157

Since it's a new season, let's brush up on some of the terminology The Update likes to use, such as "meat loaf." Of course, that means to win two out of three games, as in Meat Loaf's song by the same name: "Now don't be sad, cause two out of three ain't bad." Well, the White Sox meat loafed the Twins over the weekend, losing the opener when No Way Jose Contreras got bombed in a 12-5 loss. Bartolo Colon and Mark Buehrle came back to shut down the Twinkies, with 8-0 and 6-1 wins on Saturday and Sunday.

Pitching has been the name of the game for the Sox so far this season. The team ERA is a measly 2.29 over the first six games -- and that includes the 12-run debacle on Friday. The other run totals have been 2, 2, 2, 0, and 1. Not too shabby. The most fascinating story so far has been Octavio Dotel. The Update will admit to not being a big Dotel fan, but what he's done to start the year is nothing short of amazing. He's appeared in four games. In the first, he struck out 3 batters while pitching one inning. In the second, he did the same thing. In his third game, he pitched 2/3 of an inning and struck out one. In the fourth, he again tossed 2/3 of an inning and this time whiffed two batters. That's a total of nine Ks in only 3.1 innings pitched, or an average of 24.3 Ks per 9 innings. Nobody's that good, but Dotel is off to a very nice start.

Speaking of pitching, here's a little nugget courtesy of Les Reiter's crack research. Last Thursday, we asked Les (who retired last Fall) to see if the stats supported our belief that Bobby Jenks pitches better in a save situation than in a non-save situation. What Les found clearly backs us up. In the save situation, Jenks is better in a variety of categories: strikeout to walk ratio, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, batting average on balls in play, tOPS+ (whatever that is), and WHIP (walks + hits allowed/innings itched). The only categories where Jenks is more effective in a non-save situation are ERA and Ks per nine innings. Ozzie, mull this over the next time you're thinking about bringing Jenks in without a save on the line.

The weekend activity leaves the Sox a half game behind the Tigers and cut the Magic Number to 157. Now it's off to Detroit to play three with the Sabertooths (should that be Saberteeth?), followed by a trip to Tampa for four with the Rays, and then three with the Orioles at Camden Yards. Yours truly is going to try to catch at least one of the O's games, but it's kind of tough to make mid-week games up in Baltimore. Go Sox!