Home, Sweet Home - Game Preview & Lineups 6/30

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A three game winning streak helped cool the burn that was an otherwise abysmal 11-game road trip. The three wins in Toronto helped the White Sox end the trip a merely 4-7, far better than it could have been.

The White Sox return home Monday night for the first of a six-game stand, their final six at U.S. Cellular Field before the All-Star break. Their foe for the 7:10 p.m. first pitch is the Los Angeles Angels and Garrett Richards, a 26-year-old right-hander whose blossomed into a fine rotation piece for the team from Anaheim this season.

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The Catbird Speaks - 6.30.14: It's an intervention!

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James Fegan, Nick Schaefer and Collin Whitchurch sat down for a Sunday night gabfest on the White Sox. Our slated topics of conversation were Carlos Rodon's negotiations, the ever-changing bullpen, the fifth starter conundrum, trade deadline goals and target, and what to do about the corner outfield slots. See how close we stuck to the agenda!

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Old Southpaw v. New Southpaw - Lineups & Preview 6/29

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Today, barring incident, I probably won't be too upset if the White Sox lose. Probably heresy, but it's hard for me to ever stop rooting for Mark Buehrle. The former White Sox institution is actually a Cy Young contender this year, with a 10-4 record and an ERA of 2.52, somehow posting the lowest home run rate of his career at age 35. Buehrle is an obvious regression candidate as the season progresses, but the more achievements he can shove in his cap and the longer he hangs around, the closer he creeps to a weird, dark horse Hall of Fame resumé. And that would make me very happy.

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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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This would be a good year to figure out how to handle Adam Eaton

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Adam Eaton was really on a bit of a roll before he left Thursday's game in the first inning with umpteenth leg injury flare-up of the season. For the month of June, Eaton is hitting .322/.401/.478 with 12 walks and five triples in 102 plate appearances.

Thanks to the hot streak, his season-to-date could be broken down into three distinct periods.

Pre-DL stint: .276/.363/.378, 9.7 BB% in 113 PAs.

Post-DL stint in May: .232/.232/.250, 0.0 BB% in 56 PAs.

June: .322/.401/.478, 11.8 BB% in 102 PAs.

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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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Minor League Deep Cuts

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The White Sox have just snapped a losing streak, although they still sit in the AL Central basement, and they are waiting to see what happens in the negotiations with Carlos Rodon. Some of the prospects that you've heard quite a bit about - Courtney Hawkins, Tim Anderson, Micah Johnson, Carlos Sanchez, etc. - have progressed in promising fashion. Others that you have heard a lot about have taken very troubling steps in their development - Trayce Thompson, Erik Johnson, Keenyn Walker, Jared Mitchell, and Matt Davidson to name a few. But I thought I would take a moment to poke around in the minors and find the sleepers or surprise performers that might inspire some extra hope on the South Side. 

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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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Would the Home Run Derby Ruin Jose Abreu?

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MLB has announced their Home Run Derby captains, who are tasked with selecting the players from their league they’d like to hit homeruns alongside. It’s a relief that the league is sticking with this format if only because it lessens the impact of their oddly constructed ballot. Naturally, there’s been some interest voiced in seeing Jose Abreu be among the participants. Accompanying that interest is a section of folks that feel that Jose Abreu would be ruined immediately afterward, and should therefore steer far clear of anything that asks him to hit dingers as if it is his job to do so.

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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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At Least We've Still Got Chris Sale Day - Game Preview & Lineups 6/23

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There’s a little less charm in a Chris Sale Day when he’s been counted upon to end a losing streak. A losing streak that started the day after his last start and occurred against a team that hadn’t won 4 games in a row all season prior to the elongated weekend series against the White Sox. The Orioles, on the other hand, have registered a 4-game winning streak, a 5-game winning streak, and currently find themselves only 1.5 games behind the Blue Jays for best in the American League East. Help us, Chris Sale. You’re our only hope.

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So Now That We Know We're Sellers...

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Not that any reasonable White Sox fan didn’t already know it, but the lovely four game sweep at the hand of the Minnesota Twins this past week should have made it obvious to everyone watching: the 2014 White Sox are not going to contend.  Sure, it was fun to pretend that things were going well and we might sneak into that second Wild Card slot back in late May, but a .368 win percentage in June pulled the mask off a .500 May that saw the Sox outscored by 19 runs.

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How for real is Jose Abreu?

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This headline is a joke, of course. We know that Jose Abreu is the realest real, and that his skill and dominance is more authentic than even our love for our own families. For example, spend the next fifteen minutes declaring to everyone around you that your love for your family is false, then spend 15 minutes declaring that Abreu's production at the plate is a lie--which is more affected?

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Let's Not Get Swept By The Freaking Twins, OK?

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The first three games of the current 11-game road trip have been none too kind as the White Sox have dropped three straight to Minnesota and fallen to five games below .500, their low-water mark of the season thus far.

Avoiding a four-game sweep also means winning the one game of this series that shows some semblance of being a solid pitching matchup when John Danks takes on Phil Hughes at 1:10 p.m. on Sunday.

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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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