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Last night was one of the most enjoyable games of White Sox baseball I have witnessed in a long time. Many of the young guys had stellar games and/or stellar moments. This got me thinking about the young guys currently on the roster. Right now, we have 12 players under the age of 26. Of the players listed below, who do you see as part of the future core, what role do you see them playing, and what kind of performance do you expect out of them? Position Players: Chase Meidroth (24.0): 325 PA | 9.8% BB % | 13.2% K % | .059 ISO | 84 wRC+ | 1.1 fWAR Miguel Vargas (25.7): 409 PA | 9.5% BB % | 17.1K % | .179 ISO | 98 wRC+ | 1.1 fWAR Lenyn Sosa (25.5): 319 PA | 2.8% BB % | 23.5% K % | .143 ISO | 92 wRC+ | 0.7 fWAR Kyle Teel (23.4): 101 PA | 13.9% BB % | 27.7% K % | .096 ISO | 122 wRC+ | 0.6 fWAR C. Montgomery (23.4): 58 PA | 10.3% BB % | 25.9% K % | .196 ISO | 129 wRC+ | 0.6 fWAR Edgar Quero (22.3): 224 PA | 9.8% BB % | 17.4% K % | .086 ISO | 98 wRC+ | 0.2 fWAR Brooks Baldwin (24.9): 182 PA | 5.5% BB % | 29.9% K % | .139 ISO | 71 wRC+ | -0.7 fWAR Pitchers: Shane Smith (25.3): 86.2 IP | 8.41 K/9 | 3.84 BB/9 | 0.93 HR/9 | 4.29 xERA | 1.1 fWAR Grant Taylor (23.2): 18.1 IP | 11.29 K/9 | 2.95 BB/9 | 0.00 HR/9 | 2.08 xERA | 0.8 fWAR J. Cannon (25.0): 88.1 IP | 7.34 K/9 | 3.06 BB/9 | 1.43 HR/9 | 4.90 xERA | 0.7 fWAR Sean Burk (25.6): 101 IP | 7.57 K/9 | 4.19 BB/9 | 1.43 HR/9 | 5.23 xERA | 0.4 fWAR Mike Vasil (25.4): 64.0 IP | 6.61 K/9 | 4.78 BB/9 | 0.70 HR/9 | 4.32 xERA | 0.1 fWAR

Montgomery needs to show he can’t play SS. Meidroth is much better at 2B than SS defensively as well.

What the f*** does this have to do with anything?

I say this with all due respect of Bruce Levine... the man is terrible at his job, and worthless as a,reporter. What was the last thing he broke besides wind?

I definitely get the small hall crowd, but it's a museum. Mark Buehrle is more than worthy of being enshrined. One of the most unique arms we've seen. A guy who very likely would not be drafted today, and certainly wouldnt have scouts attention. A guy who pitched quick in an era of slowness. He threw slow when everyone else was starting to fixate on velo. A guy who mastered the fringes in a way that got him off the fringe. A pitching doctor, who understood the mental side of the game better than most anyone who has stepped on a mound. My problem with the small hall crowd is they're typically fixated on peaks and "whod you want to start one game" but they're not arguing for someone like Jose Fernandez who should be in that argument of one game. Imo durability is a top 3 skill for a pitcher. Taking the ball every 5th day is job number one. Also, when youre asking for a guy to pitch one game, what are you looking for? A guy that can baffle and dominate a team by throwing a perfect game... with next best outcome being a no-no? Mark has done both those things so...

