There was a small silver lining to be found from Sunday's loss to the Angels. John Danks appeared to have worked through his dead arm period, lost release point, whatever he had going on, to put together a nice (though not "quality") start. Danks still found himself leaving his changeup high in the zone in his last two innings of work, but the change was down in innings 1-4. Plus, he seemed to have both better control and the ability to more readily put hitters away, as evidenced by his 7:1 K/BB ratio.

Danks was pulled in the 6th after he allowed his first run of the game following back-to-back-to-back hard hit balls over the span of just 5 pitches. His quick exit was determined more by base and out situation and the scoreboard than it was by pitch count, but with his change losing effectiveness late I'd say he was getting a bit tired. Still, Danks as an 80-90 pitch pitcher is better than the Danks we saw doing 5th starter impersonations in the last few outings. If I was Ozzie, I'd keep Danks at or around 90 pitches for the remainder of the regular season.

Offensively, the Sox managed just two solo-shots (one each by Paul Konerko and Toby Hall) against Joe Saunders. Ozzie went with a rare all-right-handed batting order, subbing in Brian Anderson and Josh Fields (combined 0-6) in addition to Hall. Individually, all of the subs could be defended, but I don't like seeing 3 subs in any one so-called Sunday lineup and I would have liked to have seen at least one left-hander breaking up the parade of righties.

The Angels scored the eventual winning run following a couple of questionable choices. First, Horacio Ramirez entered a tied game. As if that wasn't bad enough, Ozzie called up Ehren Wasserman with the go-ahead run 90 feet from home and nobody out. After Wasserman coaxed a first-pitch ground out from Vlad Guerrero, Ozzie called for the intentional IBB of Torii Hunter to load the bases, which seemed odd to me with Juan Rivera on deck, almost assuredly to be replaced by the left-handed Garrett Anderson. Sure enough, Anderson came on as a pinch-hitter, and lifted a deep fly ball down the right field line. Jermaine Dye caught the ball in foul territory, just a step or two from the wall, which allowed Guerrero to score easily from 3rd.

I questioned the IBB, but if you're going to play for the double play, if your intent is to increase the likelihood of allowing no runs in the inning at the expense of increasing the odds of a big inning, why catch a ball in foul territory that results in a sure run? Wasn't the all-or-nothing directive set by the walking of right-handed batter to load the bases for what eventually turned into left-handed batter? I don't fault Dye for catching the ball. It just seems to me that the two plays came from opposite ends of the run-prevention playbook. But baseball players probably don't think that way, and certainly not as they're running toward the line to make a catch just a few feet in front of a low wall.

Where Was That Pitch?

For once, Hawk's constant whining about balls and strikes was warranted. Just take a look at this chart. See those 7 or 8 little green squares in the lower right side of the zone? Those are called balls for White Sox pitching. Notice all those red triangles around that area? Those are essentially the same pitches thrown by Anaheim pitchers, but they were called strikes. One or two of those pitches going uncalled is unfortunate, 7 or more is a pattern. That pattern really seemed to get accentuated after Ozzie Guillen gave home plate ump Eric Cooper an earful from the dugout when he awarded timeout to an Angels batter for the second time after Danks had started his motion.

I'm not saying. I'm just saying...

Make no mistake about it, the Sox did not lose Sunday's game because of Cooper's divergent strike zones. But there's no question that those strikes-called-balls changed the outcome of at-bats, which in turn changed the shape of an inning, and thus influenced the outcome of the game.

Bigger Picture

For a weekend that started out about as poorly as imaginable, with the loss of the unicorn-riding, stuff-you-liking, homer-hittin' Carlos Quentin, and ended with the Sox blowing a 2-run lead, I'm feeling pretty good about the weekend in general. I quickly processed the loss of Quentin, with a little Al Davisism "Just win, baby."

The Sox and Twins are both flawed teams. The Sox are an offensively old, slow team and don't really know what they're going to get from any of their 5 starters on any given night. While the Twins offense is powered by 2 superstars surrounded by a merry band of role players, but their bullpen, which is usually a strength, has let them down. One of these two teams, flaws included, has to make the post-season. Might as well be the Sox.

If you had told me on Friday, in that woe-is-me happy hour after we found out Q! had passed on but before first pitch, that the Sox would have taken 2-out-of-3 from the first place, playoff-bound Angels, I would have been happy. If you would have told me that the Twins were gonna drop 2-out-of-3 to the Tigers in the Metrodome, blowing leads in both losses, I wouldn't have believed you. Picking up a game on the Twins, while simultaneously taking 3 home games off their remaining schedule is a big win for the Sox.

All-in-all, the weekend turned out about as well as you could have reasonably expected.

My last entry, the Orlando Cabrera-Greg Walker Can You Find Right Field salvo, was extraordinarily well timed. There was a stark difference between the execution of the two teams on the field in Tuesday night's 2-0 loss to the Angels.

The Angels hitters were content to hit the ball the opposite way, to hit the ball where it was pitched, and generally looked like they had a plan at the plate, on the basepaths and in the field. Meanwhile, the White Sox appeared allergic to the opposite field, lacked any plan at the plate, gave up a free bases at nearly every opportunity, and topped it off with some poor defensive play in right field which led to the winning runs. In all honesty I don't think I've ever seen such a contrast in fundamentals in a single game.

