Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Not Blogging Doesn't Work
Two months since the last post on Black Betsy. Blogger fatigue, exhibit A. Lots of things have gone on since, new house, selling old house, trying to do some business, saving kids from burning abandoned amusement park, solving crimes and creating a new hip Sudoku / crossword puzzle game called "Put The Letters There! No, There!" (title to be finalized - needless to say, you will be playing it three times a day the rest of your life and will gladly hand over thousands of dollars to me each year for solution books).
It's clear that me not blogging about the White Sox doesn't help the White Sox. Since my last post, they've gone 28-25. That's bad baseball, and the proprietors of this Blog apologize for any poor play this blog has caused.
In that time, the team has gone to pieces. Especially the pitching:
Mark Buehrle: .318 / .356 / .533 AVG/OBP/SLG against
Freddy Garcia: .304 / .346 / .556 against
Javier Vazquez: .304 / .359 / .477 against
Jose Contreras: .273 / .335 / .411 against
Jon Garland: .253 / .299 / .387 against
One of these things is not like the other. Only Jon Garland has been a good pitcher in the last two months, while Contreras has been about average, and Buehrle, Garcia and Vazquez have all been bad pitchers. No one should therefore be surprised that the Sox have played 28-25 ball during that period.
That does not fully answer the question as to why the Sox are 3-11 in their last 14 games (before that, they had been 25-14 since my last post). That answer is simple: the hitting has caught up with the pitching in collapsing. And it's not due to a real lack of getting men on base or hitting for power; instead, the Sox have consistently failed to hit with men in scoring position and have consistently failed to get runners in from third with less thant two outs. Someone called it corpseball a while ago, and that's about right.
The upside is that the Sox are a much better team than they have been playing. They weren't over their heads at 31-15 on May 25, and could pick it up any time. But "turning it on when they need to" has never been a strength of the White Sox.
But, the turn around can start today. No time like the present.
