Guillen has White Sox fighting for playoff lives

If a seven-game winning streak had to come to an end, the Sox pickedjust about the smoothest way to let us down easy. Freddy Garcia didn'tsize up well against Justin Verlander to begin with, so watching his badback cut his legs out from under him in a 9-1 loss to Detroit certainly didn't help matters.
And it's not going to help Ozzie Guillen, either.
Give Guillen credit: Kenny Williams decided how hard he was going to pursue a division title when he traded for Edwin Jackson, and Guillen is on the same page. He's throwing everything he can into the stretch run, ignoring the book and going with the hot hand, and to much success.
Consider!
*Three different White Sox starters have cracked 125 pitches since the start of August -- Gavin Floyd against Minnesota (125), Edwin Jackson against Cleveland (129), and Mark Buehrle against Boston (125).
In fact, Ozzie Guillen has let his starters throw 125+ pitches more often in the last four weeks than he did in his first six years as a manager. Entering this season, only Javier Vazquez had broken the barrier ... and that was back in 2006.
It hasn't worked out, exactly. He left in both Floyd and Buehrle one batter too long, but he was definitely living and dying with who he thought was the best pitcher he had available.
Here's the list, because of course you care:

*Chris Sale has deserved high-leverage work, and Guillen hasn't shied away from giving it to him. Four of his last five outings could be classified as tight spots, and Guillen leaned on him in a big way by riding him in the final 2 2/3 innings against the Detroit Tigers on Monday. That might be the highlight of the season for both Sale and Guillen, and if he can provide this kind of multiple-inning relief, it may result in shorter hooks.
*Bobby Jenks isn't far behind. Guillen used him in both ends of a doubleheader, and it was the second time in his career that he picked up two saves in one day.
*Juan Pierre wasn't bunted over! Since I've raked Guillen over the coals for wasting outs late in the game with the league's most prolific basestealer on first, it's only fair to note that Pierre stole second on Josh Beckett with nobody out in the seventh inning while down a run. They ended up scoring two runs and taking a 3-2 lead that inning.
*Besides Pierre, guys like Brent Lillibridge and Alejandro De Aza are also getting the green light in the late innings. Both were successful, and Lillibridge's steal turned out to be huge in the Sale game.
*Aggressive substitutions in general are giving the Sox some pretty weird looks late in the game. Lillibridge has come off the bench to play both center and right during this last week, but Guillen's "anything for a run" strategy has yet to backfire defensively.
We haven't seen this kind of seat-of-the-pants managing from Guillen in years. He went with a four-man rotation down the stretch in 2008 (and the short-rest start will make a return with John Danks tonight), but when it comes to reshaping the bullpen and, to a lesser extent, the offense... well, you'd probably have to go back to 2005 to find him being this resourceful. Or desperate.
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Guillen's mad scientist approach is working now, but it's only going to get tougher if Gordon Beckham's hand is as bad as it looked a week ago. Beckham reacted like that fastball broke something, and that he couldn't grip a bat made it seem like he broke something.
And before Tuesday night's game? Well...

"This is the worst my hand has felt in three days of playing, and I don't know why it hurts worse now," said Beckham, who returned to action for Saturday's doubleheader against Boston and has played the past four games. "I'm having trouble swinging the bat, so I don't want to get in there and give us less of a chance."  [...]
You would think it would be feeling a little bit better. So I don't know. I don't know what we're going to do or anything. I can't swing a bat like I'm capable of so I have to get out of there. I've got to give our team the best chance to win and I don't feel like ... I can't really hold on to the bat. You need both hands to swing.
"Obviously, you're concerned when it hurts," Beckham said. "I'm not really sure what's going on. I don't know why the pain is jumping from different places. There's not much I can do about it. I think I just have to rest it and hopefully it'll get better. I don't know."

... I'm thinking Cleveland's x-ray technician wasn't as much a comedian as he was afraid of delivering bad news.
On one possibly broken hand, you could consider this an extension of the 2008 theme. As I said before, that September featured the White Sox sweeping a hurricane-caused doubleheader. Now it has pitchers starting on three days' rest and a hard-to-pin-down extremity injury to the team's hottest hitter. Beckham is merely this year's Carlos Quentin.
Unfortunately, that year also featured a Minnesota team that could not protect a division lead. The 2008 Twins were 9-15 whenever they held at least a share of first place after the All-Star break. This year is a different story. The White Sox have gone 7-1 on this 10-game road trip, and have not gained a single game.
That's the life of a team that doesn't control its destiny. It could very well be the case that Guillen manages his tail off, the Sox have their best September ever under Guillen's guidance, and they still finish a handful of games out of first. We'll see how the Sox handle the Twins in the games before making any final judgments, but Guillen has shown signs of finally finding a truly flexible approach. It's just a little bit ironic that it happened the same time Williams finally forced a full-time DH upon him.