Tigers 9, White Sox 0: positives and negatives

April 15, 5:44 PMChicago White Sox ExaminerJJ Stankevitz

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Not exactly pretty results, but a ton of credit has to be given to Armando Galarraga. He spotted his fastball and slider—pretty much the only two pitches he threw today—absolutely perfectly and exploited a Sox offense that looked content to try to to pull most of the pitches they saw.

Positives

• Jackie Robinson Day. Having all MLB players wear No. 42 was not overkill—it was a nice, fitting tribute to one of, if not the, most important baseball players of all time. 
• Jose Contreras. I know, he gave up five runs over 5.1 innings. But through his first four innings, Contreras was throwing the ball extremely well. Starts like this might be a fact of life for Contreras early in the year as he gets re-acclimated to going deep into games. If he can build off the first four innings of his start today and go deeper into each of his next few starts, he should be about where he wants to be by early May. So while his start today wasn't really a positive, there were some nice positive signs in it. 

Negatives

• The offense. Like I said, give Galarraga a lot of credit for 6.1 scoreless innings—but whatever gameplan the Sox used today, it was pretty bad. As a team, the Sox only had four hits and went 0-6 with men in scoring position. When it came down to it, the Sox just could not lay off Galarraga's low-and-away slider. Brent Lillibridge went 0-3 to drop his season average to .077, so he's well on his way to proving all of his detractors right. He's a terrible option as the team's leadoff hitter, so hopefully for the lineup's sake Chris Getz returns tomorrow in Tampa Bay.
• Mike MacDougal. Unfortunately, MacDougal has proved early in the year that his solid spring was a complete mirage. He had no idea where the ball was going today, walking three while allowing three hits and four runs (all earned) in two innings of mopup work. It might not be long before the Sox turn to a Charlotte reliever to fill in for MacDougal.

Hey, here are positives on some of the White Sox minor leaguers, courtesy of Jeff Manto via Baseball America:

On SS Gordon Beckham: "He’s probably as polished of a college player as I’ve ever seen. He can do it all. There’s not too many chinks in his armor right now—just solid across the board. His weaknesses have not been exposed, but his strengths are numerous. He hits the ball for power, for average, he knows the strike zone and knows his strike zone, so we’re really, really excited about him. He’s polished. He’s ready to play and he needs some minor league at-bats, no doubt, but he’s definitely the closest of everybody in our system."

There also are encouraging notes on Dayan Viciedo, Tyler Flowers, Brandon Allen, Jordan Danks, and Jon Gilmore. Manto really seemed to like Gilmore, who was one of the players brought in from Atlanta in the Javier Vazquez trade. If he and/or Brent Morel develop nicely, the Sox could have a pretty nice surplus of third basemen in a few years.