Big time series starting tonight on the Southside.  The White Sox forgot to bring their bats to Baltimore and just lost 3 out of 4 to the suddenly on fire Orioles.  While the Twins rested and ate cake yesterday, the Sox took the late flight home from the city that Avon Barksdale once ran.  Hopefully the squad got some sleep and will come out hungry for their biggest series of the year.

Sox vs Twins, two out of three gets you first place and some momentum going into the last six weeks of the season.  The series probables are:

Freddy Garcia vs. Scott Baker

John Danks vs. TBD (Slowey just got scratched with a bad elbow)

Gavin Floyd vs. Francisco Liriano

I like the White Sox to take game 2 and the Twins to take game 3 so the Garcia vs. Baker match-up tonight could decide who grabs the top spot in the AL Central.  Should be a great series and a lot of good baseball from two teams playing as well as anybody over the last month.  Look for Hawk to use a lot of “Don’t Stop Now…..BOYS.”

If there is not another move involved here, I don’t like the trade.  We basically just traded our top young pitcher who is under team control at a low salary until 2016 and another young pitcher who was rated our 8^th best prospect.  We get back a guy in Jackson who has a ton of talent and is more proven than Hudson but has just been a mess this year other than his no hitter, and lets be serious who hasn’t thrown a no-hitter this season.  We will pay him 1.5mm this year and then 8.5mm next year and then he is a free agent and we might not be able to re-sign him with all the money were are paying the other 4 in the rotation (peavy, buehrle, Floyd, danks).

The upside of this deal is that Cooper has proven many times that he can work his magic on a young pitcher with talent (ie. Danks and Floyd) and Jackson has awesome stuff.  Also, you can never fault Kenny for trying to win now and Jackson is without a doubt a better option than Hudson short term.

I still don’t think this is the last move though….I think we land Dunn by tonight for Jackson and another prospect.

Well today was probably the worst and most painful loss of the season.  The White Sox were up 6-3 in the ninth inning and in a great position to get a solid split up north and then all hell broke loose.  Bobby Jenks and the bullpen just completely imploded and the game went from an easy 6-3 victory to a 7-6 loss.  There are days when a pitcher just doesn’t have it and I think it’s safe to say that Jenks “didn’t have it” today.

The new Target Field is a really good looking stadium and still proves to be a tough place to play but it just doesn’t scare me the same way that the Twinkie Dome did.  I say this because I think when they designed the stadium they had three main concerns in mind: Mauer-Proof it, Morneau-Proof it, and then once those two were done….Kubel-Proof it.  I mean you are kidding yourself if you don’t think some architect from Edina, Mauer, and Adam Banks sat around a table just smashing cake and drawing up the worst possible stadium design.

The entire strength of the Twins lineup and the faces of their franchise for the next ten years are left handed hitters, yet they have a ballpark that couldn’t be further from their strengths.  No longer can Mauer slap balls into the first two rows in left and left center like he did in the dome.  No longer can Morneau and Kubel use the gaps and slap balls over the weak ass garbage bag that they used as a fence.  The new Target Field is a massive park and the ball just dies in the deep gaps.  Mauer has a grand total of 0, yes 0, home runs at home this year.  Morneau has a grand total of 4 and Kubel has 6 so the big three has a total of 10.

The twins are a very good team and the AL Central is going to be a three team race the whole way but I just don’t think the Twins have enough pitching to win the division in their new pitchers park.

Well this wasn’t what we needed.  As soon as the Jake Meister left the mound in pain last night, I knew we were in a lot of trouble.  Not many guys pitch through more pain than Jake Peavy so when it forced him out, I knew we were fucked.  If I needed any more confirmation of that, I listened to Hawk say: “Stoney, I don’t know where the Latissimus is, but it don’t sound good.”

The official diagnosis is that Peavy’s Latissimus Dorsi is detached from the bone and he is headed to see the dreaded Dr. James Andrews.  Best case scenarios have him being out two months and worst case scenarios have him not touching a baseball until next February in Glendale, AZ.  Either way, we are going to be without one of our best and hottest pitchers for a long time.

The silver lining is we get to see top pitching prospect Daniel Hudson show us what he can do.  I hope he lives up to the hype but no matter what, the White Sox just took a serious blow in trying to win the AL Central.

If Hawk’s most popular word for the month was “Mercy!” you know it was a great month.  The White Sox started June with a 22-28 record and I was telling you who should be traded if a fire sale happened.  Well, June ended with the team sitting just 2.5 games out of first place at 40-37……and now I want to be a buyer at the trade deadline.

