Here we take a look at the White Sox players who are playing well and those who need to pick it up some. This way you, the White Sox fan, can better know who should draw your ire on the message boards, Twitter, and sports talk radio. Let’s start it off with the players who are setting off the scoreboard (Statistical research in this piece includes games through Saturday, 8/4)...

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Who’s Hot

Alex Rios
To say what Alex Rios is doing is a hot streak is unfair.  He has been more or less carrying the White Sox offensively for more than two months.  To truly understand how good Rios has been let’s go back to May when the White Sox started their 9-game winning streak that vaulted them from a .500 team to a playoff contender.
On May 22nd, the day before the streak started, in 41 games Rios was hitting .268 with 1 home run and 15 RBI.  He was slugging .369 and had an OPS of .700; pretty pedestrian numbers and much more like the Alex Rios of 2011 than the guy we see right now.

From May 23rd until now, Rios is hitting .345 with 17 home runs and 52 RBI in 63 games.  He is slugging .643 (an increase of 274 points) and his OPS is 1.003 (an increase of 303 points).  Not to mention that the guy has scored 56 runs, hit 20 doubles and stolen 11 bases over that same stretch.  To put that into perspective, if he were to keep that pace up over an entire season he would hit 44 home runs and drive in 134 runs to go along with scoring 144 runs.  He has come up with big hits time and time again, case in point his game winning home run Friday night to beat the Angels. If he keeps this up he will play his way into the MVP consideration, and if you look at the numbers he may already be there.

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A.J. Pierzynski
Where in the world did this power come from the White Sox veteran backstop?  Since returning from injury AJ has homered in 5 straight games, bringing his season total to a career high 21 dingers.  His previous career high was 18 back in 2005.  However, he hasn’t hit double digit homers since 2009 when he had 13.  In fact in the previous two seasons combined AJ only had 17 home runs. Talk about a contract year.
In addition to the power surge lately, A.J. has also driven in 9 runs and scored 5 in the 4 games since his return to the lineup.  This is likely to be a career season for A.J. as he has already set a career high in homers, and is just 5 RBI short of his highest total (64) in a White Sox uniform.  He is also slugging .537 for the season which is well above his previous career high of .464.  His big offseason will make up for the fact that he is still only throwing out 25% of would be base stealers, below the league average of 27%.  He has also allowed 7 passed balls and 38 wild pitches but if he keeps hitting home runs I guess we can forgive him.

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Who’s Cold

Gordon Beckham

While it looked like for a while that Beckham had figured out his issues at the plate and was coming around, he has once again gone into a tailspin.  Since July 13th, the first game back from the All Star break, Beckham is hitting .155 with a .221 on base percentage and is slugging .211.  His OPS is .432 over that span.  He has not driven in a run since July 13th and hasn’t drawn a walk since July 18th. His last home run came on June 20th against the Cubs (no thanks to Mike Trout). To break it down even further, since July 23rd Beckham has as many hits (6) as strikeouts. His season average has dropped back down to .226 and his on base percentage is .278, 4th worst in the AL among qualified players.
Many people are starting to wonder if he is ever going figure things out offensively.  The only thing that has kept him in the starting lineup is his tremendous defense, where he has played a Gold Glove caliber 2nd Base.

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Dayan Viciedo
“The Tank” has recently gone into the tank.  Over his last 8 games Viciedo is hitting .107 with 5 strikeouts, no extra base hits and just 1 RBI.  While there was a time back in May where Dayan was carrying the White Sox offensively, the story just hasn’t been the same since then.
Since the All Star break Viciedo is hitting just .230 with 2 home runs and 12 RBI, 4 of which came in one game.  This isn’t unexpected though.  In his first full season in the majors, Tank has been as streaky as they come.  On May 13th Viciedo was hitting .196 with 3 homers and 5 knocked in.  Then over the next 19 games he hit .387 with 9 homers and 24 RBI.  In the 49 games since then he has hit .219 with 4 homers and driven in 22 runs.  Hopefully this means that “Tank” is ready to get hot again because the White Sox could sure use his production at the bottom of the order.

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Posted by GSB! Contributor, Matt Hoeppner.