Somebody else's baby

The Detroit Tigers are in the World Series. Every White Sox fan knows it could've easily been the White Sox.

Ultimately, the 2006 White Sox died from neglect. Not from the bullpen, not from the starting pitching, not from the unexpected bad luck of sharing a division with a couple of teams on Missions from God.

They died because, in his haste to cement a second championship team, Kenny Williams forgot to have any backup plans. When Brian Anderson struggled at the plate, there was no major league caliber option to back him up. When Scott Podsednik struggled at the plate and in the field, there was no option to replace him except Pablo Ozuna.

They died because of gratitude. When the bullpen struggled, blood flowed, and Riske and McDougal were brought in to (mostly) stem the bleeding -- but not until Cliff Politte got 30 innings to blow multiple ballgames before earning his release. One has to think that Podsednik not being replaced had more to do with his homer off Brad Lidge last October than any realistic assessment of his contributions. His defensive drop-off made him possibly the worst regular position player in the league.

They died because of stubbornness. Boone Logan got far more opportunities to show he wasn't ready that any rationality justified. Anderson, despite his manifest problems hitting lefty pitching, was platooned, deepening his slump. The use of Cotts and Logan as LOOGys despite poor performance in that specific role was stubbornly repeated.

Now comes the offseason, the great time to blog because, well, you can't be proven wrong for six months.

Good luck to the Tigers. But we all can't help but think it shoulda been our time again. In baseball, unless you're the Yankees, the opportunity not seized doesn't usually come again for a long time.

Capitalize on this good forture

When Joe Crede broke his finger last year, he was a lifetime .251/.300/.428 hitter. Given the high expectations, that would officially qualify as a major disappointment.

Since he came off the DL on September 10, 2005, Joe Crede has now played in 85 games. In that span he's hit .320/.354/.560.

Here's one way of looking at it: double his last 81 games and you get:

.312
34 homers
118 RBI
28 walks (nobody is perfect)

Suffer not your neighbor's affliction

As midnight approached on May 27, the Detroit Tigers were coming off a win off the Indians and were an incredible 35-14. Virtually everything was going right for the team, easily leading the league in ERA and scoring runs in bunches. One more game against the Indians, who they'd been dominating, followed by stretch against the Yankees, Boston, the White Sox, and Toronto, gave the Tigers an opportunity to quiet the last naysayers.

The Tigers have now gone 3-9 in the last 12 games, being outscored 70-42. Three things have gone wrong for the Tigers:

• Their schedule suddenly got a lot tougher,
• They started suffering injuries (Maroth, Monroe, I-Rod), and
• Their mixed-bag bullpen started giving up a lot of runs, capped by last night's meltdown.
  

They have managed to cling to first place mostly because the White Sox have not played Whack-A-Mole with them quite enough yet. The wheels aren't off yet, but the Detroit lug nuts look to be loose or missing for 2006. This is not to say the Tigers aren't long-term contenders; the wealth of young pitching plus more coming (and Zumaya eventually moving into a key role) augurs well for their future -- if Leyland doesn't Dusty-Baker the young pitchers first, that is. On the other hand, Polanco, Ordonez, I-Rod, and Guillen aren't spring chickens, and the latter three have terrifying injury histories (which are the reasons they're all in Motown in the first place), so keep in mind the possibility that this team could be a mirage.

Indians followers are amazed at the team's floudering at 29-31. "With all that talent," they ask, "how can they be under .500?" The answer, of course, is that the pitching staff isn't the same one they had last year, and in virtually every case, the replacement in 2006 is worse than the 2005 role-player. It hasn't helped that Cliff Lee has regressed to ordinary, but Paul Byrd and Jason Johnson simply haven't pitched well, and the smoke-and-mirrors 2005 bullpen is scattered and the replacement just hasn't gelled. From the perspective of a White Sox fan, the Indians' decision to use Aaron Boone at third and the Broussard/Blake hot starts should stretch out the playing time for three candidates for long-term replacement, and lead the Indians to avoid some tough decisions they should make for 2007. Of course, Boone's supposed heir apparent, super-prospect Andy Marte, is not hitting at Buffalo (.256/.324/.363). Is it possible the Crisp trade, surrendering Crisp and bullpen handyman David Riske, will turn out to be the supposed "2005 Major League Executive of the Year's" serious mistake? We can only hope.

Game 60: Caught between a rock and a hard place (37-23)

White Sox 5, Indians 4. Brian Anderson's running catch at the wall in the top of the 8th denied Travis Hafner of an RBI double, and Jermaine Dye's two-run single gave the White Sox a 5-4 win.

