Losing streak to Twins is ovah

The White Sox were jumping up and down at U.S. Cellular Field on Saturday, but the cause of the elation was more for Alexei Ramirez's game-winning single with two outs in the ninth inning than finally beating the Twins.

“It doesn't matter what team it is,” Ramirez said through a translator, bullpen coach Juan Nieves. “We just have to win games.”

True, but didn't the 4-3 victory feel particularly good, especially when the Sox beat Minnesota at its own game while snapping a nine-game losing streak to the Twins?

“There's no weight off my shoulders, no,” manager Ozzie Guillen said. “I take it one game at a time and I don't care how many games we win or lose.

“I just take it one day. Obviously, it's nice to beat them. But we have to beat them another nine times before they beat us. Then I'll take the weight off my shoulders.”

There were other members of the White Sox who took opposing views.

A.J. Pierzynski, who came on in the eighth inning after catcher Ramon Castro broke his right hand, led off the ninth inning with a double and came around to score the winning run.

“We got two-out hits,” Pierzynski said. “They've done it to us all year and that's how they've been beating us, by getting two-out hits.”

Before Ramirez's heroics, Carlos Quentin pulled the White Sox into a 3-3 tie with two outs in the eighth inning on an RBI single off Joe Nathan.

“Carlos got a huge one off Nathan,” Pierzynski said. “Alexei got a huge one off (Alex) Burnett.

“To come back … that game had the same old feel of the way we had lost a lot of games to these guys and they played well. It was a great game, it was a fun game, and hopefully it will carry over to tomorrow.”

If the Sox can manage back-to-back wins over the Twins, hey, maybe anything is possible.

“Every time you lose, then every day you come in here, you hear about it and you read about it,” Pierzynski said of the White Sox' brutal stretch against Minnesota.

“It starts to fester in there and then you get to a point where you almost try too hard because you want to end it and then it just snowballs.”

Mark Buehrle helped the White Sox finally break the ice with 8 strong innings. The left-hander allowed 4 hits and 3 runs, all of them unearned.

“Everything was working for me,” said Buehrle, who also had 8 strikeouts, a season high. “I used all four pitches, and Castro called a good game. We were throwing changeups in to righties, which I've never thrown, and they were coming back for strikes, so we were kind of playing with a little bit of stuff out there.”

And the Sox finally beat the Twins.

“Every time we win a game it's good,” Buehrle said. “Obviously, the way we've been playing, we haven't been playing up to our capabilities.

“So we say it every time, but hopefully this gets us over the hump. We've got one more game before the break … it'd be a nice little break to go in on a winning streak.”

sgregor@dailyherald.com