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.
