Still missing a starter: Carroll roughed up to cap doubleheader sweep

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Scott Carroll came out for the seventh inning of Tuesday night's doubleheader nightcap, having gotten steadily hammered throughout the night already, facing his fourth trip through the batting order and trying to keep hold on a one-run deficit.

I can only chuckle at anyone who thinks its wrong to question Robin Ventura's decision-making at this point, but the desperate motivations behind it are also clear: a doubleheader, a horrid bullpen, and other starters who could certainly need a hand this week in games where they stood a better chance. There's so little depth in the Sox pitching staff, Ventura opts for controlled burns.

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Noesi's magic wilts under weight of nation's attention

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When the nation was watching through their fingers as the U.S. men's national team faltered out of the World Cup, and judging from the attendance, at work, the White Sox cruised through a charmed opening to the first half of their traditional doubleheader with the Angels.

Jose Abreu maximized the reward of a shaky first inning from Garrett Richards by bombing a three-run opposite-field bullet inside the right field foul pole, Hector Noesi didn't allow a hit through the first four innings despite being absolutely terrible, and the Sox were nursing a healthy lead on a future playoff team. 

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The Saturdays thing is dead: Sox edge Blue Jays behind Viciedo and Sale

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One pitch was enough to turn around the White Sox whole Saturday slump. After 12-straight weeks of starting the weekend off wrong, Dustin McGowan stepped in, toed the rubber for the first time with two outs in the seventh inning and hung a meatball slider to Dayan Viciedo, and it was over. Buried in a 4-3 victory. Break out the champagne.

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White Sox victory only built on 4 Cuban dingers

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Sometimes baseball is a simple game, where success is simply measured by clobbering more home runs than your opponent. In this mode of play--one that takes outfield defense out of the equation--the White Sox are a pretty competitive group. Jose Bautista should take note, a team with Jose Abreu on it can win some home run competitions, as the Sox out-homered the Blue Jays 4-3, and won the game outright 5-4.

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White Sox besmirch the reputation of American baseball to a foreign audience, lose to Jays

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Remember May 28? Besides being yours truly's 27th birthday, it was the night the White Sox wrapped up a three-game sweep of the Cleveland Indians and pushed themselves over .500 by a game. It didn't sound crazy to suggest the Sox could load up and gun for the playoffs. 

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Sox bullpen ruins peaceful romp by the bay

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Maybe they should have just let Hector Noesi pitch the whole damn thing.

Second-guessing whether Robin Ventura should have pulled his clearly flagging starter before he ruined the best start of his career for no reason in the eighth inning of a 4-0 game is only forgivable if it's done tongue-in-cheek, but snark is the only path to sanity when addressing a bullpen that coughed up a 4-0 lead and pulled around again in the 12th to finish the job with game-losing wild pitch to cap a grisly, wet 5-4 loss in Baltimore.

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Jose Quintana finishes what he starts

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For a team with pitching as bad as the White Sox, it surprises that Jose Quintana's non-awfulness has not been more celebrated. Since the White Sox offense has been so much improved from last year, it surprises how Quintana has been tagged for a 3-7 record while taking clear steps forward as a pitcher. And it surprises that Quintana could step into Tuesday night's game tasked with ending a five-game losing streak that his hard luck night in Minnesota started, and breaking a four-game skid of the Sox losing his starts.

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Sale outruns his mistakes, Belisario doesn't

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It's possible that in all of our glad-handing and celebrating of how Chris Sale had cheated death and fate in skirting through six innings of two-run ball with perhaps the worst stuff he's ever trotted out, we forgot that in this game, death has nine innings to act, and that baseball is a team sport.

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...And then you lose three games to the Twins

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As much as the White Sox look like a real damn team when Jose Abreu is making the field look 200-feet long and Conor Gillaspie's dinked singles are making the outfield look like an ocean, they play a real convincing last-place team when they're sleepwalking through an entire series against the Minnesota pitching staff and trying to prop up an overwhelmed starter who mysteriously spins apart in multiple trips through the order.

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Last place is not without its moments: Sox drop second-straight despite comeback

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The monumental sea change that the Sox ninth inning comeback offered proved to be just a passing wave. After Adam Eaton's RBI double against the platoon advantage in the ninth tied an otherwise dispiriting game at 4, two Daniel Webb walks proved one too many, and a walk-off Brian Dozier single off Ronald Belisario sent the Minnesotans home happy in the bottom half with a 5-4 win in a game the Twinkies mostly dominated.

