Chris Sale's slider returns, and so does his dominance

The White Sox evened their record at 5-5 on their current 11-game road trip Wednesday with a 9-2 trouncing of the Texas Rangers.

First baseman Jose Abreu returned to the lineup after missing three games with a finger injury, and his two-run home run capped off a six-run rally in the top of the second inning that sent the Sox on their way to victory.

But the big story was ace left-hander Chris Sale, who has not been scored upon in his last 19.2 innings. Sale worked seven shutout innings on Wednesday, allowing just three hits. He struck out a season-high 13 batters and walked only two. Sale has now reached double-digit strikeouts in each of his last three outings.

Check out the difference in his numbers from his first five starts of the year to his last five starts:
First 5: 2-1, 5.93 ERA
Last 5: 3-1, 1.40 ERA

In those last five outings, Sale has worked 38.2 innings. He has struck out 53 men and walked but six, a ratio of almost 9-to-1. He's also allowed just 19 hits.

What changed? Well, Sale has rediscovered his slider, and he's throwing it more each and every time out. Jim Margalus noted this in a recent blog on South Side Sox.

Sale's number of sliders thrown in his last five outings:
May 12: 12
May 18: 14
May 23: 18
May 28: 28
June 3: 32

Remember, Sale missed most of spring training with a broken foot and started the season on the disabled list. His first five outings, he was basically a two-pitch pitcher - fastball and changeup. When he did try to throw his slider, he hung it and it got hit hard.

When a pitcher misses time with an injury that is not arm-related, as was the case with Sale this spring, rediscovering fastball velocity is usually not the main issue. It's finding the release point on the breaking ball, and building up enough arm strength to snap it off the way a pitcher needs to. The breaking ball is more of a "feel" pitch than a fastball, and it takes time and repetition for a pitcher to get that right.

Most pitchers in MLB went through that process during spring training. Sale didn't get that chance because of injury. He had to figure it out on the fly, in real games against major league hitters, and that's the reason why he struggled the way he did early in the season.

Now, his "spring training" is over, so to speak. He's in regular-season form, and we see the difference in results. He's a three-pitch pitcher now, and he's much harder for opposing hitters to handle.

Jeff Samardzija is having problems early in games

I'm not going to spend too much time breaking down the White Sox's 15-2 loss to the Texas Rangers on Tuesday night.

The Rangers are hot. They've won 10 out of 12 games to pull their record over the .500 mark (27-25). They jumped on Sox starter Jeff Samardzija for four runs in the first inning after two were out Tuesday, and the rout was on from there.

The bad first inning continued a season-long trend for Samardzija, who has had a lot of problems early in games.

Check out Samardzija's ERA by inning this year:

1st inning: 11.45
2nd inning: 6.55
3rd inning: 4.09
4th inning: 4.09
5th inning: 2.45
6th inning: 2.00
7th inning: 1.50
8th inning: 0.00
9th inning: N/A

You hear about pitchers getting stronger as the game goes on, but Samardzija's numbers are an extreme case. He's given up a total of 38 earned runs in 11 starts this season -- 22 of them have scored in the first two innings of games, including 14 in the first inning.

Overall, the Sox (23-27) have been terrible early in games this year. They've been outscored 45-14 in the first inning, and 104-60 in innings 1 to 3.

That's an awful lot of playing from behind, and Samardzija has been one of the main culprits in digging the Sox a hole in the early innings.

Eight road games in seven days: White Sox go 4-4

This week could have been a lot worse, couldn't it?

The White Sox had to play eight games in seven days in three different cities, but they pulled through it in decent shape. A week ago, I think most of us would have taken it if we had been told the Sox would go 4-4 in these games, which is exactly what they did.

It's especially good to end up with a split for the week after the Sox opened with back-to-back losses in Toronto. But they recovered to win the finale against the Blue Jays, before splitting a doubleheader in Baltimore on Thursday and taking two of three from the AL West-leading Astros this weekend.

How about the weird shutout for John Danks on Sunday? The Sox left-hander recorded his 1,000th career strikeout by fanning the first batter of the game, Houston right fielder George Springer. Maybe that was an omen everything else was going to go Danks' way, as well.

Danks struck out six and walked one in a 6-0 win over the Astros, and he somehow managed to go unscored upon despite giving up 10 hits.

How rare is that?

