It was another rough week and just to put things in perspective, the White Sox have as many wins as the Royals do. There’s some good news in all this but I’ll get to that near the end but the White Sox have lost ten of their last twelve and twelve out of their last fifteen games. The net effect has been a truly horrible month of June where the White Sox have gone 4-12.
What’s been wrong? John Perrotto gives us the low down in this interesting Baseball Prospectus column. While I know the Sox have been doing bad, I’ve stayed away from a lot of the numbers just because I’d get pissed but it was interesting to read that outside of Jim Thome’s 18.7 VORP, no other White Sox hitter has more then a 4.0 VORP. My favorite, Joe Crede, has been the worst at a -9.9 VORP and last year’s MVP candidate, Jermaine Dye, comes out right at replacement with a -0.8 VORP. That’s not good. He also touches on the White Sox pen woes.
Now, let’s get to the good news. In looking at the standings, the 10 1/2 game deficit looks pretty rough until you break things down and just look at the losses. Because the White Sox have played fewer games then their division rivals, they sit “just” eight games back of the Tigers for the Wild Card. Now eight games is tough to make up when your team has a hard time scoring more then three runs in a game but it’s not insurmountable if the Sox can turn things around.
And there’s no better time then the present with a mediocre Marlins team rolling into town. Josh Johnson makes his season debut for the Marlins and Jose Contreras and his 4-7 record throws for the White Sox. There’s no better way to get your hitters going then to beat up a guy who’s only faced minor league pitching so far this year.
