Hudson throws six pitches and gets the W.
These two wins in Cleveland definitely make up for losing the prior two there.Fun fact. The White Sox are a much better team at home than on the road.
Too young to know what they are doing and it's a treat!!
Venable has been the biggest change in my opinion. He’s smart, well spoken, and seems to be a leader. The attitude of the team changed dramatically last year, and his game management has been phenomenal.I feel like I've seen the sentiment all year (not necessarily on this board) that we've been winning in spite of Venable which is crazy to me. He has been utterly masterful in the first three games of this post season. I've second guessed him leaving in Taylor and Smith a little too long, and I was wrong. I wasn't a fan of Kay coming out to do bullpen stints, and I was wrong about that. I loved when he brought Brazoban in a relatively low leverage situation (at least as far as playoffs go), and took him out after 3 batters when he realized he didn't have it. Batting Pham 5 in game 1 against CLE could be the one decision I've been critical of, and even that decision was one less gust of wind away from being a 3 run homer. I haven't agreed with every decision Will has made throughout the year, but I do support his (over)use of the opener in general. But I have been all-in on Will since probably around the all star break this year, if not a little earlier. Maybe my optimism will eventually be proven to be misguided, but this post season is basically cementing Will as our guy for the foreseeable future, and I love it.
A couple weeks ago, I was day dreaming about us winning it all, and I had this thought "nothing will ever top 2005." But then I challenged that. Why not? Sure, 2005 is the first title many of us had the opportunity to see so everything after it won't have that same level of "feeling special." And we are only 3 games into the post season, playing teams that combined to go like 6 games over 500 so I'm not trying to get too far ahead of myself, but what Will is doing with this pitching staff is something special. I'm at the point where I am not second guessing any move that man makes in terms of starters/bullpen. I love seeing the complete shift in strategy from regular season to playoffs. We have a LONG way to go, but if we are going to continue to make a run, we are going to have a lot of fun moments to look forward to with a lot of fun personalities on this team. This has already easily cemented itself as the 2nd best season of my lifetime ('93 is the only other season in contention and I wasn't really old enough to appreciate it), but if we did manage to make a run with this group, I really do think it would give '05 a run for its money. Either way, this past week has seen a lot of fun baseball, and at the very least, we've got a few games left in October and I'm here for every single minute of it.