Don't believe the hype: Upcoming Dodgers series bigger than Crosstown Classic

June 22, 4:13 PMChicago White Sox ExaminerJJ Stankevitz

Previous Next

5 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Chicago White Sox Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Cubs/Sox is always one of, if not the, biggest baseball series of the year in Chicago regardless of where either team is in the standings. The atmospheres are always equivalent to playoff games as the whole city drops what they're doing to watch the games on either side of town.

But for the White Sox, the biggest series of the week is a three-game series Tuesday through Thursday against the Dodgers, the best team in baseball at 46-24.

The Sox are coming off a 5-3 "road trip" that took them to Milwaukee, the North Side, and Cincinnati. Powerhouse SEC football schools do less traveling than that for non-conference games—that means you, Florida and Georgia.

Last time the White Sox had a good road trip (5-1 against the Angels and Royals May 25-31), they followed it up by Ricky Barnes'ing the next homestand, going 4-8 against the A's, Indians, and Tigers. Outside of the Tigers, those should have been pretty easy wins, at least in theory.

For the first time in what seems like forever, the White Sox actually have a better road record (17-18) than home record (16-18). Usually, going .500 on the road is a really good thing as it'll set a team up to make the playoffs if they can pull their weight at home. For whatever reason, the Sox haven't been able to do that this year. On that 12-game homsteand, the Sox were shut out three times and averaged just over three runs a game. Compare that to the five runs per game the Sox averaged on the eight-game road trip that just concluded and you have just about the reverse of 2008, when the Sox were great offensively at home and poor on the road.

Expecting the offense to cure its home woes against the Dodgers might be a tall order, though. While Hiroki Kuroda is coming off back-to-back bad starts, the Sox have a history of struggling against pitchers that feature sinkers/splitters and force hitters to take the ball up the middle and the other way. Randy Wolf has been surprisingly good this year, but he's giving up a ton of fly balls that could come back to bite him if the predicted hot weather holds during the week. And Chad Billingsley has been one of the better pitchers in the NL this year despite seeing his strikeout totals fall in his last few starts.

On top of good pitching, the Dodgers have a very solid lineup that isn't extremely flashy (especially without Manny Ramirez) but still find ways to score in a style that seems similar to the '05 White Sox to the outside observer.

If the Sox can find a way to take two of three in this series, it could go a long way toward righting the ship at home. In theory.

Then again, this team has been so unpredictable in the last year and a half that trying to spot any sort of improvements or trends is often useless. Yeah, that's a huge caveat.  But it's just a reminder that while this series is important, it certainly won't dictate success for the rest of the year.

It's just more important than the Cubs series.