Series Preview: Chicago White Sox @ Seattle Mariners

Seattle: 36-56
Chicago: 50-41

Credit to the pitchers for the White Sox holding the lead in the AL Central so far. Three of the big successes for Chicago on the mound this season have been John Danks and Gavin Floyd who have both increased their ground ball rates and J.J. Putz who is pitching like 2006-Putz again. Danks and Floyd are scheduled to start this series and I would be amazed if we missed Putz completely.

As a note of caution, the Mariner hitters are on the verge of falling below the Astros for dead last in the league. Another series like this past one and it could flip. The Mariners struggled through May the victim of some cripplingly bad luck. The Mariners are struggling through July because they're sucking. I think it is vitally important that we distinguish those two. 

Mon Jul 19, 19:10: David Pauley vs. Dan Hudson

Tue Jul 20, 19:10: Doug Fister vs. John Danks*

Wed Jul 21, 19:10: Felix Hernandez vs. Gavin Floyd

Dan Hudson is Jake Peavy's replacement who has been pitching pretty well down in Triple-A and went all the way from A-ball to the Major Leagues last season before heading back down. He should be interesting to take a look at. David Pauley is a lot less interesting, but he is on our team so that counts for something. Seven in fact. It counts for seven things.

The risk that a pitcher like Doug Fister faces is that sometimes he has outings like the one against the Angels. While it certainly seemed like a poor outing, Fister faced 28 hitters and walked only one and avoided any home runs. Overall it was a solid effort from Fister but sometimes you allow a .480 BABIP and when you do not remove many hitters via strikeout than you are susceptible to those hits stringing together into lots of runs.