151

It was a good weekend for the White Sox. Had Matt Thornton, pitching in relief of Bartolo Colon on Friday, not given up what proved to be the winning run on a pinch hit grand slam home run by Ben Zobrist, it would have been a great weekend. The Sox rebounded from that 6-5 defeat by taking the last two games of the four-game set with the Rays, 8-3 on Saturday behind Mark Buehrle, and 12-2 on Sunday behind Gavin Floyd. Instead of any recaps of the games, let's play with some numbers instead.

• Jermaine Dye drove in the 1000th run of his career on a sac fly on Saturday. Surprisingly, it was on a ball caught by the Rays' second baseman.
• Jim Thome hit his 544th home run on Sunday, which means he needs only four more to tie Mike Schmidt for 13th place on the all-time list. He's got a decent chance of catching A-Rod, who is nine taters ahead of Thome, but is still on the DL.
• The Sox have seven Quality Starts this season, picking up one from Buehrle on Saturday, and one from Floyd on Sunday. By the way, the team leads the majors in that category since 2003.
• The Sox collected 37 hits over the weekend and 51 overall during the series with the Rays. The Good Guys had 17 on Sunday (every starter had at least one), 11 on Saturday, nine on Friday, and 14 in Thursday's opener.
• The team scored 25 runs over the weekend and 28 total during the series: 12 on Sunday; eight on Saturday; five in a losing effort on Friday; and three in the opener.
• Sox hitters slugged seven home runs since the last Update and a total of eight while in St. Petersburg. Thome hit his 3rd (Sunday), A.J. Pierzynski his 1st (Sunday), Carlos Quentin his 5th, 6th, and chart-topping 7th (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) -- think that wrist might be healed? Q has as many so far as he did all last April when he finished second in the A.L. Home Run Derby -- Paul Konerko his 3rd (Saturday), and Dye his 3rd and 4th (Thursday and Friday).
• The heart of the order finished the weekend batting over .300. Q is at .302, Dye at .370, and Paulie at .341.
• Speaking of the order, after this weekend, the Sox are 3-3 on the season when Chris Getz bats leadoff like he did Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. They're 3-1 when Brent Lillibridge hits first, like he did on Saturday. And they're 1-1 when Dewayne Wise tops the order, which the current DL listee did for a couple of games.
• Finally, the Sox have already won three games on turf so far this season, after winning only four (out of 20) all last regular season. They're also 3-1 against the Rays, after going 4-6 during the 2008 regular season and 1-3 in the A.L.D.S.

The weekend wins put the Sox back in first place, tied with KC and Detroit. The Sox Magic Number now stands at 151. That's a 12 game drop from the 163 that every team starts the season with. At that pace, it's going to take 163 games to clinch the Central Division crown, so don't be surprised if there's another playoff to see who gets into the post-season. Go Sox!