Life In The Cell

Reasons Not to Give Up Hope Now that Quentin is Hurt

As I’m sure you all know, Carlos Quentin is out for the forseeable future. He had a screw placed in his wrist and will be reevaluated in 2-3 weeks. Yes, it sucks; yes, the Sox are without the man who may have won the MVP, but don’t give up hope. There are still reasons to have a sunny outlook on the rest of the season. Here is why:

-The White Sox currently have a head start on the Twins in the form of a 1.5 game lead.

-The Twins are struggling right now. They have lost 9 of their last 13 games! While their schedule may be a bit easier down the stretch (mainly due to 6 games vs KC and 3 vs BAL) they still have to play 4 games at Tampa which will be tough since they’ll still be fighting for the East, AND they have to play Darth Vader on the 16th. There’s no way in hell Vader loses that game, so that’s a definite loss for the Twins.

-Quentin is being replaced by a sure-fire 1st ballot Hall of Famer! (who’s, erm, er, past his prime, ahem, cough, cough)

-On the season, Quentin has created 102 runs, which works out to .78 runs a game. He will be replaced by Griffey who has an offensive output of .54 runs a game. So yes, while there is a significant drop off from Quentin to Griffey, it’s greatly minimized by the fact that there’s only 22 games left in the season. The offensive dropoff works to about 5 runs over the remainder of a season. According to Bill James, 10 runs roughly equates a win, so that’s 1/2 game dropped. Thanks to that head start I noted, the Sox have a net head start of about 1.0 game.

-Quentin, as all good Chicagoans know, is really God masquerading as a human. This means that if things do get dire, Quentin will heal himself just in time to save the Sox’ season.

-Quentin is also Superman, so there’s always the chance he can come back from that wrist injury in time for the playoffs (y’know, if the Sox get that far).

-.338/.470/.558/1.028, .282/.336/.447/.783, .302/.312/.557/.869 - That first line is Paul Konerko since Griffey was acquired, the second set of slash stats is Juan Uribe since taking over 3rd base, and the final line is Alexei Ramirez over the past month. You may be wondering why I’m spouting off these stats; it’s because Quentin, prior to his injury, no longer was the single driving force behind the Sox offense. He actually hasn’t been for quite some time. It just seemed like he was everything to the Sox offensively because of some of his early-season, Herculean feats. The rest of the team has been hitting better than their weight as of late, and I’m not even including JD or Thome in this set of data. There are still a lot of good hitters in this lineup. Tonight while watching the game it really hit me, I went into the game thinking the Sox lineup is effed up the a, but it turns out there’s enough talent to bridge the gap. Just fyi, I wanted to throw in Alexei’s numbers for the past month to show that he hasn’t hit a wall or anything, he’s still hitting solidly.

-There’s the return of Scott Linebrink to look at as well. He has been out for a long, long time, and I reckon that if he’s healthy and effective, he will have as big of an impact as Quentin hypothetically would have. In case you have forgotten, Linebrink helped anchor down the ‘pen by posting a lovely 2.31 ERA and a WHIP of .923.

I know I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for a miraculous recovery from Quentin, as you all should be doing as well, but until that moment when we find out whether Quentin will be back or not, there’s no reason to give up on the White Sox. I’ve been strolling around the interweb and a good number of Sox’ fans have already written off this season without Q. Remember, it is baseball, crazy shit can and does happen. The Sox have the bats to cover for Quentin, so I say rather than wallow in depression, cheer on the Sox and pray the rotation will hold it together.