M's 4, White Sox 2
.
TOP HALF
From the MLB.com wrap on the game, here is James Shields regretting the "mistake" that led to Cano's decisive 3-run shot:
.
White Sox right-hander James Shields went six innings for the third time in eight starts this season, but couldn't get out of his trouble in the third. After giving up a walk and a single to lead off the inning, Shields left an 85.6-mph cutter over the heart of the plate and Cano homered to give Seattle a 3-1 lead. The Mariners added another run when Shields' fifth-inning wild pitch allowed Jean Segura to score, leaving the veteran right-hander on the hook for four runs.
"Obviously I didn't want to throw the ball down the middle to Cano," Shields said. "I wanted to get it inside, off the plate a bit. If I make my pitches right there, I think it's a whole different ballgame."
.
Which is fine; a cutter that does not jam in by another 6 inches, that's a mistake. But that's what you have rich men in the lineup for, to hit pitches that can be hit. Tuffy Gosewich, bless his heart, doesn't go deep power alley over the fence on a single "mistake."
Then, too ... let's split this out, what say. :- )
...
JEAN SEGURA had yet 2 more hits. He's at .350 and that's as a Safeco player. We liked Scott Servais' explanation that Segura has (1) a quiet lower body that leaves him square to the plate very consistently and (2) "short arms" that leave few moving parts in his swing. The wonder is that he can hit the ball hard this way.
...
Random win by 4 runs to 2? Not at all. The Mariners had
√ 10 base hits
√ 4 walks
√ 3 doubles
√ a home run
√ a screamball RBI double by Gamel barely nipped by their shortstop in the webbing
Whereas the Sox had to scrape for every base off Paxton. Re-play the game 100 times and the M's win maybe 80 of them.
.
ZEUS
Sometimes a pitcher's line score shows 2 runs and he's lucky; this time Paxton gave up 2 runs and was unlucky. The White Sox were in grovel mode from the start, fouling off pitches with arm swings from inning one. They succeeded in this too. Because of the shower of foul tips raining down over the catcher's net, and because of 9 strikeouts, the Sox ran Zeus' pitch count up and Servais chose to pull him after 6 innings and about 103 pitches or something. Pretty nice scrounge on the Sox' part, if you ask me.
He had B+, A- stuff:
√ Fastball solid, not great, velo. Very good control but not inner-third command. Not the explosive high-90's length. Like we sez, B+, A- by his standards.
√ Foshball not breaking much and too close in speed to his fastball, but still, it was there and reliable.
√ Knuckle curve really good; by dint of immense effort the Sox had "only" 16 swings and misses on the day
√ Weirdly, Zeus threw not a single changeup the whole game
But the trendline is right where they want it to be. That's two straight Zeus outings, following a K-Pax outing before that. Here is an article with video replay if you'd like to wallow in Paxton's glory.
Enjoy,
Dr D