Here’s a quick snapshot of their hitting as a whole:

They’re just…bad at everything.  They strike out at an above average rate (I ranked the lowest K% as 1 and the highest as 30), yet that swing-and-miss profile doesn’t yield above average power.  They are walking more than they have in the past, but not enough to prop up their otherwise low power and low contact proclivities.

So far this season they have been held to two or fewer runs by the following mediocre-to-bad-to-horrible pitchers: Clay Buchholz, Dillon Gee, Ivan Nova, Cody Anderson (x2)*, Hector Santiago, a Matt Harvey who could not feel his fingers and now may never pitch effectively again, Yordano Ventura, Jered Weaver, Erasmo Ramirez**, Mike Pelfrey, Mike Foltynewicz, Mike Fiers, and Kyle Gibson.

*In fact, out of nine appearances in the majors this year, Anderson has shut down the White Sox twice and then gotten absolutely annihilated in the other seven.  They are literally the only team he can pitch against.

**Out of 36 appearances this year, Ramirez was only allowed to start one game.  He threw nearly six innings of shutout ball.

This is hardly scientific–I am just listing pitchers that I consider to be extremely beatable, chucking out good starts against them of less than 5 innings, and I’m not even including last night’s vivisection at the hands of Matt “Still Moonlights in Salt Lake City for the Angels” Shoemaker–but that list alone represents 15.5 percent of the games the White Sox have played this year.

By contrast, the Indians have a roughly league average offense, sitting at 16th in MLB by TAv, and it looks like they’ve had six such similar games where they were shut down by a weak pitcher.*

*Ian Kennedy, that same Mike Fiers, Tyler Duffey, Joe Kelly, Derek Holland, and Wade Miley.

This is just one way an offense can fail, but this is my response to yet another embarrassing outing by the offense that has been defended by some who say, “Well, Shoemaker was just dealing yesterday.” And maybe he was! But I find it hard to believe that one fringe major leaguer after another just happens to have the game of their life against the White Sox on such a consistent basis.  It really is, in fact, the offense’s fault.  And if you’re going to dig yourself a hole against the dregs of the league, it’s hard to imagine that you’ll make up the ground against actual good pitchers in the other games.

I suppose it isn’t surprising–the lineup has a modest high end trying carry dead weight at multiple positions.  The primary DH is the 12th worst hitter in the majors, and there’s only one qualified hitter in all of baseball worse than him who isn’t a shortstop, catcher, or center fielder.  That’s on top of punting offense at catcher and center field, and shortstop only recently getting upgraded.

Even marginal major leaguers can have really great games on any given day, and sometimes you just get beat. And, over the course of a season, every team will have multiple games where they just can’t put an attack together against bad pitchers.  That’s fine.  The problem is, virtually every major league pitcher has a way of getting hitters out, and at a certain point you have to acknowledge that the White Sox play 162 games against other major league teams and they cannot afford to get eviscerated by mediocrities with such regularity if they want to sniff the playoffs ever again.

Lead Image Credit: Patrick Gorski // USA Today Sports Images

1. Saturday night in Anaheim, the White Sox fell victim to Angels starter Matt Shoemaker‘s 13-strikeout, complete game shutout breakout party. Shoemaker has been mostly subject to hard luck and hard contact this season despite flashing some dynamic swing-and-miss stuff, but Saturday was more exclusively the latter. Opposing starters have now strung together 30 strikeouts with no walks in 23 innings over the Sox last three games, and they have now lost back-to-back series to last place teams, and there’s a solid five teams between them and a Wild Card spot, in addition to a 8.5 game division gap.

2. There was the whole eight innings that preceded it to get all hot and bothered about, but the Sox probably best represented their struggles by finding a way to blow the ninth inning against Shoemaker when he was spiraling over 100 pitches, and they only needed one run to tie. Adam Eaton laced a leadoff double to the left-center gap, and really avoided a triple out of restraint; risking eliminating the tying run to grab third base with no one out is not prudent, right?

That process may have been good, but after Jose Abreu grounded out uselessly to third, and a bullet Melky Cabrera single to left didn’t allow Eaton to advance beyond third, the results were gut-wrenching. Despite titling over 110 pitches with fading command, and with the deeply struggling Huston Street warming in the pen, Shoemaker dug deep for his best sliders and struck out Todd Frazier–who had no read on him all night and whiffed three times–and Justin Morneau (who otherwise looked good) to end it.

3. Abreu seemed good, or the best of anyone at least. Not in his traditional favorite, ‘I once hit 29 home runs in a half of a season’ good, but he laced a pair of doubles and generally seemed cognizant of the reality that he was facing a glorified No. 4 starter. The mild flurry should keep his season line slightly north of depressing. However, he struck out with Eaton on second to end the sixth–a plate appearance that was imbued with far more importance than any random sixth inning plate appearance should have–and then bounced to short with Eaton representing the tying run on second in the ninth.

4. James Shields was…dominant? Results-wise, at least. He completed the sad version of the complete game, stringing together eight smooth one-run innings, and only getting burned because of the two hits he gave up on the ninth, one was a leadoff triple to Yunel Escobar in the first inning, which lead to a run across on a Mike Trout groundout.

He was far from overwhelming again, striking out just two and showing only flashes of decent breaking stuff, which has been representative of his nice stretch of outings against the Twins, Yankees, Braves and Angels. He’s put together a 1.91 ERA over those four-straight quality starts, but has struck out just 12 in 28.1 innings. The good starts matter, but the future implications are concerning until he shows a bit more.

