White Sox Cling to First Place; Cubs Sitting Pretty

Although both of the Chicago teams are still in first place, the Chicago White Sox lead has been shaved to 0.5 games over the second-place Minnesota Twins. The Sox are 4-6 in their last ten games. Dropping the City Series to the Cubs last week-end didn’t help them in the standings. And they lost again Wednesday night to the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-0.

Dodgers’ pitcher Eric Stults is 2-0 after his complete-game shut-out. He threw 116 pitches. The Sox only hit four of them.

Sox outfielder Dewayne Wise has been having better results recently than his team has. He has been getting some playing time since Paul Konerko is on the disabled list. Wise has gone 8-for-16 and scored four runs in his last five games. He didn’t play Wednesday, though.

The Sox need to keep an eye on the Twins. Although the Twins were down by 6.5 in the standings behind the White Sox a couple of weeks ago, they have made up a lot of ground. They beat the San Diego Padres last night 9-3 and have won eight straight and nine of their last 10.

Meanwhile, Chicago has another team. The Chicago Cubs are 4.5 games ahead of the second-place St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Central Division. And they still have the best record in baseball.

Wednesday night, they beat Baltimore 7-4. Ted Lilly got the win and Kerry Wood got his 20th save.

I’m really happy to see Jim Edmonds performing. He had a home run and three walks in Wednesday’s game. He has had five home runs and 12 RBI’s in his last 10 games.

The Cubs finish up their series with Baltimore today and the Sox finish their series with the Dodgers. Then they face each other for three games in Sox Park.

And the stats that are immutable: The Chicago White Sox won the World Series in 2005, a mere three years ago. The Chicago Cubs last won the World Series a little longer ago, in 1908, which would be, let’s see now . . . 100 years. That’s right, a century. And the Cubs and the White Sox last faced each other in the World Series even longer ago than that. The last all-Chicago World Series was in 1906.

Tags: Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, DeWayne Wise, Eric Stults, Minnesota Twins