Life In The Cell

A Different Sort of Trip to Oakland

For years now, the city of Oakland has represented pain and despair for White Sox fans. From 2001-2007, the Sox have gone 6-27 in Oakland. Overall against the A’s in that span they’ve gone 18-42. Basically, during this run, the Sox had to just tip their hat and call the A’s their daddy. After 7 years of fear and humiliation, the White Sox finally came through. With Sunday’s 13-1 victory over Gio Gonzalez and the A’s, the Sox won the season series (5-4) for the first time since 2000. It’s also the first time they’ve won a majority of the games played in Oakland and the first time they’ve won consecutive games in Oakland since that 2000 campaign.

The rubber match of the series and season series was set up to be an intriguing matchup from the get go. You have the White Sox in the middle of a tough division race, then throw in Nick Swisher returning to Oakland for the first time since being traded, and then finally sprinkle in the fact that one of the pitcher’s traded for Swisher (Gio Gonzalez) making his third career start. Even with all the intrigue surrounding this game, this one was quickly turned into a laugher/snoozer, depending on your point of view. The Sox hit Gonzalez early and often. They scored 3 runs in the second and third and 2 runs in the fourth to chase Gio out of the game after a mere 3 1/3 innings of work. Two of the worries about Gonzalez when he was in the White Sox system was his control and his propensity to give up the long ball. Both of those worries helped spell doom for the A’s on Sunday. Gio gave up a whopping 5 walks and also allowed 3 homers. One bad start shouldn’t be used to pan his future or be used as evidence to try and prove that Kenny made a great trade for Swisher. I will admit, though, that it did make me a bit happy that he didn’t pitch a gem against the Sox.

Gio floundered, but his counterpart on the Sox, Javy Vazquez, had his second straight strong outing. He went 8 innings and gave up only 4 hits and 1 run while striking out 8 batters. Half those hits and the sole run only happened in the 8th after this came was clearly decided. I was in transit between the 4th and 8th inning, and upon inspecting the box score noticed that he had only thrown (around) 74 pitches. In his past 2 starts he’s put up a line of 16 IP, 9 H, 1 R, 18 K and only 1 BB. Maybe, just maybe, he’s reverting back to his 2007 form, which would be a big boon to the Sox with the uncertainty surrounding the 5th starter. At the moment, for example, nobody outside of the Sox organization can be certain who will take the rubber for the Sox on Tuesday. I thought that it could have been Jack Egbert, but he pitched on Sunday and would under no circumstances be pitching on 2 days rest. Clayton Richard was an option, but he pitched the 9th against the A’s, which probably rules him out, though it lends credence to the idea that he is replacing Boone Logan for the time being. As it stands now, we may see Aaron Poreda for the first time. He would be on regular rest if he pitched Tuesday, though I’m not sure who would be sent down to make room for him on the active roster; Dewayne Wise would make the most sense. The other option, of course, would be the tandem of DJ Carrasco and Clayton Richard. We’ll just have to wait and see, but we can at least be reassured by the recent form of the rest of the rotation, which Jim takes a look at.