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Ron, your contention window has closed. Thanks for a couple decent years.

Look, I don't think most people doubted the stuff of Crochet. People doubt the durability of Crochet, and for good reason. He hasn't even remotely stayed healthy at any point in his career. One great start does not change that.

This was my stance . I was quite the proponent of building him up very slowly in the minors because of his injury history. However I will not get angry if he gets injured doing it their way like I did when they pitched Rodon into the ground in an important year where they would need him in the playoffs. Whatever the Sox plan is with Crochet, Crochet seems to be fine with it. He always wanted to be a starting pitcher and he's going for it full steam ahead. Let him be the master of his own destiny. If his arm doesn't last it probably wouldn't have lasted no matter what approach they took. I was actually happy that they put him on a starters schedule and an every 5th day routine. I didn't think he'd be capable of pitching 6 innings until July or August if he lasted that long. It wasn't how I proposed they do it but hey it's not my job or my career. There's no real good reason to be angry just because Crochet is way ahead of schedule on a plan I thought was cautious and prudent. That doesn't mean they are throwing caution to the wind without regard for Crochet's health. If Crochet is cool with it so am I.

Literally the Bill Wirtz of the White Sox.

Holy s%*# are you being intentionally dense in a sad attempt to make a point you are 100% wrong about. He absolutely 100% threw only 12.2 innings in 2023. He may have done other things, but they do not fall under the actual definition of innings pitched. So did every other pitcher in baseball. In fact they would have done multiples more work because they were healthy and working at full speed and strength.

Baldwin might be the shortstop in AA. Rodriguez will join Charlotte. Hes out dealing with a family matter. Cespedes released, Tatum, Eder and Bush in AA He wasn’t drafted with that thought in mind. He was drafted because the scouting department thought he was a starter.

Just to add to the discussion. Tommy John was a pitcher back when they actually pitched. Modern day pitchers are more throwers, giving max effort on almost all pitches. Back in the day, no one threw 100 mph, then a few and now almost every team has a couple guys capable of 100 mph. Crochet may have on opening day (first opening I didn't follow in probably 50 years). Point being 60 of 87 pitches being max effort is different than 15 of 120. Several studies point to arm stress not being linear but going up near exponentially at a certain point. I think that is where the now common 100 pitch limit came from. Look at the innings guys used to throw in a year. 200 was nothing. 300 was frequent. Seaver began MLB at 22 years old and went over 250 innings in 11 of his first 12 years! One would think with modern training and medicines pitchers should be accumulating more innings not dropping like crazy. Now 180 is a lot because of much more max effort? (Also, with guaranteed contracts, ownership is probably more worried for the health of their 100 million dollar investment.) For teams with budgetary constraints, I think you could make a case for treating pitchers like NFL running backs. A granted, shitty way to treat human beings but probably cost effective. Draft pitching heavily , develop, use heavily while under team control, if no team friendly extension- trade near end of control. Rare second contracts. You can bring in cheap vets and reclamation projects to fill out a staff or pen but most of staff is home grown, young and cheap. Pitching is always a shortage so you get a premium in trades to fill out your positions and/or reload pitching staff. If you look at the high dollar pitching contracts, very few of the long/expensive ones returned excess value to the team while many were bad returns on investment.

Hoping a game or two gets PPD to push back the need for a 5th starter and we get the extra year. It's really only like, 11 days.

Unfortunately the only person who can fire JR is JR. I’ve detested this the man since 1982 when they brought in Sportsvision and you needed a special antenna to pick up the games, what a fiasco and how stupid as the Cubs were televising all of their games on free TV on WGN. JR and EE showed what kind of scum they were when they were interviewed after the Sox clinched the 1983 Western Division and they defamed Harry Caray, Harry knew what he was dealing with those 2 and wanted no part of them as he bolted to the Cubs in 1982. Just about every move JR and company has made in his 43 years of Sox ownership has alienated Sox fans and some wonder why Chicago is a Cub town by at least a 60-40 margin.

