I wanted good starting pitching and I got it. I wanted solid defense and so far, I’ve gotten it. As for offense, it was sparse and unfortunately, when opportunities arose to score, nothing happened. The White Sox dropped the opener to the Cleveland Indians by a final of 1-0.

The game turned out to be a pitching duel. After how Jose Quintana had pitched in his previous efforts, I was not expecting to see such a strong outing from him. Things got off to a great start for him when he struck out the side in the bottom of the first inning. Unfortunately, as good as he was, Justin Masterson was matching him. Masterson ended up pitching a complete game shutout tonight. He scattered five hits over the course of nine innings as well as striking out seven Sox batters. He also issued just one walk. » Continue reading “Offense Unable To Support White Sox In Pitching Duel”

Welp, the 10-game road trip the White Sox are currently on is going just terribly. They got swept in Washington in their first stint of interleague plague. Now, they are off to visit Cleveland and an improved Indians roster. Here is what you need to know for this three-game weekend series.

2013 Record: White Sox: 4-5, Indians 3-5

2012 Series Record: 11-7

All-Time Series Record: 1,046-1,000 (The Sox are 490-528 against the Indians on the road)

The following pitchers are expected to start the three games:

Jose Quintana: 0-0. 11.25 ER, 3K vs. Justin Masterson: 2-0, 0.69 ERA, 13K

Chris Sale: 1-0, 1.84 ERA, 14K vs. Zach McAllister: 0-1, 3.00 ERA, 3K

Jake Peavy: 1-1, 5.56 ERA, 13K vs. Brett Myers: 0-1, 12.19 ERA, 4K

Friday’s game is at 6:05 pm, Saturday’s game is at 3:05 pm and Sunday’s game is at 12:05 pm. All times CDT.  » Continue reading “Road Trippin’ Ain’t Easy. Series Preview: White Sox At Indians”

A forty pitch first inning is never a good sign for the rest of the game, let along the starter. That was the case tonight as the White Sox dropped the finale to the Washington Nationals by a final of 7-4 and also suffered a sweep in the nation’s capital. All in all, it was just not a good game. In fact, it was one of those games where you just don’t want to see it as it is just ugly all around.

sure does suck to have them used on you. . .

Dylan Axelrod, as good as he was against Seattle, was just as bad against Washington. He threw 40 pitches in the first inning. The second was a little better, but not by much. All told, Axe only lasted 3.2 innings and in that span gave up six runs, all of them earned, to go along with four walks and only two strikeouts.

Fortunately, Hector Santiago came in to work 2.1 innings and did a really good job. Although he walked two guys, no one scored on him. Matt Lindstrom and Jesse Crain also did good work when they came in for relief as well. Jesse did allow a run to score, but at that point in the game, it was seemingly inevitable that something further would happen. » Continue reading “Another Day And Another L For White Sox”

Baseball is a game where anything can happen on the field and off the field. Tonight was no exception, as the start of the game was delayed by 15 minutes. Many games in the Midwest were delayed due to bad weather, but that wasn’t the case in Washington. No, the Sox-Nationals game was delayed because the umpiring crew was stuck in traffic. Yes, you read that correctly. » Continue reading “White Sox Can’t Figure Out Nationals Pitching”

Travelling to Washington for the beginning of their first road trip of the season, the White Sox started interleague play early in the season since the Houston Astros are now a member of the AL West. Jake Peavy faced off against former Sox pitcher Gio Gonzalez, and it was a hard-fought battle, ending in a Sox loss.

The Sox got on the board quickly in the first inning after Gonzalez had a shaky start. After striking out Alejandro De Aza to lead off the inning, Gonzalez gave up back-to-back singles to Jeff Keppinger, who broke an 0-for-19 streak, and Alex Rios. During Alexei Ramirez’s at-bat, Gonzalez balked, allowing Keppinger to score before Ramirez flew out to end the inning. » Continue reading “White Sox Lose to Nationals After Allowing Four Homers”

Lead off home runs are nice to see. Unless your team is not the one who gives it up. Tonight there was a lead off home run. Unfortunately, if you root for the Chicago White Sox, it was not a good thing. The Seattle Mariners’ Franklin Gutierrez led off the game with a ball that initially appeared to be a routine fly to right field. Then the wind got a hold of that ball and out it went for a quick 1-0 lead. The Sox would tie things up in the fourth inning, but then the Sox and Mariners decided it would be a good idea to start trading runs.

yeah, he didn’t help his cause tonight

Jose Quintana started off the evening pitching like the starters had in previous nights. Getting his pitches over and keeping the opposing batters off balance. Then the fifth inning came. And he just fell apart. First, Jason Bay hit a double to left field. Then what should have been an out on Dustin Ackley resulted in Jose committing the first error of the season by someone on the infield. From there, The Mariners decided getting hits was a good idea. All told, they ended up scoring five runs for a 6-1 lead. After they scored the five runs, Jose was off to take a shower for the night. Oh and there were no outs recorded yet.

