April 3: Indians 7, White Sox 1

The WPA graph doesn't lie, Sunday's series finale can basically be summed up in two plays; in the top of the 4th, already leading 1-0 and with the first two batters of the inning on, Alexei Ramirez bunted into a 3-4-6 triple play worth nearly -.14 WPA and reopened the door for the Indians, who guided by Justin Masterson, kept the game close until John Danks finally made one key mistake, an 88 MPH fastball that was left dead over the heart of the plate that Orlando Cabrera crushed over the gigantic LF wall at Progressive Field. That play alone was worth .376 WPA for the Tribe, pushed their win probability north of 70% and they never looked back, bleeding 5 more runs out of Will Ohman and Matt Thornton as they salvaged the finale of this 3-game series.

White Sox MVP: Carlos Quentin is the MVP posting a .061 WPA for the day, though he owes a bit of that to Indians 3B Jack Hannahan whose throwing error on a slow, 75-foot roller off the bat of Quentin turned a tough, but not unrealistic out into essentially a double.

White Sox LVP: Alexei Ramirez, come on down! You can't bunt into a triple play without feeling the repercussions and his -.213 WPA was thanks primarily to the blunder worth -.138 on its own, but the Sox had plenty of chances to break this game open and, unlike Friday and Saturday, just could not convert. Ramirez had a few more key outs, in the 2nd and 6th innings, both times with runners in scoring position and both times inning-ending, but Adam Dunn, Paul Konerko, and Alex Rios all had opportunities at various points of today's loss to drive in meaningful runs to no avail.

Mystery of John Danks' Run Support Continues: Last season, the Sox scored 4 or fewer runs for Danks in 17 of his 32 starts and 2011 was no different. Danks had a good game today, pitching 6 innings, allowing 6 hits, striking out 8 and only allowing 2 runs. 66 of his 104 pitches were strikes, but the only one that matters was the one he threw to Cabrera, that cost him 2 runs, 1 more than he could afford to allow.

Looking Ahead: The Sox are off Monday before opening a brief, 2-game series in Kansas City. Gavin Floyd makes his season debut against Luke Hochevar for the surprising 1st place Royals.

May 19: Angels 3, White Sox 2

I could have made my first post about the Sox this season yesterday's impressive win over the Tigers, but something about that didn't feel genuine, considering how extraordinarily impotent the Sox have been all year. Thankfully, they returned to form tonight and essentially played a case-study of this woeful season in Wednesday's 3-2 loss to the Angels.


Statistically speaking, Paul Konerko wins tonight's Pick To Click contest, posting a .148 WPA fueled by scoring the team's two runs, the first on a sacrifice fly courtesy of Carlos Quentin in the 2nd inning and the second on an ultimately meaningless solo home run to lead off the 9th. A quick glance at the box score, however, makes a strong case for John Danks, who posted a pedestrian .013 WPA only because his offense so thoroughly failed him (again), as the Sox score 3 or less for the 5th time in 8 starts. Seriously, he is pitching as well as he ever has in his career, and only has a 3-3 record to show for it.

Meanwhile, the White Sox offense hit another new low tonight, getting completely baffled by Joe Saunders. Joe F-ing Saunders. Yes, a guy who entered tonight's game with a .287 BAA, .364 OBPA, and .517 SLGA silenced the Sox bats to a tune of 4 hits and a single run over the course of 7.2 innings of work. As you might expect, there's plenty of blame to go around; Alex Rios gets the distinction of posting the team-low -.268 WPA thanks to an 0-4 night highlighted by an inning-ending fly-out in the 6th leaving the bases loaded while the Sox were still down by 1. Andruw Jones nipped his heels posting a -.229 WPA by also going 0-4 and striking out twice, once as the tying run to end the 8th inning. Alexei Ramirez had the single worst out of the game, the game's final one, a strike-out with the tying run on 2nd base. And who can forget Jayson Nix, who was quiet at the plate (0-3) and only posted a -.097 WPA but really put this game out of reach in the 8th with his brutal defensive play at third, bobbling a grounder and then throwing it to right field. Getting charged with two errors on one play and allowing what was ultimately the winning run to score? Thaaanks!

Sox Biggest Hit of the Game: Konerko's home run off Brian Fuentes to lead-off the 9th.

Failed Opportunities: Despite losing, the Sox actually had 7 of the 10 biggest plays of the game according to WPA, and not just from one inning, they had chances to bust this game open in the 2nd, 6th, 8th, and 9th. The problem: The Angels top 2 plays netted them 3 runs. The Sox top 9 plays only netted them 1.

Sox Biggest Out of the Game: A.J. Pierzynski gunned down Bobby Abreu trying to steal second in the 7th inning, worth -.063 WPA and indicative of Pierzynski's increased ability to limit opponents on the basepaths this year. In the past, A.J. has had all kinds of problems keeping other teams from running on him, but with Abreu and Torii Hunter's CS earlier, that is 16 stolen bases off AJ now in 24 attempts, only a 33.3% CS% but that's nearly in the Top 5 for the whole American League and much better than the usual low-20s, high-teens CS% he was producing for most of his time in Chicago.