I think there's a fair argument for Buehrle to get in. I think there's an easier-to-make argument for why he shouldn't. I like to look at Jay Jaffe's stuff on the Hall. He makes it easy to quantify what holds Mark back. He has a little bit less career WAR than the average SP hall of famer. It's kind of unfair, given that SP have been held to the highest standard of any position and it's the position that has changed the most in its usage in recent decades. That said, the more serious issue for Buehrle by the numbers is that he didn't have a great peak. We spent years arguing over whether MB was an "ace." It's not good for your Hall credentials if there wasn't unanimity on a point like that when a guy was at his best. He pitched through some offense-heavy times but it's just hard to point at the point in time where he was definitely best or almost the best in the league. To put it a different way, Johan Santana was indisputably an ace and perhaps the best pitcher in the game for a period of years. In that period, nobody thought Buehrle was better. So Buehrle is a longevity guy but he retired at age 36. He needed to *really* get longevity to get a lot of momentum via that route. He had a remarkable run of health and consistency that most guys would have needed more years to achieve. But I think Mark needed to do it for longer to make up for the lack of true dominance. One thing that irks me is that Andy Pettitte gets a lot more support from Hall voters. First of all, Pettitte is a doper. That makes you lose all benefit of the doubt. And otherwise, the playing career is quite similar to Buehrle's. To be fair, Pettitte threw a whopping 276 playoff innings. Included in that were some great moments. Overall, he was basically the same pitcher in the postseason that he was in the regular season. That nudges me towards not giving too much extra credit to him since his ability to be in the playoffs was not all that much about him but more about his great teammates. Pettitte otherwise has some of the same demerits as Buehrle in terms of lacking dominance, having longevity but not really that much, etc. I still think Buehrle has some special things that should push you into the "benefit of the doubt" column. I think stats should have an important role in the selection process but it's not everything. So what does Buehrle have that's off the stat sheet? Played most of career for one team, so special relationship with a fanbase World Series champion Rare combo of win plus save in the World Series Threw a 27-batter no-hitter Threw a perfect game separate from the no-no Set the then-record for consecutive batters retired, remains the record for a starting pitcher Iconic defensive play 4x Gold Glove winner, highly regarded for defense throughout career All-time leader in pickoffs (didn't know this until I looked it up just now) Only 58 stolen bases allowed in entire career Very unique pitching style, throwing softly, rarely striking batters out Excellent reputation for on and off-field character, integrity, etc. ??? probably forgetting some things I think the ideal Hall of Famer is the kind of player who generates stories, e.g. "did you hear about the guy that ____ ?" Buehrle has that in spades. If someone loves or wants to love the game of baseball, they really need to know the Buehrle lore. He pairs that with a great playing career. I'd love to see him get in, but sadly I'm not optimistic about it.

The movement of the draft to the middle of July has just destroyed the trade deadline drama.

Tossed a no-hitter, a perfect game, all the gold gloves he won, his durability from year to year.