Brian Anderson if 19 for 123 with 6 extra base hits and 16 walks. Normally this would earn him a trip back to Charlotte, but given that he's a very good centerfielder on a team that doesn't have anybody else who is competent there, he has to play, which Guillen announced yesterday. Mackowiak gave it his best shot, but his being overmatched has cost the White Sox at least a couple of games already.

Anderson will almost certainly start hitting at some point. There really isn't anything magical about the majors outside of the hitters' minds (and their paychecks, obviously). Before the season, PECOTA had him at .269/.329/.468, rather than .154/.254/.268. Even if he does turn it around, he will post an ugly rookie season no matter what, as hitting .300 the rest of the way would still leave him somewhere in the low .200s.

Game 53: Heartbreak's a soul shaker (33-20)

Between being sick this week and the pathetic efforts turned in by Garcia and Contreras over the last few days, it pains me to comment at all. So I won't.

Game 50: I don't wanna work, I just wanna bang on the Tribe all day (33-17)

White Sox 11, Cleveland 0. Take a moment on Memorial Day to remember the many fallen.

In my house, today, not much went right on a holiday. I'm laid up with a bad cold, woozy, and barely coherent (translation: even less so than normal). On the baseball diamond, just about everything that could go right, went right, at least for the White Sox. Javier Vazquez brought his best stuff, Cliff Lee didn't, Jim Thome slammed two home runs, and the Indians managed two singles in the entire game.

Game 48: You take the biscuit

Toronto 3, White Sox 2, 11 innings. The White Sox stranded 13 baserunners in a game they should have won.

After the game, Ozzie made noises about maybe sending Anderson to the minors and bringing up another pitcher. I will say it once, I will say it a thousand times: no major league team needs 12 pitchers. EVER. Carrying 7 men in the bullpen just encourages overmanaging, excessive pitching changes, and ensures that half your bullpen is bad. Note to Ozzie: stop using pitchers for one batter, go back to the way you managed the team before, it worked fine. I don't care if you're facing Cleveland or whomever. Do not cripple the offensive bench so you can carry worthless 1-batter pitchers.

Game 47: Take it Easy

Toronto 8, White Sox 2. Toronto beat up on Freddy Garcia in a rout. The only White Sox highlight would be the wasted two-homer game by Paul Konerko. The White Sox continue to struggle with lefthanded starting pitchers. Fortunately, Casey Janssen and Ty Taubenheim were born as northpaws.

The Tigers continue to win, beating the rosin out of the Cleveland Indians last night. But, please remember it's a long season. Scoreboard-watching in May is pretty much pointless, unless somebody is running away and hiding. The Tigers have done their best to do this, but they have managed to hide only from the Twins, Indians, and Royals; the White Sox hang in with their .660 record. Until late July or so rolls around, we simply don't really know what constitutes "help". At this point a year ago, the Indians were just about where they are now, and so were the White Sox (within a couple of games). The Tigers could suffer crippling misfortune and the Indians get hot at any point, in which case the Tiger rout last night would turn out to be welcome. Despite the wrist-slitting depression that accompanies any Sox loss, they are still 5-2 over the last 7 games and 15 games over .500, playing .660 baseball overall.

Notes:

• MLB announced their suspensions for the melee, with Barrett getting 10 games, Anderson 5, White Sox third base coach Joey Cora 2, and A. J. Pierzynski a $2,000 fine. Now, for Pierzynski, who makes $4M a year, this fine amounts to about as much as a night at the movies for the rest of us. Effectively, MLB has decided that the Cubs are 59% responsible for the brawl and the White Sox 41%, or, if you count the ejections, the White Sox lose about 7-person-games and the Cubs 12-person-games, or63-47. This is, of course, ridiculous and insulting, but it continues the long tradition of screwing the White Sox when other teams incite fights, most notably the five game suspension given to Jack McDowell for being assaulted by Mark Whiten, in contrast to the walk granted Nolan Ryan v. Robin Ventura in pretty much exactly the same circumstances.
  

