Getting Real

The White Sox had a chance to pull out a game last night against the Orioles. Up until the eighth inning, it was another pathetic effort, with Shane Smith setting the tone in a bad way, giving up six runs on nine hits in 4.1 innings of work. But five runs in the bottom of the eighth pulled the Sox to within a run at 8-7. The bottom of the ninth offered the “core” a chance to show what it could do. With one out, Chase Meidroth collected his second single of the game, bringing up Kyle Teel. The rookie catcher hit his eighth homerun of the season in the first and worked the count to 3-1. Then he struck out on a pitch in his eyes. Up next was Colson Montgomery, who’d struck out twice already. Make that three times, number three on a fastball Montgomery swung through. The 23-year old has now struck out 75 times in 216 at-bats. He’s hitting .095 (2-for-21) over his last seven games, .196 over his last fifteen (10-for-51). Where’s hitting coach Marcus Thames? Teel I’m not too worried about; he admitted after the game to trying to do too much. Everything so far, a .281 BA with 33 RBIs in 224 at-bats suggests he will in fact learn from his failures. That said, I hope Thames or some other coach is there to point out he left a walk on the table with the game on the line. As for Montgomery, I worry all the time. I see the Angels just sent down onetime phenom Scott Kingery. That could be Montgomery in the not-too-distant future if he doesn’t fix his swing. But not to worry. It’s all rainbows and unicorns, or as Sox manager New-Mickey Venable put it in his postgame comments, “Another great example of these guys continuing to battle. Got off to a great start there offensively [the two-run homer by Teel]. Shane did, too. Just as the game went on and they continued to score runs [!!#@!!], our guys continued to battle and it was nice to see us make it interesting.” [quote from today’s Tribune online] They still lost their fifth straight, Skipper.