Morning Box Score

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Sep 22, 2010 1:15PM

Sox Free Fall Continues
There's an Emmylou Harris song that goes, "But one thing they don't tell you about the Blues/ When you got em/ You keep on falling cause there ain't no bottom." That must be about how the White Sox feel right now as they lost their eighth straight game and the shot at the playoffs seems as distance as the Cubs' right now after last night's 7-2 loss to Oakland. In fact, the loss officially eliminated the Sox from playoff contention last night, all hope of a once-in-a-million-years miracle comeback gone. Mark Buehrle gave up 11 hits and five runs over six innings pitched while reliever Lucas Harrell gave up two more. After the game, Ozzie reflected on the elimination:

"It's disappointing for me, yes," White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said. "You look back and you say, you worked all Spring Training through the summer and don't get what you want to get. I mean, it's another losing year, no matter what it is. I know we played hard, I know they tried hard, they did everything they could to finish where they wanted to finish. ... I'm not getting paid to have a good season. I get paid to win. ... We didn't do it this year."

The Sox still hope to finish the season on some kind of up note and that includes snapping this losing streak, the team's longest in three years. They'll have another chance against Oakland this afternoon (2:35 p.m., CSN).

Giants Edge Cubs
Carlos Zambrano was sharp last night pitching six scoreless innings. But the Giants' pitching staff was sharper as four pitchers, led by Matt Cain, combined to shutout the Cubs 1-0 in a tight game that got started after a little weather delay at Wrigley. The Cubs only managed two hits and the best chance to score came in the sixth when they managed to get two men on with one out but a double play ended all hopes of that. The lone run of the game came when Buster Posey knocked a solo homer in the eighth. Still, there's hope for the resurgent Zambrano. Interim manager Mike Quade said, "He's a guy who's passionate about pitching and pitches with passion but maybe he's channeling it a little differently. Whether he's doing that in his mind, I don't know. When you see results like he's given us the last five, six weeks, all you can do is speculate on why that's happened and how important that is to him. From my point of view, it's very important." The Cubs try to even up the series tonight (7:05 p.m., WCIU).