{"id":16491,"date":"2011-07-18T14:11:44","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T19:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=16491"},"modified":"2011-07-18T14:11:44","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T19:11:44","slug":"davies-struggles-struggling-kyle-davies-faces-the-white-sox-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/davies-struggles-struggling-kyle-davies-faces-the-white-sox-at-home-16491\/","title":{"rendered":"Davies’ Struggles: Struggling Kyle Davies Faces the White Sox at Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago White Sox (46-49)\u00a0 AT Kansas City Royals (38-57)<\/strong>
\nJuly 18, 2011 at 8:10 PM EST<\/strong>
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 CWS -130, KC +110<\/strong>
\nCurrent Line:\u00a0 CWS -120, KC -100<\/strong>
\nOpening Total:\u00a0\u00a0 9.5<\/strong>
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 9.5<\/strong><\/p>\n

SP: CWS- Mark Buehrle; KC- Kyle Davies<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Paul Konerko has 68 RBIs and is batting a team-best .318<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mark Buehrle’s resurgence, or return to form, has been a beautiful thing for White Sox fans to observe.\u00a0 In 2008, Buehrle finished with a 15-12 record and a 3.79 ERA, but had not been anywhere near under 4.00 since that season.\u00a0 This year, his 3.42 ERA represents the second lowest ERA for his career (his best was 3.29 in his second year in the league – he had a 16-8 record to go along with it).<\/p>\n

In his last four starts, Buehrle has compiled a 2.30 ERA, though he did not record a decision in any of those matches.\u00a0 Against the Twins on the 9th, he gave up 3 unearned runs in 8 innings of work, as the White Sox won 4-3.\u00a0 He’s already started twice against the Royals this season, but did not receive a decision in either of those games.\u00a0 In the first he gave up 5 runs in 5 innings, but the White Sox won; in the second, he gave up 3 runs in 7 innings as the White Sox won 5-4.\u00a0 Over his last four starts against the Royals, he has went 1-0 with a 3.81 ERA, and the White Sox have won all four of those starts.<\/p>\n

Kyle Davies, unfortunately, has not been as lucky this season.\u00a0 His 7.74 ERA ranks among the worst in the majors of all starters and he has only won one decision on the season so far (while having picked up eight losses).\u00a0 He has lost his last 7 starts with a 8.10 ERA over those games and even missing time to let a rotator cuff heal didn’t prove to reverse his fortunes.\u00a0 Since he has returned from the injury, his ERA has been even higher, at 9.00.<\/p>\n

He rationalized his pitching, implicating it has been much better than the numbers suggest, saying, “Obviously, you look at the numbers and they’re not good, but command wise, I’m working as hard as I can to command the baseball, keep the ball down low and try to get better.”<\/p>\n

The fact is, Davies has not kept the ball low and has given up 22 walks with only 35 strikeouts in 50 innings pitched.\u00a0 He was projected by Baseball Prospectus to have a much better season, with a possible ERA in the neighborhood of the high 4.00s, certainly not in the 7.00s.\u00a0 His WHIP is nearly 2.00.\u00a0 It’s difficult to win when you allow a runner in scoring position almost every inning.<\/p>\n

Last start against the White Sox, however, Davies actually pitched well, giving up only 1 run in 6 innings, as the Sox went on to win 8-2.\u00a0 The White Sox are coming off a tough loss to the Tigers in which they blew a three run lead and failed to complete the series sweep.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we play for the rest of the season like we played in this series, we\u2019ll be fine,\u201d White Sox’ manager Ozzie Guillen said. \u201cI\u2019ll take two of three for the rest of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Royals have really been struggling offensively.\u00a0 They have scored an average of 2.6 runs per game over the last 5 and they lost 4-3 to the Twins last night, their sixth loss on the last eight games.\u00a0 The Royals, also however, have won 9 of the last 13 games at Kansas City.<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:<\/p>\n

The Chicago White Sox are 3-6 SU in their last 9 games and the total has gone UNDER in 5 of their last 6 road games.\u00a0 The White Sox are 6-2 SU in their last 8 games and the total has gone OVER In 5 of the last 6 road games against the Kansas City Royals.\u00a0 The White Sox are 4-9 SU in their last 13 road games against the Royals.<\/p>\n

The Kansas City Royals are 1-4 SU in their last 5 games while the total has goen UNDER In 4 of their last 5 games.\u00a0 The Royals are 5-13 SU in their last 18 home games and the total has gone OVER In 5 of the Royals’ last 6 games at home against the White Sox.\u00a0 The Royals are 9-4 SU in their last 13 games at home against the White Sox.<\/p>\n

Given Davies’ struggles, it is easy to see why the total is set high at 9.5 for this one, and though it is high, I actually do like the ‘over’ on it.\u00a0 I expect the White Sox to get cooking offensively and possibly score 7 to 9 runs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chicago White Sox (46-49)\u00a0 AT Kansas City Royals (38-57) July 18, 2011 at 8:10 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 CWS -130, KC +110 Current Line:\u00a0 CWS -120, KC -100 Opening Total:\u00a0\u00a0 9.5 Current Total:\u00a0 9.5 SP: CWS- Mark Buehrle; KC- Kyle Davies Mark Buehrle’s resurgence, or return to form, has been a beautiful thing for White […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":4961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[171,38],"class_list":["post-16491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-kansas-city-royals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16491"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16493,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16491\/revisions\/16493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}