Kerry Wood is good enough, Cubs manager Don Baylor said Friday, “that even on his bad days, he still helps keep us in the game.”
This was the case Friday when Wood (8-6) was the losing pitcher in a 7-2 White Sox victory before a standing-room-only crowd of 40,157 fans at Wrigley Field.
On the positive side of the ledger, the Sox hit only 10 balls in fair territory in the six innings the 24-year-old fireballer worked. Wood struck out eight and limited the Sox to two singles.
The Cubs trailed 3-0 when Wood left the game, and Sammy Sosa quickly trimmed that deficit to 3-2 when he hit his 30th home run of the season with Ricky Gutierrez on base in the sixth.
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So, as Baylor said, Wood kept the Cubs in position to win.
But . . .
There was a reason Wood lasted only six innings. Actually, three reasons: strikeouts, walks and foul balls. They combined to balloon his pitch count to 122 after six innings, prompting Baylor to lift him.
Woods’ eight strikeouts required 38 pitches, an average of 4.8 pitches. His seven walks required 39 pitches, an average of 5.6.
“Obviously, the walks killed me today,” Wood said.
Less obvious were the 35 foul balls off Sox bats that raised Woods’ pitch count even faster.
Magglio Ordonez set the tone for Wood’s abbreviated outing when he battled the Cubs right-hander through an 11-pitch at-bat in Wood’s 24-pitch first inning.
Wood got ahead of Ordonez no balls and two strikes. Then Ordonez took a called ball, fouled off four in a row, took another ball, fouled off two more and finally grounded to short.
Sox pitcher James Baldwin was limited to five innings in a recent start because his pitch count reached 100, including 31 fouls.
Sox manager Jerry Manuel believes the fouls included some pitches where Baldwin narrowly missed retiring the batter and some where the batter just missed hitting safely.
Few “loud” fouls were struck off Wood. The righty believed most of the near-misses were his. “I felt good at the start of the game,” Wood said. “I threw some very good pitches to Ordonez, but he kept getting a piece of them. It was a good at-bat for him. I came close to striking him out, but he stayed alive.”
Wood threw first-pitch strikes to nine of the 10 batters he faced in the first three innings, but against the last 10 batters he faced, he missed the strike zone on nine first pitches.
“I can’t tell you why I started getting behind the hitters after I was ahead of them,” Wood said. “And I really don’t know why I had the control problem today.”
“Strikeout pitchers tend to go deeper into the count,” Baylor said. “”You have to live with it.”
In contrast to Wood’s Friday outing, Jon Lieber needed only 78 pitches to pitch his 3-0, one-hit victory over the Cincinnati Reds on May 24. Wood had 77 pitches after four innings Friday.