White Sox 5 – Yankees 4
CHICAGO – They complained about an awful performance from plate umpire Bill Miller, who admitted to hitters he didn’t see certain pitches, and was terrible no matter who was hitting or pitching.
They battled the White Sox to the end, refusing to fold after putting themselves in an early hole thanks to leaky defense and not being able to hit in the clutch.
And yet the Yankees didn’t deserve anything different than the 5-4 loss they absorbed from the White Sox last night in front of 39,389 at U.S. Cellular Field, where the start of the game was delayed for 1 hour and 26 minutes due to heavy rain.
When you make two costly errors in one inning, go 3-for-14 with runners in scoring position and strand 15 runners, you should lose.
“It’s tough against a team that good to give them that many outs,” said Mike Mussina (13-5) after his second straight loss in which he gave up five runs (three earned) and eight hits in six innings. “Nothing good will happen when you give them four and five outs. It was a tough inning. I made some bad pitches and we made some bad plays.”
When the Yankees opened the six-game road trip last Friday in Baltimore, they led the Red Sox by one game in the AL East. Thanks to the reeling Red Sox losing their fifth straight last night, when the lowly Royals completed a three-game sweep in K.C. by beating Curt Schilling, the Red Sox are three lengths behind the Yankees.
Still, the Yankees had a chance to further distance themselves but dropped two of three to the defending world champions.
“We had a chance to jump to four games,” said Johnny Damon, who made the final out of the game with runners on first and second via a grounder to the right side against Bobby Jenks. “We missed out on a great opportunity.”
Alex Rodriguez threw away a double-play ball in the second and Melky Cabrera boxed a ball in left in the same inning. The mistakes allowed the White Sox to score four runs, two of which were earned.
“I tried to get two [outs],” said A-Rod, whose throw sailed far out of the reach of second baseman Robinson Cano. “Looking back, I should have gotten one.”
The throwing miscue was A-Rod’s 18th error of the season and stopped his streak of 16 error-free games. While Cabrera partially atoned for his mistake with a two-run homer in the seventh, A-Rod didn’t come through at the plate. He fanned with runners on first and second and one out in the first, and popped up with runners at the corners and one out in the sixth.
“It was very frustrating,” A-Rod admitted. “If I get a sacrifice fly it’s a tie game, and if I get a hit we win the game.”
Jason Giambi hit a two-run homer off winner Javier Vazquez (11-6) in the third but struck out looking in the fourth with the bases juiced and swinging to end the sixth with two on.
“It was one of those things where they managed to get us out and we gave them too many outs,” Joe Torre said.
Having lost two of three didn’t get Torre down.
“We are playing with confidence and this game won’t deter that,” Torre said.
