The Chicago-Boston series this weekend is a tone-setter for the final stretch of the season, and earlier, Sarah laid out the strategy for how the South Side Sox can take it to the Fenway Sox. It’s a very convincing analysis – that is, unless, the BoSox can get to the ChiSox starters.

Chicago is a team that hits home runs, and they’ll try and score as much as possible from the get-go; a strategy that has worked for the most part. They do lead the league in home runs and they are 3d in runs scored. But they’ve also suffered losses even when scoring big and they’re not a team that’ll come back. Chicago is 11-12 when behind in the second inning, 15-19 in the third, 16-28 in the fourth, and 15-34 in the fifth, anything beyond that and you can almost bet they’ll lose.

They do have 35 comeback wins, but they’ve also blown 26 leads, and their starters have the toughest time getting over the 6th inning: they hold a collective 5.55 era.

Gotta get through those 3d and 4d innings Javy

The ChiSox might score a lot, but they’ll lose some of those games. Just a quick glance at their calendar and we see a 8-7 loss to Kansas City, a 10-6 loss to Minnesota, 10-8 loss to Cleveland, just to name a few.

Although their bullpen has been solid all year, the only reliever with a record over .500 that has pitched in more than 20 games is their closer, Bobby Jenks (and he has three blown saves), which is to say, should the BoSox get to the starter, it’ll be tough for the relievers to limit or hold the damage to allow the Chicago offense to try to get back in the game.

Tonight’s starter will be a tough cookie for the BoSox to figure out. Javier Vazquez is 3-2 with a 3.00 era in August (2-1 1.96 era in the last 3 starts) and he’s pitched 7 or more innings in each one of those, but he does have a sub .500 record, all thanks to his 5.53 era in the 3d inning (and his five long balls in the 5th). If the BoSox get to Vazquez before the 6th, probably by scoring four or five runs, then they’re good.

Tomorrow’s starter, Mark Buehrle has had a very inconsistent season, but the same framework applies. Get to him quick, and he’ll be outta there by the 5th.

Now, Sunday is a different story, as Gavin Floyd has pitched very well all year (14-6, 3.70), but it can’t negate the fact that he’s allowed five or more runs in five starts, one of which came against these very same BoSox.

So what’s the game-plan team? Score early and often.

As everyone knows, the White Sox won the World Series in 2005 primarily on the strength of their lights-out starting rotation. The front four starting quartet of Mark Buehrle, Freddy Garcia, Jon Garland, and Jose Contreras all won at least 14 games and all had ERAs of 3.87 or lower. The dominance of the quartet was underlined most clearly when each pitcher tossed a complete game in order in the Sox’ 4-1 triumph over the Angles in the ALCS.

In 2006 the rotation was supposed to be even stronger thanks to the addition of one-time ace Javier Vazquez as the 5th starter, but whether you want to call it regresion to the mean or fatigue from all those innings they threw in 2005, the original quartet all regressed in ‘06, as all four  saw their ERAs into the 4’s and threw much fewer innings.

But don’t look now (or *do* look, if you are a White Sox fan like Alejandro), because the White Sox rotation is getting back to its ace-laden look of the 2005 world champions. Freddy Garcia is gone now, having been shipped to the Phillies in the offseason, but Javier Vazquez is looking more like the pitcher that dominated as the ace of the Montreal Expos than the pitcher of recent years who looked very mediocre in stints with the Yankees and D-Banks, and rookie John Danks (acquired from Texas for Brandon McCarthy) is pitching much more like a veteran  third starter than a rookie fifth starter.

Last season, White Sox starters had a 4.65 ERA, but this year they are a full run lower, at 3.65. Garland’s 8 1/3 innings against the Royals last night marked the 17th game in a row that the White Sox starter went at least 6 innings. Indeed, so far this season the White Sox are second in the American League only to the Red Sox with 6.25 innings pitched per start, and trail only the D-Backs, Giants, and Reds in the National League, despite the fact that NL starters don’t have to face the designated hitter.

Perhaps most amazing of all, all five White Sox have allowed fewer hits than innings pitched, and as a whole they have allowed the fewest hits and the lowest batting average against in all of baseball. And it’s not like they are walking a lot of guys either, as they have yielded the fourth fewest walks of any rotation.

Although the Sox have gotten off to a somewhat lackluster start in the extremely competitive AL Central, if their rotation can keep this up all year, they will have a good shot at turning it around and making a run.

That’s one of those damn things you get pissed off about.

Javier Vazquez was working a perfect game until the fourth. He had Matt Stairs on a 0-2 count and then walked him. Fine, no-hitter still in place.

Fourth, fifth, and sixth innings go without a hint of a base hit. Maybe the third out in the sixth, but Juan Uribe made a leaping catch at short.

So I fire up my text editor to begin this post, get ready with the screen capture software to illustrate that magical moment that I foresee. But I didn’t jinx him (or did I). I started thinking about the no-hitter in the third inning, and thought about blogging it two innings later.

It’s still the seventh. One out, Doug Mientkiewicz at the plate. Weak-ass check-swing, roller up third base line. Hits the bag, base hit.

Damn. At least Thome scored a run in the game, and he has scored a run in every White Sox game this season.

Sox win 4-0, Royals on a 10-game losing streak.