• Speaking of Pierzynski, I know he's widely disliked for being mouthy, but the number of comments on the Internet suggesting that punching him, hitting him with pitched balls, crashing into him, or otherwise generally advocating violence is either in extremely poor taste or disgusting. Angels fans in particular: all the man did was run to first on a dropped third strike, and keep running on a tag by a fielder who neglected to put the ball in his glove. How that warrants Kelvim Escobar's intentional HBP is beyond me. Do NOT tell me it wasn't intentional; Pierzynski is the only batter Escobar has hit in 55 innings this year. The odds that out of 233 plate apperances, he would accidentally hit the one man he has a history against, and on the third pitch he threw him, are ridiculously long. How Escobar avoided an ejection or suspension is beyond me. To all who advocate plunking him or punching him: shame on you. If you don't like him, hell, heckle him. He simply is not Osama bin Laden.
  

• Much has been made of the weak schedules faced by the White Sox and Tigers, but this ignores the technical problem that this is in part because the White Sox and Tigers have played and beaten those teams. The White Sox opponents are actually 2 games over .500 in games not involving the White Sox so far. The team's weighted pace (that is, projecting their current win/loss rates against the balance of the schedule) is still 104 wins. They won't meet this (because they won't go 19-0 against the Tigers).

• The White Sox have apparently decided to move 3B prospect Josh Fields to the outfield. Fields has been the core of the offense of a team playing runaway baseball (albeit now on a 3-game losing streak) and sports a .323/.408/.568 line in his third pro season. Beware of him, I say: he strikes out a LOT. The 9 stolen bases say he's decently fast, and while they've talked about this OF thing, he's still playing 3B.
  

The trouble with the maples (and they're quite convinced they're right)

Jay Jaffe at Baseball Prospectus, in his recent chat, showed what happens to analysts who look at numbers but not the reasons for them. Two excerpts:

Joe (35th and Lowe): White Sox: Legitimate 100-105 win team, or have they just gotten pretty lucky over the past 14 months? Jay Jaffe: Once again, the WHite Sox are playing above their heads; they're +4.7 in the third-order Wins department according to our Adjusted standings. They've been more than a bit lucky over the course of that span, sure, but I do see them as about a 90-95 win team, particularly so long as Contreras and Thome remains healthy.

As I understand third-order wins, they are extrapolating from basic statistics and adjusting for quality of opponents. In other words, if all else is equal, what do the hits, walks, homers, etc., project as for wins. I suppose they have studies showing that their methodology is a sound prediction method, but as far as the White Sox are concerned, they've been basically, insistently wrong for over 200 games now. Further, having followed all of those games, I just can't see where the "luck events" occurred. Jaffe and crew should consider the possibility that their methodology is all approximate, that the real game of baseball is not played by APBA cards, and that when their prediction models can't account for performance, there is a 50% chance that the problem lies in the prediction model.

Nick from WH (SF): What do you make of Jhonny Peralta's slow start? Is he still the real deal? Jay Jaffe: I'm a huge Peralta fan; in fact I think I picked him as my AL MVP in the staff preseason picks. Which is probably the problem right there.

Where to start. Peralta's 20 homers last season should have come with an asterisk: (* Almost all hit off poor pitching). A look at Peralta's pitchers-faced profile showed that a disproportionate number of Misplaced H's home runs came off mop-up pitchers in massacres. Now, there's nothing wrong with this, but expecting that sort of performance to translate to the 3-hole in competitive games was naive, and showed that "one of the five best GMs in the game", whose superior team is now struggling with .500, didn't have deep insight into the true nature of his shortstop.

Game 46: Washing machine (31-15)

Chicago 3, Oakland 2. The White Sox completed their first three-game home sweep of the A's in almost twenty years when Bobby Jenks struck out three, getting the last four in a row, to close out a solid Mark Buerhle outing backed by great defensive plays by Joe Crede and Jermaine Dye. (Dye later dropped a fly ball to take the luster off his game.)

The big story for the series was supposed to be Frank Thomas' return to the scene of virtually all of his career. Thomas was really, really good, the best he's been all year, with 4 hits in 9 at bats, including a couple of homers, four walks, and a HBP. It didn't matter. He was upstaged by a squeeze bunt, a home-run derby, and Buehrle&Jenks.

Notes:

• Bobby Jenks is one nasty so-and-so. Jason Kendall is very difficult to strike out, but he nailed him in the 8th with the tying and go-ahead runners in scoring position. That gives him 17 strikeouts in May in less than 11 innings. He's been walking a batter almost every game, but not today.
  

• The White Sox now have had six consecutive sellouts. That has never happened before.
  

• After an off-day tomorrow comes a visit back on the plastic, to the so-called "Rogers Centre" in Toronto. The Tigers draw the Indians, who desperately need to kill them. Should be fun.
  

• Oh, and when is Michael Barrett getting suspended?

What a drag it is...

