Life In The Cell

Disaster in the Dome

August 1st, 2008 Posted in 2008 season, Bullpen, Clayton Richard, G. Floyd, Jeeves, John Danks, Justin Morneau, Mark Buehrle, Minnesota Twins, Recap, White Sox

The series with the Twins at the Metrodome is (thankfully) over. It’s time to pick through the wreckage and figure out where the Sox stand. First, I’m going to go through my preview and point out what went to plan and what didn’t go to plan. Then we’ll get to how things currently stand, and I promise you, things aren’t as bleak as we all feel they are after losing another winnable game.

I made an effort in my preview to throw in a bunch of predictions on top of my analysis, so let’s see how both the analysis and the predictions held up:

He’s [Buehlre] been the Sox best pitcher recently, which should be a great way to kick off this series. Buehrle is coming off a great start Tuesday when he pitched on 3-days rest. He pitched 7 1/3 innings and gave up 1 run against the Rangers. I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict a 2 run, 7 2/3 inning outing for Mr. Buehrle today. Hopefully I prove to be more Nostradamus than Ms. Cleo.

It’s easy enough to see that in this case, I am Ms. Cleo. He gave up 4 ER (5 total) in 5 innings. I suppose if I wanted to go the easy route, I should have just said I predict he’ll let up an unearned run as he is apt to do. Buehrle just ran into trouble in the 4th which sunk him. That actually was the theme (besides bad bullpenage) of the series for the Sox. When they lost, they lost because of the big inning. As far as Slowey is concerned in that first game, I commented on his control and how he’s a pretty good pitcher. He affirmed both accounts by walking 1 and throwing a complete game shutout. I jokingly predicted Alexei would walk against Slowey, which of course didn’t happen. Just about every aspect of the game failed the White Sox in the opener. The starter didn’t pitch well, the defense made mistakes, the offense couldn’t muster anything, and the bullpen let up runs (2 courtesy of Mssr. Masset).

His opponent will be Glen Perkins. I’m not quite sure how Perkins is as effective as he is. He has a 4.08 ERA which is pretty good (right around league average) but the rest of his peripherals suck. He has a 1.428 WHIP, which is due to high hit totals….So with that in mind I’m going to go ahead and say Perkins will throw 6 innings and give up 3 runs

I was pretty good on my prediction for Perkins. He gave up 4 runs in 6 innings, which was only 1 run off. He was, in fact, done in by a high hit total (8 hits). I didn’t make an outright prediction for Richard, but I certinaly expected better than his final line of 5 runs in 4 2/3 innings. All you really need to know about his performance is here. The game was just disheartening. With Clayton cruising and a 4-0 lead, it looked like the Sox would waltz to a victory, but instead they were victimized by the big inning as they were in game 1 and they would be in game 4. Of course, the bullpen gave up runs, this time it was DJ Carrasco who gave up 1 run. I can’t particularly get mad at him for it though; he’s been excellent so far and was bound to give up a run.

Game 3 was the one bright spot in the series, and I didn’t even see this game live, I watched it today as the Griffey madness was unfolding. The reasons for success in this game were Floyd pitching brilliantly for 8 innings which minimized the damage the ‘pen could do (2 runs in 1 inning for Bobby Jenks) and a good run by the offense which came up with 8 runs. As far as my predictions are concerned for that game this sums things up nicely

Livan Hernandez just isn’t good.

I also commented on how Floyd still scared me but gets the job done anyway. After this start, I think he has my full confidence, which I hope isn’t the kiss of death.

I thought that Game 4 would be “the pitcher’s duel that Verlander-Danks should have been. I hate doing it, but I’m going to go ahead and say Twins win this one but through no fault of Danks.” For awhile, Danks held up his end of the bargain, until he was victimized by the big inning and started the beginning of another big inning. Baker, also didn’t pitch well, so I was just wrong about that. Though I was correct in guessing the Sox would lose and Danks wouldn’t be the reason why. The guilty party, of course, was the bullpen. The ‘pen combined to give up 5 runs, plus an inherited run which sunk the Sox’ ship.

So to sum up the series this is what happened. In games 1, 2 and 4 the Sox starters didn’t pitch well. They were all felled by the big inning, which was due in part to the Twins uncanny ability to hit with runners in scoring position with 2 outs, oh, and some fellow named Justin Morneau. The bullpen collectively crapped the bed which eliminated any hopes of comebacks. In game 1 the Sox offense was completey owned, but they did at least show up in the other games.

Game 3 was the exact opposite of the rest of the series. The starter, Gavin Floyd, went deep into the game and pitched beautifully. The Sox offense scored early and often, though the ‘pen stayed true to form by sucking it up.

These are some stats to mull over as you take in the series:

-The Sox’ bullpen ERA was 9.36 (10 runs in 9 2/3 innings)

-With 2 outs and runners on base, the Twins hit .500 (9/18)

-With 2 outs and runners in scoring position, the Twins hit .545 (6/11)

-The Twins scored 54% of their runs with 2 outs (14 of their 26 runs)

-Justin Morneau is Paul Bunyan…sorry that wasn’t a stat, but he’s a monster

-In the series Morneau single handedly drove in 8 2-out runs.

-In the series Morneau’s slash stats were .357/.471/.929/1.400

-If you exclude Gavin Floyd the Sox ERA was 9.24.

So yes, as you can gather from that mess things were ugly and Justin Morneau is a demi-god, but all is not lost. Believe it or not, the Sox still hold a 1/2 game lead in the division. The Sox have seen their lead shrink to this point before and when that happened they promptly saw it rise again to 3.5. I’m not saying it will necessarily rise to that point, but there is an ebb and flow to the season, so hitting a rough patch isn’t the end of the world. Think about it this way, the Sox have gotten through the 7 hardest games of their road trip. In those 7 they have gone 3-4; if they take just 2/3 from KC, then that’s a 5-5 road trip which isn’t bad especially considering they are under .500 on the road. Yes, it sucks knowing that the White Sox held 4-0 leads in two of the games they lost, but at least they didn’t get swept as the Twins did when they played 4 at the Cell.

There are actually bright sides to this series. The hitting, save for the first game, showed up and scored what should have been enough for the Sox to win each game. This, of course, reflects poorly upon the pitching, but the pitching wasn’t even that bad when viewed through the right perspective. As I noted above, the Twins scored A LOT of runs with 2 outs. Ignoring the first game, in which the Sox just got their jock handed to them, if you remove the 2 out RBIs the Twins would have scored 1, 2, and 4 runs in games 2, 3, and 4 respectively. I know I’m cherry picking by taking those runs out, but seriously, if the pitcher just made that one pitch in each of those situation, we’d be singing a different tune. Now, don’t take that as me taking credit away from the Twins; kudos for them for punishing the Sox with 2 outs, but realistically no team, even the Twins, hits that well with 2 outs. In my opinion, we’re far and away from the point of panic. Ok, if things go poorly in KC then fine, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the Sox moving forward, but there’s a lot of baseball to go, it’s only the start of August, so take solace in the fact that your team is in first place in their division at this juncture of the season. At this point last season, the Sox were 11 games under .500, battling the Royals for last in the division. Maybe I’m settling, but I’ll take 13 games over .500 battling the Twins for first in the division anyday.