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Meche wins second straight as Royals edge White Sox

Sep 19, 2007 - 9:30 AM By Pat Madden PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Ticker) -- The Kansas City Royals used a masterful pitching performance by staff ace Gil Meche to hand the Chicago White Sox a 3-2 defeat on Tuesday.

Meche (9-12) outdueled White Sox starter Gavin Floyd to earn his second consecutive victory after a string of six losses. The righthander held Chicago in check for seven innings, allowing four hits and two runs while striking out five.

"We get three right off the bat and it let me go out there and relax a little bit," Meche said. "It seemed like I got better as I went along. In the seventh inning I had the best stuff I had the whole game."

"Gil was outstanding tonight," Royals manager Buddy Bell said of Meche, who surpassed 200 innings pitched in a season for the first time in his career. "He felt like his fastball was as good as it had been in a long time."

Floyd (1-4), who was making his first start of the season against the Royals, gave up three runs on nine hits while tying a season high with six strikeouts in six innings.

"Early they hit a couple of good pitches," Floyd said. "I got a little unlucky. I just tried to keep the game close and give the team a chance to win."

"Floyd threw the ball good," White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said. "Great performance. I am real happy about it. It's nice to see him have some confidence."

David DeJesus, Mark Grudzielanek and Jason Smith each collected two hits for Kansas City, which won for just the third time in its last 13 outings.

Kansas City took an early 3-0 lead in the first inning on a run-scoring double by Ross Gload and a two-run single by Billy Butler.

"That's all we needed," Bell said. "I think we had a runner on first with nobody out in the first inning. That's about all we did the rest of the game. I just felt like we were on the edge all night."

"That's two games in a row where we got him early run support and he did the rest for us," DeJesus said of Meche's performance. "We would have liked to have gotten a few more runs late in the game to give us a little room, but the pitchers came through."

Chicago cut the margin to 3-1 in the fourth inning on sloppy defensive play by the Royals. Josh Fields walked to open the inning, moved to second on Jim Thome's single and scored on third baseman Smith's error.

The White Sox got another run in the sixth inning as Fields scored on a Darin Erstad groundout after opening the frame with his second double of the contest.

Three Kansas City relievers combined to pitch a perfect eighth inning, setting up Joakim Soria's 16th save of the season in the ninth.

Fields had a double and a triple for the White Sox, who fell one-half game behind the Royals in the basement of the American League Central Division.