8 In A Row And A Stanley-Sox Connection?

With a tornado warning in Cook County, I didn’t even think this game would happen. And, if by some miracle, the game was to go down, I thought the Sox weren’t going to win this one. What are the odds of stringing together 8 wins in a row? And winnings 2 in a row against the Braves, who had the best record in the NL? Against a pitcher whose ERA was something like 2.30? Could they be this lucky?

And lucky they were. The outfield must be littered with four-leaf clovers because the Tigers, Twins, and Braves all added one to the loss column. And all thanks to two men: Mark Buehrle and Carlos Quentin.

Quentin seemed reanimated and much like the 2008 Quentin. TCQ, anyone? Of the runs today, 3 came from Carlos himself who hit 2 home runs. Carlos has tallied 4 homers in the last 10 games. 3 of them in this series against Atlanta. He is for 12 for 36 in these last 10 games (.333) and he’s picked up 11 RBI.

Another happy camper is Mark Buehrle. Although he wasn’t at his best, he contained himself to just 2 runs over 6 innings, getting out of sticky situation after sticky situation. He picked up a win, and the bullpen held the score for him.

On a side note, Paul Konerko and Alex Rios weren’t so lucky. Paulie picked up a base, but collected a silver sombrero. Alex Rios was close behind with 2 strike outs of his own and no hits. The only other strikeout of the night belonged to Beckham who went 0-3. Pierre went 0-4, unfortunately. While the first two are excusable, Beckham and Pierre are, unfortunately, still behind their many teammates in production.

The good news is that tomorrow’s scheduled pitcher is the least scary of the Braves pitchers the Sox have faced. And the Cubs are next, who just suffered an 8-1 loss. The latter are also 13-22 on the road, on a 2-game losing streak, and 9 games below .500. The Sox should be able to stand their ground for the time being. If the Sox were to gain any more ground (they’ve already picked up 7 games on the Twins, going from 10.5 to just 3.5 games behind), I might not be able to handle it. It’s as if the Stanley Cup win broke the Chicago Sports curse- that is, if you don’t count the Cubs as a Chicago team.

If you think about it, while the Stanley Cup was being earned, the Sox began their rampage, taking 2 from Detroit, winning the Series at Wrigley the day of the Parade, and being unstoppable since. I could really be onto something here. Perhaps a correlation between distance of the Stanley Cup from the home plate at U.S. Cellular Field and the amount of runs scored? Or the amount of people in the same room as the Cup and the amount of strike-outs per game. We could guarantee the Sox never lose a game again! That is… if you’re superstitious.