136

Looks like this is going to be a long season. The White Sox can't hit, and they've got two big holes in the rotation with no good candidates to fill them. They're lucky to have won two of the four games from Thursday through Sunday, the last game of the series with Detroit and one of three against the Rangers.

Let's start with the hitting. The lineup in Sunday's game featured four players -- three of them regulars -- who are hitting below .200: Brent Lillibridge, .164; Jim Thome, .198; Alexei Ramirez, .198; and Corky Miller, .182. But it's not just these guys. As a team the Sox got six hits in winning Thursday's opener; four hits in Friday's loss; seven hits in Saturday's win; and only two hits in yesterday's loss. The run totals are a little more encouraging, but not much: six; zero; three; and one. That's not going to get it done unless the pitching is spectacular.

Speaking of spectacular, Mark Buehrle was just that on Thursday, taking a perfect game into the seventh inning and giving up only one hit and no runs before yielding to Bobby Jenks, who pitched a scoreless ninth. The win raised Buehrle's record to 5-0 on the season, his best start ever. John Danks also pitched a beauty on Saturday, allowing only one run on four hits over six innings, but failed to pick up the win when Matt Thornton gave up the tie run in the seventh. Fortunately, the Sox squeezed out a run in the eighth, and Bobby Jenks shut the Rangers down in the ninth to save reliever Scott Linebrink's first win of the season.

The rest of the starting pitching? Terrible. Jose Contreras pitched himself out of the rotation on Friday, surrendering three earned runs on six hits in only 3.2 innings. No Way Jose is headed to the minors unless someone claims him off of waivers, but who's going to do that? The guy is 0-5 with an 8.19 ERA. We applaud his coming back from an Achilles tendon injury so quickly, but agree that he needs to figure out how to pitch again before he takes the mound for the Sox again. (Clayton Richard -- no great shakes so far this season -- is slated to face the Indians on Wednesday in Contreras's spot.) And that brings us to Bartolo Colon, who lost Sunday's game. Colon's got a better record (2-3) and a better ERA (4.88), but he looked as bad as Jose yesterday, serving up five runs on five hits and three walks in just 4.2 innings. He's not out of the rotation yet, but it may be only a matter of time -- and finding someone who looks like he can do a better job -- before that happens.

Despite all this, the Sox are tied with Minnesota, only three games behind Detroit and KC. The Magic Number is 136, and they get to face Cleveland. The Tribe has the worst record in baseball, so this three-game series is just what the doctor ordered. Using Bill James's log5 method of calculating the percentages of a single game outcome, the road Sox (6-8) have a 60.1% chance of beating the home Indians (5-10) tonight, when Gavin Floyd takes the hill in Cleveland. Buehrle goes tomorrow, and then Richard makes his 2009 starting debut -- he was 2-5 with a 6.35 ERA in eight starts last year -- against reigning Cy Young Award winner, Cliff Lee. Lee is 1-5 on the season, but has a 1.74 ERA in his last four starts. All we can say is Go Sox!