The Opener is always a wonderful experience win or lose and yesterday was no exception. GRate was in top condition and showed no signs of deterioration inside or any need for replacement It doesn't. The field was in optimum condition and will look even better when the ivy in Center field greens up. Tailgating was as it always is for an Opener, crazy good with tremendous camaraderie among Sox fans including sharing barbecue tricks, food and spirits and memories of prior seasons and games. I had some great interactions with other fans tailgating before the game and after the game at Cork and Kerry. As you know, Crochet was fantastic and our bullpen held the game within striking distance. Luck was not with the Sox on that day. A few balls were smashed by Sox hitters including a deep line drive by Eloy that the LFer made a shoestring catch on. That one could have changed the game. Eloy was on everything and could easily have sent the game into extra innings with one swing. Baez taunted us by throwing a balls at the screen in front of us and exchanging some bad looks and verbal taunts. Maybe Grifol should order a few brush back pitches when he comes up next time. The biggest problem this season will be Cub trolls that are aimed at trying to depress Sox fans and spin everything in the most negative light. Many of them are on this forum... really negative people. Meanwhile, the Sox know what they have to do including bolstering the bottom half of the line-up with one or two guys that can hit for power and constantly looking to improve the rotation. This team needs to start adding some talent instead of looking to trade it away.

What is known is the bottom three in the lineup are historically bad. There's no stud in the lineup except Robert. Moncada, Robert, Eloy and Vaughn will probably have nights the four of them rake. We 'should' win many of those games maybe if the bullpen doesn't implode those nights. This team has no power at all and the most of the hitters won't make any opposing pitcher sweat especially the last 3 guys in the order. You can't strike out as many times as this lineup will and walk so few times and homer so few times and win games. I'll stick with this season being historically bad.

Will tray challenge JR to a fight when the shovels go into the ground

Colas hard hit oppo double. 2-3.

Colas doubled off a left-handed pitcher ?

I watched an "interview" of Chris Getz with AJ Pierzynski and friends last night. They asked him about Pedro and he sounded pretty frank that Pedro would be out of a job if he doesn't get good years out of Eloy, Moncada, Vaughn, Robert -- "the core". That the manager's only job is to get the best out of his players (duh) and that will be reflected on how those players perform. At least that's how I interpreted it. Seems like a reasonable barometer anyway. I don't know how much of last season's dumpster fire can be pinned on Grifol. He certainly didn't help. I think he was the wrong hire to begin with but I don't see what it hurts giving him another year, maybe he can actually be good at his job under appropriate working conditions. Beyond potentially being good at his job (I don't believe this), keeping him around another year might signal to his replacement that there's some job security in this manager position. haven't exactly shown a strong track record there recently. probably scares away proper candidates.

This is fucking clownshoes. Are you Native American? Because that's the only group whose opinion matters on the logo.

Wirtz went so far as to raid his own niece's trust fund. The only reason he didn't end up in jail is because the statute of limitations had passed. Not saying Jerry is good, or that Rocky's actions make others better or worse. Just stating that Bill Wirtz was in a league of his own, and Jerry, as bad as he is, doesn't touch Dollar Bill's level of corruption.

I will probably smoke a cigar the day he dies. Not in his honor, but in celebration. He's been a fucking curse on this organization for the duration of his ownership.

Jerry has hired a series of inept ass-kissing clowns to GM and manage his ballclub over the years. He just cut the payroll by $55 million in one offseason. His favorite player is David Eckstein so his stupid new GM hire decided to fill the lineup with three of them, and that’s not including Benintendi. He blames Sox fans for his team’s lack of success and earning power at his current stadium and expects taxpayers to fund his new ballpark billions of dollars. He is a smug talking, cigar smoking, piece of garbage who apparently wants to win, as long as he doesn’t have to pay a player what he’s worth on the open market. I’m sure I’m missing a lot more great points, so please add your own. When will we be free of this pathetic miser? By the way, this is what I picture whenever we rage about this team, except he’s laughing at us with huge puffs of cigar smoke billowing from his mouth, blowing perfect smoke rings in between laughs.

Grifol is pathetic but defending TLR on anything is clown shoes. Dude fell asleep in the dugout.

@southsider2k5

Is the Vikings logo racist?

Tommy John himself came back from the first TJS, after roughly 18 months of rehab, and pitched 207 effective MLB innings without a single rehab appearance in “actual game play.” And that was some 45 years ago. Crochet has had more time than that with 40+ years of advancement to the process. If done properly, his arm should be a cannon by now

This right here. I was wrong on how the start would go. I expected a much earlier exit. I didn’t think he’d crack 60 innings this year, which I may be wrong about again since he’s already a tenth of the way there. But I still expect his season to end in injury.

This is trash. Common decency shouldn't require an ethnicity.

He's only working with so much but I don't understand why you'd leadoff Benetendi and have Moncada second against a tough LHP. I probably would have had Vaughn second if absolutely nothing else.

A player has to explain what they feel. A trainer isn't a mind reader. If they say they feel ok and its a lie, what is the trainer supposed to do?

The corpse of TLR won a division with this team and had the same club hovering .500 the next year until the pressure nearly killed the man. Grifol had a giftwrapped roster of talent and they looked like they forgot how to play baseball. Need a new man at the helm in 2025. Probably will be current AAA Manager J.J. since he will be ready for the bright lights.

