I’m not sure the tears in my eyes this morning while I read the Tribune were from the Sox actually winning the division, or just from the shock of seeing a whole 8 pages devoted to the White Sox. 

Sorry I haven’t had a chance to post until now.  Unfortunately right after we clinched yesterday I still had class and an appearance on the radio that I couldn’t miss.  And then of course there was the celebration later in the night.  I can promise that just like "SOXTOBER" in the Tribune, I will increase my coverage in the playoffs.  And there are a lot of things to talk about going into this weekend and then October.

Clinching Home Field

The Magic Number for home field advantage is 2 over the Yankees and 1 over Boston.  We tied New York 3-3 in the season series and I honestly don’t know what the second tiebreaker is.  Boston won the series against us 4-3 so they would have the tiebreaker.  With the big series in Boston, I think it would be safe to say that if we win 2 of 3 in Cleveland then we give ourselves home field advantage throughout the playoffs and 1 win might even do it.

Who do we want to play?

Personally, I think Boston is our best bet.  Their already slim rotation is worn down and I don’t see how they could take 3 of 5 from us with our pitching heating up again and a potential Game 5 being played in Chicago.  Come on, they are so desperate for pitching that they traded 2 minor leaguers to Washington yesterday for Mike Stanton- who won’t even be eligible for the playoffs.

New York would be the second best option.  Their pitching is suspect too and they would have no time to set up their rotation with this big series in Boston this weekend.  Once again, I don’t see how they would take 3 of 5 from us with Game 5 being in Chicago.

The Angels look scary right now.  Bartolo Colon is that pitcher you would see twice in the ALDS.  If he came into Chicago pitching Game 1 and 5, you got to at least think he would win 1 of those starts (without the bullpen blowing them)  and that would take the home-field advantage from us. 

What that all means is that we better not let up this weekend.  We need to keep Cleveland out of the postseason, if not only because that would mean we wouldn’t have to play LA, but also because Cleveland would be scary in October as well- especially because of the recent trend of wild-card teams winning it all after having a huge second half. 

Previewing this weekend’s series in Cleveland

As long as the White Sox aren’t too hung over, you have to like their chances in Cleveland.  Buerhle faces Millwood tonight, which won’t be easy.  Millwood has a 1.35 ERA in his last 3 starts and is 2-0 in those starts.  But we also know how awesome Buerhle was against Minnesota on Sunday.  Both offenses are ready to break out as well, so both pitchers will have to be focused all night.  The Indians struggled to score against Tampa Bay until they finally broke out last night.  Meanwhile, the Sox offense has stuggled all month but now it seems as if every player has broken out of their respective slumps with the exception of Iguchi.  So who will be more focused?  The Indians have more to play for, and knowing Buerhle, he probably had a little too much fun last night.  But we also know he comes to play everyday and with the Sox on a high from winning the division, I bet we will see a spark tonight that we haven’t seen since the first half.

Garland faces Westbrook Saturday and McCarthy faces Elarton Sunday.  What happens Saturday will have a lot to do with what we see from each team tonight.  But Sunday could be different.  Elarton struggled against the Devil Rays and McCarthy is pitching for a spot on the playoff roster. 

In the end, with 3 studs going out there this weekend and the Indians already starting to falter under the pressure, I predict the Sox take 2 of 3.  That should give us home-field advantage and also hopefully give us Boston or New York in the first round.

McCarthy or El Duque

There is one battle that is not over for the Sox this weekend.  With the playoff roster only allowing there to be 11 pitchers, either McCarthy or El Duque will have to go.  McCarthy has been great taking over for Hernandez, but Orlando also has a 9-3 playoff record.

Nothing has been decided yet and it could all come down to how they perform this weekend.  McCarthy has the ball Sunday in a start that is basically an audition for the playoffs.  El Duque may see some time out of the bullpen, which would also be an audition.

Personally, I’m leaning towards McCarthy because he has not only shown that he can start, but he came in for El Duque twice out of the bullpen and pitched great.  Having him for long relief in October could be huge.  However, we can’t sleep on Hernandez who says he is getting stronger.  I think who ever pitches better this weekend (which could just mean McCarthy gets the job done or doesn’t) deserves to be on the team in October. 

