The Finish Line Is Near

With four games to go, the White Sox sit in first place with a three game lead. Their magic number sits at two, their playoff magic number sits at one. At this point the Sox are all but in the playoffs, and the media can now stop talking about them choking.

So I’m in a good mood, it’s amazing how this team can affect my outlook on life. Most of the year I’ve just been in such a damn good mood that I haven’t been down much this year, but the past two weeks I’ve been a bit nervous and even found myself pissed off the other day when they had lost to the Tigers. But for now, I can let that all go. The Sox are going to the playoffs, and probably will have home field advantage on top of that.

I know this team is so flawed at this point that it’s amazing that they’ve gotten this far. Their starting pitching, which was great, has let them down in the second half. Their bullpen is just good enough, but my no means great. They only have one real power hitter in Konerko, and while Dye has done a fine job this year, he’s hitting in the five hole when he should be hitting sixth. They don’t have a number three hitter, which will probably be the demise of this team in the end.

Then again, this team knows how to create runs since they’ve been doing it all year. They have the hottest pitcher in baseball in Jose Contreras. Their other three starters can come on and shutout anyone. Pods stole a base yesterday, so maybe he can run again. Crede and Uribe have been very good at the bottom of the line up over the last month. If some how Rowand and Everett can stop being the black holes that they’ve been in the second half, the Sox have good as shot as anyone else.

Anyway, if I had to guess, the AL playoffs are going to look like this:

White Sox vs Red Sox
Yanks vs LAAofA (nothing gives me more pleasure than typing LAAofA... it's so outrageous, it's so Calli, it's so perfect, someday I hope they're the LAAofAintheOC. A man can dream as the great Martin Luther the King, Jr. once said).