I’m not going to waste any time. This game, like the last, was encouraging for our outlook on the White Sox. It was a game in which the White Sox had a lot of “small wins” throughout the game, which led to them winning the highly powered offensive game.
It started off in great fashion: Alejandro De Aza (I don’t want to wear out the De Awesome joke) led off with a single, followed by a perfect sacrifice bunt from the struggling Brent Morel (in which he reached base on an error), and then a single and double from Adam Dunn and Paul Konerko, respectively. Paulie was the fourth consecutive runner to cross the plate to start off the ball game when A.J. Pierzynski followed with an RBI sac-fly on a drive to left-center that Indians’ center fielder Michael Brantley was able to track down. After that, Justin Masterson calmed down the White Sox offense for a while, as the game drew closer, which is when the Sox began to need some clutch performances; and they got them.
You say De Aza? I say De Amazing!
It’s hard to constitute any of the first inning offense as clutch. And while it was a big outburst of an inning from the Sox, it ended up not being the biggest of Wednesday’s bout. After watching a couple hours of the game drawing closer, we headed into the sixth inning with a 5-4 lead. That was before Alejandro De Aza clubbed a 2-run HR and A.J. Pierzynski drilled a 3-run shot. Just when it looked like John Danks might blow the lead we had all game, large in part due to spotty defense behind him, the hitters had his back, giving him a 6-run lead, with a score of 10-4. In my previous update on Monday, I talked a lot about swagger, or confidence as you may refer to it as (not that I’m sure why you would, it’s not as much fun to say). Not only did that confident pep in their step not fade away for today’s game, but it even added another great adjective to my arsenal of words I can use when describing the White Sox: clutch.
Those two home runs that I mentioned were huge; they told the pitching staff “if you keep us in games, we can pick you up.” And that is exactly what a pitching staff that does not have very high expectations from many needs: support. If the White Sox can continue to hit with RISP, or ‘being clutch,’ the pitchers ability will shine and translate into wins. And the ability is there, as I have described before with arms like Sale, Peavy, Floyd, Reed, Santiago, etc.
While John Danks had some close calls in this game, the offense was able to pick him up and help him earn his first win of 2012
Even though like most of you guys I am very enthused about what I have seen to this point, it obviously cannot be ammo to start saying that we can contend with the best of them…April 11th is just too early to jump to that. But what you, as a White Sox fan, have to remember, is that it also is not reason to believe that we cannot compete with anybody. And here in the middle of April we find ourselves saying “well, if we play like this, we’re pretty good,” then who knows, maybe we’ll be saying it a week from now, a month from now, or come time for the All Star Game. So, our hopes and dreams for a contender will live for at least another day. Well, two more days because of the off day tomorrow. So, cheers to optimism for the next two days.