It took until now but the White Sox are finally feeling the effects on losing Jake Peavy for the year as I’m officially saying that starter, Freddy Garcia, is out of gas. A lot of people probably are thinking that the Sox would not have gotten Edwin Jackson if Peavy was still in the rotation, but don’t be so sure about that. The idea at the trading deadline is to make your team better, and if Peavy did not go down to injury and the Sox had the opportunity to add Jackson to one of the best pitching staffs in baseball then they would have.

Garcia has not pitched that well since Jackson has shown-up, and has even commented that he’s the odd man out going into next season. That’s obvious since Jackson is as good of a pitcher as Garcia was in his prime, if not better. Jackson continues his domination of offenses since coming to the White Sox with 11 strike outs against the Tigers on Saturday. Since arriving Jackson has compiled some pretty impressive stats over a three-game span; 24 strikeouts, three earned runs, only four walks, and a 1.35 ERA over 20-innings pitched. His one blemish would be he has let up 20 hits, but he’s certainly gotten out of whatever jams he’s gotten into.

As Sox fans you can only imagine the rotation in 2010 with Peavy pitching down the stretch, but we’ll have to wait until 2011 to see that rotation. Instead, the Sox now sit three games back of the Twins since J.J. Putz has had one really bad pitch in each of his last two appearances that helped the Tigers win. You can blame Putz, but the lack of offense on Saturday that had many opportunities again, and another poor outing by Garcia put the Sox in a bad position. They did battle back and took a lead, but a poor bullpen outing and bad fielding lead to their demise on Sunday.

Hopefully the White Sox will show-up with clear heads to Target Field on Tuesday evening as they send their top three pitchers against the Twins, and let’s hope the Sox hitters don’t let the Twins’ pitchers off the hook like they did on their last home stand.