– Great offensive performance for these guys today to FINALLY give Jose Quintana run support when he needed it most. They were facing a very underwhelming man making his MLB debut, but still, 19 hits and 14 runs is very impressive.
– Of all the impressive aspects of the offense, the 7-8-9 slots of the order really carried the team today by going 9-for-14 with 5 RBI. After an incredibly slow starts, Alexei Ramirez is up to .252 and Gordon Beckham is up to .246. It’s great to see these two guys hitting well, because they could easily be the best 8-9 hitters in baseball if they hit to their potential.
– I think Paul Konerko, Adam Dunn and Alejandro De Aza are all out of their slumps right now. As a matter of fact, it’s hard to find anyone on this offense who isn’t hitting at the moment. This is how this offense will be all season long in my opinion, streaky, as that’s the way most of the hitters on this team are.
– Jose Quintana: I’m not worried about his rough outing tonight, as I felt like there were a lot of things working against him. For one, he probably felt a lot of pressure facing his former team and maybe tried a bit too hard to do something, a recipe for disaster with soft-tossers. Also, he was facing a fantastic offense in the Yankees, and honestly, was probably just due for a stinker anyways.
– Jose does need to adjust to something I noticed today though, as I saw the hitters make a big adjustment to him. Q worked inside a ton in his first starts, so today, the Yankee hitters backed off the plate a bit more to counter that. It’s something other teams will probably pick up on, and I’m curious to see Quintana’s next move.
-Nice debut for Leyson Septimo, even though it looked like he didn’t realize the game was over (go look at the last out, he was walking back to the dugout).
– Always funny to see position players pitch as we saw with former Sox Dewayne Wise today. I bet you Konerko and Rios didn’t want to be the guys to face him, as if you make outs like they did, you’ll probably never hear the end of it from your teammates.
The Sox are in GREAT shape right now with the Tigers and Indians losing and Jake Peavy on the bump tomorrow. Kuroda goes for the Yankees, though, and he’ll be a tough pitcher. It should be a nice pitcher’s duel tomorrow as opposed to tonight.
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Posted by GSB! Editor, Luke Stanczyk