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Imagine referencing this scouting report, from before the season when Sosa was ranked like #22 in the Sox system by pipeline.

Terrible break for mendick. He'd been playing great. Baseball is a cruel game.

Although not confirmed, this is the same person who had the Mena promotion

Perhaps Gio should consult his Jr. High pitching coach.

Josh Harrison now has .1 fWAR. Baby steps.

It's what you'd expect with a 31 game on-base streak, but seeing Colson with an OPS over 1.000 (after tonight's game) & a ~.450 OBP over the last 30 days is just ridiculous. That is some grade A savagery.

The fact that Tony brought that up specifically tells me it was more about discipline than anything else.

I am just going to say this out loud. If this team can't stay healthy, I am 100% not interested in seeing them move any of the crowd at the lower levels of the minors to try to plug holes on this ship. I would rather miss the playoffs by a game or two, than to give up the guys we need to go limping into the playoffs. Use the off-season to do the heavy lifting to really rework the roster. Find better balance between left and right handedness. Find better balance between early starters and summer hitters. Find some decent defense. Find some healthier players. Find some smarter players. Bonus points if you can find players that check multiple of these boxes. But quit with the incremental moves. Even if you have to trade a guy we all thought would be a core guy, its time for a reformation. I don't think we need a full pledge sell off, but we do need a realignment.

How is the entire training and strength & conditioning staff employed???

Kath in June thus far. .295/.377/.590

God I hope Gallo washes out of the league so I never have to see someone want his worthless ass on the Sox again

Too bad Dylan Cease can only pitch well against weak hitting ballclubs.

Harrison coming to life is just like a trade...

He has been such a great watch this season and the progress has been incredible. Props to @bmags on being the OG Sosa guy though. He was on the Sosa train before he was even in Kanny I believe.

Montgomery's streak is up to 31 games now

Everything is awesome. Everything is cool where you're part of the team.

And he still sucked it up for an entire game. Love that man.

What a dumbass contract

This is just going to make for another terrific Guaranteed Rate commercial. Lucas Giolito was the worst pitcher in baseball, then he wasn't and now he is again. Time to refinance

100. Hahn is afraid of moving folks off the 40 man. Reminds me of my grandmother hoarding useless shit in the garage.

That is what we get for playing an actual outfielder in LF. This wouldn't have happened if we had a first baseman out there.

.284/.385/.640/1.025 -- Mike Trout .312/.405/.633/1.037 -- Yordan Alvarez .323/.395/.646/1.041 -- Opposing batters against Lucas Giolito in June so far.

I don’t mind it.

I don't think there is a bigger slam dunk than the White Sox trading for Chisholm and he completely falls off the face of the earth hitting .220 with no power once here.

The issue is it really needs 2B, a 2B (😁). As the OF/DH is pollock and Robert with Jimenez and Vaughn. There is no room for a new regular in the OF.

I’ll be at the game on Friday, Father’s Day gift from my daughter!! 1st game this year. Don’t know who’s going to start.

Hater

I'm going to guess it'll be Severino....this is kinda like the opposite of pick to click.....crap to cut?

I remember having these same thoughts last season.

“A right-handed hitter, Sosa owns some of the best hand-eye coordination and bat-to-ball skills in the system but needs to make better swing decisions to reach his offensive potential. He rarely walks and gets himself out too often by making weak contact. He has enough bat speed and projectable strength to deliver 15 or more homers per season if he can adopt a more selective approach. Sosa has good actions, reliable hands and solid arm strength at shortstop, but his below-average speed leads to subpar range. He fits better at second or third base, though those positions will demand more offense. He may be more of a bat-first utilityman than a true everyday player.” https://www.mlb.com/prospects/whitesox/lenyn-sosa-672820 Need to tap the brakes a bit…it’s exciting to see change, but a Top 10-15 MiLB guy like Andrew Vaughn didn’t even get everyday playing time.

The Sox aren't calling up Sosa to let him dick around and try to learn the OF in the big leagues. He'll be playing 2B everyday.

