By Morris Phillips

The Giants and White Sox have plans to occupy the same baseball diamond at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago on Tuesday night.

And that’s where the comparisons between the two ball clubs end.

While the Giants started the season well and saw things get considerably better from there, the White Sox have been stuck in the mud almost from day one on March 31. The South Siders won their first two games, then lost the next three.  They’ve been stuck exactly at .500 21 times then lost the following game on 14 of those occasions.   Having played 16 different opponents in 70 games thus far, with a postponement thrown in, the White Sox haven’t been able to find any consistency in 2014. 

And when they most recently hit .500 at 33-33, the White Sox lost four in row leaving them searching as the team with the best record in baseball comes to visit.

“It’s not necessarily us not being able to get over the hump,” infielder Gordon Beckham said.  “It’s just the way the season has gone that we just haven’t really broken through when we could have.  There is no real answer as to why we get to .500 and we dip back down.  Hopefully we’ll grind back to .500.”

If gaining traction is rooted in consistency of a team’s schedule, the White Sox haven’t had much.  Tuesday will mark the team’s 17th interleague game thus far and the number of different opponents is just a fact of the new, balanced, interleague-heavy schedule. After Wednesday’s matinee against the Giants, only two of the Sox’s final 90 games will be against National League opponents.  If pitching and defense weren’t such big issues, the break from interleague play might be the thing that propels the White Sox.

Chicago has committed an AL second-worst 53 errors and team ERA ranks 26^th of 30 clubs at 4.37.  The lack of pitching and defense has minimized the impact of Cuban slugger Jose Abreu, who has 19 home runs thus far in an eye-opening rookie season.  Also, the Sox haven’t capitalized on bust out campaigns from Alexei Ramirez (.313) and former Giant Conor Gillaspie.

The 26-year old third baseman played 29 games for San Francisco in 2008, 2011 and 2012 without hitting a home run. But Gillaspie’s made himself a fixture in Chicago by hitting 13 homers last season and hitting .329 in 46 games this season.

Maybe the White Sox issues center around the disabled list which has seen Abreu, Gillaspie, Beckham, pitcher Chris Sale and outfielder Adam Eaton miss time with injuries.

The Giants send Matt Cain to the mound in Tuesday’s opener to face Chicago’s John Danks in a 5:10pm start.