White Sox 3, Giants 1: The Good, Bad, and Indifferent

Box Score

Good

Mark Buehrle

I suppose it isn't all that difficult to look good against the Giants, but Buehrle's outing today was nonetheless pretty solid.

Buehrle allowed just one run over 6.2 innings of work on seven hits, three walks, and one strikeout. Granted, it certainly wasn't the best we've seen from Buehrle, but it certainly was a step in the right direction for the left-hander.

Nobody's going to jump back on the Buehrle bandwagon after 6.2 innings of one-run ball against the lowly Giants. How he does against Cleveland next week will be a true barometer of where Buehrle is at this point.

Octavio Dotel and Scott Linebrink

Once again, the White Sox bullpen did an excellent job of bridging the gap from starter to closer, as Dotel and Linebrink combined for 1.1 scoreless innings of work in relief of Buehrle.

Dotel entered the game in the bottom of the seventh with the bases loaded, and after throwing a ball on the first pitch, blew three fastballs by the hot-hitting Randy Winn to get the Sox out of a big jam. With his 0.1 inning of work, Dotel's ERA is down to 3.06 on the season.

Linebrink then held the Giants scoreless in the eighth, and has now allowed one run in the month of May (seven appearances, 6.2 innings)

Bobby Jenks

Jenks nailed down his tenth save of the year by retiring the Giants in order in the ninth. He's looked very good since blowing those two saves in a row against Baltimore back in April, and his ERA is now down to 1.96.

Bad

Barry Zito

I'm sorry, I had to do it. How is he making $17 million a year? That's absolutely criminal.

Indifferent

The offense

There were some good individual performances—Toby Hall and Jermaine Dye both had three hits—but, on the whole, the offense was unable to get the job done, scoring three runs, but leaving 14 men on base, seven of whom were in scoring position.

The lineup wore Barry Zito down, making him throw 116 pitches in five innings of work, but only scratched across two runs despite getting eight hits and drawing six walks against the $126 million dollar man.

Zito, who has a 6.25 ERA, wasn't able to get out of the jams, as the White Sox let him off the hook. Like yesterday, I'll take the win, but this lineup is really going to have to shape up for the upcoming series against Cleveland.