At the beginning of the season, Freddy Garcia was touted as the White Sox' "stopper" - the pitcher who could be counted on to give 6 or 7 strong innings and stop a losing streak. More recently, Gavin Floyd seemed to have taken over the role. Last night, that job fell to John Danks - and all Danks did was throw 8 innings of 1-run, 6-hit baseball. The strength of the White Sox pitching staff lies in two areas - one, a strong bullpen; and two, the ability for all five pitchers in the rotation to give solid starts and put the team in a position to win.

As we all saw in the Baltimore series, and have seen during the course of the year, the offense is going to be prone to fluctuations in effectiveness. The White Sox only put up 10 runs against the Orioles in a four-game series, but at the same time White Sox pitching conceded only 11 runs. In a short series, statistical anomalies such as this will appear from time to time, but the fact of the matter is that the pitching, which was incredibly strong throughout the 8-game road trip, put the White Sox in a position to win each and every game (save for the 7-1 loss to Detroit courtesy of Carlos Torres).

Tonight's game against the Twins is going to be sort of the litmus test of this series - two strong pitchers who have recently found their groove and are throwing extremely well. Gavin Floyd needs to go out tonight and simply pitch his game. If he does that, it is on the offense to pick up their starter and get him three or four runs. As the Sox have shown before, Floyd can pitch a brilliant game, and get no run support (see: June 13 @ Chicago Cubs). We could be in for a long night if the Sox can't figure out Francisco Liriano, even if just for one or two innings.