Bad night all around for Sox
MINNEAPOLIS - The local media was out in force before Monday night's AL Central showdown between the first-place White Sox and second-place Minnesota.
Sox manager Ozzie Guillen showered the Twins with his usual praise, but he did stress one point.
"We come here to kick their butts," Guillen said.
Maybe it'll happen tonight.
On Monday, the White Sox failed to show up in every area of the game, and the Twins took full advantage while rolling to a 7-0 victory at the Metrodome.
Sox starter Mark Buehrle was way off, and so was the offense and the defense. Add it up and the White Sox saw their division lead trimmed to 1 games.
"We haven't had many games like this where in every part of the game we didn't play very good," Buehrle said after allowing 5 runs (4 earned) on 8 hits over 5 innings. "Just throw it out; we have three more games to play."
The series opener looked like a near lock for the Sox.
Not only has Buehrle been one of the best starting pitchers in baseball since June 1, the White Sox had pounded Minnesota starter Keivn Slowey twice this season, piling up 11 total runs in 8 innings against the right-hander.
On Monday, Slowey threw his second complete-game shutout of the season while limiting the Sox to just 6 hits.
"He was locating," third baseman Josh Fields said. "Every pitch you thought you were on, the next thing you know it's off the end of the bat. I'm speaking for myself, but it looked like the other guys were having the same problem."
Jermaine Dye made the only solid contact against Slowey, crushing a ball to deep left field leading off the fourth inning. Initially, third-base umpire Bill Welke signaled home run, even though Dye didn't even bother going running the bases.
The call was correctly changed to a foul ball, and that was as close as the White Sox came to scoring.
"He was throwing a little cutter that was nasty," Fields said of Slowey. "It was hard tonight because we didn't have too many fastball counts."
Minnesota scored all the runs it needed in the third inning on 2-run homers from Denard Span (the first of his career) and Justin Morneau.
"I wasn't as sharp as I've been," Buehrle said. "Even in the first couple innings, I knew I didn't have any location. I've never really liked this park. They use it to their advantage. They have a lot of young, scrappy guys that put the ball in play and make the defense work."
Fields and second baseman Alexei Ramirez capped the Sox' miserable night with errors.
"If you come to this ballpark and make mistakes, they're going to get you," Guillen said. "We just had a bad day today, a real bad day. We didn't pick it up to their level because we didn't have anything going. A good ballclub bounces back. We'll see how we do tomorrow."