If Ever A Chance For Sox Success in Dome, This Is It

With the way the two teams come in, the pitching matchup, and the ballclubs' makeups as a whole, this is really the best chance I have seen in a long while for the Sox to be successful up in that hell hole they call the MetroDome.

The Sox will run, Danks, Buehrle, and Colon out to the bump while the Twinks counter with Perkins, Baker, and Liriano. In all three matchups the Sox have the edge. Not only in pure raw stats coming in to the game, but also the way the pitchers have been doing coming in. Buehrle on the perfect game, Danks coming off the extra days rest to heal the finger, and Colon off his good start in Detroit. If you could line the pitchers up the way you would want the three against them, I think how it falls is how I'd do it for the Sox, and for the Twins, if I could line them up to give the Sox the advantage it would be exactly how it will play out. As far as starting pitching, there's no excuse why the Sox don't have the edge there.

As far as the teams' streaks coming in, both teams played poorly at the beginning and middle of their previous series and finished strong with big wins before heading out. The difference is that the Sox are coming from Detroit, while the Twins are coming from Los Angeles. This somewhat neutralizes the dome. When the Twins play long stretches at home they get acquainted with the batters eye (and fielders eye for that matter) quicker each game as their stretch moves along. when they come straight off a road trip, they must readjust just like the visitors do. Obviously the Twins should adjust quicker because it's their home park, but there's no doubt there's a little advantage for the Sox there. (Well more of less of a disadvantage that there could be).

And lastly the overall make up of the teams is much more similar this year than it has been. The Sox come in with speed at the top and speed at the bottom with the boppers in the middle. The Twins who normally have a little bit more speed than the Sox have kind of lost that edge a little. The middle of their lineup is Morneau, Cuddyer, Kubel, Crede, Young. They never used to have 5 guys in a row that were power hitters. Therefore the ballpark does not play in their favor as much as it used to.

Of course all these things being said, we have to go into this series expecting to get swept. The thing about streaks in sports is that you cannot bet against them until they are clearly broken. Therefore until the Sox go up there and hand their Twins their rear ends to them like they have done to us for the last 5 years, I'm not going to say we will for sure have a good series up there. But if there's ever been a chance, I think this is it.