With one week of baseball under their belt the Chicago White Sox have proven one thing offensively, they are never out of a game. The Sox may have come up short three times as they enter week 2 of the baseball season at .500, but the games were watchable unlike 2012. Part of the White Sox early offensive success is they actually have depth and speed at each position, well except there’s no real speed at first base. They’ve lead in every game this year, based on that we can get to the next topic, pitching.
Chris Sale has looked outstanding in both of his starts and Jose Quintana and John Danks both had quality starts. Felipe Paulino rebounded from a rough beginning lasting 5-1/3 innings while striking out six batters in a 7-6 winner over the Twins, so overall the starting pitching has been decent except for Erik Johnson. Johnson looked like a rookie pitcher is his first start of the season against the Royals where he lacked control. Hopefully, Johnson can bounce back and look more like the pitcher from September 2013. The real issue has been parts of the bullpen like Nate Jones who appeared in two games and walked 4 batters and has an ERA of infinity, it turns out he was playing injured. I appreciate the effort but it hurt the team more than it helped. Our new closer Matt Lidstrom has an ERA of 9.00 and a WHIP of 2.33 and finally Scott Downs added to “sure-up” the bullpen has a 10.80 ERA with 3.00 WHIP.
On the flip side of that is the good, recent call-up, Jake Petricka, gave the team 2-1/3 scoreless innings and fireballer, Maikel Cleto hasn’t allowed a run either. The rest of the bullpen also shapes up nicely, but ERA doesn’t tell the whole has the White Sox have had some fielding issues, which would be the other issue I have with the Sox’ week one performance.
The Sox have racked up six errors in just six games this season, which is unacceptable as far as I’m concerned. Jose Abreu has been handling the bat well, but not so well with digging balls out of the dirt. He has two of the Sox six errors. For those of you who believe in jinxes then you can blame Hawk for Abreu’s troubles as both of these errors occurred after Hawk mocked reports that Abreu had issues at first base.
Having watched a lot of baseball this week around the league I would have to say the Sox actually look like a team that can compete this year. I’m pleased with their performance thus far in this young season. It’s fun to watch a young team with a lot of upside. Just how young are the White Sox? They are the fifth youngest team in all of baseball, so there will be some growing pains along the way but overall, these kids can play.