• The Angels stole 3 bases on John Danks. Two were completely uncontested, and the third was so easy that the runner didn't even bother to get anything more than a one-step lead. They had him read like a book, and Pierzynski never stood a chance at throwing out a runner.

  

• The Angels right-handed hitters were content to poke the ball into right field, and did so at least twice on 0-2 counts on balls out of the zone. I've attached an image from MLB's GameDay to illustrate. That mass of blue in right field is 6 opposite field hits by right-handed Halos and a 3-0 rope from Garret Anderson, which was yet another example of a hitter with a plan. Anderson was looking for a fastball, and roped a high, 95 MPH pitch from left-hander Matt Thornton.

  About the only bad thing I can say about the Angels play on Tuesday was that Anderson didn't make it to second on the play. He laid out a rope in front of Jermaine Dye, and just assumed it was going to be caught. It's a play Anderson knows well, as he's a poor outfielder who is know relegated to DH duties. Yet he was genuinely surprised that Dye was unable to come up with the ball that set up the game-winning situation.

• With runners on the corners and nobody out, Mike Napoli flew out deep to Nick Swisher, who decided to air mail his throw to the plate allowing Anderson to get into second base uncontested. Swisher's failure to hit the cutoff man is not an isolated incident. I would need two hands to count the times he's missed the middle-man, and his replacements in center field have been just as bad. Brian Anderson and Alexei Ramirez have each missed the cutoff man multiple times (in one game). It's such a simple task, and yet the Sox don't have a single center fielder who feels the need to be fundamentally sound in the throwing game.

If these were isolated incidents I could let them go, but you add them up with the Sox inability to properly execute a rundown, with Sox hitters HR-or-nothing approach at the plate, and you can only draw one of two conclusions, neither of which is encouraging:

1. The Sox (in general) are poorly coached.
2. The Sox players have completely tuned out their coaching staff

The Twins announcers questioned the White Sox batting practice routine last week, observing that it looked like a homerun hitting contest. Meanwhile the Twins were practicing bunts, situational hitting, opposite field hitting. After watching the Angels on Tuesday, I can guarantee their batting practice is more Twins-like than Sox-like... It should come as no surprise that the Sox are 0-10 this season when they fail to hit a HR.

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It's unfortunate that I had to spend this recap talking about the coaching and lack of fundamentals, because there were a few bright spots in the game.

• Danks, aside from the stolen bases, was excellent. So much so that I protested him being pulled from the game when Ozzie game out to get him in the 7th.
• Octavio Dotel did his best El Duque impersonation, throwing balls out of the zone to get strikeouts with the bases loaded. Dotel has been on a roll recently. In his last 8 outings, he's pitched 9.1 innings, allowing 6 hits, 2 walks, and 16 strikeouts. Unfortunately, thanks to the poor defense and fundamentals, that 6th hit put him on the hook for the loss, dampening an otherwise stellar relief outing.
• Carlos Quentin is still dreamy.

* * * * *

Jim chimes in: What's the Opposite of Adjusting?

I would say that Mark Buehrle and the White Sox just got unlucky on Monday night, but the truth is they had nearly as many cheap hits and extra outs as the Angels but couldn't avoid the rally-killing double plays. In fact, I would argue that double plays --the Sox hit into 4 to the Angels 0-- were the entire difference in the game.

The Sox took an early 3-0 lead in the second after the Angels were unable to turn a double play on Joe Crede, who was somehow credited with a hit on what would prove to be the first of about 4 different questionable scoring decisions. While there are 2 errors listed in the box score --the Anaheim official scorer apparently only hands out errors if the ball leaves the field of play-- I can think of at least 4 more shoulda-been-an-errors off the top of my head. Juan Uribe had two, both of which looked like easy double plays, and Orlando Cabrera added another.

Buehrle didn't get hit hard. Only the Vladamir Guerrero homer, which followed one of Uribe's botched DPs, was really tagged, but poor defense, a number of weak hits, and the aforementioned bizarre scoring makes it look like a terrible outing in the box score. As I mentioned in the gamethread, Buehrle entered the night with the 3rd worst DER (balls in play converted into outs) of any American league pitcher at .652. By my calculations, that defensive efficiency dropped to .636, which would put him within an eyelash of the worst mark in the league. To quote Hawk, he's wearin' it.

In what was a microcosm of the game, the Sox allowed what proved to be the winning runs in a bizarre 6th inning. Buehrle had just come off a rough 5th that saw him give up the Vlad HR after the shoulda-been DP, and a 2-out Garret Anderson RBI triple --Swisher needs to stop coating his throwing hand in non-stick cooking spray between innings-- one batter after Robb Quinlan hit a Baltimore chop infield single. Buehrle struck out the first two batters of the 6th and induced a soft ground ball to third base that a charging Joe Crede threw away. The next 5 batters would reach base, plating 4 runs after what should have been the 3rd out.

Here's how it went down: Buehrle gave up a double before Ehren Wasserman --Did I mention I was worried about Wassermann?-- gave up a rope and nubber, followed by a couple of solid hits off Boone Logan before they could finally record the final out, a strikeout. They struck out the side, but an error, an unfortunate bounce, and some generally poor relief work finally sunk the Sox hopes.

The Sox are just finding ways to lose right now. There was blame to be thrown around to every part of the team once again Monday. So as they sit in third place a game below .500 it's time to ask; unlucky or just plain bad?