lostfan

He's def better than he was last year, still doesn't feel like he's pitching to his full potential though.

I love Cease but his efficiency often leaves something to be desired.

I hate this Finals schedule where *every game* has a 2-day break except one game. Now there is no game on the weekend.

Well if we're talking about basketball the NBA changed illegal defense rules (as others have brought up) and banned hand checking because the pace of play and scoring volume was too low and it was becoming a problem. That opened up perimeter play so that guys could drive to the basket more often and the versatile guys who could do that while still being good from long range started to shine more, and eventually coaches started to find better ways to score than the traditional ways. Anyway my point here is that aesthetically, the discussion of banning the shift is basically the same thing, offenses are starting to get flat and dull, and they're trying to bring some life back into it. "The hitters need to adjust" isn't a real solution, if that was it, then guys would've done that already.

Well in fairness to Kopech, between having Tommy John surgery and COVID he basically had 2 years ctrl+alt+deleted and it really was nobody's fault, otherwise he would've probably had that impact at age 23 also

I always see people say "hit it to a different part of the field if you don't like the shift" and that's just not how hitting works at all especially at the MLB level. It's difficult enough to hit a sac fly, let alone drive a ball in the opposite direction of where your swing usually takes it.

Chris Sale start, aka "Guaranteed Win Day"

It's something about the way the ball just jumps out of Kopech's hand, he just throws fire

This isn't really true, an out is an out. A F9, 5-3, and a K all count the same. Sure if you have a guy on 3rd you want a F9 cuz it scores a run, but if you've got a runner on first and hit a ground ball to SS, that 5-3 is now a 5-4-3 and you'd have rather had the K. That's not to say the way the out happened doesn't matter at all since every hitter has different tendencies, but I remember the days when people would complain about how often Jim Thome struck out when his OBP was like .400. I'd be much more concerned with low walk rates than high strikeout rates (of course the Sox have a glaring exception to this rule with Tim Anderson who always manages a mid-300s OBP despite striking out a fair amount and almost never walking).

that single had an exit velocity of 110.5 mph. Crawford was there, it just ate him up

I'm not the first one to say this but I'm impressed by what Jake Burger's been able to accomplish - the guy really has no business playing pro baseball at any level after what his body's been through

I'm not looking at his spray charts or anything, but from my memory, Luis Robert seems to be hitting a lot of stuff really hard to dead center and right center more often.

The ol' triple axel fastball, fools the hitters every time. Sox need pitching help right?

In the past 4-6 weeks, the Bulls have systematically and totally snuffed out any enthusiasm fans had for the playoffs.