White Sox 1, Indians 0

Mark Buehrle chewed through Cleveland’s lineup, allowing two hits and walking one while striking out five in eight innings of work. Paul Konerko provided most of the sock in the Sox’ lineup, collecting two of the team’s four hits and scoring the game’s only run on a bouncer to short hit by Aaron Rowand.

Game Notes:

-- The Sox offense didn’t do very well, but it was only one game. Talk about a small sample size. I like manager Ozzie Guillen’s answer when a reporter asked him during the postgame press conference if the though the team was overmatched offensively, which was basically, “It’s just the first day of the season.” I don’t think you an form any conclusions about a team until at least a month into the season.

-- Speaking of Guillen, he made one very good call with Konerko and another very good non-call.

The non-call came when Konerko doubled to lead off the bottom of the seventh. I was afraid Guillen would pinch run for him. Instead, he let Konerko stay in, despite being his slowness on the basepaths. The run came around to score anyway, and if necessary, Konerko could have hit again.

Guillen did replace Konerko at first base with Ross Gload to start the ninth. Gload then made a nice play for the last out of the game. Ozzie did look smart on that one, as it’s hard to imagine Konerko ranging to his right for that one.

-- Nobody looked very good at the plate, except maybe Konerko. But at the same time, nobody looked bad, except maybe Joe Crede. Nothing the Sox’ third sacker hit left the infield, and the last shot off his bat went to the shortstop for a double-play.

It was pretty unusual for Crede in that last year, better than 47 percent of his at-bats resulted in fly balls, as opposed to 33 percent that went for grounders. It doesn’t really mean anything yet, but it’s just something of interest.

POW: I’m going to be doing something called the Scott Posednik On-Base Percentage Watch. All it is an update on how often the Sox’ new leadoff hitter is reaching base. So, as of today, the POW is .250 after a walk and no hits in three at-bats.

Around Baseball: What the fuck is going on with Javier Vazquez? The Cubs are lighting his ass up. … Speaking of the North Siders, they inked third baseman Aramis Ramirez to a 4-year, $42 million deal. Ramirez can opt out after 2006. Not a great deal for Cub… The Twins are losing to the M’s. … Pedro Martinez got roughed up today, but I think he’ll be OK. .. Milwaukee beat Pittsburgh handily today, 9-2. The Brewers are my pick as this year’s surprise team in baseball. They’ll be good offensively, they have a couple good pitchers. Now all they need is a couple young guys to step up, and they could be close to .500. When you haven’t has a winning season since 1992, that would constitute a surprise.