KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The logical prediction is the New YorkYankees. The popular and somewhat sentimental picks have the Cubs andBoston Red Sox fighting it out for the top prize. And the talentedteam most often dismissed in preseason picks is the White Sox.
Hardly anybody is expecting the Sox to do much more than finish insecond place in the American League Central, and nobody is looking atthat runner-up possibility as the backdoor into the playoffs as thewild-card team.
For all of their recent failures, the Sox still should get the jobdone in the AL Central. There are no excuses for why they haven't hada successful finishing kick since 2000. They have nobody to blame butthemselves.
But even with the Minnesota Twins' lofty status as back-to-backCentral champions, the Sox still are the team the division loves tobeat with marquee players such as Frank Thomas and Magglio Ordonez.They enter the season with a 21-game winner in Esteban Loaiza, a near-20-game winner two seasons ago in Mark Buehrle and a 20-game winnerwaiting to happen in Jon Garland.
So what will happen this year? How will they let it all get awayagain? Will the Sox fall with another thud, or can they finally putthe pieces together now that nobody outside the division cares towatch? Here's a look at what could go right and what could go wrong.
WHAT COULD GO RIGHT
1. The heart of the Sox' order is about as devastating as it gets.Ordonez, Thomas and Carlos Lee all have figured out how to post bignumbers with a combined 102 home runs and 317 RBI last season. Whatthey haven't been doing is complementing each other with timely hitsor simultaneous hot streaks.
The Sox might drive in more meaningless runs than any team inbaseball, but that should change this season. What they will do moreof is collect late-inning, game-winning RBI and two-out clutch hits.Aaron Rowand in the No. 8 spot in the order and Willie Harris in theleadoff spot are trying to focus on on-base percentage.
After five seasons together, Ordonez, Thomas and Lee finally cansee the difference between making solid contact to get a run over andkeeping the rally going instead of the low-percentage option ofswinging for the fences and trying to be the hero.
2. It was nothing an optometrist could fix, so Paul Konerko had toimprove his plate vision on his own. Konerko looks to be back ontrack after stumbling from the start last season, admitting that hejust wasn't seeing fastballs very well in the first three months ofthe 2003 season. That certainly spelled doom because Konerko alwayshas been able to handle fastballs.
Working with hitting coach Greg Walker in the second half of lastseason, as well as this spring, Konerko is comfortable with hismechanics, and as a result, he feels confident facing fastballsagain.
Yet for all the work Konerko did last season to get his swing backon track, his biggest lesson might have been his first-halfstruggles. He now knows first-hand that the worst way to try to breakout of a slump is by trying to hit three home runs in a night. Lookfor Konerko's plate discipline to return.
3. Energetic and upbeat, new manager Ozzie Guillen isn't just thelife of the party, he starts the parties. He not only spends asignificant amount of time with the players in the clubhouse, heoften is the loudest voice in the room. The trick was blending in hisupbeat attitude with a team of self-starters that had been giventheir space under Jerry Manuel.
Guillen not only has fit in, as expected, with the core of Latinplayers, he quickly answered the questions surrounding how he andformer teammate Thomas would get along. While it isn't like the twogathered for a daily game of cards, they clearly have shown a respectfor each other.
While there are many comparisons to Guillen possibly being thebreath of fresh air that Tony Pena was with the Kansas City Royalslast season, the Sox' situation does differ. Where the young Royalsbought into Pena's optimism, Guillen's strength has been the raw andhonest feedback he gives to players.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG:
1. Until Billy Koch proves he has successfully reinvented himself,closing out tight victories is sure to be an adventure again thisseason. Koch's velocity still hasn't returned to the high-90s levelthe Sox thought they were getting when they made the trade with theOakland Athletics.
Koch had an early-spring run of scoreless innings in Cactus Leaguegames, but he also was hit hard during that stretch in a B game. Heclosed out the spring with all the question marks still intact as heallowed seven earned runs in 12 innings.
Damaso Marte even proved he was human, allowing five earned runsin 82/3 innings. It seems as if the Sox' backup plan has noguarantees either.
2. The rest of the league appears ready to hit on No. 21 thisseason as Loaiza looks nothing like the 21-game winner of lastseason. Not only is the right-hander's cut fastball nowhere near whatit was in 2003, he broke camp with a sore neck.
Realizing that the Twins had figured him out at the end of lastseason, Loaiza said he will mix things up more this year. That onlymeans he will be relying more on the pitches he used to go 69-73 inhis first eight seasons.
There isn't even much talk about Loaiza pushing 20 victories againthis season. His teammates have reduced expectations, just hopingLoaiza keeps them in games this season.
3. Guillen's attempt to build a running game didn't quite work inthe spring, not that the Sox were lacking for runs in Arizona.Harris, the guy at the top of the order who expects to be in motionthis season, did steal nine bases. But he was caught stealing sixtimes.
The Sox were 26-for-40 in steals this spring, a percentage thathardly justifies the risk. One problem is that Harris looked a tadslow, not only on steals but going from first to third and first tohome.
Steals and sacrifice bunts might lead to timely runs this season,but right now, they just look to be free outs for the opponent.
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