If you are willing to believe that Vargas became a new man when his swing change happened, this is what he's done since then: 1.6 fWAR, .246/.325/.458 line, 117 wRC+, 12 homers in 77 games. You could even naively extrapolate that to a full season by multiplying everything by 2. That will play just fine at 1B even if it doesn't mean he's a star. And it's clear he can play 3B competently. The way I look at it, he's not really playing 1B because there's something seriously wrong with his 3B defense but because the Sox have the personnel to push him there. I'm not going to act like any of us can precisely forecast what anyone is going to be, but I feel reasonably confident that Vargas is an MLB-quality player. His floor is still a bench player I suppose but I'm feeling like he's most likely a solid everyday player much as he's looked like for the bulk of this season. As for the rest of the core, my current gut feeling is that Teel is the next safest bet. Of course, playing catcher is always such a big plus that it raises your floor. It's obvious that he's at least solid defensively. And to me, his bat is looking just like we would have hoped. I don't think there's a ton of risk there besides the usual cautions you give with small sample sizes. For those who don't compulsively check these things, Statcast points towards Teel actually deserving significantly better results than he's gotten so far. Those watching the games can probably remember a handful of near-misses on homers and such. Teel is (IMO) a really likable player thanks to his very obvious intensity and desire to win, but it wouldn't shock me if at some point that same trait might drive him into a slump. Still, there's a lot to like there. His ceiling isn't exactly Johnny Bench, but the talent is there to be one of if not the greatest Sox catchers (sorry late career Pudge). We'll happily "settle" for an AJ Pierzynski type of career too of course. As a hitter, I feel pretty good about Quero as well. His defense has looked more rough than Teel's in some respects but I think it's best not to put too much stock in partial-season framing metrics, especially with ABS challenges coming soon (probably). Quero makes excellent swing decisions at the plate and is very much the kind of hitter that Getz seems to love. He's doing some things at the plate that help him manage the excellent contact rate and low chase rates while also limiting his upside. He's an extreme outlier in terms of how deep he lets the ball get before making contact paired with a very opposite field oriented swing path (thanks to Statcast for giving data on this). Quero is basically propping up his plate discipline and contact by watching the pitch so long that he often can't make power-oriented contact. That is paired with a short, slow swing which has the same costs and benefits. He may need to adjust that to become a truly good hitter. I'll note that Statcast indicates that Quero has been gradually making contact more out in front of his body, with a bit less push-oriented bat angle, and higher-velocity swings. That matches the eye test for me too. That said, he's shown that he can basically go up there in survival mode and be a MLB-quality hitter even if an unremarkable one. Did I mention he's just freshly 22 years old? That's really exciting to me, too. I have less to say about Meidroth despite really liking him. I still see some risk that he ends up a bench player. So far, his defense seems good enough that it's not going to kill your team if he never really hits. I'm not sure whether that will be true in the long run but it will be great if it is. He only needs to find a little bit more power to be a fixture in the lineup going forward. I'm happy to give him every chance going forward. It's great seeing Colson not flounder at the MLB level and his defensive acumen at 3B and SS is a very nice surprise. He's also running better than I expected. He's showing the top flight bat speed (and therefore power potential) that we had been promised. He's also showing some really problematic swing and miss tendencies in his short sample so far. I look at in-zone whiff rate as the simplest measure of pure contact ability. His would be the second worst in MLB if he had enough ABs to qualify — those around that part of the leaderboard include, to be fair, some great hitters who offset the whiffs with other stuff like power hitting and walks. So far I'm not seeing great patience from Colson although it's not a serious issue in and of itself. He's being beaten badly by non-fastball pitches thus far, whiffing at around half of them which is truly astronomical. Looking at his zone breakdowns (beware: very small sample sizes), he's only making >60% contact on pitches that are down the middle, middle in, or up and in. The inside pitches he's hitting extremely softly. Middle-middle is the only place he's making hard contact. A change from his first 100ish games in AAA is that he's handling velocity pretty well, which is one of those signs that he's not necessarily the guy we saw in 2024 or early 2025. But he's just oozing with risk and I'm not going to pencil him into the core yet despite a nice-looking slash line. I like Lenyn Sosa. I'm not totally sure what he is or will be. I think the average Soxtalker underrates his defense because of how conspicuous his defensive mistakes are. It's not often that there's a guy who seems completely competent at 2B or 3B but is somehow confounded by the basics of 1B defense like standing on the base and catching throws. He's just kind of a space cadet, it is what it is. At the plate, there are some nice trends in his profile. Every year, the production has improved (granted it started at a very bad level). Every year, his bat speed has gotten faster. His exit velocities have gotten higher (predictable from the bat speed). His ground ball rates have gone down (a ton) and his line drive rates have gone up. He's doubled the rate at which he pulls the ball in the air. On the other hand, he barely ever walks and he chases a ton (second only to PCA in MLB). Those limit the upside because I think those are traits that are very difficult to teach. He doesn't make good swing decisions in general, not only chasing but taking too many strikes. Yet he shows very good natural contact ability and the arrow is still going up on the raw power. The two hardest balls he's ever hit were both in the past week as were 5 of the hardest 8 balls he's ever hit. I want to see where that's heading. Likewise, his chase rate has been on a steady downward trend since the beginning of May. He'll never be a plate discipline guy but it's possible he won't be an auto-out against a slider in the other batter's box. He's also showing reverse splits which I find interesting — I tend to think if a righty is hitting righties, that's hard to teach. But you can teach him to hit lefties. I see Lenyn as a guy who may be a bench/utility guy in the long run but has a little bit of upside, especially because of the power he's flashing. He's not going to win a gold glove, he's never going to run a high OBP, so those will hold him back somewhat. Still 25 years old and 4 more years until free agency. I'm no longer putting Brooks Baldwin into the core conversation. I'm starting to see him increasingly as someone with bench/utility upside instead of downside. Not writing him off yet and I'm open to him getting everyday reps if/when the Sox move LouBob and Tauchman. I don't know whether he has a defensive position. I'm supportive of the Sox's plan to give him a chance in the outfield but as we saw last night it has not yet borne fruit. It's not totally fair to Brooks who entered the year with little experience there, but then again he looked like dog water playing the infield this year. He has a Sosa-like propensity for boneheaded mistakes on defense and they were happening at a high frequency when he was in the infield. He runs well enough that he's made some plays that some of our other outfielders just can't make. In fact, I think the ball he dropped last night is one that e.g. Benintendi doesn't even attempt to catch. On the other side of the ball, I don't think he gives us much to dream on as a hitter. He has big problems with velocity, whiffing at double the league average rate on 95+ heaters. You don't have to watch closely to see he chases those pitches helplessly. His contact ability besides that is fine but not superlative. His propensity to chase is not overall very high but in two-strike counts it is astronomical with predictable results. His stats looked good in AAA after his demotion but Statcast points to it being substantially luck-based. I'll credit him for showing a little pop as a lefty hitter, having athleticism in general, and still being quite inexperienced so there's a chance he makes some of the very difficult adjustments that he needs to. Overall, I feel decently okay about the offensive core. There is a lack of star power. Maybe Braden Montgomery ends up providing it. Or, much later, Billy Carlson. Or someone else pushes beyond what we thought their abilities were. More problematic for me is it's really not very clear who the next wave is. All the guys who are "close" are in Chicago right now. The cohort that might have included the likes of Jacob Gonzalez, Bryan Ramos, Wilfred Veras maybe...just isn't materializing. The group of kids in A/A+ look interesting but they are obviously further off — debuting mid-2026 in the absolute most optimistic cases and more likely 2027+. It makes me feel like this deadline is sneaky important because even if you aren't getting that star power (IDK how you would), you want to get more Chase Meidroths, Lenyn Sosas, Brooks Baldwins. It's either that or you start finding some hidden gems in major league free agent market or the trade scrap heaps. Eugenio Suarez was free to a good home a couple years ago. Ryan O'Hearn has been on and off waivers a number of times. Brent Rooker was a waiver claim. You want to hit on a couple guys like that if you don't want to win the next Harper-esque bidding war — in fact, hitting on a Rooker type is often a pre-condition for swimming in those deep waters. On the pitching side, IDK. I like Grant Taylor but I'm not putting a reliever in my core. I think that out of Cannon, Davis, Burke, Thorpe, Shane Smith, Vasil, Noah Schultz, Hagen Smith, Christian Oppor, Tanner McDougal, ..., others...you probably can find a usable rotation in there that doesn't require too terribly much outside investment. I have no idea how many of those guys will still be hanging around a couple years from now and pitching well nor do I know which it will be. Pitchers have a bad habit of suffering 18 month injuries. And a bad habit of being bad.

