Here's part of the reason the Indians own the White Sox

The White Sox were one out away from finally beating the Cleveland Indians on Tuesday night. Alas, it was not meant to be.

Jason Giambi got a hanging slider from Sox closer Addison Reed and knocked it out of the park for a two-run homer with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, erasing a 4-3 deficit and lifting the Indians to a 5-4 victory.

It was a familiar feeling for the Sox, who have been walked off six times in Cleveland this season. Chicago is just 2-16 against the Indians and has dropped the last 13 meetings between the two clubs.

Why? Well, there are multiple reasons, of course. But one thing I've noticed throughout the year is that the Indians own Reed. They also own Sox ace left-hander Chris Sale. I have the numbers to back it up.

This season, Reed has appeared in seven games against Cleveland. He is 0-2 with 12.15 ERA. He is just 2 for 5 in save opportunities against the Indians. Against all other clubs, Reed is 5-2 with a 2.97 ERA in 51 appearances. Against teams not named Cleveland, he has converted 37 of 42 save chances. Nearly one-third of the earned runs Reed has allowed this season (9 of 30) have been against the Indians.

The story is much the same for Sale. He's made four starts against Cleveland and lost 'em all. He's 0-4 with a 8.61 ERA. Nearly one-third of the earned runs Sale has allowed this season (22 of 69) have been against the Indians. Sale has started 25 games against clubs not named Cleveland and has gone 11-9 with a 2.16 ERA in those appearances.

The White Sox best starting pitcher can't slow the Tribe; neither can their best reliever. That plays a major role in going 2-16 against an particular opponent.

The Indians are likely to make the American League playoffs as a wild-card team, and they have the Sox to thank. Against teams that are not from Chicago, the Indians have a pedestrian 71-68 record. They become 87-70 only when you add in their mastery of the White Sox.

In case you are wondering, Cleveland is a combined 12-27 against the four other likely AL playoff teams (Detroit, Boston, Tampa Bay, Oakland). Unfortunately for the Indians, they will not be facing the White Sox in the playoffs.

The pennant races with one week to play....

The 162-game marathon has come down to a six- or seven-game sprint for some clubs as we enter the final week of the regular season. Here's a rundown of the races, who has clinched, and who still has work to do:

AL East
The Boston Red Sox have clinched the division and own the best record in baseball (95-62). The Red Sox are two games ahead of the AL West-leading Oakland A's in their quest to secure homefield advantage throughout the playoffs.

AL Central
The Detroit Tigers (91-65) possess a five-game division lead. Their magic number is down to two. They open a series Monday against the 90-loss Minnesota Twins. Detroit figures to clinch before it leaves Target Field. The second-place Indians (86-70) figure to be more concerned with securing a wild-card spot at this point.

AL West
The Oakland A's (93-63) have proven last season's division championship was no fluke. They have clinched the title for the second consecutive year, once again outplaying the big-spending clubs in Texas and Anaheim. The A's will need a red-hot final week to catch Boston for the top seed in the AL, but I doubt anyone in Oakland will be complaining if the A's finish with the second-best record in the league.

AL Wild Card
Six teams remain alive, but realistically, this race is between Tampa Bay (86-69), Cleveland (86-70) and Texas (84-71). The Rangers are 1.5 back of Cleveland and two back of Tampa Bay. Texas opens a three-game set Monday against 105-loss Houston, and it better sweep. The Rangers close with four in Anaheim. The Indians are in great shape. They have two games left with the 94-loss White Sox and four with the 90-loss Twins. They win five out of six, they're in. Four out of six will probably do it, too. Tampa Bay is concluding a four-game series with Baltimore on Monday, before a six-game closing road trip to New York and Toronto. That will not be easy, but the Rays have the advantage of that two-game cushion over the Rangers. Kansas City (82-73) is 3.5 out of the wild card. New York is four back, and Baltimore is 4.5 back. Each of those three teams is still alive, but realistically, they would need to win out while others choke.

NL East
The Atlanta Braves (92-63) have the best record in the National League and clinched their division title Sunday with a 5-2 win over the Cubs at Wrigley Field. It will be a fight to the finish for homefield advantage in the NL. The Braves are just 1.5 games ahead of St. Louis (91-65) and 2.5 ahead of Los Angeles (90-66). Does that even matter? You bet it does. Atlanta is 52-22 at Turner Field this season and just 40-41 on the road.

