48 games

Merkin @ CWS:

A few years ago, analyst Rany Jazayerli did a study for Baseball Prospectus, asking a simple question: How meaningful are the first few dozen games of a season, in terms of predictive value? In other words, at what point does “still early” become “too late?”The question has a special relevance for the White Sox, who finished April with a 10-18 record and set a franchise record for losses in an opening month. There was a lot of complicated math in Jazayerli’s study, but his conclusion was that, generally speaking, a team is what it is at about the 48-game mark. There are lots of exceptions to the rule, including last year’s White Sox, but the rule of thumb is that once that threshold is reached, a team’s current record has as much predictive value as any kind of preseason projection.

After today’s loss, the Sox will have played 29 games.

And Ozzie’s take:

Manager Ozzie Guillen returned to the dugout on Sunday, saying he’s grown weary of questions about bad starts.

“I’m tired of saying it’s too early,” said Guillen. “I get tired of telling myself it’s too early. It’s never too early. If you go out there and start saying stuff and pushing these guys, talking to those guys, then you say, ‘Well, the manager is panicking. The coaches are panicking. The owners are panicking.’

“There is no way we are going to play this bad any longer. There is no way. We’ve done everything on the field to be terrible. Now, it’s our time for the ball to bounce our way.”

Expecting to win due to magic. Maybe Ibis made some mean quesadillas!