The Floodgates Open in Coors Field-Assisted Win Over Rockies

The White Sox atoned for their embarrassing loss on Monday night by embarrassing the Rockies on Tuesday night with a 15-3 victory.

Jose Quintana pitched effectively in the early innings and the offense matched his performance with a rally in the second.  Avisail Garcia came to bat first and frankly looked lost on the first two pitches.  On 0-2 Morales threw a mid-80s cutter to the inside part of the plate that Garcia crushed for a solo home run.  Morales looked flustered in the next at bat and missed out of the zone on a curveball before grooving a fastball in to Alexei, which he hit for a single.  Tyler Flowers came up to the plate as one of the hottest hitters on the team and promptly turns around another mid-80s cutter for the second home run of the inning.  It didn't look like Garcia or Flowers even got all of those pitches.  Thank you Coors Field!

In the third inning Viciedo knocked in Eaton on a sacrifice fly and Cuddyer replied with a fourth inning homer that he flipped over the center field wall Making it 4-1.  Both pitchers would settle down until the seventh and most decisive inning of the game.  

Morales was replaced after both Eaton and Semien reached base to start the inning.  Chad Bettis came in to pitch and the battle between him and Abreu ensued.  After fighting through eleven pitches, Abreu hit the twelfth, a low breaking ball, over the left field fence for a three-run home run making it a 7-2 lead for the White Sox.

At this point the Colorado pitching fell apart and an unbelievable string of White Sox offense commenced.  In the top of the eighth Avisail hit his second home run to lead off the inning.  Ramirez hit another homer in the next at bat.  With two outs, Tyler Flowers singled then scored on a Marcus Semien double.  Jose Abreu hammered a ball to center field for his second homer of the night.  Viciedo got a hit on an infield single followed by Gillaspie's only hit of the night, a single.  Avisail, up for the second time this inning hit a duck-snort single that scored Viciedo.   After watching Wliton Lopez hemorrhage six earned run on eight hits, Walt Weiss mercifully replaced him with Tommy Kahnle who ended the White Sox offensive onslaught.  Dan LeMahieu would score in the bottom of the eighth inning on a Tulowitzki sacrifice fly but it was all for naught as the Carlos Gonzalez-less Rockies were no match for the White Sox offensive assault (who would have thought we would ever say that?).

Notes:

-Eaton and Semien were all over the bases at the top of the order.  Eaton reached base in five of his six plate appearances while Semien went three for four with a double and a walk.  Eaton and Semien both had stolen base as well.

-Jose Quintana, while not flashy, was solid and only used 86 pitches through seven innings.  He lowered his ERA to 2.77 over his first two starts.

-The White Sox hit six home runs off Colorado pitching but only Abreu's second homer appeared to be legitimate.  The others all seemed to be park-assisted to varying degrees.

-The White Sox kept on rolling after their breakout in the seventh and eighth innings scoring two more runs in the top of the ninth.

-Alexei Ramirez is on a nine game hitting streak.

-Gillaspie was the only hitter not to join the hit parade going one for six with two strike outs.

Team Record: 4-4

The next game is tomorrow, 4/9/14, against the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field.  The start time is 2:10pm Central time and those in the Chicagoland area can watch on Comcast Sportsnet or listen on 670 The Score.