Hall -of-famer?

Here are the pitchers from the modern era who have thrown a no-hitter and a perfect game in their careers: Jim Bunning, Randy Johnson, Addie Joss, Sandy Koufax and Cy Young.

All but Randy Johnson are in the Hall of Fame (and the Unit will join them soon enough), which begs the question: has Mark Buerhle solidified his status as a HOF pitcher?

His career numbers are certainly respectable (133-90 over a 10-year career), but are nothing that would make him stand out over other great pitchers of the past decade. Except, of course, for those no-no’s and the fact that he was a central part of a World Series championship in 2005.

For his part, Buehrle doesn’t even want to think about it, from Mark Gonzaelz “Hardball” blog:

“I think I got to do a lot more in this game to be thought of in that category,” Buehrle said. “Obviously it’s an honor for people to even mention that. I got (133) wins now. I need a lot more wins and a lot more stuff in this game to be mentioned there.”

Speaking to the Sun-Times’ Joe Cowley, Guillen said he thinks the bar for Hall of Fame induction will get lower:

“Hall of Fame is going to need people to get in,” Guillen said. “You will see people in with 200 wins, 220 or 250. There’s no doubt. You have to. I don’t think any pitcher is going to last long enough to win 300 games.”

And Rob Neyer agrees that Buehrle is good, but thnks he’s not that good:

Buehrle’s career ERA is roughly 23 percent better than the American League average during his 10 seasons. That’s really, really good. That’s better than Bob Feller, Eddie Plank, Juan Marichal, Don Drysdale, and various other Hall of Famers. It’s better than CC Sabathia,Josh Beckett, Jake Peavy, Andy Pettitte, and John Lackey.

But would Joe Fan or Rob Blogger put Buehrle on the same level with those stars?

Probably not, because Buehrle just hasn’t done the sorts of things that get one mentioned among such notables. He has never won 20 games, and has won more than 16 games just once. He has been mentioned in the Cy Young results just once (finishing a distant fifth in 2005). With two notable exceptions — first the no-hitter, and now this — he’s never been particularly overpowering.

So what do we make of it…

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I can’t believe I have to go back to work after this. How am I supposed to concentrate?

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.

With nary a weekend between us and Super Tuesday, you’d think the pro-war crowd would be subdued, since, ya know, the war is kind of unpopular these days and the front runners have all but ensured a pullout.

What’s interesting, though, is how people find ways to support the troops without explicity being in favor of the war. Those are two different things. Hell, my book order from Amazon came with a plastic, mailable pouch where they ask people to donate used cell phones for the troops to call home. Had I a spare cell phone, you bet I would’ve sent it. Doesn’t mean that I was too happy about the war in the first place.

And now, White Sox hurler Mark Buehrle, has convinced management to have the team wear camouflage unis this 4th of July to show support for the men in uniform. The gimmick is right up the Sox alley:

The Sox are famous for all their uniform changes throughout the years and I think they pioneered the St. Patrick’s day jerseys that are popping up around the league.

But:

Mind you, this would have been 100 times cooler if the San Diego Padres hadn’t been wearing military themed uniforms for a while now.

Right; so what do Padres‘ fans have to say about all this?

There is only one Team of the Military and every body knows it’s the the Padres. The rest of these teams are unpatriotic communists. You know it’s true.

Apparently it was Mark Buehrle who magically came up with the idea while watching any number of Padres games over the last decade. Not only did he insist that the White Sox wear the camo on the 4th of July, but he had it put into his contract. Buehrle is a fraud and a war profiteer!

The White Sox are a disgrace. I’m calling for Congress to get involved. I want Mark Buehrle under oath! Let’s have him tell Uncle Sam where he came up with this idea, so that we can put him behind bars where all copy cats belong!

You know, that’s interesting. I’ve actually been to San Diego to watch these very Sox play against those very same Padres; when we left the stadium after a 2-1 Padre victory, some badass douche bag stepped to us, taunting the victory: “This is Padres country, son.” How appropriate from a fan of the team represented by priests.

[H/T White Sox Cards]

Some men are forced to end their seasons with ACL tears. Others may throw out their arms. But Mark Buehrle? He has to kill a bear. Literally.

Buehrle volunteered to skip his final start of the season, so that a younger pitcher could start in his place.

“I got my 200 innings, finally got that 10th win [Friday], so there’s nothing else really out there to shoot for personally,” Buehrle said before going on a bear-hunting trip with Thome, Pierzynski and Jermaine Dye.

Nothing left to shoot for? Well, not quite.

