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This isn’t true.

NO EXCUSE LARUSSA NEEDS TO BE FIRED TONIGHT

Probably not

Yermin is so good he gets hits while not even playing.

The culture is “fuck off, I’m Jerry’s friend”

Icy cold takes in this GT..."Not TLR's fault, Gio should be better!" Yikes, bros. It is the job of the Hall of Fame Baseball Person manager, to see his starter is completely out of gas, everyone saw it except Sleepy Tony.

thank god they did not give Giolito 200 million.

If you ask they're gonna say no because that is technically the rules, but I was able to walk the length of concourse without anyone asking for my ticket. They have these gates up but the employees standing at them don't do anything.

I think there is a strong argument that relative to his time periods offense he is the greatest hitter of all time.

The Sox in the AL Central is the unsinkable ship and yet the dorf hires the one captain determined to steer it directly in the path of an iceberg. Even a halfway competent halfway sleeping manager could get this team into first place. Hey look Ozzie. The dorf called him to let him know he couldn't be the manager again. Does anyone doubt the Sox would have a better record with Ozzie instead of Tony? Leave it to Jr to literally fuck up everything like only he can.

He kinda sucks.

I’ll post my kids travel ball schedule if you would like to crosscheck. I’ve been on nearly every game for over 15 years (sadly).

Because it's fathom

The almighty Royals lost to the Pirates.

Isn't a hamstring pull?

This is the definition of a trap game, even without Robert. Giolito fell apart last time out, we’re coming in with a winning streak and Tigers collapsing.

Minneapolis is tough right now. Tbh, you definitely won't get the same experience as you would have pre-covid/George Floyd outside of the ballpark itself. Just a lot less activity downtown than usual. For instance, I've worked downtown for about a decade now and I haven't stepped foot in my office since mid-March 2020. I've really only been downtown a handful of times in the past 15 months. This is pretty much the case for most of downtown employees. Tons of restaurants are still not re-opened and a lot of downtown is boarded up. Its sad. But there is plenty to do, and dtown Minneapolis is very walkable. Would definitely recommend heading across the river to NE Minneapolis (like 15-20 min walk from Target Field), where things are little more open, and you'll find more restaurants, breweries, patio seating etc open. Just east of the ballpark is an called the North Loop and that area is pretty happening still and will find lots of good restaurants and younger people milling about going to bars. A few restaurant suggestions in the area - Parlor Bar (best burger in MPLS), Bar LaGrassa, Smack Shack, Young Joni (best pizza in MPLS). I promise you none of those will disappoint. As for the park - I would definitely recommend sitting in different places for each game. The last 15-20 rows behind the dugouts are their own section with comfy/padded seats and private dining options below the stands. Definitely would recommend splurging 1 game and sitting down there. My company has seats 3rd row behind the visitor dugout and that is super duper fun place to sit when the Sox are in town. This is different than the scout seats behind the plate and a very clear step down. Think more like $60-85 tickets as opposed to several hundred. There is an overhang in rightcenter field where there is like 4-6 rows of seats up above the limestone wall - also a very fun place to watch a game and can get seats pretty affordably. Would recommend trying that one game as well. LF bleachers (with back rests) is also a fun place to sit. Champions Club (similar to whatever used to be called the LG Skyline club at the Cell - not sure what its called these days), is also a good spot. I would avoid the upper deck in all honesty. Foodwise - its mainly your typical ballpark fare, but I would recommend the smaller/movable stands as opposed to the built in more generic stands. Several good options to try out. Minneapolis is a big craft beer city, so lots of beer stands offering the local brews. If you drink beer, give a few a try! All in all, Minneapolis is a great place to visit and I think you'll really enjoy it. Not exactly the best time in its history, but still plenty to do and the ballpark is beautiful. Go Sox! Feel free to DM me with any questions as it gets closer. Happy to help!

