Cubs 2, White Sox 1: Sox can't win on Peavy's guts alone

In the second inning, the White Sox had a chance to end Travis Wood's night early. Alexei Ramirez hit a ground-rule double to score the game's first run, and put runners on second and third. Tyler Flowers followed with a walk -- Wood's third of the inning -- to load the bases for Orlando Hudson.

Hudson worked the count full before mustering a mere popout to short. All the runners held, and they wouldn't move any further, as Wood struck out Alejandro De Aza to end the inning.

Hudson would come through one inning later, but for the wrong team. With one out, Hudson fielded a Geovany Soto grounder and had all the time in the world to throw him out. Hudson dropped down for some reason, and set off a whole bunch of suck dominoes for several other teammates in the process.

Hudson threw weak and wide, which pulled Paul Konerko off the bag. Soto ran around Konerko, and slid past first base without touching it. It was a race for the bag -- except Konerko had a brain fart and didn't realize the force was still valid. Soto tagged the bag with his hand before Konerko tagged Soto. It's not often you can say this, but Konerko's foot (or glove) would have won a race to the base.

Tony Campana followed with an infield single off Peavy's foot. That flipped the batting order back to David DeJesus, who was 0-for-15 against Peavy in his career. Sure enough, Peavy got ahead of him 0-2 ... and then started overthrowing breaking balls. Tyler Flowers couldn't block one of them, which allowed the runners to move up a base. And sure enough, both of them would score as DeJesus lined 3-2 pitch to right.

And even though Wood, winless on the season with seven homers allowed over 35 innings, appeared to be in a shaky state, the Cubs had already won the game.

The White Sox only advanced one runner as far as second base over the last six innings. Their best chance came in the eighth, when James Russell walked Gordon Beckham and Adam Dunn with one out, bringing up two of the Sox's best hitters.

Manny Corpas threw Paul Konerko a hanging slider -- he jammed himself into a weak flyout to right. Alex Rios had an at-bat turn against him when first-base umpire called a clear check-swing against Rios on a 2-1 count, and ended up grounding out to first. It would be easier to get angry at the umpires if the Sox could muster more than one scoring chance over seven innings.

The loser -- on paper and spiritually -- was Peavy. He showed up when the Sox needed him, throwing a 125-pitch complete game to give the bullpen a day off. He allowed just six baserunners (five hits, one walk), and pitched around a DeJesus leadoff triple in the ninth by getting two grounders and a strikeout to hold DeJesus at third.

All he has to show for it is his third loss of the season. In his three defeats this year, he has allowed four runs over 25 innings, including two complete games.

Bullet points:

• The White Sox have lost five consecutive series, and fell out of first place.
• Alex Rios drew his first walk in 80 plate appearances in the second inning.
• Tyler Flowers threw out Starlin Castro on an attempted steal for a double play. Flowers is now 8-for-12 this season, and the Sox have four strike-him-out-throw-him-outs on the season. They had four over 2010 and 2011 combined.

Record: 35-33 | Box score | Play-by-play