Along with their announcement of their 2013-heavy Saturday lineup, the White Sox pushed across a slate of roster moves that varied between sad, odd, necessary or all three combined. The centerpiece being centerfielder Adam Eaton going to the 15-day disabled list with a hamstring injury.
Read MoreLast night will be a pretty tough act to follow - indeed, Jose Abreu's walk-off grand slam topped off an extremely strong night of Chicago sports as the Bulls held on to defeat the Wizards and the Blackhawks won in overtime against the Blues. In the sober light of day, however, there are certainly issues to worry about with the White Sox.
Read MoreThe only thing left to do now is to not get swept. Series win is out of the question and the White Sox are staring at a 5-game losing streak if they fail to pull one out in Texas. Erik Johnson has looked better with each trip out to the mound, his most recent being his best of the season in which he allowed a single run over 6.2 innings. It also represents the last time the Sox won a game.
Read MoreFelipe Paulino's performance last night, on the heels of his previous two starts, would normally be enough to get him immediately yanked from the rotation. The problem is, there isn't really any obvious choice to replace him. Most of the starters in AAA Charlotte have gotten off to a slow start. Andre Rienzo has been giving up hits and walks without striking anyone out. Charlie Leesman has a shiny ERA in three starts - a product of his absurdly lucky 93% strand rate - and although his profile doesn't often generate good peripheral stats, he's still walking too many hitters to be viable beyond an emergency spot start. Eric Surkamp, brought in as insurance for just this sort of scenario, is getting absolutely annihilated by minor league hitters thus far. Dipping further down into AA, the options are either prospects whose development would be destroyed by calling them up - Chris Beck, Myles Jaye, and Scott Snodgress - or pitchers who simply cannot get major league hitters out.
Read MoreIn June, with the #3 selection the White Sox will have the highest first round draft pick they have had since taking Harold Baines #1 overall in 1977. They've fared pretty well with their three Top 5 selections since then, grabbing guys like Jack McDowell and Alex Fernandez - although taking Kurt Brown ahead of Barry Bonds was probably ill-advised. So, seeing as they have had all of four Top 5 picks since the Carter administration, this is a bit of a special occasion.
Read MoreHaving won their first two games of the season against the Indians, the White Sox have already matched their win total against Cleveland for the entirety of the 2013 season. So far, the offense gets most of the credit for the team's 6-5 start, having scored 70 runs in those 11 games - the most in the majors.
Read MoreAs we settle in to the 2014 season at the major league level, the minor leagues have kicked off as well. At the drafting of this article, the minor league season had statistics on the books for about five games. Not only do all of the same caveats about small sample sizes being meaningless that pertain to the majors apply to the minor leagues, we have even more confounding variables.
Read MoreJohn Danks gets out-dueled by notorious White Sox killer Bruce Chen as the White Sox drop their third straight game in a 4-3 loss.
Read MoreAfter a season of losing to pretty much any team that bothered to show up with 9 players, the Royals no longer have any sort perceived hold on the White Sox. They beat them same as everybody else, at about the same rate to boot. Shame for Kansas City, since 2013 was supposed to be the year they got off the list of baseball’s most unsuccessful franchises of the last quarter century. Today starts a new ledger, with the Sox riding high on a series victory against a Twins team that gives them no real gauge of their overall value, while the Royals lost a couple of heartbreakers to the Tigers before losing the privilege of a series finale to weather.
Read MoreWhat do the White Sox have at each position after the 2014 offseason? The picture has gotten a bit clearer with the recent cuts and reassignments. Let's take a look at the White Sox's first base position to see how it stacks up for 2014 and beyond.
Read MoreWhat do the White Sox have at each position after the 2014 offseason? The picture has gotten a bit clearer with the recent cuts and reassignments. Let's take a look at the White Sox's catcher position to see how it stacks up for 2014 and beyond.
Read MoreSo often battles are more of a question of what the winning party will have to resort to in order to reach their inevitable conclusion.
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