Posts tagged ‘Mark Buehrle’

Fair warning to all baseball pundits, regardless of team allegiance: he who attempts to declare that he has the AL Central “figured out” does so at his own peril.

Monday’s crucial series opener between the Twins and White Sox, who stood just 2.5 games apart in the standings, did confirm a few things that have long been status quo for anybody who follows the White Sox:

A) The Sox do not play well in domes.
B) The Sox really, really, really don’t play well in the MetroDome.

The 2008 AL Central race has, up to this point, been a complete blueprint for what life will one day look like through the looking glass (or inside the Matrix, take your metaphorical pick). Up is down. Black is white. The guy who’s been on a roll for two straight months and has 9 years of big league experience and a World Series ring gets taken deep by a rookie with a name that would make a good alias for a minor member of Batman’s Rogues Gallery. It’s what happens after everybody has it figured out that counts.

As mentioned in Monday’s episode of the podcast, it wasn’t until after I saw how much the pitching matchup for Monday’s game would “supposedly” favor the Sox that I began to get that gnawing, abysmal feeling in the pit of my stomach that surfaces every time the Sox play a critical game in Minnesota. Coming into this game, Mark Buehrle had been 6-2 with a 1.99 ERA in his last 10 starts. For his career against the Twins he was a stellar 21-11 (his most wins against opponent) and has been one of the few successful Sox pitchers in Minneapolis (10-5 career mark). Opposing him was Kevin Slowey, his dominant run of late June a fading memory as he allowed 15 runs in his last 14 innings to go with a finger injury that pushed back another start. Oh, and did we mention he was 0-2 with a 12.38 ERA against the Sox in two starts this season?

So naturally Buehrle got tagged for a pair of two-run homers by Justin Morneau and Denard Span, two left-handed hitters (lefties had only 3 HR against Mark all season) while Slowey threw a complete game shutout. You decide what it means. All I know is it gives me a lot of comfort seeing as how the deck is now “supposedly” stacked in Minnesota’s favor tomorrow with Glen Perkins matched against Clayton Richard, who’ll be making his second major-league start.

The one thing you can count on in sports is just when you think you know you have no idea. As the White Sox head into the All Star break with a 1.5 game lead over the Twins, it is time to reflect on what we thought we knew as the season marched on. In March the problem was the pitching, many said a rotation relying on John Danks and Gavin Floyd to be major contributors was doomed to fail. Well 94 games later the Sox boast the second best ERA in all of baseball and the main reason for this has been the emergence of Floyd and Danks. Arguably they both should be pitching in New York tomorrow night as Gavin ends the first half with 10 wins, an ERA of 3.65 and has twice carried a no hitter deep into the 7th inning. Johnny Danks is fourth in the AL in ERA and with any sort of run support would be making a case not only to be in the All Star game, but to be on the mound in the first inning. Danks has decided recently to control his own fate by pitching into the 7th inning or later in three straight starts, which he was failing to do early in the season.

The sure thing headed into April was obviously Mark Buehrle, but after a rough April some fans were questioning the signing and wondering if Mark had lost it. On May 27th Mark’s ERA was 5.26, nine starts later it has dipped to 3.68. If there is one thing I have learned as a Sox fan the last person I am ever going to worry about is Mark Buehrle. The ace of the staff was supposedly Javy Vazquez and he played the part the first two months of the season, but after being outdueled by Scott Kazmir in Tampa in May, Javy has looked the Javy the Yankees wanted no more part of. Now there are Sox fans muttering it is the same old Javy that just doesn’t have the mental make up to be a front line starter. I am a sucker for pitchers with great stuff and without a doubt Javier has the best stuff on this staff. If he continues to slide into August, there may be something to worry about, but Ozzie is giving him plenty of rest over the break and that may just be exactly what he needs.

It was only about a month ago when Jim Thome was washed up and needed to be benched. He was hitting just over the Mendoza line, but Big Jim has been on fire in July, hitting .372, but more importantly putting up typical Thome slugging numbers. He can’t hit lefties? Well he is hitting 30 points higher versus lefties this season. Just another example of the more you know, the less you know.

What could be a deciding factor in the AL Central race is what the Sox get out of their Captain, Paul Konerko. Hands down he has been the biggest disappointment in the first half, but the “sit down Paulie talk for Brian Anderson and moving Swisher to first” nonsense needs to stop. The man has earned the benefit of the doubt and has shown in the past he can have a big second half. I don’t want to make excuses for Paul, but he did have a nagging hand injury and then the oblique strain. The man is just 32 years old, did he just all of a sudden lose his ability to hit? Somehow I doubt it, and I think we are in store for the Paulie of old coming up in August and September and hopefully October.

It is a looooonnnng season Sox fans - a team that wins 90 games is going to lose 72 games. It is important to keep that in mind and not get too high when it’s going good or to low when inevitable bad streak happens. Not many expected this team to be where they are in the standing at the All Star break and the division is ours for the taking.

Let’s all sit back and watch Quentin and Dye help secure home field advantage tomorrow night and get ready for what promises to be an exciting second half.

The 2008 White Sox are turning into a team caught in a constant paradox. Some recent surges with the bat have propelled thier offensive numbers out of the depths, while outstanding pitching numbers have begun to level off. Both developments should not come as a huge shock considering how hitter-friendly the home ballpark is when summer time rolls around.

