Black Sox Blog

Well, I’m about 99% there.  The White Sox were humiliated their last two games against the Red Sox and they now sit just one game ahead of the Royals.  The reason I’m 99% there is because the Sox play four against the first place Tigers.  If they can somehow sweep Detroit, I’ll put them back in the hunt.  Anything less then that isn’t going to cut it.

So with a week and change left until the trading deadline, we’ll probably have to contend with a White Sox team that’s out of it.  It’s been a while because for the past few years, the Sox have been competitive it just looked like things came to a head this year.  So the question is, who gets shipped out of town and who are the guys that the team is going to build around.  Mark Buehrle is going to be here after that contract extension. Jerry Owens and Josh Fields have struggled but it’s only their first year and I think Paul Konerko will be in town.  Everyone else is fair game.

The offense still stinks.  Last in the American League with a .243 batting average and they’re just ahead of the Padres who sit at .242 (despite contending for the NL West).  They’re last in the AL in slugging (.384) and OBP (.317) as well.  And they’re dead last in doubles, which is what’s dragging down their slugging because they’re actually middle of the pack in homeruns.

So we’ll see what happens.  There’s one more against Boston, then the four against Detroit.  If the White Sox are still 15 games down, I say start selling the farm.  Jon Garland is on the mound this afternoon and he’s having one of those bizarro seasons.  He’s better then he was last year, yet he’ll be lucky if he wins 14 games because of the horrible offense.  And his numbers are skewed by that beating he took at the hands of the Twins.  Prior to that, his numbers were very good and in seven of his last nine starts, he’s given up three runs or less.

39-47.  Even if the White Sox put together an eight game winning streak out of the box, they’d still only be sitting at .500.  And with a twelve game deficit for just the Wild Card, the White Sox are going to have to come out of the box in these last few weeks in July to show whether they’ll be cleaning house at the trading deadline or whether they’ll be looking to add a piece or two down the stretch.

The Mark Buehrle signing was a start.  We locked up one of the White Sox better home grown arms and they did it at what was probably a discount at least based on market value.  It’s a weird market these days and four years, $56 million may be a bit much for even a pitcher of Buehrle’s talents, it’s just the way things have become.

Three guys names have popped up in the trade rumors.  Jermaine Dye, Juan Uribe and Jose Contreras have all been mentioned in different rumors and you know Joe Crede is also on the block.  There’s also the rumor that Scott Podsednik is gone once the season’s over with.

You hate to carve out one four game series and call it critical but in a way, the White Sox four game set against the Orioles that starts tomorrow could be a potentially big one.  After salvaging a split against the Twins prior to the break, a nice start to the second half against a mediocre team would go a long way towards the White Sox making one last push in 2007.  Jon Garland will get the start tomorrow and the hope is that he finds himself in the second half.  In the meantime, the White Sox hitters will go up against Jeremy Guthrie.