Series preview: White Sox @ Royals

May 4, 1:06 PMChicago White Sox ExaminerJJ Stankevitz

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Zack Greinke has been absolutely dominant so far this year.

May 4, 7:10 pm: Bartolo Colon vs. Zack Greinke

Through five starts, Greinke has been, without a doubt, the best pitcher in baseball. He has 44 strikeouts to just eight walks through 36 innings. He's thrown two complete games, one of them a shutout. He's allowed just two earned runs all year—the list goes on.

Greinke is holding batters to a .191 batting average, and the scary thing is that it's not a fluke—his opponents' BABIP is .294, meaning that he hasn't been extremely lucky this year. His FIP—which measures how good a pitcher has been regardless of the fielding behind him—is a MLB-best 1.47 (side note: Javier Vazquez has baseball's second-lowest FIP).

Alright, so Greinke is good—if the season ended today, he'd be the unanimous AL Cy Young. He's already started against the White Sox this year, allowing three hits, three walks, seven strikeouts, and no earned runs over 6.0 innings at U.S. Cellular Field April 8. In that start, Greinke kept the ball down for the most part and picked his spots to throw inside or high, which explains his 8/1 GB/FB ratio for that game. The Sox—like just about every other lineup that has faced Greinke—didn't hit the ball hard a whole lot off Greinke.

Everything seems to be pointing in favor of Greinke and the Royals in this game. The Sox are coming off a weekend in which they scored a combined four runs off Scott Feldman, Brandon McCarthy, and Matt Harrison (and three of those runs scored after Feldman left the game), which was really just a continuation of a disturbing trend that has shown up this year. As Jim at Soxmachine pointed out, the White Sox have not hit starting pitching this year (triple-slash splits: .226/.298/.292). Once the relievers come in, the Sox offense has taken off—but this lineup cannot rely on three innings of offense to score enough runs to win.

If that trend keeps up on Monday, the White Sox may not have a chance to get into the Royals' bullpen. And even if the Sox do get into the Royals' bullpen, if it's Juan Cruz and Joakim Soria, it won't make much of a difference (however, if it's this guy, they might have a shot).

Colon is coming off a nice rebound start, throwing 7.0 innings while allowing an unearned run on four hits, one walk, and six strikeouts against the Mariners. Granted, that was against a pretty bad offensive team, but Colon's fastball looked much better than it did in his April 23 start against the Orioles.

Having that good fastball will be key for Colon, but going up against Greinke, there won't be much margin for error. Even giving up three runs over six or seven innings might earn Colon a loss, so he will have to put together an excellent start against an offense that scored 22 runs against Minnesota in three games over the weekend.

Can the White Sox beat Greinke? Yes, anything can happen. But will they? I certainly wouldn't bet a whole lot of money on it.

May 5, 7:10 pm: Gavin Floyd vs. Kyle Davies

Davies started the year off well by throwing seven shutout innings with eight strikeouts and two walks against the White Sox April 9, but since that start, his performance has been spotty. His numbers have been trending in the wrong way in his last few starts, as he's been allowing more home runs, striking out fewer batters, and allowing more runs.

Last year, Davies' did not allow more than three runs in any of his four starts against the White Sox—but in three of those starts, he did not make it past the sixth inning. Looking at Davies' last couple of starts, they seem to mirror those starts against the Sox, with one exception (Davies allowed seven runs in 5.1 innings against Detroit April 25). In those starts, he's thrown between five and six innings while allowing three earned runs in every game.

Again, though, Davies' peripherals have been trending in the wrong direction—especially his K/BB ratio, which has been 1:1 in his last three starts.

Davies may not repeat his April 9 start, but expect him to go five or six innings while allowing a few runs. However, if the White Sox offense still shows the same ineptitude against starting pitchers that they've shown all year, then Davies could repeat that start.

As for Floyd, he's struggled in his last two starts. He's had major problems locating his fastball like he did for stretches last year—but this time, he's getting burned because of it. He's still walking too many batters—again, like he did last year—but, again, he's getting burned because his BABIP is so high this year.

That stat will go down—it's not going to stay at .375—but it's almost like Floyd's luck from last year (.268 BABIP) is normalizing itself this year. However, here's the good news: Floyd's FIP this year sits at 3.92 through five starts, which is nearly a full run lower than his 2008 season FIP. In theory, his ERA should regress toward his FIP, but then again, maybe this is another example of the baseball gods evening out Floyd's luck*, as his FIP was 4.77 last year while his ERA was 3.84.

If Floyd can locate his fastball and curveball well and start missing some bats, his numbers will start to move in the right direction. Doing that against a Kansas City offense that has looked very good as of late will be very important if the White Sox want to leave Kansas City with a win.

Outlook

We're 25 games into the season and the Royals are in first place. The Royals. They haven't played this well since 2003, when the Royals shocked everybody and won 83 games—the franchise's only finish above .500 since the 1994 strike. This team isn't without holes, but anchored by a pretty decent pitching staff and a lights-out back of the bullpen, this team definitely has a chance to contend for the AL Central title this year.

Also, I'll tentatively be in Kansas City for Tuesday night's game. I'll probably do some twittering from the stands, so check out my twitter page (@ChiSoxExaminer) for some updates from the K (which, let me add—the Royals did a GREAT job with the renovations there).

*This is not to be taken seriously.