Soxtalk has spoken. Grifol sucks. He wasn't going to be given a chance because he was an unknown cheap hire from KC . Makes no sense to argue otherwise since I don't really think any manager could've done much better with the team he inherited. If anyone thinks the Sox could've won 70 games last year with a different manager more power to them. They still would've been terrible.

Every time a pitcher has TJS, he is rebuilding his arm from scratch, yet they often come back with full workloads as effective or more so than ever. Previous workloads are practically irrelevant since the arm has to be completely rehabilitated. After two months of immobilzation, every pitchers arm strength has been reduced to virtually zero. So if it can be done by other pitchers, to go from be incapable of throwing a baseball at all, to being strong enough for a full workload following rehab, without any actual game innings involved in that rehab, there is no reason it couldn’t be done with Crochet. When they shut him down from gameplay with shoulder discomfort, he still continued his rehab. He wasn’t shut down from activities for more than a few days. At any rate, not sure how you can claim there is no way on earth when so many pitchers have come back stronger than ever from TJS

Everyone has to stop this. Crochet pitching out of the bullpen could lead to serious injury. It already did. It's going to be a long road and there will be bumps along the way but it is abundantly clear making him a starter is the correct path to maximize his immense talent.

At some point the lack of innings will catch up to him. I just hope it doesn’t result in serious injury.

I only got to watch few innings here and there while at work, but my god I think I saw a record for swinging at pitches out of the zone. Some of our hitters look absolutely lost up there. Hope it didn't look that way the whole game. Not throwing any shade on Vaughn though. The at bat I did see, there were two horribly called strikes on him.

2 Hour 10 Minute game and Rob Manfred still has umps calling out players for being 1 second late to the batters box. Stepping over dollars to chase pennies.

Is that legal?

He was awesome, no question about it. Was like Sale was back. I just have questions with his workload, even in college, when its going to come back to haunt him. Having him throw 87 pitches to me his first start, s like letting Cease, if he were still a White Sox, throw 130 on Opening Day.

Think again. Getz is riding Crochet to the playoffs. Just wait until this lineup awakens!

Weird topic but now that u mention it ... I gave up coffee about 8 months ago cause I faced a schedule with a ton of travel and frankly I wanted to see if I'd be able to go less. You take a 2.5 hour plane ride it'd be nice to not have to get up especially if you have no aisle seat. You drive 4 hours with other people and you do not want to have to stop more than mabe once. You get in an uber for a 20 minute ride and you certainly don't want to have to find a bathroom cause u just chugged some water or coffee. I will say having no coffee cold turkey did help reduce the need to hit the bathroom. I worship coffee, just love it, but now don't drink it. It's a good trade off. I don't need to find a starbucks to avoid a coffeeless headache and don't have to race to the bathroom as much at inopportune times. However, don't quite understand why most nights I have to get up a lot to go to the bathroom. Truly it's annoying. If it is emotional issues I could see that cause I am a wreck as in Veeck. Peace out.

OldManPeeTalk.com

Time to honor the King of All Grinders.

You poor soul.

They’re bad. You know it too. No amount of jokes is going to change that the bottom of our order will be DFA fodder by the start of summer.

Grifol chose to lead off with Beni today. Never mind we were facing a really good lefty. What a mope.

Watched the whole game today. Won't be making that mistake again soon. My lord, Maldonado is really awful. His framing "skills" are the worst I've ever seen. He musta flat out dropped 15 pitches. Carlos Perez we hardly knew ye.

Jay Cuda coming out of the long off-season with guns blazing, lol... Looks like the Twins are suddenly even more vulnerable with Lewis (quad, the Eloy/Moncada of their team) and Kepler already injured, to go along with Duran and DeSclafini. Really think it's going to be an interesting race with the AL Central winner closer to the 83-85 wins range. Yes, this gets said nearly EVERY year, but the lack of spending/improvement (other than DET and KC on the margins) is quite remarkable across the entire division.

Apparently it doesn’t happen, even against a very good pitcher. It only happened one other time 57 years ago against a Hall of Famer. This putrid offense is already setting records.

Yes, fabricating narratives then attempting to gaslight the responses sure seems measured to me. ?

When the same person talks up a good game, preaches playing smart and hard, and completely gets the opposite results? No, not being to hard. Pedro doesn't have what it takes to be a major league manager. I'd be shocked if we ever see him manage a team again after his Sox tenure eventually ends.

I thought I heard him say in a post-game interview that he threw about 80 pitches.