With the Detroit Tigers playing very good baseball right now, the White Sox can ill-afford to go on an extended losing streak. The Yankees handled John Danks as they have for his career against them, by pounding him. Danks had an ERA close to eight coming into the game, so I can only imagine that he’s surpassed that mark.
The biggest blow to the White Sox has been not having the services of their captain, Paul Konerko, for the last two games with a bruised calf. The Sox offense which barely has had a pulse can be pronounced dead without Konerko in the line-up. The games against the Yankees should have been getting easier after Monday night’s 3-2 loss to C.C. Sabathia with their sub par pitching staff, instead the Sox made Phil Hughes look like an ace as he shut them down in a rain shortened affair.
When the Sox assembled this team in the offseason, losing Konerko for a few games surely seemed survivable. The Sox brought in a 40 home run hitter in Adam Dunn, but that’s turned into a complete bust. Dunn sits at 10 homers and while he’s hitting more fly ball outs over the last week, they are still outs. Even worse than Dunn is Alex Rios, who has 6 homers and 24 RBIs in contrast to 21 homers, 88 RBIs, and 34 stolen bases a year ago. If you look at both of their numbers the Sox at this point are lacking 27 home runs and 78 RBIs they were expecting to have.
They were counting on a bounce back year from Carlos Quentin and he has done just that, the sad thing is Rios isn’t even producing half the numbers he produced last season.Dunn on the other hand still has a chance to salvage the season, somewhat. If he does that the Sox may still make some noise, but at 5-1/2 games back the Sox continue to make things more difficult for themselves.
It’s desperate times, in fact I’m so desperate I shaved off the soul patch in an effort to switch things up for the team. The history of the soul patch is as follows; I grew one in 2005 and the Sox won the World Series. Since, I usually grow one every summer, I hadn’t last season, then grew one and the Sox went on their epic run. I know this is all ridiculous, but it is how much a part of my life the White Sox are and even though the logical side of me knows my facial hair or lack there of does not affect the team, I sadly do what I do.
Tonight they face AJ Burnett, another very hittable pitcher. Maybe, Paulie can come back to tonight and DH, and act as a defibrillator for the Sox offense so tomorrow I can proudly write, soul patchless face, 1- 0. Go Sox!
Major League A*Holes 