ESPN has spent the entire night blathering about "what's wrong with Randy Johnson". It's his mechanics. It's his mental approach. It's a slump.

The man turns 43 on September 10th. He's old, that's all. Old.

Get a little action in

Observations:

1. A. J. Pierzynski did nothing wrong on the second inning collision. Michael Barrett was blocking the plate, set up for a tag, and the conventional play in professional baseball is a collision in that situation.
2. The Cub pitcher's assertion that Pierzynski should have known that the ball was ten feet from Barrett assumes that Pierzynski has eyes in the back of his head. If Pierzynski had shied from the collision, Barrett would not have granted some kind of courtesy on the tag.
3. Pierzynski did nothing wrong after the collision. The umpire had not yet signalled safe (even thought Pierzynski had already touched the plate twice). The exagerrated thump was just an exclamation mark, one that Cub fans should be familiar with after ten years of Sammy's "hop".
4. Pierzynski did nothing wrong in attempting to go after his helmet. Some Cubpologists asserted on the internet that the helmet was not in the direction he said it was, but in fact, the replay clearly shows it did.
5. Pierzynski's action when struck in the face was to back away. There is no evidence he did anything confrontational from that point forward.
6. Pierzynski did show considerable emotion on his way to the clubhouse after his ejection.
7. Apparently Pierzynski was ejected immediately and Barrett only after long discussion.

This raises four serious questions about major league baseball:

1. Why did the home plate umpire wait for the thump before signalling safe when Pierzynski had clearly touched the plate more than once before?
2. Why did the umpires eject Pierzynski at all? He did nothing wrong. He has been remarkably sportsmanlike about the starkly wrongful ejection by umpires whose handling of the situation looked incompetent.
   
3. Why did the umpires try to avoid ejecting another player who had punched a player in the mouth in full view of the home plate umpire?
   
4. Will MLB have the guts to admit (1-7) and that the umpires' ejection of Pierzynski was a mistake?
   

It also raises two serious questions about ESPN and the Chicago media:

1. Why were Pierzynski's actions discussed at all? He didn't do anything wrong?
2. Why, after defending Pierzynski at length, did ESPN yapper Jeff Brantley say, if he were pitching tomorrow, he would hit Pierzynski? WTF?
   

Crush 'em like so many paper beer cups

While the supremacy of the free world is being decided at 35th and the Dan Ryan, FOX is broadcasting to most of the nation a game between two obscure teams called, I think, the "Mitts" and the "Yank-mes". Now, from what I hear, the "Yank-mes" have an outfield populated by rookies, and an infield populated by, shall we say, players with reputations for sullenness.

I will probably have to surrender my White Sox fan party card for this, but I have to confess, I just don't hate the Chicago Cubs. I don't like them, either; they exist in that vast nebula of baseball teams about which I have no opinion. That's the way it is. Right now, they are The Team Playing The White Sox, though, which always moves them to Honorary #30 on my top-to-bottom list.

And:

• Based on a seven-game road trip where he hit .238/.217/.429, some people are already writing The New Joe Crede's obituary. I say, check the splits. Joe doesn't hit well in Minny, Tampa, or on plastic in general. I won't speculate on why this is true -- there may not be a bigger BS dump in baseball than theories on offense on Astroturf (or its relatives) other than to say that the turf probably favors fast slap hitters, which is the opposite of what Joe Crede is.

• The poster children for methodological blindness are still at it.

• Peter Gammons called the Tiger pitching the best in baseball yesterday in his ESPN blog (pay site). Now, this is an defensible point; but it seems when Peter Gammons says something, it's jumping the shark. Cincinnati slaughtered the Tiger pitching staff. Coincidence?

• Outgoing Sewanee economics professor J. C. Bradbury has web-published a study suggesting that pitching dilution, not steroids, is responsible for the home run epidemic of the last 20 years. He extrapolates a Stephen Jay Gould argument that decreased variance in statistics implies increase in overall quality when you are operating at the extreme end of the normal curve. Since the hit batter rate tracks the home run rate reasonably, it's logical to presume that pitching quality dilution is the primary motivator. All this sounds correct, but as the comments to Bradbury's blog say, there is a problem here. Technically, I think the best way to put it is, nobody knows if the performance distribution curve is wide sense stationary or egodic. Practically, this means that the observation that the strike zone is smaller than it was 20 years ago and the prevalence today of Chet-Lemon-style plate crowders could be affecting both home run rates and HBP rates. Further, one could argue that smaller parks not only increase the home run rate, they encourage teams to flirt with wild power pitchers. Personally, I don't buy the steroids-as-cause argument alone, because power hitting in baseball is not purely a function of strength, and because pitchers were also users too.
  