Well, the last pitcher to throw a complete-game shutout while allowing 10 hits or more was former Minnesota right-hander Carlos Silva, who gave up 11 hits in a 10-0 win over the Anaheim Angels on Aug. 3, 2004. It's been more than 10 years.

For Danks, it was his first shutout in nearly four years. The last time? Well, it was a three-hitter against the Seattle Mariners on Aug. 27, 2011.

No doubt Danks' complete game was welcome for the weary White Sox bullpen. Not only was this a stretch of eight games in seven days, it also was 18 games in 17 days. That's a lot of innings to cover over a two-and-a-half-week period.

The Sox (23-26) finally get an off day Monday before they play the Texas Rangers in a three-game series down south.

Quantifying the White Sox offensive woes

Toronto starting pitcher Drew Hutchison entered Monday night's game against the White Sox with an ERA of 6.06. Naturally, he fired a four-hit shutout in the Blue Jays' 6-0 win over the South Siders. While not feeling well.

Right now, the Sox offense is enough to make you sick to your stomach. They've lost six out of their last eight games to fall to 19-23 on the season. They've scored just 15 runs during that stretch, and have not scored more than three runs in any game during that time.

You look around the league, and you'll see that most teams have a hitter or two performing under expectations. That's baseball. Sometimes guys have slow starts, or bad years. That's just how it goes.

But the Sox? Well, they've got seven of their nine regulars performing below their career norms and below the numbers they posted in 2014. Avisail Garcia is the lone exception. For purposes of this discussion, we'll just exempt second base, because the Sox have played two rookies with little or no track record there throughout the season.

Let's take a look at the on-base plus slugging (OPS) numbers for the eight Sox regulars who do not play second base -- biggest drop-offs listed first:

Only Avisail Garcia has swung the bat well for the White Sox this year.

Melky Cabrera
2015 OPS: .558
2014 OPS: .808
Diff: -.250
Career OPS: .747

Jose Abreu
2015 OPS: .964
2014 OPS: .808
Diff: -.156
Career OPS: .929

Adam Eaton
2015 OPS: .621
2014 OPS: .763
Diff: -.142
Career OPS: .721

Adam LaRoche
2015 OPS: .682
2014 OPS: .817
Diff: -.135
Career OPS: .808

Tyler Flowers
2015 OPS: .559
2014 OPS: .693
Diff: -.134
Career OPS: .660

Alexei Ramirez
2015 OPS: .614
2014 OPS: .713
Diff: -.099
Career OPS: .715

Conor Gillaspie
2015 OPS: .683
2014 OPS: . 752
Diff: -.069
Career OPS: .714

Garcia
2015 OPS: .821
2014 OPS: .718
Diff: +.103
Career OPS: .746

So, there are basically six players in the Sox everyday lineup whose OPS is down 100 points over where it was last season. That's two-thirds of a lineup that could be characterized as severely underachieving. Remarkable.

Only Garcia is better than he was last season. Only Garcia is performing better than his career average. Everyone else is under career norms, some significantly so.

You would think these guys would eventually come back to their career levels, wouldn't you? There's no sign of that happening right now.

John Danks vs. AL Central: AL Central wins

Whatever good vibes the White Sox generated with their six-game winning streak are gone now, after the team dropped three consecutive games to the last-place Cleveland Indians at U.S. Cellular Field this week.

The latest loss came Thursday night, a 5-2 Cleveland victory that wasn't as close as the final score indicated. The game started at 7:10 p.m. It was basically over by 7:30. Sox starter John Danks gave up four runs in the first inning, including home runs to Nick Swisher and Mike Aviles, and the Indians tacked on another run in the second to seize an early 5-0 edge.

The score remained the same until there were two outs in the bottom of the ninth, when Sox catcher Tyler Flowers hit the traditional, ceremonial meaningless home run to make the score look better in the paper.

The larger trend I took away from this game, though, is that Danks really struggles against AL Central division opponents. The teams than know him best tend to get to him early and often. I checked the numbers, and for the most part, they confirmed my suspicions. Danks is just plain lousy against three of the four teams he pitches against most regularly:

Danks vs. Indians: 5-13, 5.29 ERA
Danks vs. Twins: 7-14, 5.67 ERA
Danks vs. Tigers: 6-10, 5.11 ERA
Danks vs. Royals: 8-1, 2.73 ERA
Danks vs. AL Central: 26-38, 4.83 ERA

The Royals have to be wondering what they are doing wrong. For the Indians, Tigers and Twins, it's a fight at the bat rack when they see Danks is pitching. Those hitters probably can't wait to get to home plate.

