MVN - Most Valuable Network

Paulie! Paulie! Paulie?

Questions remain regarding the struggling White Sox offense, and with Paul Konerko five for his last thirty-three anchored in the center of the line-up, one has to wonder if he will snap out of it soon.

Konerko is a career .279 hitter, so I am not expecting a career year like in 2006 (when he hit .313 and 35 HR), but his current .213 average is really frustrating to watch.

Although Ken “The Hawk” Harrelson has repeatedly mentioned that Paulie’s hits have been big hits in big situations, he has also ended a lot of innings prematurely and hit into big double plays.

There is a ton of blame to go around for the struggling offense, but Paulie is easy to focus on because he is in his 10th season in the middle of the White Sox line-up.

A face of the franchise if you will.

Others like Swisher, Cabrera, and Thome haven’t been with the team very long, and we don’t know yet what to fully expect.

With Konerko, we know what to expect: About 150 games, over one-hundred K’s, around one-hundred RBI, and of course, no speed.

The batting average is the real issue lately, as he hit only .259 last year, and as mentioned earlier, only .213 so far this year.

As far as the club as a whole, they are now two games under .500 at 18-20, but continue to remain in the mix in the AL Central due to solid starting pitching, finding themselves only two games back of Minnesota.

John Lackey makes his season debut for the Angels tonight, after missing the first month and a half of the season with a strained right triceps. Hopefully his struggles to find his command when he matches up against Jose Contreras in another late west coast game at 9:05pm CST.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 7:32 am and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.