Chicago White Sox: Looking at the 2005 World Series rotation

The White Sox rotation kept throwing good players at you every single night. Jose Contreras is an example of that as teams would have to face him following Mark Buehrle and Jon Garland a lot of the time. No matter what order they went in, having to face them all in one series was less than fun for a lot of teams.

Contreras didn’t get his MLB career started until he was on the older side. 31 years old is pretty old to be a rookie but that’s where he found himself as a member of the New York Yankees in 2003. New York sent Contreras to the White Sox halfway through 2004 in exchange for Esteban Loaiza. It ended up being a great trade for Chicago because Contreras was great there for many years.

Contreras was the only White Sox pitcher to be credited with a loss in the 2005 postseason but that doesn’t mean he didn’t pitch extremely well. In fact, he was the winning pitcher in game one of the World Series. The first World Series game that the White Sox played in a very long time was won by this man. He would go on to have a good career following 2005, including an all-star appearance in 2006. He was a very important piece to this great rotation.

In Game One of the World Series, he pitched seven innings and allowed three earned runs. He didn’t walk anyone and had two strikeouts over the seven innings. The pitcher on the other mound was Roger Clemens and he outdueled him. Neal Cotts and Bobby Jenks were used in relief to give Contreras his third win of the postseason.