My body is ready…… for him to blow out his hamstring at GRF Who does Yolbert have to choke to get a shot? Sosa must really look nice to leapfrog the 2 million dollar man. https://mobile.twitter.com/ChuckGarfien/status/1539231147846246400

Feels like it's been ages since the Sox promoted a position player prospect straight from AA, but I would love to see it in regards to Sosa

Kath with an opposite field double in his first at bat. It's so good to see him using the whole field lately. Early in the season it seemed like it was pull side or nothing.

I'm gonna say that this was his discipline for not hustling.

lol this sounds bad to say but do you ever remember in Little League, having the bases loaded or a rally, then the bottom of the lineup comes up and ends all hope. Yeah that's Harrison and Garcia.

lol he made that catch on Pollock last night but couldn't catch a fly ball at the track today. He could have saved all of us a lot of time.

Why, he would have just torn a tendon off the bone if he had to run hard

Stone very irritate by it. Good

Maybe you need to get inside more.

Guessing a big part of Engel is that he almost always comes in for defense late in the game if we're winning, and we've won very few games in blowout fashion. Just turns out he started the games we did win in blowouts.

Fine with this, and I say that as a frequent critic of TLR's lineups. TA clearly needed a day, half our lineup is injured/unavailable. The only one who could be there to upgrade is Pollock but I imagine he needs a day too.

I woke up at 4.15 am here in the UK to see the Whites Sox 4-2 down in the bottom of the 9th and watched the game from then on, what a big win this could prove to be, the offense seems to have finally come to life and we are getting hits throughout the line up not just relying on one or two hot players. The hustle and drive to win also seem to be back after so long in the doldrums, winning breeds winning and if the Sox can maintain and build on this momentum something great might just happen second half of the season.

We shouldn’t keep trading guys in their primes for veterans in their 30’s. The Sox need the 4.5 fWAR Moncada to have any chance against the likes of the Yankees, ultimately. And Burger isn’t good enough defensively to hold down 3rd. He’s Josh Fields now.

Possibly. Offer them Moncada and hope they bite

CCD classes here at SoxTalk. My 93 year old mom would hate that change.

EXTEND HARRISON

What a large fucking win. Down 2 runs with two outs and nobody on against one of the best closers in the game, and we got it done.