Other Notes

I don’t know about you, but I was pretty happy to see the Sox celebrating in front of Magglio.  He continued to throw out some crude remarks yesterday when asked by reporters about the Sox celebrating, saying he was only happy for a few of his former teammates.  Clearly he is still bitter.

Out of all the coverage in the Tribune today, I especially enjoyed John Kass’ column on the front page of the paper (not sports section). 

It was sad to see that Mike Downey’s column still had a little pessimissim in it.  I agree that there are still reasons to doubt this team, but we can put those doubts off for a few days and enjoy the celebration.  Also, I don’t think any of the players were denying that there were problems this past month, as Downey eluded to. 

Unfortunately my cable here in Madison will be airing the Red Sox-Yankees game tonight on ESPN instead of the White Sox game.  I guess I expected it, but I’m sure if the Cubs were on they would show us that game.  Oh well, the Red Sox-Yanks series should be very entertaining.

And once again, I want to congratulate the White Sox players, office, and especially the fans.  We are all a part of this and it has been a great year no matter what happens in the next few weeks. 

Also thanks to those of you who regularly read this blog and respond.  I want to hear what you guys think about who we should want to play in the ALDS and also who should make the team, McCarthy or El Duque.  I look forward to seeing your responses.

And thanks to Scott Reifert, the White Sox Vice President of Communications and writer of "Inside the White Sox".  He did a great job all year giving us the information we wanted.  I really liked knowing the starting lineups before I went to the game and also hearing the "behind the scene" stories.  I hope we can both give some great insight in October and I look forward to hearing your comments.

With the Sox winning Wednesdayand the Indians losing, it appears as if the magic number is 2.  However, if you do a little math you will find that the number is really only 1.  I saw a number of people who were unsure as to how the tiebreaker within a division works.

Because the Red Sox and Yankees play each other this weekend, it is impossible for the team that doesn’t win the East to have 96 wins.  Thus, the Sox clinch a spot in the playoffs with their 96th win. 

However, they will also clinch the Central with their 96th win tomorrow as well.  Even if the Indians win their last four games (that would include sweeping the Sox this weekend) they would finish tied with the Sox with 96 wins.  However, the Sox would automatically win the tiebreaker with a 11-8 record against the Indians this season. 

So that means, we win tomorrow and we will have successfully avoided the biggest collapse ever and completed a wire-to-wire lead in the division.

If we are to lose, 1 win in Cleveland will seal the deal, unless the Devil Rays some how complete the sweep on the Indians- in which case we will win it tomorrow anyway.

But how about we just win tomorrow, take 2 of 3 from Cleveland and clinch home field advantage.  That sounds better to me.

In any case, the Sox looked great Wednesday.  See what happens when Podsednik gets 4 hits and steals 2 bases?  I sure miss that from the earlier parts of the season and that just confirms what I have been saying the last two months- that he is the key to this team winning. 

Anyway, Crede will be back tomorrow on a high from the birth of his new baby, Garcia will hopefully have some confidence, and the Sox hitters will hopefully continue to breakout of their slump.  That would mean another victory and the 2005 Central Division Championship!

I’ll be watching from here in Madison, with the Sox jersey on and the champagne on ice.  SOX PRIDE!

Well I guess it’s obvious that White Sox nation said goodbye to one fan last night as Curtis Granderson, who grew up a Sox fan, hit a walk off home run to give the Tigers a 4-3 victory last night.

I know I would have just struck out on purpose. 

While that isn’t realistic the Sox now have to win 3 of their last 6 to make the playoffs and if we lose another to the Tigers we will have to take 2 of 3 from the Indians this weekend assuming they sweep the Devil Rays.

So apparently the Sox collapsing is finally starting to have an effect on my health.  I went to the hospital here at UW yesterday because I have been having some shoulder and neck pains that I thought were related to my heart. 

Turns out I have a partially collapsed lung, which is a result of a cyst that I apparently had, rupturing as a result of stress.  Well I was thinking about it, and the only stress I have had in the past month has been worrying about the White Sox day in and day out. 

