White Sox Barely Edge AL Champion Rays

Nothing comes easy in domes for the White Sox, or so it seems. This was on full display tonight as the White Sox barely edged the Tampa Bay Rays 3-2. John Danks picked up his first win of the year while Bobby Jenks picked up his third save of the year in a shaky ninth inning. The White Sox are now 5-4 and in a three way tie for first for the AL Central.

I don't know what the story of the night really was. There was some good and a lot of bad that made me realize just how slow and old this team really is. Let's start with the good. John Danks pitched 6 nearly flawless innings. He struck out 8 batters and only allowed 2 hits. He did walk 4 and also gave up a solo home run to Carlos Pena, but you can't expect Danks to be perfect. The bullpen was also pretty good during crunch time. Thornton, Dotel, and Jenks all got in trouble in their respective innings pitched, but Thornton and Dotel came away without giving up a run while Jenks did just enough to nail it down and get the save. To say the least, the pitching staff was solid tonight. Some key contributors on offense included Jermaine Dye, who accounted for two of the Sox' 3 runs with his second inning two run homer, and Josh Fields, who had 3 hits and knocked in a crucial insurance run in the 9th.

Now for the bad, the real bad. The Sox had 14 hits today and only scored 3 runs. That's right, I don't know how those numbers add up at all. Even worse, the Sox left 11 men on base tonight. Here's the worst part of the story. The Sox had 5 runners on third with less than two outs and only scored one of them! My God it hurts just typing that. Now here's another bad part, they scored just 2 runs off of Jeff Niemann. Who? The dude came in with a 10 ERA after his start against the fucking Orioles. Boy oh boy, if this continues, Ozzie's gonna go on another rant. How fitting too, it's against Tampa Bay. Ozzie can bitch and moan, but there's no way he can make Paul Konerko, Jermaine Dye, and Jim Thome run faster. Here's one instance of how slow the Sox are today. In the 6th, the White Sox got three consecutive hits. Dye got a single with one out. Konerko then singled to right field. Dye wasn't fast enough to move to third. Even worse, Pierzynski comes up next and hits a single. Jeff Cox stupidly stops Dye at third when he could have scored. What happens next? Alexei Ramirez pops up to the shortstop and Brian Anderson grounds out. How can you watch this without pulling your hair out? The team is slow and it can't hit with RISP. If Dye didn't hit the long ball in the 2nd, this game would have went to the Rays.

They better not pull this kind of sorry effort again tomorrow, because they're facing a much better pitcher in James Shields. They won't have room to make stupid situational hitting mistakes. We got away with this one today, but tomorrow won't be the same. Let's hope Bartolo Colon can do without the run support tommorow. Because I don't know how many scoring opportunities the Sox will mess up tomorrow.

- Stan (White Sox writer)

Side Note: Our writer James will be at the game tomorrow. He will try to give us live updates while at the park with pictures. :D