White Sox Season Preview Take 2

I did a season preview way earlier in the year when the pitchers and catchers reported. There was a lot that I didn't know back then about this team. Spring Training doesn't mean much, but it can tell you a lot about how some of the younger players are going to play.

I got a good vibe from spring training this year. The wins and losses don't matter and that's not what I'm talking about. I liked what I saw with Milledge, Morel, and Beckham. With those young guys in our lineup playing at their best we are a good team. Konerko will be solid as always, and the rest of our offense seems like it will be ready to play. Our pitching was great, I'm extremely excited about Johnny Danks and Gavin Floyd. Both pitchers came to our team without experience. Buehrle groomed them and now every year they get better. The pitcher I am most excited about is Chris Sale. When he first started playing last year I knew he was a gamer. I was asking for him to be out there as much as possible, he seemed like one of the few guys who could actually win a game for us. This year he will be better and I look forward to him most likely being a starter next year.

The bad things that I noticed were very few. I remembered a few things. I remembered that Adam Dunn strikes out a lot, and that is an understatement. I also remembered how terrible Teahen is at defense and that is why he didn't get the third base job. Other than those two I can't think of anything that was a bad sign. Buehrle didn't pitch well at the beginning of spring training, but he will be fine in the regular season.

The worst thing this off-season and spring training was the Peavy situation. The worst part was that I thought he would be out for a good chunk of the season, then he made a really rapid recovery and I loved what I saw. Right as he was about to finish his miraculous recovery he started to have tendinitis in his elbow and we are back to square one. Peavy will probably be back around the same time he was expected to with the first injury. White Sox fans shouldn't be worried. He will come back when he is ready and he will be fine.

Okay, now onto the future, where I think the White Sox are going to go this year.
They have gotten some love from some ESPN guys to be a dark horse in the league, and that's the position the White Sox like to be in. They have great pitching, and it will be even better when Peavy comes back. You could argue that this pitching staff is only second to Philly. The White Sox also have added a lot of good things to their offense this year. Our outfielders are going to be better than they were last year, and if one slacks off Ozzie won't hesitate to put Milledge in. Our infield is very young excluding Konerko. Morel, Beckham, and Ramirez are going to need to grow up and play well. Beckham needs to have a bounce-back season, which I think is very possible. I'm not too worried about the offense of the other two. This team is built to win a World Series. I'm not going to drink the kool-aid and say they will win, I'm saying that they are built to win it. If we do everything right and don't have very many injuries the World Series is possible. The twins and Tigers are tough, though and we are going to need to play well in every division game. If they play well against their division, and win the division they have a good chance at going all the way. The way the team is set up with great pitching and a good offensive core, they are built for the playoffs. Stay tuned to this blog for a AL Central preview soon, and for more up to date info follow me (@the_chicago_fan) and my blogs (@tcf_blogs)




I had to post this, since I love all team commercials, like the one goal series and I hope the All in series is just as good.

White Sox Season Preview Take 1

If your first expression of this post title is that you are wondering why I said take 1 I will explain. I plan on making a season preview before opening day. This is the spring training one, so it may prove to be super wrong or be super right.
Tomorrow the White Sox play their first spring training game. They are playing against the Dodgers. This should be a good game. I think both teams have good chances, although I think the White Sox have a better chance. I can't wait for baseball season and that's why I have been blogging like crazy about them and tweeting about them a lot. I really hope they have a good season, because only the Bulls are really doing well and making me completely happy this season.
This year is bound to be good. We signed a pure DH in Adam Dunn. I think last year we got way to caught up in trying to have a speedy team that we forgot that power is okay also. We didn't have an official or pure DH last year and I think this year we do. That will be a huge difference in our offense. The White Sox biggest problems in the past few years have been that they have not been able to get runners home when they are in scoring position. This stresses me out almost every game. I hope this year they have solved that huge problem with their offense.
The pitching last year was pretty good. The starters were all good pitchers and they will again this year. Peavy will be back early in the season, which was not expected, and that will help our starters have a better year as a total. Buehrle will again be the opening day starter. He is a great pitcher and I love him as our ace. Our other pitchers are great also and they end up performing well. You can read more about all of the pitchers in my blog post about when the pitchers and catchers reported. I went into much more depth in that post.
Overall I think the White Sox are going to have a great season. They made a lot of great additions this offseason and kept a lot of important players. I think resigning Paulie and A.J was huge. Keeping them will help our offense and keeping A.J will help keep our pitchers steady with him. He is a great defensive catcher and keeps the game running quickly. This offseason the White Sox improved both their offense and their pitching staff. Improving both of those parts of the team will make this team much better and will give them the edge to win this division.

