Good News For Jake Peavy, John Danks

The White Sox just dropped a 6-2 game to the Los Angeles Dodgers, but John Danks said he “felt awesome” after his start, despite taking the loss and allowing as many runs today as he had in his other four spring starts combined.

The bulk of the damage occurred in the fourth inning when Danks walked Tony Gwynn, Jr. to lead off the inning. former White Sox Juan Uribe worked a very long at-bat, fouling off a number of pitches, before blooping a single into right field.

Matt Kemp then came up and hit his fifth home run of the spring to put the Dodgers up 3-1.

Just a case of “making a mistake to a good hitter,” Danks said.

He worked 5 1/3 innings, giving up four runs – three earned – on six hits. He struck out four and walked three. Danks still leads all starters with a 2.49 earned run average.

Carlos Quentin his a solo homer for the White Sox in the second inning. He has 10 hits in his last 13 at-bats.

General manager Ken Williams spoke at length about Jake Peavy’s condition, as did Peavy himself. They received good news from the doctors today, as there is no structural damage, and the spot in his shoulder that has been giving Peavy pain is responding positively to the treatment he’s receiving.

When asked about Peavy’s chances of breaking camp with the team, here’s what Williams had to say:

"I don’t want to use any absolute terms, simply because this is Jake Peavy, and he has pushed and worked his tail off to get to this point. From what I understand now, the medicine that he is taking , from what I understand is similar to any kind of medicines he would be taking even if he didn’t have the lat issue, is working on him. So it’s the same soreness you generally have during this time of spring training that all the guys have. He’s working through it. But his recovery time, because of the injury, let’s say it’s at seven days instead of four days. Now the more he works through it, it will go down to six days of recovery. It will go down to five days, and then four. Depending upon what kind of plan we put into play, and how long that will be, we can’t shut him down from what I’ve been told, he’s got to work through some things. But whether he will be ready or not is a big question mark."

So at this point, it’s doubtful that he’ll actually be on the opening day roster, but he also can’t be shut down or else all progress made so far this spring will be lost.

Phil Humber makes the start tomorrow for the White Sox against the Cubs. He can put a stranglehold on one of those bullpen spots since it’s likely that the White Sox will be taking 12 pitchers with them from camp now. Again, that’s bad news for Lastings Milledge or Brent Lillibridge.

Lillibridge didn’t play today and Milledge had two plate appearances later in the game, walking both times.