So this isn't the start anybody wanted. This is about as close to the worst it could have been. The White Sox find themselves amazingly in only second to last place in the AL Central after going 10-18. Somehow the Twins have managed to be worse than the Sox. There were very few bright moments and a whole lot more of the negative variety. To sum April up, I wrote a brief Haiku, which as you remember from grade school is a poem of three lines in a 5-7-5 syllable pattern.
Offense is inept
Dyslexia in standings
Please fire Greg Walker
These are pretty much my sentiments in a nutshell. I mean how do we expect to win if we can't hit, we can't field and we can't run the bases? It's been bad just about everywhere in the game it can be bad. First of all, the bullpen has struggled. Despite Santos and Crain pitching solid, Thornton and Sale have struggled. Thornton has struggled more than anyone, and at this point we don't even know if he can get AN out when he comes in.
The starting pitching has been ok. While they have had their share of poor starts, they've had a lot more good starts overall. Starting pitchers have pitched a little over 6 1/3 innings per start with a respectable 4.34 ERA. Poor Philip Humber has a 3.06 ERA, but just a 2-3 record to show for it. Gavin Floyd is the only starter who is having success, somehow going 3-1 with a 3.60 ERA. Buehrle and Jackson haven't been very good, going a combined 3-6 with a 6.68 ERA. John Danks has been screwed by run support in 4 of his 6 starts, going 0-4 with a 3.92 ERA. By screwed, I mean giving up 3 or less runs and not getting wins.
The hitting has been non-existent after the first 7 games. Through the first 7 games, the White Sox scored a ML best 52 runs. After, they have been at the bottom of the league in runs scored. As noted in my last post, they are the worst in the AL in Potential Runs Scored %. It's been really bad. The Sox are hitting just .239 and are scoring just 3 runs per game. To put it in perspective, the White Sox have scored 110 runs, and scored 15 runs on Opening Day. The White Sox scored 13% of their season runs in that one game.
Yep, the season got off to a bang. 15 runs vs Cleveland. Then the Sox beat Cleveland again the next day and won the series 2 out of 3. Cleveland then shot off, and went on a tear going 17-6 since. The White Sox have gone 8-17 since. The Indians are in first place and really look good for a young team. Nobody is really hitting all that special except for Travis Hafner who has rediscovered himself at the plate so far.
Cleveland is winning with pitching. Josh Tomlin has a 4-0 record with a 2.45 ERA and microscopic WHIP of 0.909. Justin Masterson is 5-0 with a 2.18 ERA. Fausto Carmona has been struggling and inconsistent, but they have really picked it up for him. Their bullpen has been steady, with 6 saves, a 4-2 record and 3.35 ERA. Can Cleveland keep up this kind of pitching? Who knows, but certainly no other team in the AL Central wants to jump up and take their top spot from them.
One player for the Sox who has been the biggest disappointment in my mind is Adam Dunn. The Sox paid a lot of money to bring in the slugger who can put up big time numbers. He has put up at least 38 HRs for the last several years, he has just 2 in April. He had an emergency appendectomy, so I am inclined to cut him a little slack; however, he has really struggled before and after he was back.
Dunn's batting line is .160/.300/.267. Yeah, that's an OPS of just .567. Omar Vizquel has a higher OPS(.633) with just 1 double, no triples and no home runs. Dunn has been a complete waste at the plate, K-ing 31 times. The next highest for the Sox is Beckham who has 20 Ks. If you combine Quentin and Konerko's Ks, they only beat Dunn by 2. I knew he would K a lot, but I also was under the impression that when he made contact, it would be good contact and it hasn't been.
Defense has been bad. Defense has lead directly to more than a few of our losses. Some in particular are blown saves by Thornton that were heavily related to defense by Juan Pierre and others. Thornton has blown saves on his own but a few of his saves were defense related failures. MLB.com has a newer statistic called Defensive Efficiency Rating(DER). It's a bunch of computer calculations that conclude "expected outs" and then what we actually do and gives us a percentage of the time we get outs when we should. White Sox are 28th in MLB at this with .6965 DER. We're the worst in the AL.
The Sox are making me not want to watch baseball anymore. I love baseball and I will watch, but not them. I refuse to watch the White Sox until they win a series. If they don't prove to me that they can win, I won't give them the satisfaction of my viewership. It's not because I'm a bad fan, it's because I'm such a good fan that I am holding my team accountable for poor play.
This has really been an April to forget, maybe April showers will bring May flowers? Just hope May doesn't bring Tyler Flowers, he sucks. It will be a very long summer if this doesn't get turned around.
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