Sunday Spotlight: John Danks

Here's something to chew on:

If you take out John Danks' April 9 start when he gave up seven runs in 2.1 innings against Minneosta, the White Sox southpaw has allowed a grand total of one run the entire year.

With today's 7.0 innings of shutout ball, Danks has now thrown 14.2 consecutive scoreless innings dating back to his April 15 start against Oakland where he threw 7.2 innings without allowing a run.

During this run, Danks has done two huge things right: throw strikes and get ground balls. Those were two of his biggest problems last year—when he was falling behind in counts and not getting ground balls, it was a given that he was going to get lit up and/or not make it through the fifth inning.

Against Oakland, Danks induced 12 ground balls while striking out four. 

Danks may have been better today, as he got eight groundouts but also struck out the same number.

Basically, the 23-year-old Danks is in a groove and shows no signs of slowing down. 

It's easy to see that Danks has gained a lot of confidence since his second-half meltdown last year. He watched a lot of video in the offseason and added a cut fastball that has done wonders for him. He's not afraid to pitch inside with his fastball and work his curveball and changeup outside.

I've harped on the fact that the White Sox need to get good performances out of their 3-4-5 starters if they want to have success this year. Gavin Floyd certainly has done his part, while Jose Contreras has been iffy but does have some decent results.

And then there's Danks, who now is 2-1 with a 3.04 ERA. But again, if you take that start against Minnesota out of the equation (which is looking more and more like an aberration that was caused by the frigid conditions under which that game was played), he's only allowed one run in 21.1 innings of work this year.

Something tells me he isn't going to significantly slow down anytime soon, either.