In came Matt Lindstrom and he did a good job to finally get guys out. He lasted for 2.1 innings before being relieved by Donny Veal. If you thought all hope was lost after that disaster of a fifth inning, all was not as the White Sox came back to score four runs off Mariners starter Blake Beavan. Perhaps that was because he sat in the dugout too long. In any event, the Sox pulled to within one run. » Continue reading “In A Game of Trading Runs, White Sox Come Up Short”

April in Chicago is usually not a good time for baseball. It typically is cold and even day games are miserable with fans sitting in the stands bundled up like they are about to head off to the frozen tundra. Today, the temperature was actually fairly decent. The warmest day it has been at a game start so far this season. You’d think with the warmer temperatures, the hot bats of the Chicago White Sox would continue. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

The Sox were in a bid to start the season off with a sweep of the PITA Kansas City Royals, but it was not meant to be as the Royals would win the game by a final of 3-1. As he has in the past, Jeremy Guthrie had the Sox offense befuddled. Before today’s game, Jeremy was 1-0 with a 0.30 ERA in his four most recent appearances against the Sox. It was already going to be a tough battle and he didn’t disappoint Royals fans by going out and doing what he does against the Sox.

The Sox did try to make things interesting in the ninth inning, but it wasn’t enough. Two of three against the Royals, a team that has had the Sox number of late is pretty good. Now if the Sox can do this all season, that would be fantastic.

To his credit, Mr. Consistently Inconsistent was quite good today. Gavin Floyd was locating his fastball well and his curveball was working quite well too. So well in fact that a few times, Royals batters looked at the home plate ump to ask if he was sure that was a strike because the curve ball looked so good and out of the zone. Now, if that Gavin (minus the fifth inning antics) can stick around all season, fans will be in so much love with him, he won’t know what to do with himself from all the fan affection. » Continue reading “Despite Good Gavin, White Sox Can’t Take Finale From Royals”

The White Sox continued their winnings ways with a 5-2 win over the Royals. All runs came courtesy of the long ball. Adam Dunn, Alexei Ramirez, and Dayan Viciedo all hit their first home runs of the season, while Tyler Flowers knocked his second.

» Continue reading “Homer Happy White Sox Cruise Past Royals”

Former GM Ken Williams patiently waits to ask new GM Rick Hahn a question

SoxFest was fun this year. Although last week I was lamenting that there wasn’t a Festivus session, it turned out to be a perfectly good thing. There were plenty of great stories, good looks on the players (despite what some may think, Matt Thornton’s beard really is spectacular!) as well as learning that there is a ton of personality with this group and they enjoy each other.

In past year’s, I have done posts where you can read my timeline from twitter over the days. However, this year I just didn’t have time to do that. You can always go back and look at it and I may get around to compiling it to archive soon before it is no longer available. The best news of me tweeting this year was that I managed to stay out of Twitter Jail. This was surprising to me considering all the good tidbits the players and coaches had to share. » Continue reading “Lessons Learned At SoxFest 2013″

SoxFest begins tomorrow night and I saw the schedule of events. Missing is a marketing panel which has really turned into a Sox fan festivus. During that session, fans got the opportunity to air grievances with the occasional suggestion for making things better as an experience at the ballpark. One of the questions that was asked last year by a fan got me thinking about rooting for the team versus rooting for the players.

The fan asked Brooks Boyer why he should root for  Alex Rios when Alex couldn’t even be bothered to show up for SoxFest. If you recall, Rios had an absolutely horrible 2011 and fans were rightly upset with his play. Brooks had the perfect response to the fan: you should root for Rios because he wears the White Sox uniform! And that exchange leads me to thinking about what exactly as fans are we rooting for?

A lot of times when we become fans of a team, it might be due to a particular player. Jen, who writes on this site is an example of someone who became a Sox fan because she was following a player. A friend’s brother became a fan because he liked the team colors and I became a fan because I just started watching the team and enjoyed their play compared to other teams I saw. All of us are White Sox fans rooting for that team. Hopefully, the players on the team follow, but sometimes it gets really hard to do. » Continue reading “The Name On The Jersey”