Game 41: While you see a chance take it (27-14)

White Sox 6, Cubs 1. Greg Maddux was an unhappy as Michael Finley at a crotch-punching contest today over the home plate umpire's strike zone, Konerko drove in a bunch of runs, Thome hit an opposite-field dinger, and Mark Buehrle two-hit the Cubs for a White Sox team returned from a 3-4 seven-game trip to outer space. A good start to the three-game insipid fiasco that is "interleague play".

Three notes for right now:

• Randy Johnson struggles again for the Yankees. Media wonders what's wrong with him. What's wrong with Randy is he's older than I am.
  

• Is the Cub bench so bad the best they can do for DH is Michael Barrett?

• Shane Victorino took over for Aaron Rowand when Rowand broke his nose. Victorino is hitting .373. What are the odds Kenny Williams tries to get Aaron back?
  

Come inside, come inside

Whoever scheduled back-to-back series for the White Sox has a cruel sense of humor, with the four games in the HHHDome being following by three games in the Tropi-Can.

Tropicana is another bizarre building, but it has one interesting feature, a real, full dirt infield. I never have liked the sliding-pit ballparks, and have never understood why this is even legal.

Game 37: There I was with my back to the wall... (25-12)

White Sox 7, Twins 3. Chris Widger actually hit the baseball, as did Joe Crede and Scott Podsednik. They all had three hits, and all actually hit the ball out of the park. Freddy Garcia threw 6 2/3 decent innings, giving up 3 runs, and Cotts and Politte closed out the Twins. Podsednik, virtually given up for dead a couple of weeks ago, is now a .300 hitter. The White Sox win the final game and earn a split on Monday afternoon.

It must be agonizing to be a Twins fan right now. Just about 24 hours ago, they were 6 1/2 games out, and had just tagged Mark Buerhle for 7 runs in the first inning to take a 7-3 lead. A sweep would put them back into the thick of the fight. But the Twin pitching betrayed them, as it has all year when Santana wasn't on the mound, while Buehrle found the root of his problem. The White Sox outscored the Twins 13-3 over the next 17 innings and left Minneapolis with perhaps the most satisfying Twin split in years. In 24 hours, the Twins are 8 1/2 back again, right where they were Thursday night, with 4 games off the schedule.

I suppose, if the Twins fans had been told they'd be neck and neck with the Indians on May 15, and 7 1/2 games from the Tigers and 8 1/2 games away from the White Sox, they would naturally have assumed they'd be the ones on first, with the White Sox having fulfilled Joe Sheehan's expectations and vanished off the face of the pennant race. How strange this season has been for everybody but the White Sox, who are the only team in the division living up to preseason expectations. (That ignores the Tigers, who are more than living up, they're blowing their expectations away.)

I suppose winning three straight division titles (2002-2004) has its consolations, and this Liriano kid looks like a real monster, but the thought that the Twins' micro-dynasty has probably ended has to eat at a true Twin believer. You can't just expect the team to just rise again, not for a while at least; especially not if the GM keeps signing made-to-be-Royals players like Batista and White.

Game 36: I can read your mind (24-12)

White Sox 9, Minnesota 7. First inning: Hunter robs Thome of 3-run jack, Dye follows one out later with 3-run jack. Then the White Sox play Keystone Kops afield, Buehrle battered for 7 runs (8 unearned) in the first. The White Sox scratched and clawed out six more runs over the next few innings, and the Twins got nothing. White Sox turn triple play. Jenks strikes out the side in the ninth. Just another day at the office.

During the Twin merry-go-round in the first, I was convinced either they were stealing signs or Buehrle was tipping pitches. The ESPN K-Zone system was showing the Twins bashing pitches on the inside corner, outside corner, four inches outside... on the first pitch. It was like they knew what was coming. As it turns out, they did. Post-game reports were that Buehrle was tipping his pitches with his glove position.

This could explain Buehrle's mini-slump over the last few games. If so, the Twins got a little over-eager and let the secret out. If so, let's all give a nice, big hand to them for getting greedy.

The White Sox have to get used to the fact that they'll be microscopically examined by everybody as long as they are on top.

