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TLR making the best team we’ve had in years almost unwatchable. Fuck JR

Let Me Take a Nap No way rookies can help team Leury must be played

Every metric has this team as one of baseball's best. Sure things can go wrong, but about 1/6 of the way this club looks pretty loaded. Even the fringe guys are doing enough, often enough to help the club win. At this point, and once again -- it's early, the greatest worry perhaps to have is that a richer club decides to give Hahn the keys this offseason.

I just stumbled upon a Baseball Reference chart I hadn't seen before. It ranks teams by WAR by position. Sox are: Overall - 3rd, 1.4 All Pitchers - 10th, -.0.7 Starters - 2nd, 0.9 Relievers - 12, -1.7 Non-P - 1st 2.1 C - 9th, -0.3 1B - 7th, 0 2B - 4th, 0.2 3B - 2nd, 0.6 SS - 3rd, 0.5 LF - 9th, -0.3 CF - 6th, 0.3 RF - 2nd, 0.3 OF all - 9th, 0.3" DH - 1st (tied), 0.8 *********** Some observations. 1. Having the starters rank this high is very good, since most people going into the season would have thought our starters were the shakiest part of the team. (And they were the worst group last year.) But with Carlos Rodon pitching lights out, Dylan Cease throwing the first shutout of his life, and Michael Kopech being devastating, the back end of the rotation seems like it may be as good as the front end. So when Giolito, Keuchel and Lynn sharpen up, this could be a devastating staff that can go on some nice winning streaks. Both the 1983 and 2005 Sox 99 win teams were driven by their starters. There is a lot of potential in this group. 2. The bullpen is not going to remain this bad. When they sharpen up, the Sox are likely to move to the top of the overall WAR ranking. 3. Yasmani Grandal is not going to continue hitting .120. He ranked 2nd in the AL in WAR last season. Another area where the Sox will improve. 4. Jose Abreu is not going to finish 7th. He was first last year by a wide margin. 5. Seeing Yoan Moncada 2nd after such a miserable offensive start to his season is impressive. He brought up the rear last year with a 12th place ranking. 6. Tim Anderson is good, but can and will be better. He finished 1st last year. 7. Left field is obviously the biggest hole (other than catcher) in the lineup. We need Engel to be healthy, but by late in the season Eloy's return will fill this hole. (Don't expect him Eloy to DH much when he returns.) 8. This is a surprisingly low ranking for Luis Robert, who has made strong offensive improvement. But he still has Mike Trout ahead of him and Byron Buxton has been having a year for Min. In the end, the rank will matter less than the final WAR number. 9. Adam Eaton has very adequately filled a big hole from the 2020 team. 10. The Yerminator has filled a DH hole the Sox have had for more than a decade. Overall: The Sox are underperforming where they should be if you look at run differential. I'd blame most of that on bullpen failures in close games. But the Sox also have studs like Jose Abreu and Yasmani Grandal underperforming, which will not continue. Mercedes will return to earth, but the Sox should have more than enough offensive improvement from other guys to compensate. Meanwhile, the starting pitching from the back end has been a revelation, with Carlos Rodon looking like an ACE, Michael Kopech looking even better in shorter stints, and Dylan Cease perhaps finally having the light go on. Once the bullpen comes around and the offense heats up, the Sox should be able to sustain some nice winning streaks.

There is no way I give Rodon a long term deal. Just too risky.

TLR does way more good things than Renteria did IMO. He also does about the same amount of stupid things Rickie did, which is a lot to take. The proof will be how they play down the stretch and in the playoffs it seems. Keeping a talented team relaxed will be his job.

Tony’s been slipping Leury PEDs. It’s the only explanation for everything

16 starts in 26 games, for a utility man, is really all you need to know. Lamb, I don’t mind as much, but removing Madrigal, who is hitting as well as anyone right now, to play Leury, is assanine.

It’s really the fault of Katz and Cairo, because they aren’t whispering loud enough to Tony (that tends to happen when you hit 76, can’t really blame TLR on that one)

TLR ain’t changing. These asinine decisions are him clutching to his “old winning ways” and he doesn’t give a shit what anybody including his FO think. This team will have to win in spite of him and that’s damn tragic. Who woulda thought the manager would be having a monster effect by simply handicapping his own team by playing shitty fuckin players consistently

If Robin Ventura or Ricky Reneria were making the same decisions Tony has made, no one would be defending them. Someone , maybe Hahn or KW or JR himself needs to tell Tony that especially from the left side Leury isn't a HOF baseball person brother. He isn't legit.

I'll just leave this here

Sure hope he doesn't take that too personally and resign. 😎

So fired up - Fields has so much upside. I heard a former gm on radio today - said he was being asked by so many why fields was falling on boards (media perception). Said he talked to scouts for multiple teams - who apparently said whose boards - cause he was the clear #2 qb on their boards and they weren’t moving any of the other guys with helium up. I think Fields at 11 could be the steal of the draft in a few years and if it isn’t - oh well. Go big or go home at qb. Let’s go!

Long long way to go to get to that but if we are going there kind of hard not to include Rodon in the discussion.

Nice win, comrades!

The team is terribly run & they have to spend a ton of time in Cleveland. Can you blame them?

No rational person could actually believe this. Leury Garcia has a career 68 wRC+ against RHP while Nick Madrigal has a 124 wRC+. Nick has shown so far to be almost twice as effective against RHP as Leury. Garcia is not good from the left-side of the plate and there are 1,142 plate appearances to support that. I’m not joking when I say this, but Tony just not look at basic splits as insane as that sounds.

