Chicago White Sox 4, Oakland Athletics 1: The Good, Bad, and Indifferent

Box Score

Good

John Danks

This was a huge start for Danks after he really struggled six days ago against Minnesota. Today Danks went 7.2 innings, giving up five hits, two walks, striking out four, and not allowing an earned run.

As Ozzie Guillen said after the game, "When he's good, he's real good, when he's bad, he's real bad."

If you toss out the miserable outing against Minnesota, Danks has thrown 14.1 innings and allowed one earned run.

That's how good Danks can be—he just needs to consistently have more starts like he did today. He pitched to contact, which is the biggest key for success for Danks.

The Offense

Despite only getting one hit in the first three innings, the lineup wore Dana Eveland down to the point where they could jump on him—and that came in the form of a long, three-run home run off the bat of Carlos Quentin.

Eveland threw 87 pitches in his 4.2 innings of work—just another in a long line of pitchers who have been worn down by the White Sox offense (with exemptions being Greg Smith and Fausto Carmona).

Bobby Jenks

Oakland attempted to make a comeback in the ninth off Scott Linebrink, putting runners at the corners with nobody out, forcing Linebrink out of the game.

However, Jenks came in and got Emil Brown to fly out and Bobby Crosby to ground into a game-ending double play to give Jenks his fifth save in as many chances this year.

Jackie Robinson Day

In recent years, Major League Baseball has done a great job of honoring the legacy of Jackie Robinson. I really like allowing players to wear #42 in honor of Robinson, and six White Sox players and the entire Oakland Athletics team wore Robinson's number for today's game.

If you ask me, no single athlete has had more positive impact to the world of sports than Jackie Robinson. It's really great to see MLB honoring him in the way they do.

Bad

I'll confess that I missed the third through eighth innings of this game because my ethics class here at Mizzou goes from 2:00-3:15, so I'm not going to place any bad judgment on any players today since A) the Sox won and B) I didn't watch most of the game.

Indifferent

Scott Linebrink

Linebrink had a little hiccup today, allowing one run in his 0.1 innings of work. However, he's been very good on the whole for the Sox this year, so I'm willing to forgive him as long as giving up a run doesn't become a trend—which I'm pretty sure it won't.

Sorry for the shortness of the article, but hey, as long as I'm not getting paid for this, school takes priority.

The Sox travel to Baltimore tomorrow. Game time is 6:05.