NL Central
St. Louis (91-65) is in good shape, two games ahead of both Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. The Cardinals are at home for the final week, hosting Washington (84-72) for three and the 91-loss Cubs for three. You have to believe St. Louis will win the division with a .500 homestand, especially since Pittsburgh and Cincinnati close the season playing head-to-head. If either the Pirates or the Reds were to sweep that final series, maybe they could catch the Cardinals. But, the more likely scenario involves the Pirates and Reds beating up on each other, allowing St. Louis to put the division away.

NL West
Los Angeles (90-66) is the only team in baseball enjoying a double-digit lead in its division. The Dodgers have basically lapped the NL West. They could use a hot streak at the end to pass the Cardinals and or the Braves, so that they'll be able to open the playoffs at home.

NL Wild Card
Almost certainly, the NL wild-card game will feature Pittsburgh (89-67) and Cincinnati (89-67). Both clubs are five games ahead of Washington (84-72) with six games to play. Right now, it's a matter of which team will host that wild-card game. It's a dead heat entering Monday. The Pirates play at Chicago for three games before finishing with three in Cincinnati. The Reds welcome the New York Mets for three before playing the Pirates. Here's a possible dilemma for the season's last day: If the two teams are tied going into Game 162, do you throw your best pitcher or one of your best pitchers to try to get homefield for the wild-card game? Or do you rest everybody for the winner-take-all 163rd game? I think I'd save all my bullets for the wild-card game.

Joe Girardi to the Cubs? Idiotic speculation or a real possibility?

New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi's contract is up at the end of the season. You know what that means. It is time for renewed speculation that Girardi will "come home" to manage the Cubs.

Chicago Tribune columnist Phil Rogers is leading the media charge with his piece in today's paper.

Rogers and others have reported the Cubs are open to the possibility of replacing manager Dale Sveum, who frankly has had no chance to win the last two years with the crappy rosters he has been handed. But, perhaps Cubs brass is unhappy with Sveum because supposed core players Anthony Rizzo, Starlin Castro and Jeff Samardzija have all taken a step backward this season.

My opinion on Sveum? Take him or leave him. I don't think he's anything special as a field boss, but the truth is no manager ever born could have coaxed the Cubs teams of the last two years to anything close to a .500 record, let along playoff contention.

As for Girardi, I'd be stunned if the Yankees don't offer him another contract. Even though New York will likely not make the playoffs, Girardi has done an unbelievable job of keeping a mediocre roster in contention deep into September.

Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira and Curtis Granderson have barely played this season. Alex Rodriguez, as usual, has created a circus around that team. C.C. Sabathia has had the worst season of his career. New York's pitching, statistically, is worse than both of the woeful Chicago baseball teams this year. Despite all that, Girardi is going to squeeze 85 to 87 wins out of a team that had to give way too many at-bats to guys like Vernon Wells, Lyle Overbay and Eduardo Nunez. Girardi's a good manager. He's better than Sveum. There's no denying that.

But would he leave New York for Chicago? What would be his motivation to do that? His local roots, I suppose. He's from Peoria. He attended Northwestern, and he played seven of his 15 MLB seasons on the North Side. I can't imagine money would be a motivation. Whatever the Cubs can offer, the Yankees could surely match. I don't think the Cubs can offer Girardi a better on-field situation than what the Yankees have. New York contends every year. The Yankees will find a way next year, too, regardless of who the manager is. They'll open up their pocketbook this offseason and address their holes. They always do. The Cubs, in contrast, are at least another two years away.

Are the local ties enough to pry Girardi out of New York? I don't know, but that's really all the Cubs have to offer. And, if Girardi is sick of New York and ready for a change, he would have other options than Chicago. I hear Washington is looking for a manager, and the Nationals have a team that should be ready to win. Attractive jobs could come open in Texas and Anaheim, as well.

When it comes to the Cubs, it's always hard for me to tell whether some of the local reporting is legitimate news, or just cheerleading from the press box. When I read some of these articles, it almost strikes me as if the Cubs reporters are trying to woo Girardi to Chicago themselves. In the coming months, it will be interesting to see whether that story has legs, or if it's just another round of idiotic speculation at the end of another lost season on the North Side.

