With their second victory over the Tigers in 18 hours,
the Sox improved to 12-4 on the season, their best start since 1935. Mark Buehrle didn't appear to have nearly the stuff or command that he had in his last outing against the Mariners. The offensive hero of the game was Scott Podsednik. Sure he only went 1-5, but he made the one count, driving in the tying and winning runs in the 7th inning.
* * * * *Joe Crede extended his league leading hit streak to a career high 12 games. He's 15-40 during the streak for a .375 average, raising his overall average to .296.
* * * * *Sox batters took 3 walks on Thursday to raise their season total to 25 in 16 games. The next lowest total by any team is
Seattle, at 37. Meanwhile, the pitching staff has allowed 50 free passes. They've been able to keep runs off the board(3.35 ERA) by avoiding the longball (just 12 in 16 games) and
stellar defense.
* * * * *Do you think Dmitri Young has learned his lesson yet? Since making
the statement, the Tigers have dropped 7 of their last 10 games, including going 0-5 against those teams that "he meant no disrespect to."
Dear Dmitri,
None taken. Thanks for the accommodations in Detroit.
Signed,
Twins & White Sox
* * * * *Magglio Ordonez has once again fled the country in search of medical advice. He was in Montreal to see a hernia specialist,
who couldn't find a hernia.
"The doctor was not 100 percent willing to say it was a hernia," Dombrowski said. "He still wants some other tests to be done."
It's amazing to me how much this mirrors the knee issue. I really hope it's not something serious (read: cancer), but secretly I had hoped that he would go down, or just plain suck, and saddle spend-til-we-win Illitch with a terrible contract. Right now, I'd just settle for sucking. It's not fun to see anyone go down.
* * * * *Despite his three quick outs for the save today, I have absolutely no confidence in Shingo Takatsu right now. He needs to be ahead in the count, and maybe getting a little help on the low strike from the umps, to be really effective. He's not doing either right now. The 1-2-3 9th today in Detroit was more a product of the Tigers' hitters being to anxious and swinging at pitches out of the zone than of Shingo pitching well.
That being said, it was a well timed move by Ozzie Guillen to get him into a save situation in a tight game right away. The Tigers had three straight righties due up, in the ninth, and as a team, they hadn't faced Shingo
since going 1-2-3 in garbage time back on September 30th of last year.
Having 3 (possibly 4) guys in the pen who can be interchanged to get the save is a nice luxury to have. Plenty of teams have gone the closer-by-committee route and they have been almost universally unsuccessful. The difference between those teams and this White Sox team is that most teams went to the closer-by-committee out of necessity. Translation: they had a poor bullpen. The White Sox have a good bullpen. The stats don't exactly bear that out currently, putting the Sox pen in the middle of the MLB pack with a 4.66ERA. You'll remember that Luis Vicaino was hung out to dry by Ozzie Guillen because he burned the pen; subtract that outing, and the pen's ERA is down to 3.47.
