Against teams that are .500 or above, the Sox are 18-12.
Below .500 squads, the record is just 9-19.
What gives? It’s the proverbial “playing to the level your competition” cliche.
Maybe it’s the fact that a lot of these bad teams are filled with young pitchers that no one has any tape on, and the Sox consequently struggle against them? Do the home/road splits make a difference? And will that even itself out and eradicate the statistical anomaly.
An even more telling statistic is the Sox 10-13 at home record (just terrible, yes I know) versus 17-18 on the road. That will have to change now as the Sox have the next 16/22 at home. And between now and the All-Star break they’ll only be outside Chicago for nine days. And they’re certainly due- as the Sox have had more road games than any team in baseball up to this point.
But the best nugget of hope is not in their home/road or over/under .500 splits, but instead in the fact that Adam Dunn and Alex Rios are still not producing anything yet and the Sox aren’t dead. Yes, the White Sox still need to make up 8.5 on the Cleveland Indians, but Rios and Dunn are just too good and too consistent over their career histories to stay this bad for so long. Both of them may end up having a severely down year, but their numbers can’t and won’t stay this down. There will be a natural regression to the mean, and when it comes, the Sox will get a nice boost in their record when the high-priced duo finally pick it up.