Southside Showdown » cubs

Crosstown Classic: Round 2 – Lineups 6/18

Matt Adams — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:02:04 +0000

I feel like I have to be careful what I say entering any game that the Sox should be expected to win now. Entering June, the schedule looked pretty cushy and included a large amount interleague games. Historically, the White Sox have fared pretty good in interleague play. Despite the retention of first place in the division, the wins haven’t come as easily as one might think, when they come at all. Blame Gavin Floyd, blame Humber, blame the bullpen or just blame everybody’s bats taking naps on the same day. Fact is, the 1.5 game lead should be much larger than that. So, here we are, a 3 game series with the team that has the worst record in all of baseball. With Ryan Dempster having hit the DL today, the Sox face the Cubs best active pitcher to start the series, and they are countering with a guy that hasn’t made a start all year.

That said, this is a series that Sox should be able to take without much issue. Home hasn’t been terribly kind for the Southsiders, but it’s as good a time as any to turn that around. Stewart is 3-8 in his starts with the Sox, all coming in 2011 and all 3 of those wins were against the Twins, oddly enough. This isn’t the Minnesota, but the 2011 Twins resembled the 2012 Cubs in regards to their utter hopelessness as a team. If he’s a garbage starter, so be it, it’s a good lineup to face if that’s your game.

Tonight’s Lineup:

1. De Aza – CF
2. Gordo – 2B
3. Big Donkey – DH
4. Paulie – 1B
5. Rios – RF
6. AJ – C
7. Dayan – LF
8. Alexei – SS
9. Hudson – 3B

Adam Dunn has 23 homeruns and the Cubs have 22 wins. He’s looking to keep ahead of the game in that regard and Matt Garza has been known to serve up a long ball or two. If we’re being realistic, we’re going to need quite a few runs to back Stewart’s outing and the Cubs bullpen might make it easy, but first they have to get past Garza.

Jorge Soler a No-Go for Sox

Matt Adams — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:37:01 +0000

It was originally and erroneously reported months ago, but time has passed, free agency has officially achieved, and now a contract has been signed. The winner of the Jorge Soler sweepstakes is the Chicago Cubs. The Cubs already made a splash in the Cuban market in March by signing Gerardo Concepcion.

Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus has recently made statements on Twitter that Soler is likely going to start his career in Single A so he’ll be of no help to the Cubs current troubles, however along with 19-year old SS Javier Baez they are building a core of young high ceiling players.

Money is not yet established but it’s widely believed that whoever landed the 20 year old outfielder would have to overpay dearly. Theo Epstein’s M.O. has for years been to go after amateur talent and pay a high price in order to keep the farm system stocked. Soler represents the last time the executive is able to do that under the league’s new CBA.

**UPDATE**
Jon Heyman tweets that Soler is getting about $30M from the Cubs.

Feeling Sweepy

Matt Adams — Sun, 20 May 2012 21:31:29 +0000

3 games in Wrigley Field, 3 wins. The Sox continue their winning interleague ways by sweeping the Chicago Cubs at their home park and pushing their win streak to 4. Jake Peavy held the Cubs in check for 6.1 innings striking out 7. He only allowed 3 hits as he fielded his position extremely well, inducing multiple comebackers. Also licking his chops at having some chances with the bat, Jake got himself an RBI despite going 0-3. But Peavy with the bat is not the issue here; Peavy on the mound was dominant.

White Sox: 6
Cubs: 0

Jake Peavy with the strong showing to cap off a White Sox sweep of the Cubs at Wrigley. (Jerry Lai-US PRESSWIRE)

Each game of the series was pushed heavily by White Sox power bats and today was no exception. Maholm started off alright, causing Hawk to continuously count bounces in the first couple innings as he let up very little aside from choppers of the 2 and 3 hop variety. Then in the top of the 4th another back-to-back situation arose. First Gordon Beckham ripped one down the line and out of the park and Adam-12 followed with a blast to left center. Another homerun off of a lefty, I’ll have you know. Tyler Flowers joined in the solo HR party with a long shot onto Waveland.

In the 7th, the Sox elected to score some runs without the aid of the fence, plating a pair and moving the score to 5-0, where it would wait for one more padding run in the 9th. Less than a day after failing to secure a shutout for the team, the Sox bullpen came together in the form of Thornton, Crain and Addison Reed to lock this one down. It wasn’t smooth the whole way through, but they did it. That’s what matters.

Plus: Adam Dunn is obliterating any memory of 2011. That’s not exactly accurate because with each swing of the bat everybody points to some stat of his on the corresponding date from last season. He is, however, erasing the bitterness of Sox fans.

Minus: Not a ton to complain about when the team achieves a shutout in which a grand slam could not even tie it. Of course, that was very nearly tested, but overcome thanks to Jesse Crain striking out Ian Stewart with the bags juiced, 2 down in the 8th. Therefore I merely mention it here, but it is not truly a negative.

Tipping Point:
Gordo’s was the big kicker at a 13.1% change. Beckham has been slowly moving the line. If he could put together a nice hot streak his season numbers could even be respectable.

Source: FanGraphs