South Side Surrender

The Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers are in a fight to the finish in the American League Central.  Unfortunately for the White Sox, the finish happened more than a week ago.

With Monday’s 14-4 bloodbath of a victory by the Tigers at U.S. Cellular Field, the Sox have now lost their last two games against Jim Leyland’s crew by a combined score of 32-6, have dropped four straight against Detroit overall, are 5-11 against them this season, are 11 ½ games out and five games away from elimination.  This is not a pennant race; this is something that happens in prisons.

Where did it all go wrong for the White Sox?  A lot of places.  But first, it’s all going right for the Motown meanies who have now won ten straight, are the hottest team in baseball and have a not-so-crazy chance of catching the New York Yankees and finishing with the best record in the American League.  The road to the World Series goes through Detroit?  It didn’t seem possible a month ago or even a week ago but it’s formulating ever so quietly now.

So yes, “uncle!” the Tigers are good.  But why are the White Sox so bad?  Well, they’re not.  They are simply mediocre which, in the A.L. Central, qualified for “good” until the Tigers began this late season roar.  The Sox have three everyday players – Gordon Beckham, Alex Rios and Adam Dunn – hitting .230 or less with Dunn hitting a Timmy Lupus-like .162 which is so far down that he doesn’t even make the first three pages of offensive leaders on the MLB website.  Dunn hasn’t been playing very often the past few weeks but is still in mortal danger of finishing with a higher strikeout total – he had 160 through Monday – than his batting average.

I don’t want to pick on Dunn especially since I saw him for the first time in person recently and, let’s put it succinctly, he’s huge.  It’s one thing to see the guy on TV or even from the stands but when you pass right by him his utter largeness of form is intimidating.  He’s a monster who’s having a horror show of a season.  It’s not all Dunn’s fault that the Sox will stay home for October for the third straight year and it’s also not one-third his fault but what would the Medias Blancas’ record be if Messrs. Dunn, Rios and Beckham were each hitting, say, .250?  Would they be close enough to smell Leyland’s nicotine gum?

The Tigers are hitting .276 as a team.  The White Sox are hitting .254.  The Tigers have scored 706 runs; the White Sox have scored 594.  The Tigers have an OPS of .767, for the Sox it’s .709.  The Tigers have Justin Verlander, the White Sox do not.   And, the most painful stat of all: Detroit is drawing better than 32,000 per game while the White Sox are struggling to get 24,000 a night on Chicago’s South Side.   The Tigers are good, popular and will be in better shape than any other A.L. team to get their pitching lined up for the postseason.  Their lead is so big they might even have time get Verlander cloned.

It won’t be easy to root for the Tigers in the playoffs but it could be worse – they’re not the Twins.  A Tiger pennant would be palatable because no one outside of New York, Boston, Bristol and the FOX sales department wants to see the Yankees or Boston Red Sox in the fall classic again.  The Texas Rangers?  Sure.  The Tampa Bay Rays?  It’s tough to pull for a team that draws fewer fans per homestand than the University of Michigan had in its student section versus Notre Dame.

The Tigers’ ten-game winning streak is their longest since winning 11 straight in September, 1968.  The Tigers went on to win the World Series that year.  The 1968 White Sox finished 36 games back and ended a streak of 17 consecutive winning seasons.  The Sox, thankfully, don’t have time to finish 36 back this year but if you finish second, 11 ½ may as well be 36.  And next year can’t get here soon enough.