Mental mistakes compound misery for White Sox

There's an easy explanation for the White Sox' 4-3 loss to the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday afternoon: Starting pitcher John Danks gave up hits to seven of the first 11 batters he faced and put the team in a 4-0 hole after two innings. Not a good start at all.

Danks settled down and retired 16 in a row after that, but the damage had been done. But, if you look a little deeper, you can't help but feel like the Sox would have come back and won that game against the woeful Twins if they had just done the little things right.

For example, take a look at what happened in the bottom of the sixth inning. The Sox were trailing 4-1 at that point when catcher Josh Phegley led off the inning with a double. Here was a golden chance to get at least one run closer. No. 9 hitter Leury Garcia stepped to the plate. Not being a power hitter, Garcia needed to be thinking about hitting a ball to the right side to get Phegley over to third base with less than two out.

Apparently, Garcia was thinking nothing of the sort. He rolled over on a pitch from Minnesota lefty Scott Diamond and hit a chopper to shortstop. Compounding Garcia's poor approach at the plate, Phegley foolishly thought he could make third base on a ground ball that was hit in front of him. The Twins threw him out by half a baseline, and there went an opportunity to cut into the Minnesota lead.

Later in the inning, Alejandro De Aza reached on an error, and Alexei Ramirez hit a deep fly ball to center field. If Phegley had been standing on third base with less than two out, he would have scored on either of those two plays. But, a rotten swing by Garcia and idiotic baserunning by Phegley prevented that from happening. The Sox failed to score in the inning, and they went on to lose by one run.

We've seen the White Sox make dozens of mistakes like this throughout the season. Is it any wonder the team has a 22-33 record in one-run games this year? Some people put the blame on the manager and the coaches for this kind of repetitive buffoonery. But I'll be honest, Robin Ventura and his staff shouldn't have to tell Phegley to stay at second base when a ground ball is hit in front of him to the left side of the infield. That's Baserunning 101, something my coaches taught me in Little League. That's a lesson that should be learned long before a player reaches pro ball.

In my world, mistakes like this are the fault of the player, not the manager or a coach. You're in the major leagues; play the game right.

American League wild card race will be a wild one

With roughly a dozen games to go in the 2013 baseball season, the division winners in the American League are all but decided.

The Boston Red Sox lead the AL East by nine games. The Oakland A's are up 6.5 games in the AL West, and the Detroit Tigers lead the AL Central by 6.

That said, nine of the 15 teams in the American League still have legitimate pennant hopes entering play on this, the 17th day of September. Six teams are fighting for the two wild card spots, and all of them are within 2.5 games of each other. This must be exactly what commissioner Bud Selig had in mind when he added that extra wild card position.

Take a look at the wild card standings entering Tuesday's play:
1. Tampa Bay  82-67 (+1.0)
2. Texas 81-68  (-)
3. Cleveland 81-69 (0.5 GB)
4. Baltimore 79-70 (2.0 GB)
5. Kansas City 79-71 (2.5 GB)
6. New York 79-71 (2.5 GB)

Only two of the six can qualify, and for the longest time, it looked like Texas would be one of those teams. No more. If you thought the White Sox were struggling, take a look at what the Rangers have done this month. They are 2-12 in September, and their starting pitchers have gone 1-12 in that time frame. Former Cub Matt Garza was the latest to get knocked around. He lasted only 4.1 innings Monday in a 6-2 Texas loss to Tampa Bay. This is a real critical time for the Rangers. They have three more games in a four-game set with the Rays before heading to Kansas City for a crucial weekend series against the Royals.

Speaking of Kansas City, the Royals got a big game from James Shields (pictured) in a 7-1 victory over Cleveland on Monday night. The Royals and Indians meet again Tuesday and Wednesday in the other big, head-to-head series between wild card contenders. Kansas City will send 22-year-old prospect Yordano Ventura to the mound to make his major league debut Tuesday night. No pressure, kid. Nothing at stake except Kansas City's first legitimate chance to make the playoffs in nearly three decades.

Even with Chicago teams dead and buried, there is still some good baseball left to watch. This AL wild card race could end up as one for the ages.

It's hard to evaulate Erik Johnson's first two White Sox starts

No matter what happens the rest of the year, it has been a good season for 23-year-old White Sox rookie right-hander Erik Johnson.