Unless they plan to make a major shakeup, I’m not sure where you can add on the positional side, at least when it comes to the starting lineup. If things go well, we’ll have Abreu, Eloy, Vaughn, & Mercedes all fighting for three spots. Everything else is pretty much locked in right now. I think adding to the bench is a must though, with a versatile left-handed IF being the priority. Engel returning will help our outfield depth, but we’re paper thin in the infield. That leaves the pitching staff as the primary source of upgrades. If everyone stays healthy and they can manage Kopech’s workload, adding to the rotation could become a luxury. A 1-2-3 of Giolito, Lynn, & Kopech could be pretty insane come October and that leaves Keuchel facing Rodon for the #4 spot. While adding someone like Scherzer would be awesome, I still think we should be saving our best chips for a controllable starter that can help us from 2022 to 2025 rather than go all in on 2021. I wouldn’t be opposed to adding another high-end reliever. The core four of Hendriks, Bummer, Heuer, & Crochet look legit, but there are some question marks after them at the moment. I think Marshall will be fine, but we may need some insurance in case Foster continues to struggle. None of that may be sexy, but I’d rather not blow my prospect load on rentals with an uncertain future for our pitching staff.

With the Braves, has a mid 2's ERA, and throwing 95-96.5ish tonight. 2.16 ERA. 8 1/3 IP, 6 K's. Didn't realize his nickname was "Nate's Nation." Not bad for a 35 year old who's gone through all the injuries he has, and constant criticism from SoxTalk about his throwing motion. Fulmer's hitting 94 and 95, even 95.4 with one pitch. Low 3's ERA, retired World Series baseball people Max Muncy (K), Will Smith and Chris Taylor. Never in a million years could/would Carson have held a one run lead on the road against a team like the Dodgers when he was a member of the White Sox. Never would have been given the opportunity...and didn't pitch well enough under Cooper's "tutelage/passive-aggressiveness."

The only person who had no idea this was possible was the White Sox manager

Fire TLR

Still in...please sell Jerry

This is on TLR.

Fuck off Tony

Tony is a HOF baseball person.

We're happily rolling over outside sinkers for slow grounders. At some point, it's not the pitcher. It's the hitters.

Detroit has more errors than base runners and we're still only up by 1.

Right up the origin. God Binetti is exhausting.

Grandal, rally killer extraordinaire.

Someone probably asked him if wanted Jake in the lineup, he didn't have his hearing aid in and thought he heard "do you want some jack" and one thing led to another.

I’ve moved past the shock, anger, and depression phases. I’ve accepted that this is White Sox baseball. I’ve made it 30 years being a sucker, they have my soul.

The real question is why is he playing over Robert

baseball doesn't have trap games.

Every time he gets going he gets benched. Its just baffling

No Vaughn again?! Sure let’s sit our 1st round pick who’s starting to find his stroke for a guy who will be out of a job in a couple weeks.

Why is Jake Lamb playing the outfield over Vaughn I’ll never understand that.....

Thanks for the writeup, may have to plan a road trip this year!