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Twins win The Yohan Pino game

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The eighth inning did not go so smoothly for the White Sox in Minnesota, to be honest. There are quibbles, per usual, with sticking with Jake Petricka with no help throughout the tailspin that decided the game, sticking with him as he faced Joe Mauer with the go-ahead run on third, sticking with him after Mauer had doubled the Twins ahead, sticking him as the whiff-starved reliever faced a bases loaded scenario, and sticking with him as moths descended on Target Field to devour the populace as their home team won 4-2.

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A Chris Sale Day that barely needed its namesake

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It takes a lot to take the focus of a Chris Sale Day--now a branded event---off of Chris Sale. In this case, Jose Abreu and Adam Dunn wrested the focus way with over 770 feet of damage and five RBI generated from their two home runs, both on 0-2 counts to power the Sox to a 7-6 victory, and a two-game sweep from the team hosting the best record in baseball.

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Woebegone, last-place White Sox wallop best team in baseball

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The scuffling White Sox, losers of four-straight and seven of nine, welcomed the best team in baseball Tuesday, who would start former NL Cy Young winner Matt Cain against surgically-repaired John Danks. Hunter Pence clobbered the fourth pitch of the night for a home run, and he sense of an oncoming butt-whupping was palpable, we got one.

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Saturday Recap & Father's Day Preview

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Hector Noesi actually looked pretty good to start the game on Saturday. He had a very clear plan the first time through the lineup, getting ahead of hitters on strike one, sitting about 92, and then attacking very aggressively once getting to two strikes, dialing it up to 94-95, going up and in on righties, and sweeping his breaking stuff everywhere. At first he only allowed a few unlucky hits on weak contact that went for no damage. Then the fourth inning was a combination of poor control by Noesi, atrocious defense (a Leury Garcia error and a Dayan Viciedo-it-wasn't-called-an-official-error-but-he-messed-up) meant the Royals would put up a 5-spot. Danny Duffy was on his game and that was far more than he would need.

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Trying To Rebound From Guthrie - Lineups & Preview 6/14

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Friday the 13th is supposed to be unlucky. Jeremy Guthrie destroys the White Sox. One had hoped that these two things together would cancel each other out and Chicago would once again pull to .500. Those hopes were immediately dashed as Quintana started the game by allowing five straight hits, and the game was instantly out of reach. Jeremy Guthrie, who has been coasting with a K-rate below 5 for years now, struck out 9 batters and easily protected the lead he was staked.

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Chris Sale improves, but his luck stays the same

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Well, you can't face Justin Verlander every night.

One night after rudely banishing the old lion of the Central into further ignominy, the White Sox offense...well, didn't do enough to fill out a sentence. To talk about the bottom half of the innings Thursday night, besides to wonder if the producers had time to breath before throwing it to commercial, is to talk about Max Scherzer, since he was one doing the work.

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The king is dead: Sox rout Verlander and Tigers with late rally

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When it comes to coping and pitching with mounting physical decline, it would appear experience matters. 

Now four games into his mystifying turnaround from the brink of utter useless, John Danks danced around hard contact with great economy (7 IP, 93 pitches), while Verlander, pounding his head against the wall with diminishing stuff that neither overwhelms nor tempts like it used, couldn't stopping digging his way to disaster in the sixth inning, allowing the Sox to rip open an easy 8-2 victory over the division-leading Tigers.

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Sox beat Detroit in fun-filled, scoring-filled, life-affirming affair

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After a bad, bad week in the windswept hellscape of California, the White Sox needed a pleasant distraction from the everyday turmoil of being themselves; a shining glimmer of what things are headed toward rather than an unforgiving hold shot on what they currently are.

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White Sox do little to scrub away Saturday's memory, get swept

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White Sox fans still mourning Saturday night's disaster and soul-quaking collapse had the following distractions from a 4-2, sweep-completing loss to the Angels to ease their minds:

  • Jose Quintana having nothing but his fastball all day
  • Josh Hamilton hitting fastballs
  • No one on the White Sox hitting anything
  • Long camera shots of grass
  • An eighth-inning mini-rally!
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