Pitchers&Catchers Report Tomorrow

Since tomorrow is the day that the pitchers and catchers report, I will talk about them even though this is the start of spring training which is the start of the season. I will post about the White Sox and what I think will happen this season later, but right now I will talk about the pitchers and the catchers.
The first pitcher is one of my favorites, Mark Buerhle, and he sort of made a big deal recently talking about Michael Vick and how he hoped that he would get injured, because Mark is a very passionate dog lover. I don't think this will effect his performance, but nothing really does. He will be the opening day picture for the 11th time, i think. This is a guy that loves playing with the White Sox and loves pitching in general. He is one of the quickest pitchers and I think he will have another great season.
The second is Mark's prodigy, Johnny Danks. Every year it seems like Danks gets better and I think that will continue this year. I like the fact that we have both good lefties and righties. Danks is an important part of our team and works quickly just like buerhle.
The third is Gavin Floyd. Like with Danks he keeps getting better every year and I think he will again this year. Both are young pitchers with promise learning from two greats in Buerhle and Peavy. I expect him to come back better this year and get a couple more wins.
The fourth is Sale. I think the White Sox are getting ahead of themselves with him. They drafted him last year and are ready to start him this year. I think they should keep him in the bullpen for a year or two. He needs time to mature, and we see that with other pitchers. I like his pitching and I think he is a very good pitcher, but he should wait to start.
The final is Peavy. I'm not sure when he is back. Part of me wants him to come back soon, because I obviously want to see him play and pitch for us. The other part of me wants him to get as much rest and rehab as he possibly can so that when he comes back he is better.
I know this was quick, but I will get in deeper later on in spring training.

Winning streak comes to an end.

The white sox had an 11 game winning streak going until they lost yesterday. It was upsetting for me to even watch. As the white sox kept building and building their streak I was getting more and more excited. I was watching as many games as I could on TV cause i don't have MLBtv. Yesterday I was watching the game and it was 2-0 and almost could have been 4-0 at the end of the first but then our pitching gave up just too many runs for us to catch up. The key to our winning streak was our starting pitching and our good relief. In this game we could see that when the pitching is bad our team just can't catch up. This proves that we were winning because our pitching was dynamite. I don't mean to be putting John Danks down, because he has been a very good pitcher before, but he had a bad game. When he came out, though our relief gave up runs. If they hadn't done that we could have won this game. We have to give ourselves chances to win. We have an offense that is able to score 5 or 6 runs. That means that the pitchers should only give up 4 or 5 or less. This gives us a chance to win. We have one of the best rotations in baseball, but until this winning streak nobody noticed. Now people are saying wow! they have a dynamite pitching staff. With Mark Buerhle and Jake Peavy you are a pretty good team. When you add Gavin Floyd and John Danks who are young assets you are really good. When you add Garcia who has good games where sometimes he is unstoppable and sometimes he is shaky, but that's ok. He won game 4 to win the world series when he was with the white sox before in 2005. Now with those five you are great. Now you add your bullpen which is pretty dominate, you have one of the best pitching staffs in Major League Baseball. When you have an average or even good offense and one of the best pitching staffs in the game, then you should also have one of the best teams in the game. Instead we aren't playing to our potential and we are in second or third place in our division. When/if the white sox wake up they will be the team to beat. Lets see if that happens.