Catcher Carlos Santana #41 of the Cleveland Indians waits for the throw as Dewayne Wise #28 scores on a hit by Adam Dunn / (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images)
Reporting Matt Loede
CLEVELAND (92.3 The Fan) – Sunday vs the Royals, the Indians tied team highs for 2012 in both runs and hits. Monday night vs the White Sox, they were nearly no-hit by Chicago starter Hector Santiago.
The Sox lefty dominated the Indians, going 7 innings, allowing just one hit and striking out 10 with one walk as the White Sox shutout the Indians 11-0 at Progressive Field.
The loss drops the Indians to 67-93 on the season, and ends the Indians thoughts of wrapping up the season with 70 wins. With two games left, the best they can go is 69-93.
Santiago did something that Royals lefty Will Smith couldn’t do Friday night, and that’s hold the Indians bats in check.
The only hit the Indians had off Santiago came in the third when Shin-Soo Choo singled with two outs after both Lonnie Chisenhall and Vinnie Rottino struck out.
Cord Phelps singled with one out in the 9th for the Indians only other hit of the contest.
The 24-year-old Santiago was making just his 5th career start, and moves to 4-1 on the season. He also saved four of six chances this season for Chicago.
It’s the first time a Sox rookie starter had 10 or more strikeouts in a game since Jason Bere did it against the Angels back in 1993.
The start was quite different than his last one vs the Indians back on September 26th in Chicago, when he allowed three runs on five hits over 3.1 innings.
Corey Kluber started for the Indians, and was sailing along just like Santiago till he hit a wall in the 6th inning.
He got to two outs, but then Chicago pounded him for four runs. Dewayne Wise singled and stole second, and scored on a single by Adam Dunn to make it 1-0.
Alex Rios singled to left scoring Dunn to give the Sox a two-run lead. A.J. Pierzynski singled to right center bringing in Paul Konerko to make it a 3-0 game.
The RBI for Pierzynski sets a career-high as he now sits at 77 runs batted in this season.
The Sox extended it to 4-0 when Dayan Viciedo wrapped up the inning with another single to bring in score Rios.
Chicago added another run in the 8th off Indians reliever Cody Allen when shortstop Alexi Ramirez singled to shallow center, bringing in catcher Pierzynski to make it a 5-0 game.
Dunn and Konerko each came through with RBI singles in the 9th off Esmail Rogers to extend the Sox lead out from 5 to 7-0.
The ninth got even worse for the Indians when Scott Maine came in, and promptly allowed a grand slam to Viciedo, his 23rd homer of the season, to put the lead at 11-0.
It amazingly was the first grand slam allowed by the Indians in 2012.
Tuesday in game two of the three-game set it’s Justin Masterson making his final start of 2012 as he will go up against Jake Peavy at 7:05pm.
