April 14th: White Sox 5, Rangers 1

In the second game of the series against the early season favorite Detroit Tigers, the White Sox continued to dazzle. It was a hard fought game in which starting pitcher Gavin Floyd did not have anywhere near his best stuff, but still did not let any Tiger runs cross the plate in his 6 innings pitched. It’s performances like that which tell you that the south siders may be in store to surprise all of us this season. When your best players can produce to only a decent extent against the division leaders but you still come out with a win, it makes you anxious to start thinking about what could be when more of the players are performing at their highest levels. And oh yes, I almost forgot, for at least a day the Tigers are no longer the AL Central leaders.
Your Chicago White Sox now hold a 1/2 game lead on the Tigers in the division, possessing a 5-2 record after the season’s first eight days. I know it’s early, but as a fan base, we deserve to enjoy our Saturday evening having a team in first place for the first time in a while. More importantly, the White Sox have the first hand up on the Tigers as far as confidence goes. This series win sends a message to Detroit that no matter what the Sox roster looks like on paper, we can go out there on any given day and compete with them. More specifically, that our pitchers can duel with theirs. We all know how important starting pitching is to the success of a team, and it appears that outside of Justin Verlander we may even line up better than them the rest of the way through the rotation. And with that being the case, we may be able to compete with them head-to-head throughout the entire season.

Finally, our bullpen flat out looks better than theirs so far. They have been unable to hold the Sox from getting insurance runs in late innings, while the Chicago ‘pen has been able to hold leads for a few innings at a time, a much stiffer task. Hawk always says that you can only go as far as your bullpen in today’s day and age, and if Detroit’s relievers aren’t as good as a lot of their competition, then who knows, maybe they will have to rely on blow outs and offensive explosions to win the division. These are all hypotheticals, but they certainly are at least decently realistic.
Many people around the organization have recently noted that the Sox look like a team that are confident they’re better than the opponent every time they come out of the dugout. These statements are pretty similar to the ones I’ve had to this point about them having a great deal of swagger. And for now, our best bet is to hope this swag-loaded ball club continues to aim high. If that happens, this win streak may turn into a season-long pattern very quickly.