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Saturday, September 02, 2006

I Don't Get It Either

That's what I wrote to someone on the Sox e-mail list about this Sox team. Despite terrific offseason acquisitions like Jim Thome and (as it looked at the time) Javier Vazquez, this team is struggling down the stretch. It has been losing to Kansas City. It could not close the deal against the Devil Rays. And they have lost consistently to Minnesota - 4 out of the 6 games they played.

Let's place the blame squarely where it lies: the starting staff. Of course, that's been said before by every sports writer in Chicago as well as Ozzie Guillen time after time. But it's not that the starting staff has failed, but it's how surprising it is that the starting staff has failed:

This team, in this division, with the offense being produced this year, should have won 105-110 games. Seriously. To have 4 of your 5 starting pitchers perform well below their career performance (with a footnote on Contreras) is very poor luck, or even poor coaching.

It seems very likely that the pitching will rebound next year - perhaps with some changes to the rotation (I'm hoping that McCarthy is IN and Vazquez is OUT). Of course, it's unlikely that Dye or Thome, as they age, will be able to reproduce their production this year, and even Crede and Konerko are near the top of their performance charts.

Of course, the 2005 White Sox seemed to get by with an average offense....


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