Let's Look At The Bright Side

Yeah, yeah. Bobby Jenks blew a save last night. It sucked, I know. The Sox are now at 3-4 on the season, but I'm actually pretty happy about it.

Have you been paying attention to the starting pitching over the last six days? Ever since the series against Cleveland ended, the Sox starters have been fantastic. Between Javier Vazquez, John Danks, Jose Contreras, and Jon Garland last night, our starters have combined for a 1.40 ERA over their last 25.2 innings of work. They've only allowed 12 hits while striking out 18 batters. Sure the 13 walks aren't pleasing, but they've gotten out of all the jams they've faced.

In other words, the starters are pitching like it's 2005 again.

The fact the Sox have only gone 2-2 in that stretch doesn't bother me because we all know the offense will be there, and that Bobby Jenks isn't going to blow a lot of saves like he did last night.

Mark Buehrle will be taking the mound in a few hours for the Sox as they look to take a series in Oakland for the first time since around 1845. It will be interesting to see how he bounces back from taking that line drive off of his forearm last week.

Speaking of the Sox' struggles in Oakland, I don't really think it's such a big mystery why they struggle there. They don't score a lot of runs in Oakland. The reason for this is because the White Sox offense has been alarmingly dependent on the home run as of late. Last season 46% of the runs the White Sox scored were via the long ball.

That's way too high.

So when they go to Oakland, where it's damn near impossible to hit home runs at night on a consistent basis, they're going to struggle. I mean let's look at the first game of the series. We won, but how did we score our runs? On a Jim Thome and Scott Podsednik homer. Last night the Sox only managed a single run, and at one point couldn't get Alex Cintron home from third after he led off the inning with a triple. (I know it was ruled a three-base error, but there's no way that Mark Ellis should have to take the blame for not catching a ball he had to run 100 feet to get to and catch it over his head.)

The White Sox offense still doesn't seem capable of playing the small ball tactics that Ozzie wants them to get back to. Last season a lot of the blame fell on Scott Podsednik. Well, Pods is batting .421 right now with three stolen bases. He's getting on base. It's the rest of the offense that's not getting him home.

As I said earlier though, I'm not worried about any of this in the slightest. If the Sox can keep pitching like they are the offense will come around and this team will start winning like they're supposed to a lot more consistently.

Let's just hope it starts this afternoon. I'm dying for a 10-1 victory right now.