At 42-35 with a lead that’s been sliced down to a half-game by the blazin’-hot Minnesota Twins, the Sox have a lot to be proud of at this point while keeping in mind how much work still lies in front of them. On the plus side of the ledger:

This bullpen was supposed to be a disaster, and it isn’t. It was hard for opposing GMs to contain their laughter when they saw the high-dollar contracts awarded to Scott Linebrink and Octavio Dotel. While not perfect (and each with a pair of walk-off homers against them in the past three weeks) the two have combined to be a dramatic upgrade which has, alongside a revived Matt Thornton and an improving Nick Masset & Boone Logan, provided Bobby Jenks an actual supporting cast in the late innings. While losing 4 games via ninth-inning walk-off since May 30th isn’t exactly something to write home about, a dependable bullpen is the biggest reason the Sox haven’t faded into the pack of the AL Central.

John Danks and Gavin Floyd weren’t supposed to be ready. Danks was supposed to have already hit his ceiling, Floyd was a washed-up product of the hype machine who never got close. While still too early to start campaigning for Cy Young Awards, the alleged weaklings of the rotation have thrown some of the best starts all season for the Pale Hose. Danks in particular has been stellar in the wake of shoddy run support (2 runs or fewer scored on his behalf in 10 starts thru June 25th). The rotation was supposed to be unable to get off the ground after Mark Buehrle. Right now it leads the AL in quality starts.

Meanwhile, the elephant in the room…

The offense isn’t building any consistency…except perhaps to be consistent in their inconsistency. The same corps of hitters that raped and pillaged Kansas City and Minnesota to open June at home got muzzled by the Rockies in their home park and handcuffed by the Cubs on what was a very hitter-friendly weekend at a hitter-friendly field. They can light up a good Twins’ staff just as easily as a household name like Eric Stults can throw a complete game shutout at them.

Going into the season I was counting on three things - that the Sox would have a better offense, simply by virtue of believing the whole team can’t slump for 162 games twice - right? -, that the Sox should have a better bullpen based strictly on the numbers, and that the Sox could have a decent rotation if Danks and Floyd pitched above expectations. So far my expectations have been far surpassed on latter two. On the first, many of the exact same problems that torpedoed the team time after time in 2007 are still popping up, disguised by power-ball explosions that boost up the team offensive rankings - again, after the dismal performance of ‘07 anything looks great by comparison. But this remains a lineup filled with holes despite being third in the AL in runs scored.

Everything evens out over a long, grinding baseball season. You can’t expect dominant pitching every night, just like you shouldn’t expect having a dormant offense every night. But the great teams are the ones that strike the balance early and keep building on that through the season. Right now, even with their status as a pleasant surprise and an undeniably entertaining team to watch, the Sox continue fluxing back and forth between “good” and “mediocre” so much that it makes you very uneasy about the foundation on which they’re built.

Here we are at Memorial Day weekend, and the Cubs and Sox are both in first place. ESPN’s latest Power Rankings elevated the Cubs to the top spot and the Pale Hose to fourth on the heels of their eight-game winning streak that pushed them 3.5 games ahead of the Twins in the AL Central.

Before we got too giddy with the idea of both Chicago teams in the playoffs, let alone the possibility of a Red Line World Series, remember there’s four full months of baseball left to play. The expected giants of the AL Central are stuck in sleep-mode, and while there haven’t been a ton of signs that they’ll be able to wake up and run away from the pack like all predicted they would, I certainly wouldn’t discount the possibility. Right now, the Sox even at 26-22 should be, like Kenny Williams, looking back at a handful of games they’ve already squandered that could’ve really put the pressure on their divisional opponents heading into the summer.

Since Ozzie Guillen’s drastic changes to the lineup - AJ Pierzynski and Carlos Quentin rising to 2 & 3, Thome and Konerko dropping to 5 & 6, along with increased playing time for Alexei Ramirez and sliding Nick Swisher to the eighth spot, the Sox have gone 8-2. More importantly, they have gotten a quality start in 10 of the last 11 games. Joining Mark Buehrle in the “If it weren’t for bad luck, he’d have none at all” category is John Danks, who has had a total of 8 runs scored on his behalf in his four losses (and hasn’t gotten much more support in his wins, even when including the 13-run outburst in San Francisco last Sunday when most of the offense came after he left the game). Bottom line: Sox pitchers are the real deal. Sox offense? I’ll get back to you.

On the heels of the eight-game streak that stretched between the West Coast trip and a home sweep of the floundering Cleveland Indians, the Sox bats have been put back in the deep freezer against Joe Saunder and Jered Weaver of the Angels. It was a disturbing return to the early-May trend of atrocious hitting and starting pitchers turning into their own worst enemy at the most inopportune moment - the Angels scored in only one inning against Gavin Floyd on Friday, and the second and third runs came via two walks, a single, and consecutive hit batsmen. They scored in just one inning against Danks on Saturday. Five runs in 18 innings and the Sox couldn’t win either game.

Of course, before running for the nearest ledge, it’s helpful to remember this Sox team has already outplayed the expectations and people have been saying since mid-April that their pitching staff would come back to earth. They can’t say that now. Meanwhile, the offense that should’ve made some strides by plugging in Cabrera & Swisher has looked to the young Carlos Quentin to carry the load. As we move into summer, the Sox have playoff-caliber pitching. To justify the dreams of an all-Chitown October, they still need to complete the quest for consistent offense.