White Sox-Twins: The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent

Box Score

Good

Gavin Floyd

It's funny how baseball works. In the third or fourth inning, Hawk Harrelson remarked that Floyd didn't have his best stuff out there today—which he didn't. 

And yet, he took a no-hitter into the ninth inning, finally surrendering his first hit on a one-out double to Joe Mauer.

Watching a pitcher on your team attempt to throw a no-hitter is one of the most nerve-racking, exciting things in sports. The excitement builds after the sixth inning when he hasn't allowed a hit. It starts to really be on your mind after the seventh. You don't even want your team to bat—you just want to see your pitcher get back out there and try to make history. 

And, when he loses it, it's crushing.

Well, at least until you realize that your team still is going to win the game.

But seeing your pitcher throw a no-hitter is an incredible experience—one that White Sox fans were lucky enough to see happen on April 18, 2007, when Mark Buehrle no-hit the Texas Rangers.

Sox fans nearly saw it again, but it wasn't to be. Still, Floyd pitched a great game—the second time he's taken a no-hitter past the seventh this year—and picked up a huge win for the team.  

Jermaine Dye

Dye's first-inning, two-out RBI single set the tone for this game—it was not going to be as bad as the six consecutive games the White Sox had lost up to this point.

The single was a great piece of hitting, as Dye guided a Nick Blackburn slider up the middle, scoring Orlando Cabrera and then Carlos Quentin on poor throws by Carlos Gomez and Mike Lamb. 

Dye then added a solo home run to right in the sixth to put the White Sox up 4-1.

He certainly had the right approach today, taking Blackburn up the middle and the other way, instead of getting pull-happy like so many hitters in this White Sox lineup have been during the losing streak.

Juan Uribe

Let's not fool ourselves—Uribe is a dead-pull hitter. That's what he's been all his career, and that's what he will be in the future. Earlier in the year, it looked like he was trying to take the ball up the middle and the other way, and he didn't look comfortable at the plate.

He changed his stance back in the Baltimore series and looks to be going back to his dead-pull ways. He's never going to hit for a high average by only tyring to pull the ball, but at least he'll get more hits than when he tries to hit the ball up the middle and the other way. Today, he picked up two hits— including a two-out, RBI single—by pulling the ball.

People tend to forget that Uribe has 20-home run power when he's pulling the ball. Even if he hits .220 as a No. 9 hitter, with the defense he provides, I can live with it.

The offense

It wasn't just Dye and Uribe—the whole offense just looked better today. The only player to not reach base in the game was Nick Swisher. Orlando Cabrera and Carlos Quentin both reached base twice and scored a combined three runs while batting 1-2 in the lineup. Quentin also added a two-run single in the seventh. 

The final totals for the team: 11 hits, four walks, and seven runs. That's the White Sox offense we saw in the first few weeks of the season. 

Bad

Joe Mauer

Ugh. Anybody else, and Floyd probably would have thrown a no-hitter. If only Mauer wasn't such a professional, top-notch hitter... 

Indifferent 

Nothing here. This was an incredibly exciting game to watch—something the Sox haven't had in a long, long time.