Take out the stats against Kansas City, and Danks is 18-37 with a 5.38 ERA against Cleveland, Detroit and Minnesota.

If you're wondering why the Sox can't seem to beat divisional foes these past few years, Danks is among the culprits.

The Sox (18-20) welcome divisional rival Minnesota to the U.S. Cellular Field for a three-game set this weekend. Fortunately, Danks is not slated to pitch in the series. Here are the weekend matchups:

Friday: Jeff Samardzija (3-2, 4.58 ERA) vs. Phil Hughes (3-4, 4.76 ERA)
Saturday: Chris Sale (3-1, 4.36 ERA) vs. Trevor May (2-3, 5.15 ERA)
Sunday: Jose Quintana (2-4, 4.13 ERA) vs. Kyle Gibson (3-3, 2.98 ERA)

Trevor Bauer puts halt to White Sox winning streak

The day after longtime White Sox nemesis Bruce Chen announced his retirement, the South Siders ran into another pitcher who gives them all kinds of trouble.

Unlike Chen, at least we can say Trevor Bauer has good stuff.

The Cleveland right-hander retired the first 11 batters he saw Tuesday and limited the Sox to just one run on four hits over 7.1 innings to spark the Indians to a 3-1 win. Bauer struck out seven and walked three to improve to 3-1 on the season.

This was the third time Sox hitters have seen Bauer this year, and they haven't been able to solve the riddle yet. Here are Bauer's pitching lines in those three starts:

April 15: 6 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 8Ks,. 4 BBs
April 20: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 7Ks, 2 BBs
May 19: 7.1 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 7Ks, 3 BBs

Add it all up and Bauer is 2-0 with a 1.33 ERA in those three outings. He's struck out 22 and allowed only 12 hits in 20.1 innings.

The loss puts a halt to the Sox's season-best six-game winning streak and drops them back to .500 at 18-18.

Game 3 of this four-game set with the Indians is Wednesday night. The Sox will send rookie left-hander Carlos Rodon to the mound against Cleveland right-hander Shaun Marcum.

Chris Sale vs. Corey Kluber: It lived up to the hype

Two aces took the mound Monday at U.S. Cellular Field with White Sox left-hander Chris Sale going up against Cleveland's Corey Kluber, the reigning Cy Young award winner in the American League.

Neither pitcher figured in the decision, but the matchup did not disappoint. Both pitchers were brilliant:

Kluber: 9 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 12 Ks, 1 BB
Sale: 8 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 7 Ks, 2 BBs

I guess you might give Kluber the slight edge, since he pitched one more inning than Sale and fanned five more batters. But I'm sure Sale won't mind that since the Sox extended their winning streak to six games with a 2-1 win in 10 innings.

The Sox have now won 10 of their last 13 games and have pulled their record above .500 (18-17) for the first time this season.

A game like this is usually decided by one mistake here or there. Both teams played errorless ball, but if there was a mistake made, Cleveland made it in the bottom of the sixth inning.

Sox center fielder Adam Eaton was on third base with two outs when Jose Abreu swung and missed a Kluber breaking ball that was in the dirt and deflected maybe just 10 feet away from home plate. Eaton boldly dashed for home as Cleveland catcher Roberto Perez scrambled to retrieve the ball. Both men dove for home plate and arrived at just the same time. Perez would have tagged Eaton out -- if he had held onto the ball. Instead, he dropped it in his attempt to apply the tag. Eaton scored, tying the game at 1-1.

It remained that way until the bottom of the 10th, when Carlos Sanchez delivered a two-out, game-winning single on an 0-2 pitch from Cleveland reliever Zach McCallister. Pinch runner J.B. Shuck raced around from second base to plate the decisive run.

About the only negative for the Sox: Shuck was pinch running for Avisail Garcia, who somehow tweaked his right knee while drawing a leadoff walk in that 10th inning. Garcia is hitting a team-best .338, so the Sox don't need him going on the shelf for any length of time. I imagine the Sox will be cautious and give Shuck the start in right field Tuesday for the second game of this four-game divisional set.

The pitching matchup for Tuesday won't be quite as marquee as this one was, but it will still be good. Sox lefty Jose Quintana (2-3, 4.39 ERA) will face Cleveland right-hander Trevor Bauer (2-1, 3.67 ERA). I wouldn't be stunned if that one ends up fairly low-scoring, too.