MVN - Most Valuable Network

Did Kenny Williams See This Coming?

The overall consensus going into 2008 was that the White Sox starting staff was a huge question mark, if not a huge weakness. With a string of impressive starts by young guns John Danks and Gavin Floyd, and Jose Contreras showing improvement, one has to wonder if Kenny Williams saw this coming. He showed the utmost confidence in Danks and Floyd by penciling them in at the end of the rotation and not picking up another starting pitcher in the off-season to compete. If the starting pitching continues down the current path, the club’s # 1-5 starters will be able to compete with any team in baseball.

By current path I am referring to:

White Sox pitching ranks second in the American League, and fifth in the MLB in ERA at 3.45.

John Danks has shown great command and hasn’t allowed an earned run in his last two starts. In fact, he has only allowed 8 hits over the past 14 and 2/3 innings.

Gavin Floyd almost pitched a no hitter against the Tigers and also hasn’t allowed an earned run over his last two starts.

Javier Vazquez leads the team and ranks 2nd in the AL in strikeouts with 27. (Behind only Dice-K who has started one more game than Javier).

Mark Buehrle has been the weakest link of the rotation, and history would show that he is probably the last starter to worry about. He has pitched over 200 innings and won over 10 games over the past seven seasons.

Did Kenny Williams actually see this coming, or did he just hope for the best when putting this rotation together? He is the only one that knows the true answer to that question but I will guarantee you one thing— With a solid looking rotation and a first place club, he is smiling right now.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 7:17 am and is filed under Kenny Williams, Gavin Floyd, John Danks, Jose Contreras, Javier Vasquez. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.