The former second-round draft pick tore up both Double-A Birmingham and Triple-A Charlotte, going 12-3 with a 1.96 ERA in 24 combined starts. He earned his September callup to the White Sox.

Unfortunately, it hasn't gone well for him in his first two major league starts. Johnson has given up 11 runs and 14 hits in 9.2 innings. He has suffered losses to both the New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers.

But, it's really hard to determine how much of that mess is Johnson's fault. Only five of the 11 runs he's given up have been earned. The White Sox committed four errors, including three by third baseman Conor Gillaspie (pictured), during Johnson's 9-1 loss to Detroit on Tuesday night.

Rookie pitchers are always nervous their first few starts in the majors. It's human nature. But young pitchers tend to settle down much quicker if all the plays are being made behind them. Johnson hasn't had that luxury. Instead, he's had to make a lot of extra pitches and been placed in some jams that were not of his own making. He's been asked to get a number of extra outs, and he hasn't been able to do that. I've seen much more veteran pitchers than Johnson crumble under similar circumstances.

It's unfortunate, because you'd like to get a good evaulation of Johnson coming down the stretch of this season. He's dominated hitters at the minor-league level, and it's time to find out whether he can challenge for a job in the 2014 starting rotation. Two starts in, I have no read on that whatsoever. Johnson's numbers are ugly, but it's hard to cast stones at a rookie who has received no help at all from his teammates.

Speaking of bad defense

Gillaspie on Tuesday became the first Sox player to commit three errors in one game since Andy Gonzalez on Aug. 30, 2007. That's not company you want to keep.

It has been a brutal September for the Sox thus far. They are 2-8 this month and have committed 17 errors in those 10 games.

The Sox now have a major-league high 108 errors for the season, leading to 70 unearned runs. Last year, the Sox committed a league-low 70 errors. The defensive regression in one year is really hard to explain, but poor defense does explain a 58-86 record; that much I know.

Chris Sale vs. Max Scherzer

I've said it many times: I'm a bad American. I often don't care about things other Americans care deeply about. And no matter what ESPN says, I can't get excited about a supposedly critical early-season NFC East matchup.

Instead, my eyes were cast toward U.S. Cellular Field on Monday night as the two best pitchers in the American League this year went head-to-head.

White Sox left-hander Chris Sale struck out eight over eight innings and allowed just a solo home run to Victor Martinez and four hits to lead the South Siders to a 5-1 win over the Detroit Tigers and right-hander Max Scherzer (pictured).

Sale's strikeout of Austin Jackson to end the third inning was his 200th of the season. He became the first pitcher in Sox history to record 200 strikeouts before hitting the 200-inning plateau. Previously, Javier Vazquez was the fastest Sox pitcher to 200 Ks in one season. Vazquez recorded his 200th strikeout of the 2007 season in his 207th inning. Sale got there in just 190.2 innings.

This was not a good night for Scherzer (19-3). For the third consecutive start, he was denied in his bid for his 20th victory. He allowed five runs (four earned) and needed 90 pitches to get through four innings. By the fifth inning, he had been removed from the game.

That said, Scherzer is still going to win the Cy Young Award in the American League this year. His team is in first place, and how can you argue with a 19-3 record? He's been awesome. But if you look at the statistics as a whole, the only category Scherzer has a significant advantage over Sale in is the won-loss column. Sale is just 11-12 because, well, the White Sox stink. Sale has posted a quality start in seven of his 12 losses. If he had a real team behind him, he'd have 18 or 19 wins, too, and we'd have a neck-and-neck race for the Cy Young. Let's look at some of the other stats besides the won-loss record:

Sale's ERA is 2.90; Scherzer's is 3.01.

Sale has four complete games this season; Scherzer has none.

Sale has a shutout to his credit; Scherzer does not.

Sale has thrown 195.2 innings; Scherzer has pitched 194.1.

Scherzer has 215 strikeouts; Sale has 207.

Scherzer's WHIP is 0.962; Sale's is 1.037.

Scherzer strikes out 10.0 men for every nine innings pitched; Sale fans 9.5 for every nine innings pitched.

Sale's K/BB ratio is 5.05; Scherzer's is 4.48.

These two men have similar numbers in every category except one: wins and losses. They have both been just outstanding. Scherzer will get to show his stuff in the postseason again this October. It is too bad Sale's brilliant season has gone to waste on the 2013 White Sox.