White Sox Tailspin Continues, Fall Below .500
These days whether you’re a South Sider or a North Sider, it’s tough to be a Chicago baseball fan. Thank god they have the Stanley Cup Finals to get them through June.
While the Chicago Cubs (29-42) usually steal MLB headlines for their poor play, this time it’s the Chicago White Sox (29-40).
On Thursday, the White Sox ended its three-game series against the Minnesota Twins (32-36) and this came with a sweep. For the first time since Sept. 14-16, 2010, the Twins were the winners against the White Sox. It was a first sweep for the team on its home field.
John Danks
The Twins won the third game 8-4 and this came on the Sox lefty John Danks (1-4) giving up four home runs–a career high. In his five innings of pitching, he had six earned runs. He is now 0-4 (7.29 ERA) for his starts on the road; this has also come with nine of his 10 to-date home runs also on the opponents’ field.
Danks simply said via The Associated Press, “You can’t just point out one thing that’s gone wrong at this point.”
He later added, “I didn’t do us any favors today. We’re just going to have to play better as a whole. We’re not saying anything we don’t already know or talked about. Guys are working hard trying to make it happen. It just hasn’t gone our way to this point.”
Not helping the sting of the infrequent Twins sweep is the fact that after losing the last seven of their eight games, the Sox now sit below .500 (.420). This hasn’t happened since the end of 2007’s season.
That year, the Sox had a 72-90 record.
It’s been an all-team effort for the downward spiral. In addition to Dank’s weak pitching, his fellow starters Dylan Axelrod and Chris Sale also didn’t play well in Minneapolis this week. On Tuesday, Axelrod in six innings, allowed 10 hits with four earned runs while Sale on Wednesday, gave up four earned runs from eight hits over five innings.
It it’s any consolation to Sox fans, pitcher Jake Peavy is moving along in his recovery from his broken rib from two weeks ago. He was actually undertaking some physical activity on Thursday–riding the stationary bike–but he’s still expected to be out for two to four additional weeks.
Veteran Sox reliever righty Jesse Crain is also following in the footsteps of poor play by setting a team record with his streak of 28 scoreless appearances with 28 scoreless innings reported The Chicago Tribune.
The team has a season total of 51 errors and prior to Thursday’s game, Chicago was third to last for batting (.241) in the American League and at the bottom for hits (561) and in runs (250).
Something needs to change but whether the team makes any personnel changes remains to be seen.
In the short term, the Sox will need to shake off the sweep and travel to Kansas City for a weekend series against the Kansas City Royals (34-36). On Friday, lefty Hector Santiago (2-5) will take the mound for the Sox while righty Jeremy Guthrie (7-4) has pitching duty for for the Royals.
The Sox implosion continues as the Royals get the win (-137, 8.5 o/u).
Jon Lester
Looking ahead to weekend play for other AL Central teams, the division-leading Detroit Tigers (40-31) kicked off a four-game series against the AL East-leading Boston Red Sox (44-31) on Thursday. They won Game 1 with a 4-3 victory and on Friday, righty Doug Fister (6-4) takes the mound for Detroit while lefty Jon Lester (6-4) has pitching duty for Boston.
The Tigers get another win on Friday (-136, 8.5 o/u).
The Cleveland Indians (36-35) will host the Twins for their weekend series. Indians lefty Scott Kazmir (3-4) will pitch for Game 1 vs. Twins righty Samuel Deduno (3-1). Cleveland wins the first game (-120, 9 o/u).