Giolito pitched just fine with the sticky ban last year. Yes, his spin rates are down and they've been steadily going down since the sticky ban, but he had a 3.33 ERA and 3.47 FIP in 92 innings after June 21st (when the ban went into effect) last year. The lack of sticky stuff might make it so that his fastball is no longer as effective, but he did just fine without it for about 120 innings. Here is how his 2021 went pre and post sticky ban. Pre 6/21/2021 Fastball - 2430 RPM, .225 BA, .441 SLG, 43.9% Slider - 2174 RPM, .250 BA, .583 SLG, 17.1% Change - 1475 RPM, .188 BA, .362 SLG, 37.5% Post 6/21/2021 Fastball - 2272 RPM, .270 BA, .416 SLG, 43.8% Slider - 1943 RPM, .187 BA, .245 SLG, 25.2% Change - 1511 RPM, .259 BA, .411 SLG, 26.9% Giolito really had to adjust his pitching style after the ban. His fastball and slider spin rate went down by a lot. His fastball/change combo was no longer his bread and butter without the high spin rate on his fastball, as teams could sit on the change up more. He went with his slider a lot more and it was arguably his best pitch post ban. But he adjusted fine and was still considered a very good, if not elite, starting pitcher. 2022 has been rocky for Giolito with an injury on opening day and then COVID in early May. I've seen a lot of people talk about how he hasn't been the same since COVID, so I decided to take a look at the splits. He returned from COVID on 5/18 and here are his numbers pre/post. Pre 5/18/2022 Fastball - 2170 RPM, .200 BA, .472 SLG, 48.6%, 93.1 MPH Slider - 1980 RPM, .400 BA, .650 SLG, 19.9% Change - 1426 RPM, .120 BA, .160 SLG, 23.6% Post 5/18/2022 Fastball - 2155 RPM, .365 BA, .519 SLG, 48.2%, 93.3 MPH Slider - 1954 RPM, .234 BA, .553 SLG, 28.3% Change - 1402 RPM, .385 BA, .642 SLG, 21.7% One thing that jumps out at you is just how bad his change up has been in his past 6 starts. It was easily his best pitch results-wise in his first 5 starts. Just from watching Giolito pitch recently, it's stuck out to me that his slider has been getting hit really hard. He's given up 4 homers off hanging sliders in his past 4 starts alone and I can actually remember all of them without looking it up. And yet, that's his been his best pitch since 5/18 because his fastball and change up have been god awful. He's also upped the usage on the slider by about 8% (mostly by ditching the curveball), so more sliders = more probability he hangs one once in a while. So what the hell happened to Giolito's fastball and change up combo? It was once one of the best pitch combos in baseball and it's now extremely below average. I don't think it's the velocity that's the issue here. He's throwing harder since his bout with COVID. His spin rates, while down a little, aren't down enough to make you think that's the main issue. I think the main issue is his control on both pitches. Here's the heatmaps for his fastball with pre COVID on the left and post COVID on the right. Fastball His fastball control has been erratic ever since coming off the COVID list. He was around the zone more often than not in his first 5 starts of the year, but he has since been just about everywhere with his fastball. His 40% CSW rate (called strike and whiffs) has decreased to just 32%. He's also gone from throwing 26% balls to nearly 39%. The lack of fastball control really hurt him last night in the 6th when he fell behind every hitter and had to throw his fastball in the zone in fastball counts. Speaking of fastballs in the zone, Giolito has gotten killed on them since 5/18. Here are those numbers. Pre 5/18/2022 Fastball heart - .278 BA, 16% Fastball shadow - .160 BA, 22% Post 5/18/2022 Fastball heart - .500 BA, 13.2% Fastball shadow - .304 BA, 20% Just for reference, the heart is basically in the middle of the plate, a few inches inside the corners of the zone. The shadow is the area around the edge of the zone. The league average on heart fastballs is .299. The league average on shadow fastballs is .223. So either his fastball is now one of the worst in the league or he's getting extremely unlucky. A little unlucky, maybe. His xBA on his fastballs since 5/18 is about 60 points lower than his actual BA on them, but I'm not sure that's the entirety of the problem. I alluded to him getting behind in the zone and having to throw his fastball in the zone in fastball counts earlier, and weirdly enough, he's thrown less fastballs in the zone since 5/18 than prior. All this points to his fastball just being less effective overall. He's throwing it faster, he's throwing it less in the heart of the zone, but when he's throwing it there, it's getting clobbered. It's a bit astounding that even his fastball in the shadow of the zone is being hit at a .300 clip, when that should be a pitch that gets hit for about .200. Without his ability to establish the fastball, his change up has suffered as well results-wise. But he's also not locating it as well. Here are his change up heat maps, the left is prior to COVID and the right is after. Change He's throwing the change up a lot less in the zone. He used to throw it inside to right handers and outside to lefties, but he's more or less just throwing them low and out of the zone. If he's behind a hitter, that's probably a pitch they end up laying off as opposed to swinging at. And that's more or less what batters have done as the whiff rate on his change up has decreased from 30% to just 10%. They're also taking the pitch about 4% more for balls. His CSW% is also down from 40% to 25%. TLDR: his fastball and change up are crap now. His fastball is all over the place and when he throws it in the zone, it gets crushed. He's also getting behind in the count more due to lack of good fastball control. Hitters are laying off his change up and they're also hitting it hard when he does throw a hittable one. His slider has been hit hard for homers, but has more or less been his best pitch. Although that's not saying much since his fastball and change up have been horrendously bad since coming back from COVID. How do you fix him? Get his fastball command back. The more counts he's ahead in, the more he can use the slider and change up more effectively and the less he has to throw the fastball in fastball counts. I think the days of Lucas having an elite fastball are over. He just needs it to be league average or serviceable. That hasn't been the case in the past 6 starts and that's why he's been getting clobbered.