I didn't have time to look into it over the weekend but I was still curious so I got around to it this morning. TLDR: Yasmani bunting is a bit worse than Yasmani swinging away, but both are WAY worse than having Robert try to steal second base. So comparing the three scenarios depends a lot on what Robert's chance's of successfully stealing second are. Here is a plot of the Sox' chance of winning in the 9th versus the chance of Robert stealing second base. We can see that Yasmani sac bunting dropped the Sox chance of winning in the 9th from 42.6% to 37.6%. If Robert succesfully steals second, the Sox won in the 9th 63.4% of times. If he got caught stealing second, they won in the 9th 17.1% of times. Robert currently has a career stolen base success rate of 86.6%. If that is the true chance of success, having Robert attempt to steal second would have given the Sox a 57% chance of winning in the 9th. However, to be better than having Yasmani swing away without Robert stealing, the stolen base success chance only needed to be 55%. And to be better than the actual scenario (Yasmani bunting), Robert only needed a 44% chance to steal 2nd base. The Yasmani bunt win percentage is a bit of an overestimate too, since I had no way to take into account the possibility of the sac bunt failing. So we can see that having Yasmani bunt instead of swing was probably not a good decision, but didn't have a huge effect, but not having Robert steal 2nd was almost certainly a terrible decision. Methodology: Player performance for this simulation was based on the 2021 updated ZIPS projections on fangraphs, adjusted to reflect career platoon splits using data from the last three years. There isn't enough baserunning data on Robert yet so I ran the simulations with the chances of taking extra bases or advancing on an out set to league averages from 2019 (which is almost certainly a conservative estimate). I ran 100,000 simulations for each scenario. Reasons these win percentages might be an overestimate: ZIPS is not really buying John King's breakout yet. In particular, his walk rate according to ZIPS is much worse than he has shown so far this year. He may be a better pitcher than ZIPS indicates. ZIPS is still projecting Yas to be about what he has always been, so if you think he is worse than that, the Sox chances of winning would go down a bit, less so for the bunt. Double play chances are set to league average, but Madrigal has high ground ball rates and may be more susceptible than league average to a double play. Reasons these win percentages might be an underestimate: ZIPS projections for Mercedes and Madrigal are arguably too conservative. John King had thrown a lot of pitches already, and the simulation does not have a model for pitcher fatigue Robert is almost certainly much better than league average at taking extra bases General sources of innacuracy: No strategy is taken into account (i.e., you could have Robert steal second and THEN sac bunt him to third, or you might have fielders playing in and coming home with it, etc) King, Mercedes, and Madrigal have too small of sample sizes to be very confident in the platoon adjustments.

I still hate the way the Sox are handling him. Sure, he looked good in a very small sample size last year. He's a guy with a huge arm that had big time issues pitching in college. They're giving him absolutely no time to work on pitches or hone his craft in the minors.

Perfectly said, Smoltzy. They're not developing Crochet as a pitcher they're developing him as a thrower. He's not learning how to pitch throwing at max effort once or twice a week and when his velocity drops he has nothing to fall back on because he only knows one way to do it.

I would like a world where White Sox baseball starts at 10am, 1pm, and 5pm... where are players have tireless ability and play 486 games a year.

My god: 2-12 in their last 14. That's beyond a slump.

If the Sox are going to add mid-season, a top of the line SP and upgrade on Leury as the backup IF would be my main asks. I would lump both into the luxury category as opposed to needs, though. I am not trading major pieces for 2 month upgrades.

Celebrates in Kopech, Moncada, Eloy, and Giolito.

I didn't realize the Tigers have the worst record in baseball. That's a real shame. You just hate to see it.

? Soxtalk should apologize for being right

I've said for YEARS the umps, who have the power, have purposely made a mockery of the strike zone. It's them throwing an obscene gesture at baseball owners and baseball executives in New York. For some reason umps feel they have long been mis-treated and it's their one way of taking a stand. Look ... a belt high fastball is a strike and umps for years have called anything just above the belt a ball, at least on a fastball. It's one reason guys like Cease have so many walks. Umps are also missing a lot of pitches on the outside corner. Sometimes I give them the benefit of the doubt on those that are just off the corner. They are balls but for some reason it doesn't seem as blatant as not calling the belt high fastball a strike. ... Umps also will not enforce rules on the books designed to speed the game. They just won't do it. I'm not a fan of umps.

This is what I don't get- you say this as if it's a bad thing? I'd love for the strike zone to actually be 100% consistent. As long as they aren't changing the parameters between games, it doesn't matter whether a ball barely clipping the zone is technically a ball or a strike, as long as it stays that way for both teams. We as fans would get used to the nuance of the borderline calls in time since they wouldn't be changing

It's quite literally the antithesis of instant gratification, it's delayed gratification

There is only one Yermin, that’s why.