The Sox still have all the same issues. That sentence was sitting on my screen for a while as I tried to figure out what else to really say about it. I feel alot like Rongey in the sense that i have to repeat the same thing every show (or in my case, blog), but i'll try to mix it up at least a little bit. I only saw bits and pieces of these games, but from what I saw the same things have been happening as they have all year. Friday's game was another strong start from Buehrle...for a while. One could argue that Ozzie left him in a bit too long, but I agree with him as far as the theory that (and i loosely quote Ozzie) no matter how good a starting pitcher is, if he makes 1 mistake, it's game over. That's pretty much what happened on Friday, and kind of what happened today as well.
The hitting on this team is still bad, and even though i feel like a broken record saying it, it's still the main issue. And I know i've said this before too, but as I anticipated Rios being the defining factor on this team, he has been very very good (notably his 12 game hitting streak, and today's game) and the rest of the team is under performing to say the least. It used to be the pitching and the offense, but now it's mostly just the offense. i really don't like looking at the beginning of the broadcast and seeing that most of our lineup is hitting in the vicinity of .160 .190, and the occasional .250 if we're lucky. This of course is besides Paul Konerko and Andruw Jones I believe, who actually have pretty decent averages. Is Greg Walker to blame? I still agree with what Gordon Beckham once said in that Walker isn't the one going up there and swinging the bat. but from the higher ups perspective, apon seeing these terrible batting averages on paper there are only 2 people to put the blame on, and that is Walker and Kenny Williams. Kenny put together a really good pitching staff, but we absolutely need the Quentins and Beckhams of the world to hit up to their potential to support them. i know they can come around, but the "it's still early" thing isn't going to fly anymore because May will be over before we know it.
I'm still happy with the way Peavy is throwing now, as last night he had another nice start (almost a complete game, even). This pitching is good we just need some run support for goodness sake. It doesn't get a whole lot easier tomorrow when we begin our 3 game series with Detroit, but if we can get the bats going, these games can prove to be very important if we don't want to consider ourselves out of the AL Central race already. Freddy will pitch against his former team (for a few minutes anyway) against Rick Porcello, who hasn't had that great of a start so far. I really hope we can take advantage of that.
after this series against those Tigers, we come back home to play a lowly Angels team that is even struggling to keep up with Oakland AND Texas, so if we can get a series win in Detroit before that, it could be the start of a nice little streak for us.
On a non Sox related note, I must praise the National league for a second and how unbelievably random it is. The Reds and Padres are in first place in their respective divisions, and the Nationals and Marlins are looking to hold their own in the Wild card hunt against the Giants (my original Wild card pick, however I had The Rockies winning the division...). This should be a fun MLB network year for me. ^_^
So hopefully this series against Detroit goes well. Let's give our starters some run support, boys!!!
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