Baseball in the Daytime: 7-6-07

Today's lone sun-filled matchup involves the first half of a double header between the third- and fourth-place clubs in the American League Central. At 1:05 CDT, Ozzie Guillen's Chicago White Sox will host Ron Gardenhire's Minnesota Twins for bragging rights to the division's most mediocre rotation.

The South Side club has Jon Garland (6-5), their only consistently decent starter -- he's allowed only one base runner to score in his last 14 innings pitched -- slated to take the mound; Twinkies' hurler Scott Baker (2-3) seeks consecutive good outings coming off a 79-pitch complete game in Detroit.



Both of these AL Central pitching staffs have struggled through the first half of the season: The Twins sit barely above .500 (43-41) and are 7 1/2 games behind the division-leading Cleveland Indians. Worse off are the White Sox (37-45) who find themselves in an identity crisis a mere season and-a-half removed from their world championship. The Sox have fared so poorly as of late, they've let the Kansas City Royals threaten to emerge from the AL Central's mid-season basement for the first time since the Hootster met his bride. Rough times.

Lucky for the Twins, they've managed to get some good hitting out of their lineup in the form of 37 homers between Justin Morneau and Torii Hunter, and a total of seven stick swingers hitting .275 or better. Guillen's guys, once known as a slew of sluggers, have struggled to compensate for the team's lack of quality starts. Lucky for them, when they do produce at the plate and get decent outings from their starters, they have the luxury of bringing in the 22-save butterball known as Bobby Jenks, easily the greatest closer I ever saw.

Tickets are still available for both ends of the all-Righty double header; Matt Garza battles Gavin Floyd in an exhibition of recordless pitchers. If you're not down with the South Side's 'hood, however, you can catch the daytime affair on XM 181. I pretended to be interested in looking up the DTV broadcast, but Christ. There's like 500 channels on that network, and I'll, a la Old No. 7, play the lazy card and suggest one look it up one's self.