5. At least Jacob Turner is the spot starter Sunday. That should be able to hold the opposition at bay until the offense gets on track.

Team Record: 45-45

Next game is Sunday at Los Angeles at 2:35pm CT on WGN

Lead Image Credit: Gary A. Vazquez // USA Today Sports Images

Or they grinded out a win against what does not appear to be a very good Angels team, but slapped on enough encouraging individual moments for us to come away believers again. It does not matter, they needed either one just as badly.

1. Mat Latos, disconcerting tomato can of the Spring, has smoothly transitioned into being the revitalization story of April. His 6.1 innings of shutout ball Tuesday night were a continuation of his runaway early success and lowered his season ERA to 0.49, but this game saw Latos get particularly nasty. He struck out five while flashing his hardest breaking stuff of the season, and was even too lively for the strike zone early in the game (three walks in the first two innings).

He’s still getting relatively kid gloves treatment by management, but the double that Latos allowed to get chased in the seventh was the first hit out of the infield all night. The results are outstanding, and the stuff is catching up.

2. Scuffling middle-of-the-order sluggers Jose Abreu and Todd Frazier got lifted beyond their horrendous starts to the season at the expense of Angels starter Matt Shoemaker. Abreu led off the fourth with a solo dinger to center, after Frazier led off the second with a bomb to left field against the mediocre Los Angeles right-hander, amid a night where he reached base three times, scored twice and vaulted his OPS over .600 again.

3. The Sox exploded for their first game with more than three runs in a week, by scoring three runs alone in the eighth off lefty reliever Jose Alvarez, who must have done something nasty recently to Mike Scioscia. Things peaked when Scioscia put Frazier on first with Jimmy Rollins on third, only to have Melky Cabrera send them both home with a booming triple to the right-center gap.

Cabrera then immediately scored on a lined Brett Lawrie single to right, giving the two hottest hitters in the lineup a rare opportunity to work together.

4. Sox defense even got an opportunity to provide a plus contribution. Frazier provided more sparkling work at third base, but the highlight of the night was Adam Eaton gunning down Andrelton Simmons at the plate with a blazing one-hop throw to keep the Angels — and Latos’ line — scoreless in the seventh.

5. The throw allowed the Sox bullpen to keep the game scoreless. Matt Albers extended his scoreless appearance streak to 27 games despite allowing that single with Simmons on second. Nate Jones got a save — the first of his career — for pitching two perfect innings, which saw him tie the hands of the best player in the world with an 89 mph slider.

Team Record: 9-5

Next game is Wednesday at 1:10 p.m. CT vs. the Angels on WGN.

Lead Photo Credit: Mike Dinovo // USA Today Sports Images

Mat Latos had never started a season with consecutive starts allowing one or fewer runs prior to 2016. In fact, should he go a third game accomplishing that same level of run prevention it will be the first three game stretch of that nature for him since April of 2013. How is he doing it? Cat took a deeper look following his first start, and an oversimplified summary is: pitch selection. It’s definitely worth noting that he has a lot of confidence in Dioner Navarro, who caught both of his starts this season. It may also be worth noting that this will be his first start on regular rest this year.

The start to Matt Shoemaker’s season hasn’t been as productive as Latos’, but he did also recently throw multiple innings of one-hit ball in Oakland. It came on the heels of a six-run, three-inning performance in his first start, and both outings pointed to walks being his bugaboo. Unfortunately for the White Sox, they are dead last in the majors in walk percentage, and ill-equipped to take advantage of erratic pitching.

Player-turned-television analyst CJ Nitkowski hypothesized that the Angels think the White Sox are signaling signs from second base to the hitters at the plate. The problem with this is how hard I had to think about whether or not to use the plural of hitter in the statement. If the Sox are stealing signs, at least through that method, they have to get somebody to second base to carry out the mission. The offense, it would seem, is not currently good enough for some light cheating.

Despite their 13-hit attack last night, only one of the Angels hits went for extra bases – a double by Andrelton Simmons. Surely they’re eager to supplement that tonight. Latos missed a few extra bats against Minnesota but he’s still probably not looking to turn back into a strikeout pitcher. The Angels have struck out at a lower rate than any team in the league thus far, and will be attempting to make some hard contact against the man they were able to call their teammate for about a week in 2015.

The beneficiary of last night’s demotion of J. B. Shuck has been announced as Erik Johnson. Johnson has struck out 12 batters over his two starts in Charlotte so far this season but he’s also allowed 11 hits over that time.

White Sox Lineup:

1. Adam Eaton – RF
2. Jimmy Rollins – SS
3. Jose Abreu – 1B
4. Todd Frazier – 3B
5. Melky Cabrera – LF
6. Brett Lawrie – 2B
7. Austin Jakcson – CF
8. Avisail Garcia – DH
9. Dioner Navarro – C

Angels Lineup:

1. Yunel Escobal – 3B
2. Rafael Ortega – LF
3. Mike Trout – CF
4. Albert Pujols – DH
5. Kole Calhoun – RF
6. Andrelton Simmons – SS
7. C.J. Cron – 1B
8. Carlos Perez – C
9. Cliff Pennington – 2B

Lead Photo Credit: Kenny Karst – USA Today Sports Images