Hold onto your hats White Sox fans, the Chisox are not done yet. With an exciting extra-innings victory over the Athletics Wednesday, the Sox, winners of 7 of their last 9, pull withing 6.5 games of the lackluster Detroit Tigers. And just wait until Jake Peavy joins the rotation...
HAHAHA
I couldn't even make it to a second paragraph. The Sox are still relatively talented team stringing together a season full of ugly performances even in victory. Wednesday's win over the Athletics was another prime example. The Sox had a number of standout performances erased by newly acquired, yet already considered chronic underachievers. To the bullet points.
The Good
- Freddy Garcia used his varying assortment of slop to frustrate the anemic Athletics lineup.
- Scott Podsednik extended his hit-streak to 10 games with a 4-hit night
- Ozzie Guillen turning to Bobby Jenks in the 9th inning of a tie game, then running him back out there for a second inning of work (even though things got a little bit scary).
- Chris Getz made a great deke on Scott Hairston in the 13th, then got back to cover first to turn the foul-pop-into-DP
- AJ Pierzynski looked like a real catcher shutting down the running game in the late innings
- Oh and he had the game winning double off the wall in the 13th
The Bad
- Podsednik has undoubtedly been the Sox most valuable outfielder this season, which means he's coming back next year... when he is much more likely to be '06-08 version of himself, which, as we all remember, is exponentially more frustrating than the good '05 and '09 versions.
- Tony Pena may have earned himself a new nickname of simply "Mahoney," the fat pitcher from the Buffalo Wild Wings commercial, though Not Brandon Allen works for me too.
The Ugly
- Alex Rios lost his last remaining supporter -- I'm not sure who it was -- with his 13th inning error on a routine flyball. I'm sure e-gus would be capping it for us were he not busy getting his fill from the free night in the Jim Beam Club.
I'll have much more on Rios at some point here down the stretch. I've had the same thought I've seen OM express in the comments over the past week about his batting stance ever since about Rios' 3rd game in a Sox uniform. But that really brings up a bigger issue, and I'm waiting for all the juicy quotes to roll in.
In any case, Rios looks like complete garbage in almost every phase of the game. They asked him to bunt -- the $60M extra-inning bunter -- in the bottom of the 12th(?) and even though he got the job done, it was one ugly effort. And that was before his gaffe in the 13th. He's just a complete mess right now, and the Sox don't have anyone who's qualified to fix him.
The Meta
- SB*Nation has launched a brand new sbnation.com. The old sbnation site was simply a directory of all the blogs in the network with a few (like 3) story links tossed at the top. The revamped sbnation.com will seek to do on a national level what each SB Nation network blog already does for its team or sport: provide the most timely, engaging and highest quality fan perspective information and conversation on the web.
I'm not entirely sure how it's going to work, since I didn't get to participate in any of the testing. What I can tell you is there is a dedicated team of editors working on providing quality national coverage which includes links to traditional media as well SB*Nation blogs and non-network blogs alike. The left-hand column appears to be some quick-hitting commentary from the editors, while the middle column, the one with all the pretty pictures, is SB*Nation's take on the constantly updating nature of sports news. We're calling them StoryStreams, and they are constantly updated stories that will feature plenty of linking to SB*N and non-SB*N source. Best of all, you can add to stream with links to breaking news or relevant commentary, just click the "promote your post" link in any stream.