Posts tagged ‘Mike Sciocsia’

In sport, as in life, about the only sure thing is that there is no sure thing. Just because you have an All-World lineup and then add in two more All-World players doesn’t mean you’ll score 1200 runs the following season. Conversely, just because your fourth and fifth starters entered the year with a combined career record of 14-23 doesn’t mean they can’t both be among the league leaders in ERA. It’s a crazy, mixed up world, and sometimes you just take a cue from Mike Sciocsia and instead of saying “I have no idea”, just say, “That’s baseball.”

In baseball, no two teams are alike, nor are they as different as the records might indicate. Granted there are times (plenty of them, really) when it’s quite simple to point out the disparity - the difference between a 90-win team and a 72-win team is obvious. One of them is good and the other one sucks, end of discussion. Other times it’s less clear - take the difference between say, a 94-win team and an 86-win team. It might be an overachieving group in the former or a band of underacheivers in the latter. Whatever the rationale proves out to be, once we start talking about a week’s worth of games or less in the standings, we’re talking about two teams with comparable skills. The team with 94 wins racked up that number because they closed out the games they were supposed to. The latter has a lot of talent but usually is sitting right on the outside of the playoff picture because they didn’t take care of opportunities to nail down wins they should’ve taken over the course of the season. The latter team is the type with an opportunity of a six-game stretch against the worst pitching staff in the National League and the second-worst in the American League, and goes 1-5.

How can you explain the fact the Sox looked to be rolling in late May only to thud atrociously in Tampa, then come home and hang 61 runs in 7 games, and then - facing off against two of the five worst staffs in the game - averaged just 2 runs per contest while dropping 5 of 6? The freakishly on/off nature of the bats can’t be as simple and easy to get rid of as a shrug of the shoulders and a coolly said, “That’s baseball.” Or can it?

The hard truth right now is, despite that brilliant outburst to open the month of June, the Sox remain in search of an identity right now on offense, which only seems to reinforce how much they depend on a) the home run and b) favorable home park conditions in order to achieve any type of consistency. As we move forward into the summer months, the White Sox staff (great as it’s been) is going to have to pitch in the band box known as US Cellular a whole bunch too, so it would be nice if they could get back that comfort zone the hitters provided a week ago. Otherwise, the Sox will have a nice pile of games like the ones they just played to reflect on at the end of the season while saying, “That was the difference.”