What does Katy Perry's Butthole think?

Future Core: Teel, Quero, Montgomery, Meidroth, Burke, Taylor, Cannon Not so sure: Vargas, Sosa, Baldwin, Smith I think Teel and Quero are going to be a problem for the league. I expect these 2 to become the young face of the franchise. I absolutely love Sean Burke's stuff, he needs to keep working and harness control.

I always thought of it as Fedde for Vargas and then Kopech for the two young guys.

Massive difference between these last 2 “young cores” so far is the mentality. This group gives off way more competitive, winner, having fun playing ball vibes than the Moncada, Eloy, Yaz, Robert, Vaughn group did. Culture feels far different than the last group. No clue how it winds up down the road but I think it’s an obvious difference and think it matters.

No, that gets me put straight through to Reinsdorf. Dude babbles.

Out of curiosity, when has he said this

Wait, I thought Tim Elko should start every game for the next year and a half. Apparently, Tim Elko is not in YOUR plans.

I would like to see Naylor signed by the White Sox this off season. Bruce Levine keeps saying the White Sox are going to sign some good hitters this off season. I hope Naylor is one of them.

You don’t hire Boras and then take a deal that’s potentially team friendly. Period. If a team buys him out, he’s taking likely a 1-year, highest possible AAV deal to rebuild value.

Your preference is fantasy land. Got it.

The question was My preference, not Robert.

And no way Robert is signing that deal.

Sox liked Gilbert before, could definitely see a package of him and a prospect in the 12-18 range being the best offer they get. Safe to say the Mets were one of the two teams trying to get him last week.

He was too busy making dance videos.

Vargas had them made for everyone to celebrate MAT reaching 10 years of service time. It's sweet.

I don't believe Spencer was ever on the table.

By WAR Billy was the best pitcher in the decade of the 1950's. * Won 186 games with the White Sox from 1949-1961 (211 overall) * Had 11 years of double digit wins (12 overall) * 20 game winner in 1956 and 1957 * Threw 35 shutouts (38 overall) * Had 19 saves (38 overall) * Led the American League in complete games in 1956, 1957 and 1958 (Had 193 in his career) * Led the American League in ERA in 1955 (1.97; for his career his ERA was 3.27) * Led the American League in strikeouts in 1953 (186; had 1,999 in his career) * Threw four one-hitters, including losing a perfect game with two outs in the 9th inning (1958) * Seven time All-Star and the only Sox pitcher to ever start an All-Star Game multiple times (1953, 1955, 1956) * "Sports Illustrated" cover boy in May 1957 * "Sport" Magazine cover boy for October 1957