Now this will most likely not be a big deal.  Chances are it will heal on it’s own as long as I take it easy the next few weeks.

So last night I relaxed as the Sox took the lead early and kept it.  All I ask is that we string some wins together and keep my stress level down. 

Of course none of that may not matter if the Badgers beat Michigan tonight.  I’ll most likely be hanging from the goal post as my lung completely collapses. 

Go Sox! Go Badgers!  And how about we just WIN and forget the die trying part.

I do some work with WSUM 91.7 here in Madison and today I was brought on as a guest to talk about the possibilities of a White Sox collapse.  They were mostly curious about how much blame should be put on Ozzie.  I had to admit that last night’s decision of putting Marte was probably a bad move, but without Ozzie they wouldn’t be up to 90 wins in the first place.  And maybe most importantly I tried to explain to him how hard the Sox battled last night even though they lost.

Tonight’s game was easily the best of the season.  Joe Crede was huge,  Juan Uribe was huge, and the Sox just showed heart and battled the entire game.  You almost can’t blame the pitching because Cleveland is so hot.  This series is just unbelievable.

Keep in mind that we are almost right on track with the plan I outlined in my previous post.  We just have to make up that loss to the Royals.  A win tomorrow would do just that and it would give the Indians that extra loss that is needed.

Let’s just hope Crede’s home run is the spark the Sox have been looking for and we end this season on a roll and carry some sort of momentum into the playoffs. 

Go Sox! And keep up the noise tomorrow night, I wish I could be there!

Last night’s win over Kansas City brought the White Sox magic number down to 13.  The following is a realistic and hardly ambitious prediction for the last 19 games, and I hope it shows you how hard (although also utterly sad) it would be for the Sox to lose the division to Cleveland.

The Sox have dominated the the Central Division the entire season, but lately have slipped a little.  They are also 10-3 against Cleveland.  This bodes well for the Sox who play only the Central division the rest of the way, including 6 games against the Indians.  However, the Indians are the hottest team in baseball and the Sox?? Well let’s face it, they have not played like they have the best record in the AL.  So let’s be realistic about the rest of the schedule.

We will just assume that the Sox can take 1 of 2 from KC the rest of this series, 2 of 3 this weekend in Minnesota, 2 of 4 the following weekend against Minnesota at home, and hope they take 3 of 4 in Detroit during the last week of the season.  I don’t think that is too much to ask for at all and should easily be attainable.  That gives the Sox a 8-5 record in games not against Cleveland. 

I’m going to throw out the 10-3 record we already have against the Indians this season.  They are in a Wild-Card race and playing like they are going to win it.  I’m going to say we only take 1 of 3 at home next week against Cleveland, and then 1 of 3 in Cleveland during the last series of the year.  So do your math and that means we are going to go 2-4 against the Indians in the last 6.  Again, it shouldn’t be too much to ask for, especially if we want to win in the playoffs.

All of that comes out to a 10-9 record the rest of the way- hardly acceptable, yet hopefully a worse case senario against a division who hasn’t beat the Sox all season. 

So subtract 10 from our current magic number of 13 and you get 3.  Then take another 2 out of there because we beat the Indians twice and you get 1.  1 means we are tied with Cleveland.  And that means that Cleveland cannot lose another game outside of the two against the White Sox that have already been accounted for. 

I hope this calms down the ones out there who have started to panic.  Now home field advantage is a different issue.  I won’t go through all the math for that, but Boston is on our heels and also in a playoff race.  However, I would hope that we will do better than 10-9 the rest of the way, looking at our competition.  But even 10-9 gives us 98 wins, which could win home field anyway.  The part I left out above: 1 of 3 against Cleveland at home and 2 of 4 against Minnesota in the following series means a 3-4 home stand.  So do we really want to have home field advantage?

Let’s remember, numbers are just numbers.  WE WANT HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE.  Comiskey will be a completely different atmosphere in October.  So let’s go out there and win 12 more and get 100 wins.

——-

P.S: Anyone at the Rolling Stones concert at Soldier Field Saturday?  It was amazing.

