All chewed up

"I hate the f-ing twins."
-text message from The Commish, 9:29 p.m. Friday, April 10

In the re-match of Game 163 from last year, the Minnesota Piranhas came to play, and the White Sox, while moving with more energy than they had in their first three games, came up way short. Twins 12 Sox 5.

For the Sox, there was good, bad and ugly.

The good: Chris Getz had a hit, a walk and a stolen base from the lead-off spot, and DeWayne Wise, the Opening Day lead-off man now buried at the bottom of the line-up, broke out of his slump with a couple of hits. Paul Konerko and Carlos Quentin both had homers, and seem to be improving a bit every game. Joe Crede also homered--oh, wait, he's on the Twins, now.

Crede got a nice hand in his first at-bat returning to The Cell, but Sox fans turned on him pretty quickly after the homer.

The bad: Jose Contreras started, and after a spring that seemed very positive primarly for his unexpectedly early return from injury, he looked like he wasn't quite ready for prime-time yet.

The ugly: The Twins had a 7-run 7th inning, which started with a home run by Justin Morneau, followed by three walks (by Clayton Richard and Mike MacDougal) and then five singles in a row off D.J. Carrasco (Ozzie had pretty much given up be then) before any outs were recorded.

The Sox are 1-3, and today send Bartolo Colon out for his first start against Francisco Liriano. Colon is a real wild card going into this year, so all bets are off for this one, but Liriano looked surpising hittable in his first start earlier this week, so we'll see.

Cubs update: Following up on my post from yesterday about the Cubs' miserable loss to the Brewers, I'd add that upon further review, the ball hit over Alfonso Soriano's head by Rickie Weeks was definitely a rocket. However, Soriano seemed to drift off the path of the ball as he moved back toward the wall. Ultimately, though, Kevin Gregg really fed one on a platter to Weeks. Catcher Koyie Hill blamed himself for the pitch selection, but Gregg has not been impressive thus far.