Watching the White Sox the last couple of days reminds me of Albert Einstein's definition of insanity:
doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
By this definition, this would make Sox hitters stark-raving lunatics.
I thought pitching would keep the Sox out of the playoffs if anything, but as the Sox fall further behind Minnesota in the wild card race, the bats are currently to blame. The last solid Sox effort came at the hands (or arm) of Casey Fossum on August 29. Since then, the only wins have come because of a shoddy bullpen or shoddy defense. When they're not getting help from the opponents, they're helpless.
One of the benefits of keeping score is that I'll see things that I don't readily recognize as patterns. Around the seventh inning at the game yesterday, I looked down at my scorebook and realized the Red Sox had not recorded one single outfield putout. Only when Joe Crede flew out to center with one out in the ninth did a Red Sox outfielder make a catch. The rest of the "attack" consisted of choppers jerked into the ground.
I didn't think it could get worse, but it was more of the same tonight, with the only difference being baserunners to double up. When Pablo Ozuna is hitting the nicest fly balls on the team -- and if any other Sox player hit that ball to center that purely, it would've been at least a double -- something's wrong. When they weren't striking out, they were grounding out to the pull side.
Against Kason Gabbard and Julian Tavarez, neither of whom were in the rotation at even the All-Star break, the Sox have grounded out 27 times, opposed to three flyouts. That's absolutely pathetic.
I blamed Freddy Garcia for calling out his teammates for not giving him any support, but if he were pitching in either of these ballgames, I would've backed him wholeheartedly. Jon Garland and Javier Vazquez have pitched tough, tough games, holding a pretty talented offense to two runs over 14 innings. Yet both times they left the game, they were in line for the loss.
Garland was bailed out in the bottom of the sixth when the Sox actually managed to put a couple balls in the air. Vazquez was never that lucky.