Ailing team digs out a win
Reeling Sox dump Rangers despite host of injuries
ARLINGTON, Texas — “It can always get worse,’’ White Sox manager Robin Ventura said Thursday.
Ventura could have been talking about his team’s play in the first month of the season, or he could have been addressing the team’s growing — by leaps and bounds — injury list.
On a day when right-hander Gavin Floyd revealed that his elbow might require surgery — a few hours after Jake Peavy was scratched from his scheduled start with a sore back — a few good things prevented the day from being a total bust.
Left-hander Hector Santiago took the ball a day early and delivered 5⅓ innings of one-run, two-hit ball with six strikeouts, and catcher Tyler Flowers out-shined his predecessor, A.J. Pierzynski (0-for-4) by hitting a three-run homer in a 3-1 road victory for the White Sox against the Texas Rangers.
That gave the limping Sox (12-15) their first series win since the first week, but you have to wonder how many more they can muster playing with a depleted roster.
The disabled list is long and deep with Floyd, Gordon Beckham, John Danks, Dayan Viciedo and Angel Sanchez on it.
“Every day you go through the list and figure out who is available,’’ Ventura said. “The training room is full.’’
“When it rains, it pours,’’ Peavy said.
Floyd has a tear in the flexor muscle in his right elbow and an unstable ulnar collateral ligament. He saw Dr. Keith Meister on Tuesday and will see Dr. David Altchek in New York on Monday for a third opinion.
“We’ll wait until the last doctor so I can think about it, pray about it and take it from there,” Floyd said after Thursday’s game.
“Yes. There’s options of surgery. And options of rehab. And everything like that. We just have to weigh the options and see what happens.’’
Floyd is in the last year of his contract, so his health kills almost any chance of the Sox getting prospects for him at a midseason should they be out of the AL Central race. At least there was encouraging news from Birmingham, where Danks, who is in the second year of a $63 million extension, pitched seven innings and allowed two runs in his rehab start. He struck out one, but touched 90 mph with his fastball in the later innings.
“I felt good about all my pitches, but especially my cutter, which is a great sign because that’s been the one pitch I’ve struggled with to this point,” Danks said. “I haven’t heard about my velocity but it felt like the ball was coming out pretty good.”
A night after Pierzynski got riled up over getting hit by an Addison Reed pitch, the Rangers took the high road and did not retaliate. Nursing a tender oblique, Pierzynski started for the first time in the series and failed to get even with his bat, flying out to center against Matt Thornton as the potential tying run in the seventh and striking out in a similar situation in the ninth against Reed. Reed walked two and struck out the side for his 10th save in as many chances.
“Weird for sure,’’ Thornton said of facing his longtime teammate. “He caught me for seven years, man. He’s a good friend. I know what he’s doing he knows what I’m doing. “It was just an awkward situation.’’ The mood in the Sox clubhouse was upbeat, but far from jubilant as they hobbled off to Kansas City.
“You hope in the next week or two we start getting pieces back and get to full strength and get on a little roll,’’ Thornton said.