You can tell everyone I'm a damn disgrace

There is a parallel here between Ozzie and Mark Cuban. Cuban has been fined something close to a million dollars for bitching about the quality (or lack thereof) of NBA officiating. Cuban has been treated like an out-of-control lunatic by the national media, frothing at the mouth every time the refs do something negative to his Mavericks. This ignores the simple fact that, in my opinion, Cuban has been absolutely spot-on right about everything he says. He has made specific recommendations on how to improve officiating, including not rotating everybody, including the bad officials, through key playoff games. Cuban doesn't go along with the pro-wrestling mentality (manage the TV ratings through game officiating), and the major media, instead of exposing the NBA for the hypocritical sham it is, just pretend Cuban is just a lunatic and the NBA is on the up-and-up. (Note: I am *not* a Maverick fan.)

The same thing happens with Ozzie. And it snowballs. Because Ozzie's mouth is great copy, the fact that what Ozzie says is right is getting lost. Ozzie (and Cooper!) got tossed on a seemingly disingenuous basis (arguing balls and strikes -- A checked swing argument with the 1B umpire is not what was meant by "arguing balls and strikes"). The national media story is Ozzie Goes Ballistic, which is typical BS coverage, like the Cuban coverage.

Umpiring errors are rarely mentioned in game stories from the AP, and if they are, it's couched in "objective" language about "controversial" calls and words like "replays appeared to show". If Mark Cuban or Ozzie Guillen can't draw attention to patterns of error, then nothing will ever change -- because the sportswriters are lapdogs everywhere outside New York and Boston -- and we'll have to put up this ever-declining quality of game officiating.

The truth is, baseball, like basketball, is a commercialized amusement. It is run mostly to entertain people. It is theater. We who take it too seriously forget this, and want the better team to prevail, not the better story. Cuban is so rich he'll just go on speaking his mind (or running his mouth). Ozzie's fine will get paid by Jerry Reinsdorf. And so it goes.

Game 35: Deep rotation mutilation

Tonight is an example of why I get totally blue in the face angry when people tell me how great MLB umpires are. The home plate ump clearly gave Radke an expanded strike zone tonight, pitch after pitch, keeping him in a game, pitches Vazquez didn't get. Then the Twins get four gift runs because the umpires either weren't paying attention or just stunk up the place. First, the first base umpire misses a close call on a chopper to the pitcher, neglecting to notice Castillo running inside the baseline and claiming Konerko came off the bag on the tag and tagged him late. It was a close call, but it was probably wrong, and it leads to a run.

Then both the home plate umpire and first base umpire miss a strikeout when Cuddyer is hit by a pitch he swung at. Ozzie and Don Cooper get tossed, Vazquez gets charged with a bunch of runs, and just to put the icing on the cake, Radke trots out with a 5-4 lead and immediately gets multiple gift calls on pitches off the plate to put an exclamation point on the game, telling me they don't have a clue how bad they screwed up. Unbelievable.

Now, somebody somewhere will say there's a parallel with the ALCS last year. Maybe. But the umpires didn't just toss Scioscia and his pitching coach.

Game 34: Knock me down, it’s [probably] all in vain (23-11)

So the Twins built up a four-game series in the Hump as their do-or-die. This is probably true for them, mired (until yesterday) 8 1/2 games down in mid-May. They sent Johan Santana to the mound against Jon Garland, and it turned out to be a 10-1 mismatch. Garland got hammered for the fourth time in seven starts and, as the Tribune points out, since his 8-0 start, he's been back to being Average Jon. Sadly, this makes the off-season long-term contract look pretty unfortunate; of course, with what Kris Benson types are making, and given it's a long season, things could get better. Consider, ultimately, that what matters is the White Sox record in games he's started (3-4). Add to this the fact that yesterday was the "get-used-to" game of 2006 for the extraterrestial Metrodome, and the fact that no team was going to get to Johan Santana the way he was dealing, and this one just goes in the "sure loss" category. I don't care how good you are, games where you spot start for your de facto #1 starter (Wednesday) against a defending division champion, and games where you face the real AL Cy Young award winner (Colon's selection last season was bizarre) are not games you'll win without extraordinary effort.

After the skunking, Minnesota has gained a game and now stands 7 1/2 back. The real story here is that the Twins have almost caught the suddenly flailing Indians, who dropped a game to the Tigers last night. It's still too early to start rooting against the Tigers in these intradivisional games, just a bit -- the Indians are still far more dangerous in the long run.

With Contreras on the mend, the White Sox facing three somewhat more favorable matchups (any matchup with a Minny pitcher not named "Johan Santana" is more favorable), and bullpen geezer Jeff Nelson making a return to live games in Charlotte, these last two games still feel like aberrations.