In a classic Opening Day game that tells us nothing, the White Sox victimized a Cleveland Indians team breaking in several rookies and a veteran hurler making his first start since early '08. Obviously the South-Siders showed some promise, but it's hard to imagine that this isn't the very worst that Cleveland has to offer.
The White Sox opened the season with a 1:05 start against Cleveland, as is typical for them to do on Opening Day. Some baseball 'purists' think all games should be played at this time; presumably because they are all unemployed. The combination of my job and Buerhle's swift pace conspired to make me miss the entire game, but the stench of Cleveland's performance wafted into my car during the drive home.
Call me an optimist, but I think we can attribute most of Jake Westbrook's four wild pitches, two hit batsmen, and four walks to year-and-a-half-layoff related control problems. Cleveland's retooled and green offense was bound to take some time adjusting to someone as crafty and unique as Buerhle is in his approach, and Westbrook's control problems coupled with the first-inning Konerko home run took the young Indians* out of the game early.
Cleveland's offense will mature, Westbrook will settle down (though pitchers will probably continue to plunk Quentin), and the Indians will only get better from here on out. Yet there are some positives to be taken out of this game. Though many of the hitters he faced were too young to know which part of the bat is the handle, Buehrle was effective in his typical manner; he struck out few, exhibited very good control, played good defense (yes I saw the play, clean your pants), and blazed through seven innings in barely two hours. Konerko homered and walked twice, temporarily staving off me panicking about how old he is. Quentin was very productive and displayed his trademark ability to be the guy who annoyingly stands right on the plate and gets hit a lot. Beckham had two hits, and started off the shoulda-been-bigger 5th inning with a crisp double (I expect 85 more, Gordon. Or you could just start hitting home runs, it's your choice). Rios even added a meaningless solo home run in the 8th so he could at least appear to be a less colossal waste of money. Damn decent of you, Alex. What's best is that the two offseason additions to the lineup contributed:
Pierre & Teahen: 0-7, 1 BB, 2 K
Oh...well....hmrph....
I know as a moody blogger it's my job to poke a littany of holes in a 6-0 win against a crappy team, but that seems like enough. I'll have plenty to complain about on Wednesday when Fausto Carmona no-hits the Sox while I'm in attendance.
Besides, shouldn't you be watching the title game anyway?
*That such a strange sentence to type. How the hell in 2010 is a team called the Cleveland Indians with such a preposterously garish representation of American Indians as their logo allowed to exist? You know what the common retort to my complaints is? "That's what Chief Wahoo looked like". Really? His face was bright red and his teeth took up half his face? Does no one pay attention to anything Cleveland does?!?!?! How else does this continue??
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