Reasons to Be Optimistic

1. Pitching is Amazing.  At the end of the day, pitching and defense win.  I think we learned this in 2005.  Our starting pitching has been very good, and even Buehrle has had a lot of good starts.  The pen has beeen much better than expected.

2.  All of these guys can't hit .200 All Year.  Thome, Konerko, Swisher, cannot all hit .200 all year.  We have lots of home games coming up, in a hitter's park, with warm weather, and I think you are going to see some upswing is averages.

3. Great young players !  Quentin, Ramirez, Floyd, Danks.  All of these guys are very young and provide for a bright future.  Broadway is pitching well in AAA too.

4.  We are in first place on June 2nd, and we haven't played our best ball yet !  You know we will hit a little better at least, and start to get some of those runs in. 

I am frustrated with the Rays series too, but it seems like Ozzie, and a lot of Sox fans are in full blown panic mode.  I thought I would point out some bright spots to get people in off the ledge.  I know we could make a list of reasons to be pessimistic too, but I think being positive is better. We are way better off than last year !

I like your thinking, likemorbs,

Lets accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative !!!

You have made some very good points that I hope the others on this board read.

If you don't mind,  I will add also that they have 12 more homes games to play then road games.   

I think all your points are true but you can make the counterpoint to some of your points. 

 About the young players, I dont think we could have expected anymore than any of the young guys have provided the team so far but the one problem with young guys is that they tend to fade over the course of a long season. Danks is the only one the has played a whole season in the majors so hopefully he will be ok.

The one point about not playing our best ball yet is that I think the rotation has played the best they can with the exception of Buehrle. I can not see any of these guys doing any better than they have so far. They have been that great that includes the bullpen. I hope they dont regress. If we could get a timely hit once in a while it would make their lives that much easier.

The Sox are in first place after 2 months, and that is where everyone hoped they would be. Sure you would like them to have a bigger lead but at least they are in first in the crappy division. They need some offense, Ozzie said last night exactly what I said "if you think were going to win with this offense youre full of S#!T!!!!!"

Baseball is amazing. All the White Sox needed was to execute a few more times with their situational hitting, and they'd be coming home winning 3 of 4 from the Rays. However, we all saw the repeated failures for even a sac fly. This team is not very far from where it needs to be. I agree on all the points listed above, and also with dazed about his fear of the pitching regressing. They have pitched so well, it's almost too much to ask for them to keep it up all year. They could have really made up a lot of ground if their hitting had improved just a little.

Is anyone else annoyed by Nick Swisher? I've seen two Saturday on Fox broadcasts and Swisher annouced the Sox lineups each time. Some pre-recorded crap where he has to laugh and give out nick-names to everyone in the lineup. He needs to step out of the spotlight until he gets his batting average about .250 IMO.

He loves the spotlight there is no doubt about it. They do that stupid lineup thing all the time on the national games but why are they always going to him? I think what is most annoying (besides his play) is the comment about how they lost because of 2 bad pitches, how about getting a couple of hits every now and then. take some responsibility for his horrible play so far. He should maybe concentrate on his game a little more and being a celebrity less.