Walking Away From Sixth Straight Loss – Lineups – 4/14

It’s often said that the baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s true, 162 games is a lot, and even the best teams are going to lose 60 of them. The White Sox are sprinting towards that 60 currently, just half way through the first month they’ve already managed a 5 game losing streak. Sprinting, at least, is something that they can do, because they certainly can’t walk. Joey Votto of the Reds went 0-2 yesterday with 3 walks. The White Sox walked 0 times in yesterday’s loss. It’s been 5 games since the White Sox as a team have out-walked Joey Votto, the man. Votto’s walk total on the year is 17. The Sox total is 15. Just to clear up, Joey Votto bats no more than once out of every 9 of his team’s chances. The White Sox, conversely, bat 9 out of every 9 of their chances, believe it or not. This pace can’t keep for the entire season, but it’s a problem that we can sit here and wonder how long it can.

Brett Myers is not the ideal pitcher for the trend to break. He’s got two 2013 appearances, just one of which was a start, but he’s only given up 2 walks in that time. While he’s not likely to give in to the team’s weakness, he is likely to give in to their strength. In 10.1 innings he’s served up 7 homeruns. That’s 1 short of what he served up in all of last season having pitched about a sixth of the innings, so it’s not necessarily his career trademark, but he’s having trouble keeping the ball in the park and the White Sox are just the team to jump all over that.

Jake Peavy made his last start of 2012 in Cleveland. He cruised through 8 innings and came back out for 9th with a 3-1 lead. It summed up the Peavy issue nicely, Bulldog bulldogging his way to a few extra batters, which is so often his downfall. Indeed, he surrendered the lead and the Sox would ultimately lose it in 12. It’s not Jake’s job to decide when he’s finished, obviously, it’s the manager’s. But Peavy is routinely given extra slack to his leash and it’s already clear that the problem is not contained to 2012.

Today’s Lineup:

1.De Aza – CF
2.Keppinger – 3B
3.Rios – RF
4.Dunn – 1B
5.Konerko – DH
6.Viciedo – LF
7.Gillaspie – 3B
8.Alexei – SS
9.Flowers – C

Cleveland Indians Lineup:

1.Michael Bourn – CF
2.Asdrubal Cabrera – SS
3.Ryan Raburn – 2B
4.Nick Swisher – DH
5.Mark Reynolds – 1B
6.Michael Brantley – LF
7.Mike Aviles – 3B
8.Yan Gomes – C
9.Drew Stubbs – RF

Where to Watch
Today’s White Sox game will be shown on CSN for the Chicago area and will be broadcast on SportsTime Ohio for Cleveland folk. 12:05 Central start time.