Well, after another week of White Sox baseball it’s time to look at who’s hot and who’s not for the South Siders.  It was a .500 week for the Sox as they lost two of three from Kansas City and then won two of three from Oakland.  So let’s take a look at who stepped up and who needs to step up.

Streaking

A.J. Pierzynski – Carrying over from last week’s hot list is AJ.  Last Sunday AJ had just homered in 5 straight games to tie a franchise record and had set a career high in home runs.  He followed that up with another good week.  AJ hit .435 with 2 home runs and 6 RBI this past week.  He has 7 home runs in his last 11 games.  He continued to provide clutch hits as his 2 run homer on Sunday off Bartolo Colon gave the White Sox the lead permanently.  AJ now has a career high 23 home runs, which ties him with Carlton Fisk’s 1987 season for 3rd highest total by a White Sox catcher.  Next up is Pudge’s 26 homers in 1983.
AJ now has 67 RBI, making this his most productive season in terms of driving in runs since putting on a White Sox uniform.  He needs 11 more RBI to set a new career high.  His previous career high of 77 RBI came in his lone season with the San Francisco Giants in 2004.  Not only has AJ continued to hit the ball out of the ballpark but he pulled a classic AJ move in Sunday’s game as well when he scored from first base on a groundout to the shortstop!  I’m sure you all have seen it but basically, when A.J. saw Pennington and Rosales bump into each other when fielding the grounder AJ kept running past 2nd base and headed to 3rd because no one would be covering the base.  He was right, but the A’s catcher then headed to cover 3rd base leaving home unattended, so AJ headed home and scored easily as the entire A’s infield stood their looking at each other.  Classic AJ.
Chris Sale – A pitcher makes an appearance on the Hot/Cold list for the first time and it is no surprise that it is Chris Sale.  The tall, lanky lefty has been solid all year and returned this Monday after 9 days off and a “tired arm” and didn’t miss a beat.  Sale picked up 2 of the Sox 3 wins last week pitched 14.2 innings giving up 4 runs (2.45 ERA) and striking out 18 without issuing a walk.  His velocity was back up where it had been as he was consistently throwing 94-95 mph with the fastball.  He showed no signs of the “tired arm” that caused the White Sox to skip his last turn in the rotation.  For the year now Sale is 14-3 with a 2.60 ERA and a WHIP of 1.02.  His strikeout to walk ratio of 4.26 is tops in the AL.
Sale has established himself as a legitimate Cy Young candidate.  His WAR (wins above replacement) is 4th among all American League players and is 2nd among pitchers behind only Justin Verlander.

Slumping

Adam Dunn —  Last week was not a good week for Dunn and the week before that wasn’t very good either.  Dunn went the entire homestand with just 1 extra base hit, no home runs and only 2 RBI.  In fact Dunn is currently in his longest home run drought of the season.  It has been 13 games since the Big Donkey last put one into the seats in Texas on July 28th.  His previous longest drought was 11 games in between his first and second homers of the season back in April.  The rest of the numbers are not good either.  In the 13 games since Dunn’s last homer he is hitting .120 (6-50) with just 3 RBI.  He has 18 strikeouts and 5 walks over that time and has scored just 1 run.  He looked a little better at the plate on Sunday, getting a sac fly and drawing a walk but it has to worry you that in a homestand where the White Sox were putting plenty of balls into the seats that Dunn wasn’t able to run into one.

With Konerko likely out until at least Friday the White Sox need Dunn to pick up the production.  August and September are not the time for Dunn to fall back into his pattern from last year.
Francisco Liriano – Tough decision to put him on this list but he had his first “blow up game” as a member of the White Sox this week.  After getting off to a great start in the game Saturday against the A’s Liriano got blown up in the 3rd inning and was eventually lifted with one out in the 4th.  In the end he was charged with 6 runs on 7 hits with 3 walks and a hit batter.  The real problem is that it was the light hitting Oakland A’s that did it to him and the fact that, while he didn’t take the loss, it put the Sox in a very tough spot and they ended up losing the game despite scoring 7 runs.
It was a classic Liriano game where things start to go bad and he just cannot right the ship.  He has all the stuff in the world but sometimes he just can’t get out of his own way.  The White Sox need the guy from his first two starts to show up every fifth day, not the guy from Saturday.  I would also like to see him pitch a little deeper into games, as he has gone no more than 6 innings since putting on the Sox uniform.

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Posted by GSB! Contributor, Matt Hoeppner.