Guillen has no use for critics

Think Ozzie Guillen was irritated after Thursday's ugly 5-3 loss to the Indians in 11 innings?

The White Sox manager was in an even grumpier mood before Friday's game against the rival Minnesota Twins, mainly for being second-guessed on his decision to twice have No. 2 hitter Gordon Beckham sacrifice speedster Juan Pierre to second base late in the setback to Cleveland.

Why not just let Pierre steal second?

"Well, don't watch it," Guillen said to his critics. "That's easy, man. If you don't want to watch the way I'm managing this club, it's easy, be a Cub fan or talk about something else.

"I'm not going to tell people why I do stuff, what I did. They talk about taking the bat away from Beckham, that's the seventh and ninth innings and I've got my best two hitters (Carlos Quentin, Paul Konerko), the only guys swinging the bat well right now, right behind him.

"All those idiots out there that think about baseball, come out here and manage. I don't have to explain to anybody why I do stuff."

Quentin and Konerko might be the Sox' best two hitters, but Beckham is not too far behind.

"Some guy said, 'Take the bat away from the kid that's going to hit 20 home runs and 40 doubles,' " Guillen said. "He will hit 40 doubles and 20 home runs even bunting the guy late in the game. The thing about it, like I said yesterday, we cannot strike out 12 times when we have a team that's not going to hit that many home runs.

"Our philosophy is running, putting the ball in play. Our philosophy is not working right now in two games. That's my job to let them know right away what's going on. If you're going to strike out that many times, we're not playing our game."

While losing two of three to the Indians in the first series of the season, the Sox batted .154 (14-for-19), went 3-for-18 with runners in scoring position, had a .316 on-base percentage and a .308 slugging percentage.

White Sox pitchers notched 31 strikeouts against the Indians, but Guillen continued to focus on the 18 whiffs by Sox hitters in the series, including 12 Thursday.

"My wife would have been lucky if I looked at her (Thursday) night because it's the third game of the season and I was upset," Guillen said. "It's not our hitting coach's fault; it's not anybody's fault. I'm not going to blame anybody.

"I'm just going to say we're going to strike out because we have guys that are going to strike out a lot. But 12 strikeouts in a game, that's too many."