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David Robertson brings strikeouts back to the White Sox bullpen

Here's another way to describe the ineptitude of last year's relief corps

By Jim Margalus
Jason Miller/Getty Images

David Robertson recorded his second save for the White Sox on Tuesday night, and it looked an awful lot like his first save -- three up, three down, three strikeouts.

It's a very considerate first impression by Robertson. The White Sox may have responded to one incomplete idea (building a bullpen that struggled to miss bats) with another (giving a reliever a four-year, $46 million contract), but this one had the Sox betting on a sustained showing of sustainable success.

And Robertson has shown immediately why he's been able to hang as one of baseball's best relievers over the previous four years. He gets strikeouts, and compared to last year's White Sox bullpen, Robertson looks like a one-man version of the Kansas City Royals' Big Three.

Here's a comprehensive list of all the times a White Sox reliever struck out the side in 2014.

  • Aug. 26: Maikel Cleto against Cleveland.
  • Sept. 26: Maikel Cleto against Kansas City.

And this list is ovah, which means Robertson has already struck out the side in clean innings as many times as the entire 2014 White Sox bullpen, and in just four appearances over seven team games.

But that's not the only way you can make depressing/encouraging news out of this fact, because Zach Duke also pitched a 1-2-3 eighth with three strikeouts on Tuesday.

That means the White Sox bullpen struck out the side as many times in one evening in 2015 as it did over the course of the whole 2014 season.

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