As I watched the White Sox deliver an 11-2 shellacking to the Royals, while simultaneously hitting “refresh” over and over on my fantasy baseball page, waiting for Matt Wieters to be declared a Free Agent (my commissioner only allows you to sign players on Major League rosters… lame), I realized something: the White Sox are good at baseball again. I came to this conclusion simply because I’ve enjoyed watching baseball for the past couple weeks. When the Sox are bad, it’s hard for me to read the Sports page or make small-talk with other sports fans, let alone sit down and watch three hours of sub-par ball. However they’ve now won three series in a row and, based on those series, the Sox are only capable of winning the first two games of a given series, while giving up the sweep opportunity. But hey, baby steps.

Firstly, I can’t say enough about Clayton Richard. If some of the best deals are the ones you don’t make, KW might want to write Jake peavy a hand-written note, cause Richard’s been fantastic. He went seven innings today, allowing only two runs on six hits and one walk. He consistently got ahead of the count with good strikes and was able to finish guys off to the tune of seven strikeouts, mostly due to the fact that he was able to consistently get his slider and curveball over for strikes. Just as important, he pitched efficiently, needing only 92 pitches to get through his seven innings of work. In his last three starts, he’s 2-0 with 3 earned runs in 20 innings. That’s huge. It sure would be a great bonus if we could rely on him for quality outings down the stretch this season.

Allow me to comment on Scott Podsednik. Pods was one of my favorite players during the 2005 World Series season and had he not been there, there’s no doubt in my mind that the Sox wouldn’t have won it. The tune of the entire White Sox offense was set to his rhythm. Flash forward four years and Pods is back. He was supposed to only be outfield insurance, but the guy has been a breath of fresh air for this team. He’s batting a respectable .282 with a modest 3 stolen bases, but what he’s done more than anything is keep teams on their toes with the threat of speed and taking extra bases to put pressure on opposing pitchers. I don’t expect him to keep it up all season, but him being hot during Carlos Quentin’s absence would really help keep this team productive.

Also really quickly, I talked a little bit about Josh Fields last post and he had another good game today, going 3 for 5 with two RBI and two runs. With performances like that I don’t see how you can tell Fields “thanks, but no thanks,” and call Gordon Beckham up. He’ll have his time, but let’s let Fields keep his job as long as he’s fighting for it. He’s hitting .241 right now. Alexei’s up to .250 as well, which is great to see.

Keep it rolling!