Saturday night, the White Sox lefty went hunting in northern Minnesota with three teammates – Jermaine Dye, A.J. Pierzynski, and Jim Thome – and came back having killed a 200lb black bear with a bow.

As if this story couldn’t get any stranger, Buehrle pretty much owns up to his undying love for Jim Thome. Money quote:

”Once-in-a-lifetime experience, especially going with Jimmy,” Buehrle said Sunday. ”When we got out there, the guy said we could hunt separate. But my main thing is I wanted to be in the stand with Jim Thome. I turned down hunting by myself to be with him.”

Yeah… Take it easy, Mark. Why don’t you stop talking for a while? Yeah, maybe sit the next couple plays out.

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.

I closed my laptop around this time last night. It was, to put it mildly, another disappointment in what continued to evolve as a season where the rest of the division was playing a very cynical game of musical chair at the top of the standings. We merely eeked above the lowly Royals; a team which, in any a Meche-less night would dwell in their quotidian futility. We were there, perhaps a decimal of a column inch above (or however many milimeters separate teams in the standings matrix every morning), and we were showing we deserved to be there.

Garland had been effective the night before; if anything, our defense showed that we would be able to abandon the starter at a point where the only double-play ball we had to turn, translated into a costly error – worth a two-run home run.

So as any exasperated fan would do; I threw my hands in the air and began contemplating reveling in the futility of the team I had cheered on for more than 15 years.

I came home tonight thinking it was Dank’s turn to pitch; the one stand-out story of this Rangers-White Sox series was the match-up of two trade components, the two pitchers that got swaped in the off-season where getting ready to toe the rubber and show which one was the tougher hombre.

The others? Mere afterthoughts. Mark Buehrle? He was knocked out of a game last week when a line drive left a bruise the size of a golf ball in his pitching forearm.

So when I decided to log on to my luxurious mlb.tv and “check on the score,” I nary had glanced at the 6 – 0 run column when I exhaled in relief – “goddam; we’re finally winning one.”

I noticed it was the eighth, and was amicably surprised that the opposing team had goose eggs for innings; I turned my attention away, munching down on a domestic salad tossed in balsamic vinaigrette dressing. I don’t like balsamic vinaigrette dressing.

Wait? Zeros? The eighth?

Indeed. Buerhle a no-hitter through eighth.

“Is he perfect?” my brother asked.

I don’t know.

“Check the box score,” he suggested.

As much as I could’ve, my laptop was a bit slow tonight; I couldn’t take away any resources lest the stupid mlb.tv … buffering…buffering…buffering…

This was too important a window to minimize.

As usual, Hawk was blowing smoke in Buerhle’s direction by hollerin’ – “tell everybody, your friends, your family to come see this;” very similar to what he had done last year when Freddy “The Chief” García had a perfect gem through eighth.

Good thing Sosa had walked (and gotten picked off); otherwise Hawk’s jinx would’ve been dead on.

No; this time it was too cold – ice cold – for Mark to let it slip through his fingers. Sammy’s breath in the top of the eighth was billowing from his mouth. It was too cold. Perfect night for numbing the hitters into their dugout. Not perfect for immortality, no; adequate for greatness.

Top of the ninth…

Matt Kata Strike (foul), Strike (foul), Strike (looking), M Kata struck out looking

Nelson Cruz Strike (swinging), Strike (swinging), Ball, Ball, Strike (swinging), N Cruz struck out swinging

Gerald Laird Ball, Strike (foul), G Laird grounded out to third

We forget our sub .500 record; we forget we’re no longer World Series Champs; we forget we don’t lead the division. It’s all good Mark. Greatness becomes thee.

I know the Red Sox need pitching desperately, but how weird is this offer:

The Sox this week offered center fielder Coco Crisp to the White Sox for left-handed All-Star Mark Buehrle, perhaps hoping that Buehrle’s recent struggles might persuade White Sox GM Kenny Williams to move him. But the White Sox turned the deal down.

Coco Crisp is one of GM Theo Epstein’s gems. The Sox signed him to a $15.5 million, three-year contract extension, with an option for 2010, as soon as the season started. Management has plastered his face over Boston (though the Fenway Faithful still seems to be reserving its judgment). Admittedly, he hasn’t thrived in Boston. But he hasn’t tanked either. Still, who’s going to play center for the Sox if they dump Coco “I’m the newest member of Red Sox Nation” Crisp?

It’s not that I think Crisp should stay. It’s not that I don’t want a 27-year old All-Star lefty (even one whose ERA is 11.48 in his last five starts). I’m just surprised. Stunned, even. Theo, you maverick.