Other than the first inning Friday night, the White Sox had mostly been dependent on big help from the Twins to score runs this series, and this time the Twins forgot to help.
Particularly unhelpful was Zebby Matthews, who retired the first 17 Sox and only needed 89 pitches to get through the first eight innings, only losing his prospective Maddux when he went past 100 pitches in the ninth. There were a few moderately well-hit balls, none harder than 101 mph, but the perfect game was broken up in the sixth inning by a 78 mph Drew Romo bloop after only the second time Matthews had thrown three balls. That was followed by a 70 mph Sam Antonacci-sliced double, and would have meant White Sox runs had Matthews not done some fancy fumble recovery on Tristan Peters leadoff dribbler:
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The first solid hit for the Sox was a 105 mph line shot by Peters (who else?) in the eighth.
In the bottom half, the Sox got their best play of the game, courtesy of Miguel Vargas:
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Matthews would lose the shutout when Antonacci and Vargas singled in the ninth (Vargas running his on-base streak to 16, though his consecutive games with a walk ended at 10, one short of the team record) and Antonacci scored on a Braden Montgomery single off reliever Jeff Hoffman. But the slumping Colson Montgomery popped up to end the game, and that was that.
Colson was also a key to how the Twins got a big lead, though his misplay won't show up in the records. That's because in the first inning he threw a double play relay about a bazillion feet wide of first. You can't anticipate a double play, of course, so on the books that was just a force out because the runner didn't advance. But had the play been properly made an ensuing walk, Josh Bell single and and Trevor Larnach double wouldn't have existed to bring in three runs.
The Twins added single runs in the third and seventh, the latter on a Luke Keaschall homer off José Urquidy, who otherwise pitched well and long enough (five innings, three hits, just the one run) to save the bullpen for the big upcoming series in Houston. That makes Urquidy's Sox pattern terrible game, great game (vs. the Cubs!), terrible game, pretty darned good game — the good ones on the even-numbered appearances. They just have to figure out how to skip Uriquidy's fifth time out and skip right to the sixth.
The Sox record is now 72-64, and with Cleveland walloping the Royals, the lead is back to the 3 1/2 games it was before the weekend series began, with the magic number sticking at 23. It's now on to Houston for four games, Anthony Kay on the mound against Peter Lambert in the first one on Monday night.
