I’m just going to condense this two game set against the Indians into one blog since I really don’t have much to say.

Game 1 was a good win for the White Sox. They dominated the Indians all game long and came out as 4-1 victors. Quintana struggled a bit to find the strike zone, which ran his pitch count up, but he finished strong after 6 innings. The bullpen was beautiful again. The defense was poor again. Sticks were alive though! 4 runs on 8 hits versus the Indians’ 1 run on 3 hits.

Game 2 was not so good. The Sox were held scoreless until the 6th inning when they finally were able to rough up Trevor Bauer. The defense did no favors in this outing and it just ended up being a poorly played game for the White Sox. Danks is off to an 0-2 start on the season after this game. It looks like if the starting pitcher can go 6 or 7 innings strong and hand the game over to the bullpen, the Sox are in good shape. That was not the case today. White Sox lose this one 4-2.

The Good: Abreu hit his second home run of the season in game one! The Sox were swinging the bat good in the first game but not so good in the second game. When this lineup is hot, they’re on fire! When they’re cold… it’s not a good sign.

The pitching was stellar sans John Danks who never fails to disappoint me. Specifically, the bullpen is scorching hot right now. Albers, Guerra, Duke, and Robertson are the four names that jump out at me right now. Remember, we’re still waiting on the returns of Jake Petricka and Nate Jones too! So if this bullpen stays hot, you throw in those two guys later in the season, this has the makings of a bullpen that can hang in the playoffs. Now of course, it’s still early. So they still have time to blow up… but I’m optimistic.

The Bad: This defense is absolutely atrocious at this point. Bonehead decisions and easy plays that turn into errors are slowly killing this team. After so many years of watching the bullpen perform awfully, it’s now the guys behind the pitcher that are messing it up. The defense needs a lot of work immediately.

Base running is pretty poor too. Right now, it’s the little decisions that cost the Sox an out or a run. The two glaring problems are the defense and base running. I’m not sure if it’s rust with it being so early in the season or what but it needs to change very quickly. It’s frightening to think that this Sox team can actually compete for the division but the defense could possibly stop that from happening.

Overall: 1-1 series tie is a lot better than a 0-2 series loss, so I will settle for this. The White Sox are doing things great one day and then the next they’re doing things very poorly. This series against the Indians is a great example of that. The next series against Detroit is going to tell a whole lot about how far this team can go. So for now, we’ll just wait and see how they do against the Tigers and move from there. A sweep of the Tigers would be so sweet but I can’t think of any realistic way it can happen if some things don’t change. The White Sox now sit at 3-5 on the season.

Next Game: April 17th 12:08 PM @ Detroit Tigers.

P.S. I had class today so I only got to catch the 7th inning and beyond in today’s game. So if I’m a little off about Danks’ performance or something else, I apologize. I’m just going off of hearsay and the box score. Definitely heard the defense struggled again, though.

–Maloney