The White Sox looked really strong throughout the series, from the rotation to the offense. Boston had to play well for the split.

John Danks reminded me a lot of our Jon Lester, except with a much better fastball. He pitched extremely well, even against a line-up filled with RHB and switch hitters. Beckett was solid, and ended up with the better line, but for most of the night Danks was utterly breathtaking.

Anyway, this was a great series to watch, and I’m looking forward to when the White Sox visit Boston. These teams seem destined to meet in the playoffs.

“Pitching acquisitions on hold, for now
White Sox have no immediate plans to for waiver-wire deals”

“There have been some names in the paper, one in particular, that I can unequivocally tell you that I have not made one single phone call toward that particular player,” Williams said. “I don’t know where that came from, because I don’t believe that particular player would be a good fit for us.”

“You start looking at names that really don’t necessary fit the equation and you never want to do that,” added Williams of waiver-wire deals. “A lot of names out there that are veteran type guys that would on the surface appease everyone and say we have that spot covered, but we know it won’t work. Our in-house candidates would be better served than an outside choice, because we’ve trained them to be able to pitch in this ballpark.”

“Sometimes, the most obvious move isn’t so obvious for us,” Williams said. “In essence, if we don’t really believe that will translate into success in this ballpark, and that’s very key, then it doesn’t make sense to do it.

“So, the most obvious moves, sometimes, to the public isn’t the most obvious in all of our research and what we’ve done to determine what is successful here in this ballpark,” Williams added.

Jarrod Washburn (career stats pitching at The Cell):
59.2 IP
3.92 ERA
1.11 WHIP
.224 BAA
49 H
26 ER
32 SO
17 BB

So I guess Kenny should be held responsible for this non-move (a.k.a. we don’t want to pick up Washburn’s salary) if Carrasco and/or Broadway suck in their new role as fifth starter and Washburn has a strong finish to the season. We should all remember this point in the season if the Sox fall a few games short to the Twins for the division.

you can all rest easy tonight

surgery. epidurals. nerve compression. sciatica… as someone who has suffered with a similar physiognomy I just don’t see JC coming back in any meaningful way. The L-6 compression makes you compensate for the weakness by putting strain on other parts of the body, particularly knees and shoulder. Epidurals are cortisone bandaids—yes, they relieve symptoms, but not the problem.

1. Ignoring the 9th (which, much like the gamethread, rapidly devolved into madness, pain and dog vomit), last night’s game came down to 2 at-bats in very similar circumstances: Drew vs. Danks with 2 on and 2 out in the 7th and JD vs. Beckett with 2 on and 2 out in the 8th. Drew came through, Beckett got JD to pop out, and that was pretty much it. Again, disregarding the 9th, it was an excellent game between 2 very good teams with great starting pitching on both sides - it was playoff quality.
2. Josh Beckett is good at baseball. Having said that, I thought the Sox - Thome, Uribe and Slash in particular - had some very good at bats against him (Q!, not so much). I was actually encouraged that, despite only scoring 1 run and hitting nothing even remotely close to a home run, the offense did not look pathetic against one of the best pitchers in baseball pitching at the top of his game.
3. Colin, your mother and I have decided you can no longer be trusted with the liquor cabinet key. You are grounded to North Campus for 2 weeks. Tough love, son. Tough love.
4. It’s been said roughly 100,000 times by now, but I’ll say it again - the Sox simply cannot play Griffey in center and expect not to be seriously burned. For me, the absolute clincher was the Kelly Leak/Timmy Lupus play that Slash had to make late in the game on a ball hit to medium-shallow center. Hard to imagine Griffey even would want to play there after that embarrassment. It’s still early, but right now, it looks like Griffey:Sox = Mays:Mets = Ali:Holmes = Jordan:Wizards = (presumably) Favre:Jets.
5. If one finds oneself agreeing with SSH more than 2 times in any single post, does one: (a) up one’s meds to giant chewy mouthful levels, (b) engage in radical electroshock therapy involving forks and toasters, (c) just end it all, or (d) all of the above? I ask purely hypothetically, of course …

Here are some RBI-related numbers on Hamilton I didn’t bring up earlier: He doesn’t have a single RBI since the all-star break that didn’t come via a home run. (You can find that one in today’s Elias Says column.) And he has come to bat with 51 more runners on base than Quentin (261-210). So in this day and age, with all the great numbers and info available to us, we shouldn’t be using RBIs as our No. 1 offensive criterion anymore, should we?

In fact I called for this development some time ago. I now expect him to be our dominating pitcher in the last third of the season.

regards

Link:

Right-handed reliever Scott Linebrink is hoping to stretch out his throwing program today, progressing from 90 feet to 120 feet in his long-toss sessions. Linebrink, who has been on the disabled list since July 26 because of pain deep in his right shoulder, isn’t expected to return to the Sox’ bullpen until the end of August.

’’It’s frustrating at times,’’ Linebrink said.

’’If I had it my way, I’d be back throwing right now. It is taking a little bit longer than originally expected, but we’re trying everything we can to get it healthy. It is muscular. We’re still convinced of that.’‘

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