The White Sox didn’t waste any time setting themselves up for their
second series win of the year Wednesday night, breaking out the bats
early and jumping on Kansas City Royals starter Brian Bannister for
five hits and four runs in the first inning en route to a 9-2 victory.
Andruw Jones belted his ninth home run of the year — a two-run
shot — after a Gordon Beckham walk and Carlos Quentin and Mark Teahen
followed with with RBI singles later in the inning to give starter
Freddy Garcia a comfortable lead.
Garcia parlayed the early run support into his first win of the
year and the Sox answered manager Ozzie Guillen’s plea for offensive
consistency sooner rather than later by tying their season-high for
runs in an inning.
“That’s big for us,” Guillen said of the early offense. “We
didn’t score four runs in nine innings [Tuesday], now we score four in
one. That always gives you a good cushion and more confidence.”
On Tuesday, he’d bemoaned the team’s lack of consistency after
a 7-2 loss, saying that the team’s been transforming into a completely
different animal within the span of 24 hours. Wednesday’s win resulted
in only the second winning series for Guillen’s club — and the first
against a division rival.
“Today we came back, we came fired up,” said Jones, whose
longball moved him past Joe Carter and into 49th on the all-time home
run list. “We got on the board early and Freddy pitched a tremendous
game.”
“It’s tough for the pitchers to go out there knowing they may
give up one or two runs, they may lose,” Juan Pierre said. “That’s the
way it’s been going the last month, so to go out there and get him some
runs early, get Freddy runs early so he can get into his game, it’s
real good.”
The Sox now have a chance to win consecutive games for just the
third time this season tonight in the series opener against Toronto.
And while winning streaks are great, Jones pointed out that it’s about
taking series consistently.
“The main thing we want to concentrate about is not to win 15,
20 in a row, just trying to win any series we can and see what happens
at the end of the day.”