A couple things stopping me from pushing the panic button on Schultz just yet: 1. In AAA, his Statcast metrics are vastly superior to his observed outcomes. He's allowed a .490 wOBA but his xwOBA is .311. Allowing a .311 xwOBA in AAA isn't good, but it's league average in AAA. Yes, xwOBA considers walks and such in the calculation. For example, batters are hitting about .400 against him on batted balls hit under 85mph. That won't last, it will go down by about half. 2. Entering the season, the narrative I had on Schultz's risk is that he couldn't miss bats. But he's generating a lot of whiffs in AAA. Only 7 out of 351 AAA starters who have thrown as many pitches as Noah have managed to generate a higher whiff rate (one of them is Spencer Strider). The slider, curveball, and changeup are all running about 50% whiff rates which is fantastic. The sinker is at 27% which is more ho-hum although rather good for a sinker. Four seamer has gotten more whiffs at 36% but he hasn't really thrown enough of those to say much about that pitch. Maybe there's something about the way he's throwing that is artificially racking up the whiffs, I don't know. Maybe bad command means they whiff when they swing but they don't swing often enough, something like that. But in general I think between watching a couple starts and looking at the data, it's not all arrows pointing down for him. Looking at pitch movement: This can be tricky because you have very different pitches called the same thing. The most similar sinker in MLB is Garrett Crochet's, about the same velo and about the same movement. The release point would be very different though as well as the way they are used in their respective arsenals. But the movement by the numbers is very good (albeit not quite elite) for Schultz. Chris Sale, for instance, has more sink while maintaining about the same run...and that's not even a featured pitch for him anymore. In terms of shape, the slider is almost a dead ringer for Justin Steele's. Worth noting that Steele is throwing his slider the same velo as Schultz but Steele's fastball is much slower, so the way the pitches fit into the arsenal is quite different. Still, it should be said: there is no left-handed major leaguer with as much horizontal movement on their slider as Schultz. It is fairly similar to Chris Sale's, but Sale's is a little slower, has a touch more vertical movement, and has almost 5 inches less side to side. That brings us to what Statcast is calling Schultz's "curveball," a pitch with a very similar shape and velo to the "slider." As Statcast sees it, the "curveball" is very slightly faster, a little less side to side, a little more drop, identical spin rate. They may be the same pitch. Hitters are equally unsuccessful against both. Either way, it's easy to see why the scouting reports rave about the slider because there's none quite like it in MLB. Can't help but wonder whether he has to somehow tone it down to throw it where he wants to. I'll note that he actually throws it in the zone just as much as his fastsballs (about 50% of pitches, equal to league average), although he doesn't get the same incredible whiff rate in the strike zone unsurprisingly. That said, they chase his slider/curve out of the zone at a very high rate, almost always whiff, and have not yet gotten it into play when managing to make contact. 4-seamer seems unexceptional by the shape metrics. Not much rise, although it's a lot different shape than his sinker which is really the role it's currently playing for him. This is likely why it's getting some whiffs and is chased out of the zone a lot. But there aren't many lefties throwing a fastball with a similar shape and velo. But a lot of them have more rise and it's pretty ordinary in terms of run. His arm slot makes comparisons of this kind more difficult of course. Chris Sale's four-seamer, which is thrown much more often, has a lot more run Noah's. In fact, Sale's sinker and four seamer have about equal amounts of run and differ only in the rise. Noah's four seamer only has about half the run that his sinker does, veering almost into cutter territory but not enough to get the benefits of a cutter. The shape of the changeup seems decent but not standout. I generally feel like changeups are a pitch that is kind of hard to learn about solely from the movement metrics. This is a pitch Noah doesn't use a lot (about 15% of pitches). Hitters whiff a lot of the times they swing at it, but Noah doesn't throw it in the zone very much and hitters aren't as apt to chase it as they are his slider. Quality of contact against all of his pitches *when thrown in the strike zone* is actually not very good so far (for the hitters). I find that interesting and speaks to the level of raw stuff. When watching Noah, my feeling is that hitters fairly quickly start to approach him like a two-pitch pitcher and he doesn't always have a counter-attack at the ready. When he starts mixing in that four-seamer it sometimes does the job for him of making hitters more uneasy. Trickier is that hitters seem like they acclimate to his slider as the game goes along. I know that Bannister claimed that throwing a cutter was having negative effects on Schultz's mechanics or some such and maybe he's right. But that's really the kind of pitch that would probably help him a lot. Gives him a nice middle velocity between the the 95ish heater and 81ish slider and something that could put a seed of doubt into the batter's mind when he reads "breaking ball." I suspect this would be a better weapon against righties than the slider in some cases. That said, it is true that sidewinders often don't throw cutters effectively so maybe it was never going to work. Chris Sale makes it work with a very slider-heavy approach, almost 50% nowadays. Chris probably has a more deceptive delivery though and his fastball is better, so that may not be an approach that solves all of Noah's issues.