It truly was a historic month.  We saw our team go 18-9 with an 11 game win streak that was the longest win streak since 1961 when Luis Aparicio was playing short (and no the 79 year old at third base right now is not Aparicio, that is Omar Vizquel).  The starting pitchers finally caught fire and pitched the way they were supposed to and the offense went from terrible to average.  Sure we spent most of the month beating up on the inferior National League but hey, you can only beat the teams on your schedule and that is just what we did.  The great month propelled the South Siders right into contention and we should have a great 3 team race the rest of the way with Detroit and Minnesota.

As great as June was, it is now back to reality as the White Sox must prove they can stay hot against the AL.  This team has the pitching staff and bullpen to compete all year long but it is going to take the offense heating up or one more bat at the trade deadline to compete with the Yankees and the Red Sox out there.  My wish for July is one thing……a power left handed bat.  Yes, I want your Vegan ass on my squad Prince.

June Highlight:  Jake Peavy’s complete game 1-0 shutout against the Nats

June Lowlight:  Almost getting no-hit by Lilly and then leaving the bases loaded to lose 1-0 at Wrigley.

Well that went exactly how everyone expected. One team sucks, the other team is playing real well. One team plays in the big boy league, the other team plays in AAAA. One team has a psycho baby for a starting pitcher, the other team has a starting rotation that is showing signs of being top notch (12-1 in last 17 games).

Is anyone surprised that the South Siders went home with the illustrious BP cup this year? This weekend just proved everything we already know. The Cubs suck and the White Sox are pretty good. Even in the Cubs lone victory they coughed up an 8-3 lead and almost blew the game in the 9th.

This team and its manager is deader than dead. At some point it becomes evident that a team just stinks, and the past 2 weeks have proven that for the Cubs. Theyre 9-14 in the month of June and 8.5 back in the central. And the baffling part about the Cubs is that they suck across the board. The batting is mediocre, the team era is mediocre, the defense is mediocre, the manager is mediocre. Just a collection of middle of the road talent and overpriced veterans, a truly depressing team to watch.

But hey, look on the bright side, Lebron and Bosh will be Bulls in about 2 weeks.

The White Sox are on fire.   I’m talking Ron Burgandy hot…..

I don’t want to give myself too much credit but you may remember that about two weeks ago I said this team was about to go on a run.  Well after Paulie’s big two run homer today, make it 9 in a row and 13 out of 14.  If you weren’t a believer after sweeps of the Pirates and Strasburg’s, I hope you are back after a sweep of the Braves who came in with the NL’s best record.

The pitching has just been dominant as the big 5 starters are pitching like we all expected them to.  Combine that with Jenks finding his curveball and Quentin and A.J. starting to hit, and we have ourselves a real team.  I’m not talking about ordering playoff tickets or anything like that, I’m just happy to have a competitive team that is playing like we all thought they would.   If Minnesota isn’t careful, we may just be in first place at the All-Star Break.  White Sox fans should be ready to beat up the Cubs this weekend and get Big Z to smash a Gatorade cooler tomorrow.

Oh and Kenny, now that I don’t have to give you any more lists of guys to sell off at the trade deadline, I’d like to put in an order for Prince Fielder.  Thanks.

Tonight I thought I was going to live through my worst nightmare and see my team get no-hit by the Cubs at the place where Ozzie pukes every time he walks in the door (Wrigley for those who are a bit slow).  It was really a bizarre baseball game as both pitchers just dominated and had no-hitters into the 7th.  Considering no hitters are the cool thing to do this year, I thought we might see something crazy and have both guys go 9 without giving up a hit.

Even as a Sox fan, I tip my cap to Lilly for a great performance but I couldn’t have been happier to see Juan get back at his old team and break up the celebration at Wrigley with a hit to start the 9th (by the 9th inning about half the crowd stopped talking about shopping and realized they might actually see history).  Then all of the sudden it went from history to what looked like a White Sox winner with 2nd and 3rd nobody out…… until Marmol slammed the door shut with some filthy stuff.  He did what a great closer should do but there is no excuse for not getting a run across the plate at that point.

Even with a painful loss, the White Sox put together another very good series and take 2 of 3 from the Cubbies.  Round 2 of the crosstown classic will head down to the South Side in two weeks as the Sox will try to capture the prestigious BP Cup and dump oil all over each other in celebration.