Sox stay smoking hot heading into break
As improbable as it would have seemed in early June, Chicago has a first-place baseball team at the All-Star break.
By pounding Kansas City 15-5 Sunday for their eighth straight victory, the White Sox moved a half-game ahead of Detroit atop the AL Central standings. Daniel Hudson, summoned to replace the injured Jake Peavy in the pitching rotation, was very shaky yesterday, but it hardly matters who pitches and how they do if you're scoring seven runs in one inning and five in another. Gordon Beckham had three hits yesterday. In other words, everyone is starting to get into the act.
I don't expect the Tigers or the Twins to go anywhere, but it sure looks like the Sox are a for-real contender. Coolstandings.com, a website that predicts the likelihood of teams making the playoffs based on their present record and other indicators, gives the White Sox a 49.7 percent chance of qualifying for the postseason. Neither Detroit nor Minnesota is given even a 30 percent chance.
It's going to be much tougher without Peavy than it would have been with him, but the Sox are showing they're more than just starting pitching. They've got a very, very good bullpen which might qualify as great if closer Bobby Jenks keeps getting it done the way he has lately. If Carlos Quentin, Alex Rios and Paul Konerko continue to hit and Beckham, A.J. Pierzynski and Mark Kotsay start to, the Sox could end up winning their division by 10 games.
