A meeting of the Sox is to happen this week to start the homestand off. Red against White. Right versus Wrong. Which description fits the White Sox at this point is hard to say. Are they right or terribly wrong? The answer may depend on when you are looking at the White Sox and how you personally feel about them. For now, here is what you need to know for this upcoming series:
2013 Record: White Sox 19-23, 4th in AL Central. Red Sox 27-17, 2nd in AL East
2013 Season Series: 0-0
2012 Season Series: 2-6
All-Time Series Record: 925-962 (The White are 536-408 at home against the Red)
The following pitchers are expected to start this series:
Dylan Axelrod: 1-3, 4.27 ERA, 26K vs. Jon Lester: 6-0, 2.72 ERA, 50K
Jose Quintana: 2-1, 3.97 ERA, 34K vs. Felix Doubront: 3-1, 6.03 ERA, 42K
Chris Sale: 5-2, 2.53 ERA, 61K vs. Clay Bucholz: 6-0, 1.78 ERA, 69K
All three games begin at 7:10 pm CDT. Don’t forget, you can get discounted tickets for tonight’s and Tuesday’s game here as part of the CTA construction on the Red Line.
Did you know the White Sox are coming home after having a winning road trip? If you don’t believe it, that is okay. It is almost as difficult to believe as the Sox not being in the AL Central cellar anymore. Yeah, they are just .002 percentage points in front of the Twins, but still. The team managed to split their series with the Angels over the weekend. While there were some annoying things in the games, there were also some nice things to see. Like offense. Saturday saw the boys pound out 17 hits. That is a certain high for a season when if you see a number greater than five in the hit column, you think “wow, that was amazing! this team got FIVE hits.” And Rios has a 14-game hitting streak going. You have to enjoy that.
On the bad side, there was still sloppy play by the defense. In yesterday’s game, a hurried relay throw from Alex Rios was missed by Jeff Keppinger. Granted, you would prefer to get a good throw, but if you have time to corral the ball and you choose not to – as Keppinger apparently did – well, that is just bad defense. Those things don’t necessarily show in the box score, but they do hurt.
On the WTF side of things, the White Sox pitching staff has been quite generous with the free passes of late. Saturday was a day of double digit free passes. Yesterday, Jake Peavy walked in two runs when the bases were loaded. Normally, that isn’t a super huge thing if it is a risk of one run via the free pass versus numerous thanks to a well-placed hit. However, in this case, it turned out to be a bad thing because the White Sox offense just hasn’t been there to overcome things. But maybe they are learning to do so now since they are capable of getting numerous hits now.
Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox are quite the story this season. No one was expecting that team to do anything this year. They were supposed to be bad. They were supposed to be out of contention. They were supposed to be not where they are.
Yet, they sit in second place just a half game behind the New York Yankees (another team doing what it is not supposed to.) I’m sure the fans of this team are enjoying this immensely because the team was counted out from the start. Will it last? Who knows but the Red are on a five-game winning streak. They have two guys pitching in the series who are looking to go 7-0 on the season. Hopefully, the White will put a damper on that. Especially with the new found offense.
In any event, there should be some fun baseball played on the South Side this week. Don’t forget, you can get discounted tickets for select games because you are an awesome SSHG reader. See the box on the upper right for more details. The next SSHG discounted game is Saturday against the Marlins and you can get a super awesome 1983 Sox logo hat.
