92

John Danks has pitched well enough to win several games, but lost them due to lack of run support. Last night, he pitched poorly enough to lose, but cruised to victory on the strength of the White Sox's biggest scoring binge of the season, 11 runs. The entire team contributed, with every starter getting at least one hit. Tadahito Iguchi came within a single of hitting for the cycle, but drew a walk in his final at bat. Jermaine Dye ended a home run drought by bashing his 12th homer of the year. All of this allowed the Sox to salvage a split of the series with the lowly Orioles (of course, we've been pretty "lowly" ourselves) and earn their eighth win in the last 11 games. The Sox remain 12.5 games behind in the A.L. Central race, and now must face the always tough-for-us Minnesota Twins. The Magic Number is at 92, but not dropping fast enough.

On the personnel front, Gavin Floyd is going to start one of the games against the Twinkies this series. Floyd won his last six decisions in Charlotte and has a 7-3 record with 3.10 ERA. He also averages 7.7 strikeouts per nine innings, which means he averages 2.48 whiffs per earned run -- a totally meaningless stat that the Update just dreamed up. Hopefully, Floyd, who was the key man in the trade for Freddy Garcia, will continue his minor league success and justify Kenny Williams faith in him. Kenny says more personnel moves are on the way, and the Update hopes that Mark Buehrle being traded isn't one of them. We strongly believe that Buehrle's home-town discount merits a no-trade clause. Hell, he's going to have one soon anyway if he stays with the Sox. It's not that long before he's a player with 10 years service, the last five with the same team -- the so-called Santo Clause (because Ron Santo was the first player to invoke it to block a trade. He didn't want to leave Chicago and wound up coming to the Sox for a brief tenure). So our tag line today is a little different: Go Sox, sign Buehrle!