If he played for the Yankees all those years he played for the White Sox he'd already be in.

Good point, not too many pitchers can win 20 games anymore, I doubt if we will ever see a pitcher with 300 career wins ever again, 200 will probably be tough.

I don't agree but maybe it's time to reconsider what a HOF pitching career looks like post 2000.

I really don't think we're going to get back much in terms of meaningful young talent. Maybe we combine a few and get a team's #15 prospect or something, but I'd be shocked if we got a top 5 guy in a teams system. Houser has been great, but he's still a guy they signed off the street. Teams are going to mortgage anything of significance. Tauchman is a platoon player, bat off the bench. Good hitter, and a depth piece. Robert is the most interesting, but teams aren't taking him on for much of anything. I'm honestly not opposed to keeping a few of these guys and trying to work on improving this club, but I think they will continue to trade veterans for anything they can acquire.

I'm not even seeing the blogger generated 6 player deals, or ChiSoxFanMike writing columns about fake trades.

This is boring as hell.

I’m just surprised he didn’t kick out right after being pronounced dead

I did some homework on Baseball Reference and AI was wrong about the year, the correct year was 1957 with the Sox on the road from June 18 to July 4th, 20 games in 20 days, record was 9-11, some off days but 3 double headers, visited every city in the A. L. except Cleveland.

I also wonder how much workload is taking away from his stuff. Honestly it was why I was stunned when the rushed him to Charlotte when he wasn't exactly killing in a hugely pitchers park in Birmingham.

As hawk would say TWTW

This. If he isn't a 3rd baseman, he becomes the type of 1B that you are pretty quickly to upgrade on, because his bat isn't 1B good. It is 3B.

Vargas I am very much torn on. His offensive results so far this year have been roughly league average, which reflects significant improvement and a sign that there is still plenty of room for growth. The plate discipline figures overall are good and his power numbers are fairly solid as evident by a .179 ISO. His biggest issue right now is a shitty batting average (.223) due to a very high popup rate and a little bit of bad batted ball luck. I’m very much unclear on what’s causing him to get underneath the ball so frequently, but if he can make adjustments and get his popup rate to a more reasonable level he looks like a 110 to 120 wRC+ hitter to me. The low end of that range would be at his current raw power / bat speed and the high end would be with further strength gains (which I think are possible given his frame). For him to be an impactful player at 1B, he will need to find a way to get to the higher end of the wRC+ range. Defensively I think he can eventually be plus at 1B so that will help some, but ultimately him being part of the long-term core will come down to additional improvements with the bat as league average production simply won’t cut if at 1B. I’m giving him the rest of this year and 2026 before I make that call.

They've been more fun to watch lately but still need a couple true power hitters. Maybe one of the guys already here will develop a bit more but still need some sluggers.

I got Ed Short on the line back in late 60's.

It sounds like Colson is looking very confident and comfortable up there. It's exciting that he's having some immediate success on the Major league level. That is great to see.

5th time this year the Sox trailed going into the 7th inning or later and won the game.

Altavilla is fine for what he is imo, not a great reliever but not an awful one. Hopefully on a good Sox team he's like the 4th guy out of the pen type. Difference tonight was Colson and some good patient ABs. You can dream on Colson hitting 240/330/460 for the next 5 years with solid defense... edit: colson one of 37 players this year to record 3 or more EVs > 107mph in a game. Kid has special traits, we'll see how it pans out for him.

Yeah, I thought I heard him say Mike Vasil got the final out. That and his constant butchering "Louie Roberts" and I've had enough of Plesac. Cringe.

Now let's sweep the Cubs

Multiple orgasms in this game.

South side.....staaaaannnddd up!!

Okay, they called me back. (They get calls like this all the time.) Flexen had free agency written into his contract last year. Tauchman doesn't, therefore, Tauchman will not be a free agent after this season. So, Mike Tauchman has an arbitration year to go in 2026 before he reaches true free agency.

This is EXACTLY why you sell high on Houser, Civale, Altavilla, Tauchman, and anyone else who gets a bite after a resurgance. I have no idea if there are still teams interested in them all, but SELL SELL SELL MORTIMER!