There was some symbolic evidence that Saturday was not meant for baseball to be played in Chicago. Grounds crews spent much of the morning hosing down the outfield to melt the standing snow, and stadium staff had less luck elsewhere. The effort to clear snow kept the gates closed until 35 minutes before the first pitch, and the ramps to the upper deck kept re-freezing so stubbornly that White Sox declared the section closed with barely a half hour to relocate everyone.
Naturally, Chris Sale decided to pitch in short sleeves.
1. It didn’t seem like a particularly wise decision.
Sale was wild enough to walk Juan Uribe on four pitches to lead off the second, and was bailed out of another messy inning when Collin Cowgill hit a check-swing liner right into a double play to Jose Abreu at first to end the second. From there, the sailing got very smooth. Sale relied on a looping, slower version of his slider to grab strikes, and kept the ball on the ground. He had retired 12 in a row until a Francisco Lindor infield single to the 6-hole followed by Mike Napoli golfing a changeup on the outside corner out to center ruined his scoreless day. Uneven and angry overthrows then took over for the rest of his day, culminating in Yan Gomes taking him deep into the left field bullpen to give the Indians a 3-2 lead in the seventh.
2. The letdown feeling would only last so long. Indians reliever Bryan Shaw had nothing at all, yet stayed in to face just enough hitters to put whole thing out of reach. Austin Jackson led off the seventh with his first hit of the day after the cold likely robbed him of a dinger and double earlier. Rather than bunt, Jimmy Rollins snuck a double down the left field line, and the bases were loaded after the Indians put Abreu on. Todd Frazier tied the game up with a fielder’s choice to short, but it was Melky Cabrera who played the hero: working Shaw in a nine-pitch at-bat before lining a full-count get-me-over to right to put the Sox back on top.
Somehow, two batters later, Shaw was still in the game to split the plate with a 0-2 cutter that Avisail Garcia launched into the right field bullpen, effectively putting the game away.
3. Matt Albers is starting to get pretty confident. After striking out three cleaning up for Zach Duke in the eighth and finishing the ninth, he celebrated like a man who knows he’s up to 23 consecutive scoreless appearances. Duke, meanwhile, allowed a single to Jason Kipnis, which served as his only batter faced. Resigned to strict LOOGY duty, he’s retired two of the six hitters he’s faced on the year.
4. Indians starter Cody Anderson did some good things over six innings Saturday but nothing that particularly fooled Abreu, who put the Sox on the board in the third with a laser beam out to left, collected a broken bat single and walked. Abreu swaps between swinging at junk a foot out of the zone and looking completely unbeatable pretty easily, and the pendulum has swung back toward the latter already after some ugly at-bats in Oakland. By the seventh, the Indians had seen enough, and put him on first rather than deal with him in an RBI situation.
5. The Sox didn’t touch Anderson otherwise without help of the Indians’ defense, which committed three errors in the first four innings, but hardly limited their sloppiness to three plays. Garcia, fresh off blowing a RBI opportunity in the second with a three-pitch strikeout, led off the fourth with a single, advanced on a wild pitch, and scored when an Alex Avila single to center went through the wickets of Rajai Davis. They almost had something bigger when the Indians botched an easy double play ball by J.B. Shuck, but the umpires ruled that the bad throw to Lindor at second did not drag him all the way off the base, it just made it impossible for him to turn two…and then an errant pickoff throw put Shuck on second.
A compelling case that the Indians are an above-average defensive club was not made Saturday, but it was very cold.
Record: 4-2
Next game is Sunday at 1:10 p.m. CT on CSN and on WLS.
Lead Photo Image Credit: Matt Marton // USA Today Sports Images
if we are on such a strict budget, i don’t understand why we signed duke for basically $5m per year. he’s 5% -7% of the white sox payroll. if there are financial limitations, guess what? they shouldn’t be wasted on relievers other than a closer and even sometimes that isn’t necessary.
Tell that to the royals last year