News Flash! White Sox Fans...This is Not 2005!

I will be up front with all of you. I'm an Indians fan living in Chicago. So I am required to hate on the Sox. But I will state my case anyways.

Just so all of you Sox fans out there understand, this is 2008, not 2005 all over again. I listen to Chicago sports talk to and from work every day. I hear the callers calling in, I hear the radio personalities, I hear the Sox TV and radio broadcast teams.

They are all starting to sound the same, and they are all starting to sound like they did about this time in 2005.

Let's get this right. They've played 19 games (as of time written 4/23). It's obviously still April. The Sox are last in the league in hits with 158 and 23rd in batting average, hitting an astounding .247 as a team.

So it is sort of looking like 2005 there. Their pitching is overachieving like in 2005, with a top 10 ranking in ERA with 3.74. And the White Sox are the only team in the league with single digit HR allowed with eight.

So that's looking like 2005 too. But let's look at who the starting rotation was in 2005 and who is there this year. There was the familiar Mark Buehrle, Jose Contreras, Jon Garland, Freddy Garcia, and Orlando Hernandez.

All of those pitchers were pretty good in the past, except for maybe Garland, who was somewhat still young and untested.

But now look at your starting rotation. Mark Buehrle is still there, but clearly not the pitcher he was in 2005. Contreras is still there, but no one really knows how old he is and he is defiantly showing his age.

Then there's the four and one-third inning wonder that is Javier Vasquez. There are the promising but untested Gavin Floyd and John Danks, who no one knows if they can do some of the things they are doing now for an entire season.

Looking back at 2005, although a somewhat of a fluke season (because everyone had the nearly the best year of their careers) the pitching was very good. They did overachieve, but the staff was made up of legitimate starters who stepped up. You can't go against the playoff run they compiled that year going 11-1.

White Sox fans, give your team another month or so and get back to me about winning another World Series title! We're 19 games in and you can't judge a season on the opening lap. It's only to be judged on the whole race.