Leury Garcia has a career OPS vs righties of .626 in 1158 AB's, but yes... let's get the "lefty" out there.

He's good to give the starters breaks. TLR has seen how young players who have never played 162 before wear down at the end of the season. He is giving them breaks early so they will be fresh at the end of the season. This is the reason Mendick went down and Lamb and Garcia are with the team as I said earlier. Garcia can give Mandrigal, TA and Vaughn breaks. Lamb can give Vaughn, Moncada and Abreu breaks while also providing LH at bats.

I feel this haiku I wrote best describes the situation Hawk was vindicated La Russa is fucking trash Can the White Sox win?

If Hahn got rid of them and brought in new guys it would be the same shit unless they were rookies as well. I kind of understand Lamb hitting, he hasn't looked as bad as Leury but to continue to give Garcia starts especially over Nick is inexcusable. Nick is on the bench for the 2nd time in 4 games when he is probably our 3rd or 4th best hitter at the moment. It is mind boggling and I wish the press would push the questions on TLR more.

Hawk was right to kick him to the curb. The game has passed this drunk fuck by. JR sticking it to the fans after we sat through the rebuild.

So obviously we don’t know if those whispers are happening. So you can keep asking the question, but you know there is no way we find that out. What we do know is Tony LaRussa is the manager, and was paid quite a lot of money to do so. He was also selected over many other quality candidates, apparently because of his vast amount of experience. Yet here you are, asking about Ethan Katz and Miguel Cairo. As Hawk would say.....STRETCH!

Why didn't Miguel Cairo tell TLR not to play Lamb and Leury here?

Doesn’t the buck stop at the manager? It’s the reason he makes more than anyone else, right? If they Cairo and Katz DID offer input and were ignored, it’s an even bigger red flag for TLR. If they didn’t....why didn’t the HOF Baseball mind Tony La Russa know better than them? Isn’t that why he was brought in?

I feel like he’d be even worse as a first baseman.

The Yermin-Vaughn-Abreu-Garcia conundrum.

For all we know Katz or Cairo said something and TLR ignored it. That seems just as likely to me as no one saying anything at all. None of us really have any idea what communication did or didnt happen amongst the staff, but ultimately it is on the manager to make the call. The mounting evidence that Gio was running out of gas was pretty apparent to fans watching, so I don't know how it wasn't obvious to the staff in the dugout.

Dominkk I see you do this all the time, and I love your enjoyment of metrics, but this is just not how they were meant to be used. The projectability of 47 ab's (the total amount Vaughn has) using his current statistics has an R value still well south of .5 (sitting around .32-.42 depending on which stat you're looking at). That means even his entire sample still isn't yet a great indicator of what he's going to be as a hitter in his next AB or his next 100 AB's. By taking the sample down even smaller, to being L/R splits, you are dropping the R value down to .25-.32 depending on the metric you are looking at. The only thing that sees an R value near to past .5 over 50 AB's are K/BB metrics, and even then it just creeps over. It is typically the fastest to normalize. There is no need to take a small sample and make it smaller and start drawing conclusions on what Vaughn can and can't do. Is it possible he has been more comfortable vs lefties than righties this year? Sure. Is it predictable to the point of making a decision based on it? No.

Leury is a baseball person though

I saw that in the box score ( couldn’t watch today ) and immediately thought WTF.

I wouldn't let Eloy touch an outfield glove again.

Paging @knightni and @Texsox and @Balta1701 and all the other mods for a QUICK MERGE like you're pulling onto the Dan Ryan after the game.

That play behind second by Anderson was another from another world as well.

I cannot wait til Kopech is the rotation full time 🤤

Rough afternoon for Yermin so far.

Always an adventure

Garcia threw it way too late and off target. He would have been out if Leury threw it earlier.

Just got back from a long walk with the family, I don’t envy any of the fielders out there today, it’s pretty crazy in the city.

Pretty much since VAfan declared him signing of the offseason

Ta mania!

That swirling wind is another reason not to have Lamb in the outfield. At worst, put Leury there (if you don’t trust Vaughn enough) and Madrigal at second...

Fuck Larussa, Madrigal should never be sitting in favor of Garcia unless hes hurt. What is this horseshit

I didn’t laugh at your post and I get what you’re saying, but there is a balance here and rocking an ice cold Leury in 60% of games just seems crazy to me no matter what. I honestly think La Russa is overvaluing Leury’s switch-hitting ability and doesn’t realize that he is bad against RHP.

Hmm, really would have preferred a multitude of other guys: Sage Surratt WR Jamar Johnson S Hamsah Nsairildean S Daviyon Nix DL Ardarius Washington S Seth Williams WR Those are some great values right now, didn't think we'd go guard in round 5.

My point was simply that I'm surprised that Cairo & Katz don't seem to get much flack from this forum while many people think TL has forgotten what a baseball looks like. There is no reason to have a bench coach if not to whisper in the manager's ear of situations requiring his attention. I am sure Katz is watching every pitch with knowledgeable eyes. If they were warning TL of this impending doom...shame on TL. If not...they share some of the blame.

TLR is a believer in "hard mode"

Absolutely love the Jenkins pick BTW. He gets the most praise in the run game, but he's also only given up 2 sacks in over a thousand pass blocking snaps.

Add Tatis Jr to that lineup and it is eerily similar to one of your wet dreams