Gavin Floyd isn't helping the snowball problem the Chicago White Sox are having with pitching.
As Jose Contreras was sent down to work on his forkball, up came Kansas City Royals reject Jimmy "Turkey" Gobble. Gobble continued to follow the trend Floyd was on: give up at least a run every inning you pitch.
Well, to be fair, Gobble didn't register a full inning and he shouldn't be pitching against right handers (perhaps left handers, too) anyway.
But Mr. Floyd you can't regress to Floyd Christmas from Philly. Not now.
Alas, the old crap-tastic version Philadelphia Phillies version of Floyd is on the verge of a full blown comeback tour with his infamous 7.22 ERA.
Heck, his ERA is .04 points higher than his final season in the city of brotherly love.
Could this be some kind of slump? Sure. But we've seen this before. He nibbles at the plate instead of attacking hitters and his fastball goes rogue on him.
And not in the way of "effective wildness". I'm talking 31 strikeouts to 21 walks.
Yikes.
There's literally hundreds of reasons the White Sox are in a race with the Cleveland Indians for last place in the AL Central, namely situational hitting, but you can't expect to win games when your No. 2 starter has an ERA as high as it is.
Before everyone calls for hitting coach Greg Walker's head, find me a viable replacement. On top of that, show me how the offense was better during the 2008 season, when Chicago won the divison.
It wasn't all that better and if anything it's just as bad with the exception of Carlos Quentin not carrying the team on his back.
The key last season was that Floyd, John Danks and Mark Buerhle pitched like a viable contending three-headed monster. Contreras was serviceable and Javier Vazquez was his old self.
Fast forward to this season and you'll see that there is a three-headed monster of the crappy variety in Bartolo Colon, Floyd and Contreras.
Taking a look back at the numbers from 2008, Contreras was a serviceable fifth starter then, much in the same way Colon is now.
The problem? Colon is counted on as the No. 4 starter.
The other problem? Floyd and Contreras are nothing like their 2008 stat lines and don't have numbers worthy of being considered major leaguers.
In other words?
This is what we thought would happen if we didn't see improvement from certain players after a disastrous 2007 season.
Photo Credit: Associated Press
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