indians/pirates Sunday’s games

White Sox 8, Indians 7

CHICAGO

White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen is happy his team got a big hit to avoid a sweep at home. Now he is hoping to get his ace back on track. Carlos Quentin hit a go-ahead two-run single in the seventh inning to lead the White Sox to a comeback victory over the Cleveland Indians. Paul Konerko hit a two-run homer, his 17th of the season, and Alex Rios was 2 for 3 with three runs scored for the White Sox, who came back from an early 6-2 deficit to improve to 2-4 on a nine-game homestand. With the score tied at six in the seventh, Juan Pierre led off with a single off Indians reliever Tony Sipp (0-2). Sipp was lifted after a sacrifice bunt by Omar Vizquel.

Indians reliever Jensen Lewis came in and walked Rios and Konerko to load the bases. Indians manager Manny Acta brought in left-hander Rafael Perez, who got Mark Kotsay to fly out to shallow center field. Then with two outs, Quentin hit Perez’s 0-2 pitch up the middle to score Pierre and Rios and give the White Sox an 8-6 lead. “That’s what a good team does. Kotsay couldn’t do it. Then Quentin picked it up with two outs. That’s what we’ve been missing all year long, those kind of at-bats. That’s the reason why we haven’t produced the way we can because we did not have the big hits, but today we did,” Guillen said.

Giants 6, Pirates 5, 10 innings

PITTSBURGH

The night before, and two innings before, Freddy Sanchez left the bases loaded during a potential game-changing situation. Given one more chance, he didn’t want to fail again. Sanchez hit a sacrifice fly in the 10th inning, Tim Lincecum lasted seven for the first time in four starts and the San Francisco Giants bounced back from pinch-hitter Delwyn Young’s tying two-run homer to beat the Pittsburgh Pirates. Andres Torres doubled off Octavio Dotel (2-1) and moved up on his wild pitch ahead of a mid-range fly ball to center by Sanchez, who went 7 for 13 in his first series in Pittsburgh since being traded to the Giants in July. “There’s no getting around it, that would have been a tough one if we hadn’t come away with the win,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. “After giving up a two-out, two-strike home run to tie it, Torres came right back and got us going.” With the score tied at 3, Sanchez struck out looking against Brendan Donnelly to leave the bases loaded in the eighth. Similarly, Sanchez stranded three runners to end a 6-3 Giants loss Saturday, when left fielder Lastings Milledge made a remarkable, stick-out-his-glove-and-hope catch of Sanchez’s drive to the wall. No wonder that sacrifice fly felt so good. “That [Saturday] was tough but I’ll tell you, this was even harder,” Sanchez said. “I got a chance in that same situation and didn’t come through again. The way we were able to battle back and scrap after me striking out, everyone could have gotten down.” For Sanchez, it was an uplifting way to end a weekend that included a trip to a Pittsburgh suburb to play in a game for special needs youngsters on a field he helped fund. “That was special,” he said.

Associated Press