With Paul Konerko playing in place of Frank Thomas again Sunday, manager Jerry Manuel couldn’t say when he would get Thomas back into the lineup.
The Sox have six more interleague road games coming up in Philadelphia and Atlanta. That means there is no place for both Thomas and Konerko to play.
“There are plans [to play Thomas], but Paul Konerko has played first base well and he’s one of the league leaders in RBIs,” Manuel said. “He’s a big part of our offense. Hopefully we’ll find a matchup suitable to put Frank out there.”
The Sox are one game under .500 and five games behind Minnesota, so the players know they’re all under scrutiny by management because of their record and Comiskey Park attendance.
“We don’t want guys thinking, `I’ve got to play well, otherwise I’m going to be moved,’ or `I need to play start playing well because I want to be moved,'” Konerko said. “This game is hard enough when you’ve got everything focused in where you want it to be, instead of thinking about other things.
“But this is a business, and if we don’t pick it up, [trade speculation] is something that’s going to come into play. People who run baseball teams are usually shrewd businessmen, or else they wouldn’t have the money to begin with to run the team.”
Konerko doesn’t believe Sox management wants to pull the plug on the team to save money.
“I think they want us to win so they can keep us,” Konerko said. “That would be a tough situation, where they’re going to dump someone because they’re going to be a free agent at the end of the year, like [James Baldwin] last year. I don’t see that happening this year.”
Warning, warning: Todd Ritchie plunked Alex Gonzalez after a two-run homer by Todd Hundley in the third, prompting a warning from plate umpire Mike Winters. Manuel didn’t think the umpire’s action was warranted.
“A lot of time the umpire probably gets caught up in the atmosphere rather than what was really happening,” Manuel said. “That was premature in the baseball setting. But maybe in this whole [city series rivalry] it might have been the right thing to do.”
Kerry Wood buzzed several Sox hitters in the first inning, but Manuel didn’t think he was purposely throwing at anyone. “That might have been the reason [Winters] did it,” Manuel said.
“[Wood] couldn’t find his stuff. We never felt that he was throwing at our guys. We just thought he was off. There was one point where he just couldn’t get anything over but his breaking ball. He just happened to have an off day. He’s a good pitcher.”
