Life In The Cell

Who’s Up for Some Offense?

As I’m sure most White Sox fans are aware, Clayton Richard will be taking the mound tonight against the Mariners. Clayton is currently rocking a whopping 9.64 ERA after making three starts and one (scoreless) relief appearance for the Sox. If you want to read up on his starts read here, here, and here. Even if you missed the carnage in his earlier starts, just glancing at his ERA is enough to tell you that we could be in for a bumpy ride, which may lead you to ask as to why the Sox are giving him the ball again. Basically, he lucked into this start. He was called up originally with the idea of bridging the gap until Matt Thornton was ready to start pitching again. Thorndogg was battling a sore back which left the Sox with only one left handed reliever (Horacio Ramirez), so they sent down Broadway to make room for Richard. This left the 5th starter spot open and Richard as the logical fill in for this one game. As it works out, the Sox will be able to roll with a 4-man rotation thanks to the way their off-days fall, so this will likely be the last start Richard makes for the Sox (unless, of course, he pitches well).

As I have done for his past starts, I will break this start down to see if he actually throws a varied number of pitches or not. If he holds true to form, expect a lot of straight pitches (changeup and sinker). I still think to be successful, he needs to mix in his slider and curveball more often.

On the flip side, the Sox face Felix Hernandez, who has been pitching very well this year. For the year, he has a 3.04 ERA and a 1.291 WHIP which both represent career bests. Normally that would be an indicator that the Sox shouldn’t expect to score a lot of runs, but as of late they have been tearing the cover off the ball. In the last 7 days, the team is OPSing .934, and over their last 14 days they are OPSing .894. That’s pretty damn good. The Sox have hit 4 homers as a team the past two games, and 5 times so far this month. The team with the second most 4 homer games (behind the Sox) over the whole season have 6 such games. To say things are clicking is a bit of an understatement, so perhaps this could be the one time where good hitting overcomes good pitching.

Keep your eyes on Paul Konerko who is hitting .333/.500/.556/1.056 over the past 14 days, Alexei Ramirez who is hitting .304/.333/.696/1.029 with 3 homers over the last week, Carlos Quentin who is hitting .419/.554/.953/1.507 with a whopping 7 homers over the last 14 days, Jermaine Dye who is hitting .310/.310/.759/1.069 over the last week, and even Juan Uribe who is hitting .267/.340/.467/.807 over the past 14 days with a ridiculous (for him) 5 walks. As you can tell, a lot of hitters on the Sox are in the groove, so hopefully this run can continue so that the Sox can overcome King Felix and any potential damage that Clayton Richard inflicts on the team.