Being up here in Madison, it has been hard to follow what has been going on in the Chicago Cubune the last few weeks.  I subscribed once again to get it up here, but it hasn’t started coming yet.  After reading Scott Reifert’s comment on his blog about the articles in today’s tribune, I immediately looked at the online version of today’s Tribune to see what all the fuss was about. 

I have to say that it look’s like Phil Rogers had writer’s block yesterday and just decided to come up with some system that 1) doesn’t make any sense, and 2) looks at the wrong aspect of the playoffs.  His column, "Method to predict madness: Phil Rogers’ new system of rating playoff contenders isn’t kind to the South Siders" is a sad addition to his overall stellar career at the Tribune.

The only thing that I see right in his whole analysis, is that lately teams that have gone into October hot, have stayed hot and advanced far into the playoffs.  This has been very true, but Rogers more less just hints at this concept rather than using it as a point he is trying to make about who will do well in the playoffs.  Rather, he talks about the "randomness" of teams advancing to the World Series.  It’s not "random" for a team who is 36-10 in their last 46 games to continue to win in the playoffs and make the NLCS, as the Astros did last year. 

I think that is the point Rogers is trying to make, but instead, it gets lost in his jumbled writing and comes out as him saying that we can only guess who will fair well because the most random will go all the way.  If in fact Rogers is saying that the "hot" teams will play the best in October, then I don’t see why that doesn’t favor the Sox who are now 7-0 in September and play the Central division almost this whole month- a division they have completely dominated. 

Now Rogers also wastes a huge portion of his column talking about this "system" he has made up to rank the contenders.  This system is irrelevant to the playoffs because it bases the rankings on offense.  Everyone knows that speed, defense, and especially pitching win in the playoffs.  Also, saying that our 1-run record deceives our actually strength doesn’t matter either.  Playoff games are tough, close games, where teams who struggle in 1-run games find ways to lose them, and teams who master 1-run games find ways to win them- ultimately with speed, defense, and pitching.  Once again, I don’t see how that hurts the South Siders. 

But in the end maybe all this criticism of the Sox’s chances will help us.  After all, Rogers is trying to say that the teams who aren’t supposed to win in the playoffs do.  So go ahead and keep telling us that we won’t win. 

Once again I apoligize for not writing for a few days.  I promise now that Labor Day weekend is over, everything will pick up.

Between MLB.TV, Saturday’s game on WGN, and today’s game on ESPN, I have been able to catch all 5 games of the 5 game winning streak.   There are a number of good signs from the Tiger series.  After struggling in August against a lot of non-divisional opponents, we took 4 more games from a Central Division team, who we still have 23 games against this month and have dominated the whole series.  Also, we swept a series at home.  It has been no secret that we have struggled to win at home lately and winning 4 in a row at home is huge.  As we resume the home stand tomorrow, hopefully we can sweep the Royals and bring some good "home-field advantage momentum" into a non-divisional series against the Angels this weekend. 

Today’s win against the Red Sox was very impressive.  A lot of the players stayed home and we won a big game without a full lineup.  Brandon McCarthy pitched another dominating game.  In two starts against two of the most dominating offenses in the league (Texas and Boston), McCarthy has given up exactly ZERO runs.  If he can keep that going, we might see a 3-pitcher battle for the 4th spot in the playoff rotation.  Konerko continued his 10 game hit streak and Juan Uribe had an impressive game offensively.  The shortstop has made some noticeable changes to his approach at the plate and has been more patient.  His work as obviously paid off with his recent power surge. 

Only bad signs today: 2 errors and Jenks losing confidence in his fastball.  Bobby will be fine and should have been out of the inning anyway (Iguchi’s error kept it going), but the successive double and HR in the 9th were both on off-speed pitches when neither of those batters could hit his fastball (at least into fair territory).  In the end, we extended our lead to 5 games over Boston in the race for home-field advantage and basically won that game twice because we were well on our way to winning that game on August 14th.

Looks like I’ll be in Chicago for the game Friday night against LA.  Could be my last regular season game.  October could be a lot of travelling from Madison to Chicago and back.