Sad offensive numbers for the White Sox in recent games

The only photo I could find of Daniel Mengden ...

So, the White Sox have gone 2-9 with four postponements since the calendar turned to April. And, like most losing streaks, the problem has been of combination of different things.

We've seen bad bullpen work, poor starting pitching and inept defense (three errors in one inning in Monday's 8-1 loss to Oakland!), but most of all, we've seen a teamwide outage in hitting with runners in scoring position.

The Sox went 5 for 10 with runners in scoring position in their season-opening win over the Kansas City Royals. Since that game, they have gone for 12 for 100. You don't need a calculator to know that pencils out to a .120 batting average.

This offense is 3 for 52 with runners in scoring position over the past seven games. I did get out the calculator for that, and it's an .058 batting average. Wouldn't you think a group of major league hitters could do better than that just on accident?

The Sox will never be a good team this year, but the law of averages says they have to be a little better than their 4-9 record indicates, right?

It's one thing to have your bats stuffed up your rear end by Jose Berrios, the talented right-hander of the Minnesota Twins. It's quite another when you're getting owned by Daniel Mengden.

Coming into Monday's game, Mengden was 0-10 with a 6.45 ERA in 13 career starts at the Oakland Coliseum.

He is now 1-10 with a 5.88 ERA in 14 career starts after limiting the Sox to a run on six hits over eight-plus innings. Jose Abreu broke up Mengden's shutout with a solo home run leading off the ninth inning.

Mengden had not made it out of the sixth inning in any of his first three starts of the season, so forgive me if I'm not interested in hearing about how good his stuff was Monday night.

At some point, you stop "tipping your cap" to the opposing pitcher and just say, "This is bad offense."