The tone was set for a pitchers duel early Thursday night when it became clear that home plate umpire Bill Hohn had a rather wide strike zone. Mark Buehrle and Zach Greinke took full advantage, combining for 16 strikeouts against just one walk and one run in the first 7 innings.

Jermaine Dye homered -- homered doesn't seem descriptive enough for a ball that cleared the fountains in the left field gap -- with none of those distracting baserunners in his line of sight to mark the game's only real action in the first two hours.

Things got interesting once again in the 8th inning, only this time it was the Royals staging a bizarre comeback. After giving up a lead-off single to John Buck, Buehrle induced what looked to be a routine 6-3 double play ball off the bat of David DeJesus. The Sox made the play look anything but routine, and the game turned on their failed attempt.

Buehrle reached out and got a glove on the ball, forcing Orlando Cabrera to change directions to make the initial grab, and necessitating a flip to Alexei Ramirez to turn the DP successfully. Paul Konerko was unable to handle the throw from Ramirez, the ball tricking out of his glove as DeJesus crossed first. Ramirez' throw was a bit wide at first, but not wide enough to place most of the blame on him for a poor throw, especially after replays showed a rather pathetic stretch from Konerko and his foot on the middle of the bag.

One pitch later, Mike Aviles, who is a total douchenozzle, BTW, doubled into the left field corner to tie the game. An out later, Octavio Dotel gave up a deep flyball double to Jose Guillen to put the Royals on top for good.

And then things got really crazy.

Mark Teahen realized he had gone a total of two games without homering against the White Sox, so he decided to further exploit and embarrass the Sox defense by hitting an inside the park home run, or as Konerko calls it, a stand-up double. Teahen was significantly aided by Ramirez falling asleep after receiving the relay throw. In Ramirez' defense, as the smartest player in baseball, he was probably calculating Boone Logan's FIP after the play.

Konerko's poor play, and the events that followed, should give considerable ammunition to the talk radio folk who are always looking to get rid of Konerko and/or Jim Thome. As long as Konerko isn't hitting, it's tough to argue that the Sox aren't a better club with the improved defensive alignment of an Anderson/Wise CF and Swisher at 1B. But the time to make a change isn't here yet. To quote mgl:

I am so sick of EVERYONE equating a player’s 3 month (or 6 month, or one month, or one year) performance with their "true talent" that I can’t stand it anymore.

Where do they think that we get our projection algorithms from? From real life! When REAL LIVE PLAYERS who are 33 years old hit .780 in their careers and then .577 in 3 months, they hit .740 (or whatever the number is) from then on in! We don’t just make these projections up. They are based on what players actually do, given their histories.

Konerko may be hitting .213/.319/.360, but he entered the season with a PECOTA projection of .264/.354/.483, and as mgl states, that projection hasn't changed much. Konerko's revised projection for the rest of the season is probably something like .255/.345/.470, which would figure to outpace the theoretical production of his replacements by enough to ignore the defensive downgrade.

There may come a point when it's time to remove Konerko from the lineup altogether, but it's not tonight, no matter how much it might feel like the right decision this very second.

*****

BTW, here's Jim's opinion: SoxMachine: To the official scorer's phone!

• HUPGOOD
• PECOTA card
• Fangraphs card

Ah, finally, a plus fastball.  It's probably the pitcher in me, but the guys who can really bring it are the ones I like watching best.  Greinke is one of those, with a fastball that he comfortably throws early in the count around 93-94.  Against RHB, he does fairly well.  It looks like "good" is less than a .250 ISO, but that's not exhaustive or anything, it's what I've noticed from doing like 15 of these or whatever the number is.  Anyway, it's an above average pitch that he has plus command of.  He misses the zone just 32% of the time, well below the 36% average.  In addition, with two strikes, he ramps it up to 95-96 and can get whiffs at about twice his average rate for all counts.  Being able to add and subtract, get key misses and throw strikes is about all you're looking for when it comes to the fastball. 

The curve is rarely used, but he likes to throw it early in the count, probably after fastballs to get a quick strike.  He has solid control, particularly for a curve. It isn't a swing-and-miss pitch, but he throws it rarely enough and early enough in the count that he can get poor contact. It is definitely not an out pitch, as he prefers the slider in 1-2, 0-2 counts, as well as the aforementioned fastball, elevated preferably.  The curve has a ton of horizontal movement, which makes me guess it's a bit slurvy rather than a true curve.  It also indicates that he throws from a lower arm slot, so lefties should have an easier time seeing the fastball.  The ISO backs this up (.317) and the BP card indicates he has a bigger split than average.

The slider is tough to get a grip on, as he gets more whiffs from lefties than righties, though when he's ahead, it's an effective out pitch for either.  He's not a huge strikeout pitcher, but the slider-fastball combo is about as good as Danks' curve-change routine, as they both get in the vicinity of 20% K/PA.  Even when he's not getting strike outs, he's still able to get effective results because his offspeed pitches all have relatively low ISO scores.  He may not yet (or perhaps ever) be an ace, but he's a very solid #2 along the lines of Johnny Danks.

AJ, Swish and Thome will be key tonight, as how they do against the slider and, certainly, the change will be important.  Again, like Danks, he goes away with the change up once ahead in the count and uses it to get those reaching, defensive swings that lead to double plays all the time for Johnny.  Danks' is better, but Greinke's is certainly effective and his slider is apparently quite the wipeout against lefties.

All in all, it looks like a tough matchup.  Mistakes will be more difficult to take advantage of because the stuff is there and he's got control that's as good as Bannister's.  Take away those grooved fastballs to Q last night and we don't score too many runs.  Fortunately, we should still have the same bullpen advantage we've had the past couple days (though less so than normal since they've certainly been taxed lately).  Hopefully Buehrle continues to have "too much good stuff" and it won't be ncessary.  Either way, I see a pitching duel ahead.  On a slight tangent: I know he wasn't great last night, but I'm DeJesus loses the platoon advantage he's had all series.  That makes me happy.  He's the one guy that really concerns me and his CF play has been great so far.  OMG LET'S TRADE HIM FOR THOME AND THEN SWISH CAN PLAY FIRST!!!

deep breaths...

...

......

Sorry, channeled my inner kwon for a second there. Okay, let's get the sweep, get our road record a little nearer .500, push the Twinkies back another half game and make sure the Tigers don't get any funny ideas.