Series preview: Tigers @ White Sox

May 6, 3:36 PMChicago White Sox ExaminerJJ Stankevitz

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May 6, 7:11 pm: Armando Galarraga vs. Mark Buehrle

Galarraga is an interesting case—his FIP was over a run higher than his ERA in 2008, which usually indicates that a pitcher was lucky (his .247 BABIP shows that, too). In theory, Galarraga should be coming back to earth in 2009—but again, this year, his ERA is just under 0.90 below his FIP. He might end up being one of those pitchers that FIP doesn't like—such as Buehrle (career ERA 3.79, career FIP 4.14).

However, Galarraga will be on his way to normalizing his ERA with his FIP if he has another start like he did May 1 against Cleveland. In that start, Galarraga lasted five innings while allowing five runs on eight hits, three walks, and two strikeouts. He allowed 10 fly balls to six ground balls—and in his previous four starts, he had allowed no more than two more fly ball outs than ground ball outs. For a pitcher who throws pretty much exclusively fastball/slider, he can't get away with leaving those pitches up in the zone—so if he's up in the zone today, the Sox offense should have some success.

Buehrle will face Detroit for the first time this year. He's coming a six inning, three-run performance against Texas (which, at Rangers Ballpark, is a good start). He's been allowing more fly balls than usual lately, but other than that, he's been his usual solid self.

A final note: Alexei Ramirez needs to sit this game out. He's not hitting at all this year, and mainly, he hasn't hit sliders at all this year. Yeah, his only home run came on a "slider" from Shawn Camp—but that pitch hung like William Hung and the Hung Jury. You can get he's going to see a steady diet of sliders from Galarraga, and unless something changes in his approach overnight, he's not going to hit them. Giving Jayson Nix a start at short tonight wouldn't be a bad idea.

[Ed. note: I swear I was writing this part before Joe Cowley reported that Nix would start today]

May 7, 7:11 pm: Zach Miner vs. Jose Contreras

The White Sox absolutely torched Miner when they faced him in Detroit April 13—eight earned runs with three home runs were charged to Miner that day in just 3.1 innings. Outside of that start, Miner has at least been serviceable for Detroit, though. He's not going to give them six, seven, eight innings, but for the most part, he's given Detroit about five decent innings in his starts.

Given his FIP (5.44) and his ERA (4.50), the bottom could fall out for Miner, who walks too many while striking out too few. He's inefficient with his pitches and won't go deep into games, either. However, he does get a lot of ground balls (2.67 GB/FB ratio this year), so there still a pretty decent chance that he remains in Detroit's rotation as a serviceable back-end starter for the majority of the year.

Miner was leaving the ball up in his April 13 start against the Sox, and that obviously spelled disaster for him. Of his outs recorded, six were fly balls while eight were ground balls—and while that's not necessarily bad, Miner needs that difference to be five or more between fly balls and ground balls, not two, to have a shot at success.

While Conteras has an 8.31 ERA through five starts, Ozzie Guillen doesn't seem to be willing to drop him from the rotation anytime soon. In every year of his career, Contreras has thrown his forkball over 20 percent of the time, or about once per batter faced. This year, he's only thrown that pitch—which is his only true out-pitch—10.6 percent of the time. Without it, he's been throwing mostly fastballs and sliders—and neither pitch can get hitters out with consistency if they don't respect the forkball.

I'm not saying that getting his forkball back will immediately cure all of Contreras' woes. He obviously doesn't have the feel for it right now—even when he has thrown it this year, it's rarely been for strikes—but if he gets that pitch back, he'll at least become a serviceable fourth or fifth starter.

Granted, the Sox can't wait much longer for him to get that pitch back. Clayton Richard hasn't pitched well enough to take over for Contreras, and neither has Lance Broadway. However, if Contreras continues to pitch as poorly as he has, the Sox might want to take a look at either Carlos Torres or Wes Whisler from Triple-A Charlotte. I'm not saying that Torres or Whisler are definitely better options than Contreras, but calling them up for a few starts and getting Contreras some work in low-leverage situations out of the bullpen might be better in the long run.

Outlook

The Sox have lost four straight coming into this series and played some of their worst baseball of the year on a five-game road trip to Texas and Kansas City. These games are still very early in the year, but righting the ship against Detroit and Texas in these next five games could go a long way in these next few weeks.

The Sox' bats finally woke up against a starter yesterday against Kyle Davies, but Gavin Floyd's continued struggles and and unfortunately terrible job by Matt Thornton killed any chance the Sox had of winning.

Alexei Ramirez might see his leash shrink even more with another poor string of games, so he could certainly use a big homestand.

Finally, it'd be big if Jim Thome could break out of his current slump. He seemed to be lunging at the ball from what I could tell from the stands at Kauffman yesterday, and if he can just stay back and think about driving the ball to left-center, he could quickly break out of his slump. Of course, it's not as simple as that, as pitchers have been busting Thome inside all year. If he can't make an adjustment soon, you can get Ozzie Guillen is going to be fielding even more questions about Thome's heel.