White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen has seen enough of Bobby Jenks blowing leads so he will mix and match late in games with lefty Matt Thornton and righties J.J. Putz and Sergio Santos to close out games. Jenks has pitched in 39 games for the White Sox this year and he is 1-3 with 20 saves, a 5.09 ERA and a 1.59 WHIP. He will likely start pitching much earlier in games as Guillen has lost his faith in Jenks. Matt Thornton has pitched in 40 games (0 starts) for the White Sox and he is 2-3 with 5 saves, a 2.58 ERA and a 1.04 WHIP. Thornton has only given up 27 hits in 38 1/3 innings with 51 whiffs showing just how dominating he has been. Thornton can handle righty and lefty hitters so he could get a lot of save opportunities going forward for the Pale Hose. J.J. Putz is pitching some of the best baseball of his major league career right now and he has quite a lot of experience of closing out ballgames. Putz has pitched in 36 games (0 starts) for the White Sox this year and he is 5-2 with 2 saves, a 1.50 ERA and a 0.78 WHIP. He only has given up 22 hits while whiffing 42 batters in only 36 innings this season. Putz is also showing outstanding control this season only walking six batters this year. Sergio Santos has pitched in 35 games (0 starts) for the White Sox this year and he is 0-0 with a 1.80 ERA and a 1.50 WHIP. He has walked 17 batters while whiffing 32 in 30 innings this year. With Santos relatively new to pitching I think Guillen will use Putz and Thornton in most of the save situations. This was a smart move for Guillen as he can’t sit around and watch his team lose games late.

UPDATE: (7/30/2010) - The White Sox have re-installed Jenks as the closer for now.