Morning Wood

Chicago White Sox 9 Kansas City Royals 5

If Tuesday night was any indication, the days of U.S. Cellular Field being a pitcher's park have come to an end for the season. In the first game played at The Cell in June, the White Sox and Royals combined for five home runs, and thankfully four of them were hit by the White Sox.

It wasn't just the homers, either, as there were a lot of fly balls drifting to the warning track that were probably just routine fly balls a few weeks ago. Now, your first reaction to this news may be that it's a good thing, and it will help wake up the White Sox bats. You're probably right, this will help the Sox offense, but that doesn't necessarily make it a good thing.

Remember, it's going to be just as easy for the other team to knock the ball out of the park, so the days of the White Sox pitching staff giving up the least amount of homers in the league (only 34) are numbered.

But whatever, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Carlos Quentin, A.J. Pierzynski, Alexei Ramirez, and yes, even Nick Swisher went deep for the Sox last night, as they jumped out to an early 6-0 lead putting the game out of reach early.

"We're not going to play like that every day but that's the expectation, the most we can," Guillen said. "We got good talent. It's a matter of putting it together. You look at the lineup and our lineup is strong. That's why it surprises me we don't do more damage."

Gavin Floyd went seven innings, allowing four runs, but only two of them were earned.

Chicago Cubs 9 San Diego Padres 6

Well, the Cubs road trip is off to a pretty damn good start. They've now won nine in a row after getting homers from Mark DeRosa, Geovany Soto, and Alfonso Soriano in the very pitcher friendly PetCo Park.

Those three homers made up six of the Cubs' nine runs, and helped overcome a shaky outing by Jason Marquis (Marquis struggling in June? Who knew?). Marquis allowed three runs in five innings, but that hardly tells the whole story. He also walked one guy, committed a balk, and threw a pick-off attempt away that allowed a run to score.

He really had it working for him last night.

Still, beware Cubs fans, as I've been saying to anybody who starts telling me that this team is unstoppable, Lou Piniella isn't exactly excited about the pitching staff.

"We talked about being so deep [in starters] when we left spring training, and all of a sudden two of our left-handers (Hill and Sean Marshall) have encountered problems and are both down in the minors," Piniella said. "Lieber, in his only start, was ineffective. And here we have a rookie ( Sean Gallagher) that really wasn't in the picture, in the rotation already.

"So we better be careful with our starting pitchers. It's easier to rotate a reliever from the minors back and forth than it is to go find a starter that can pitch six or seven innings for you.

"We're thinner than people think we are."

Well, Lou isn't.

AL

• Red Sox 7 Rays 4
• Blue Jays 9 Yankees 3
• Rangers 12 Indians 7
• Orioles 5 Twins 3
• Angels 5 Mariners 4
• A's Tigers

NL

• Braves 5 Marlins 4
• Phillies 3 Reds 2
• Astros 2 Pirates 0
• Cardinals 6 Nationals 1
• Brewers 7 DBacks 1
• Rockies 3 Dodgers 0
• Mets 9 Giants 6