Despite strong start, Sox’ Peavy not at all pleased
Give hard-luck White Sox starting pitcher Jake Peavy an “A” for his effort during Tuesday night’s 2-1 interleague loss to the rival Cubs at U.S. Cellular Field.
Give Peavy an “A+” for his honesty.
“I don’t mean any disrespect, but a team playing the way the Cubs have been playing, we’ve got to beat those teams,” Peavy said after the reeling Sox dropped their second straight to the team tied for the worst record (24-44) in baseball.
“Please don’t take that out of context because the Cubs are a big-league team and you got to show up every night because any team can beat anybody.
“But teams that we feel we should beat that aren’t playing that well, we’ve got to show up and take advantage of these opportunities. Detroit is coming. And we know Cleveland isn’t going anywhere.”
Actually, the Indians moved back into first place in the AL Central by a half-game over the White Sox after beating the Cincinnati Reds on Tuesday night.
And with 7 wins in their last 10 games, the Tigers finally are heating up. They are only 1½ games behind the Sox (35-33).
What a shame for the White Sox, who have lost seven of nine.
And what a crying shame for Peavy (6-3), who was left empty-handed after pitching a complete game against the Cubs.
The right-hander also has lost a pair of 1-0 decisions this seasons one to the Boston Red Sox and one to the Cardinals in St. Louis last week.
“What’s done is done,” Peavy said. “We need Gavin (Floyd) tomorrow, he knows that. We have to show up and find a way to scratch a few across.”
The Cubs scored both of their runs off Peavy in the third inning, but the Sox’ offense blew several scoring chances against starter Travis Wood and four relievers.
In the second inning, Alexei Ramirez’s ground-rule RBI double made it a 1-0 game, and the White Sox were positioned to do much more damage with the bases loaded and one out.
Orlando Hudson popped out and Alejandro De Aza struck out to kill the rally. It was another rough night at the plate for Hudson (0-for-4), who is batting .194.
Afterward, Hudson snapped without even being asked a question.
“I (bleeped) it up,” Hudson said. “I lost the game for the man (Peavy), that’s it. The man threw a (heck) of a game. I lost it for him. Point blank. Case closed. We lost. My bad. That’s it.”
OK.
But en route to losing five straight series, some big offensive outbursts by the Sox have been wasted by poor pitching.
On other days, like Wednesday, it has been the opposite.
“I don’t think by any means this team has lost any confidence,” Peavy said. “This team has shown it can play with anybody on any given day. The bottom line is we’ve been a little too streaky. We’ve been really good for a little while and not so good.
“Even during our not- so-good stretches, look at how easy, if we could have scrapped out a few runs across my last start in St. Louis when we had a couple chances with guys at third with less than two out, and we would have won that series.”
sgregor@dailyherald.com