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His arm angle has lowered from 35 last year to around 30 now, and it's apparently had cascading effects on how his stuff plays. Less deception, worse control, and his sweeper has gone from one of the best pitches in the game to his worst offering. He's missing in the zone too much and guys aren't whiffing on the mistakes when they are in favorable counts and can narrow down what's coming. After the Twins start he said it wasn't health and thought he maybe needed to change the fastball mix. After the most recent start, he said he feels like he knows what the fix is but didn't specify. Hope he figures it out, love watching him when he's on. But another bad start and an IL stint wouldn't surprise me, even if it's a phantom one.

Player of the week honors for both guys too:

His Velo was fine yesterday. He had one start where it dipped (Twins start where he got crushed), but he said no injury. Probably just a dead arm. That start going to hurt his numbers for a bit, but I'm sure he'll get it back in line. Zero doubts from me. The sinker usage is a little inflated. I have his pitch mix very similar to last year.

The patience has been more impressive to me than the power. I knew he had high walk rates in Japan but I wasn't expecting 21.5% in his first 93 PAs

A few things seem to be coming together. #1: The Sox want to build a new ballpark outside of Bridgeport. If they wanted to stay in BP, it would be really easy to come up with a plan in the old ballpark + parking footprint. #2: They seem to want to be as close to downtown as possible. They are very intensely working to create space south of the financial district, with Ishbia going to work acquiring an old rail yard with tons of work needed to do to get it to the state for a ballpark. #3: Because of the complexities of this deal, and the dance that needs to be taking place between Amtrak and the Sox, this is NOT going to be cheap. There was talk of Ishbia paying for a stadium, and undertaking a project like this with a ballpark at it's center seems to confirm that idea. Maybe they try to get some money for the state, but I have to image they would rather own this, and then create the ballpark village as the real profit center long term for the ownership group. #4: With the FIre across the river, the ballpark village concept makes more sense, as you now have another professional franchise in the area with all of those dates worth of people to come to the area for the village and games. #5: None of this will be done by the time the lease is up. Looking at the timeline, this could well be lining up with Ishbia taking over the Sox. I imagine they will sign a short term lease extension to get the park done, and then the village construction takes place after the opening of the park in the early to mid 2030's. Was the timeline for the ownership transition aligned to take place with the new ballpark? Stay tuned.

Tacking on the BA scouting reports for the new names that were mentioned with the White Sox.

Ugly bridge to nowhere 🤣 Put a ballpark there, it won't be nowhere anymore. Your location isn't even where they'll be building and creeps into the BNSF/Metra rail yard, which to this point there's no indication they're buying.

There's a lot of terrible use of data in this thread. Anyone citing general save % is being dishonest, or naive at best. Blown saves account for pitchers who will never get the save: Example; I come in during the 7th inning and lose the lead, that's a BS. Even though I'm not the one who is closing the game. The intention of this argument was discuss the expected save % of an actual closer (not a set-up guy who is almost always in line to blow the save, but almost never in line to record one). How can we actually account for expected save % of a closer? Remove all times that the reliever entered in a hold situation because those bring down numbers, and only account for pitchers who are expected closers (50% or of their appearances come in the 9th/save opps). Last year, the average BS % for that group was 30%. If we look at the past 5 years, it goes down slightly to 28%. Meaning the average closer should be converting on around 72% of their opportunities. 66% is 1+ Standard Deviation below, so I'd certainly argue that's bad. Obviously you need to account for things beyond save %, as that is ripe for small-sample variance. Your Mason Miller example being a great one. I'd also argue we should do more work to get a true expected save % - such as build some weights that account for run-leads of the group to determine who had to be more perfect (Maybe Miller came in during 5 1 run games while someone else had 5 3 run games). Either way, Dominguez has been terrible. His FIP is over 7, AND he's not converting saves. Comparing his conversion to other relievers who don't have the save opps is absurd.

Because Jerry won’t pay him. Are you new here?

That timeline certainly fits with team sale window (2029-34), which on its own seems kind of odd. If I had to guess on ballpark location, I'd say they're planning to put it just south of the Fire stadium on the 78 with the Amtrak land being used for a stadium district and parking as @soxfan18 illustrated earlier. This would allow them to get going on ballpark construction sooner since, as you pointed out and as mentioned in the latest presentation slides, it would take years to move Amtrak's facility and clear the tracks from their current yard such that we're looking at 2030 at the earliest to being construction on the west side of the river. And yeah, the Fire surely would be more than happy to have the Sox join them in this development. They only play 17 home games a year and the new MLS schedule actually has the league on an off-season break from June to mid-July, which is about half of the summer. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the amount of money involved here from the Ishbias in addition to what they'll be paying for the franchise itself. But then again, some other billionaire is about to plunk down $3.9B to buy the Padres whereas the Ishbia brothers are "only" paying about $2B for the Sox. So, it's not unrealistic to think that the Ishbias are planning to privately-finance a new stadium with state money being used for infrastructure work.

Guess the hitter based on the splits: hint: it's Colson Montgomery.

I feel like this thread has become a twisted version of Homer chasing the pig. If you know, you know

That exit velo is up there with Cruz and Judge.

Any concern about Roch's .666 OPS in Cape Cod, which I believe uses the wooden bats?

Our friend Joe Doyle has his Mock 2.0 out. Will share the top 5. https://overslotbaseball.com/mock-drafts/mlb-draft-mock-draft-2/

Braden and Shelton made the BA hot sheet. https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/ranking-the-20-hottest-mlb-prospects-hot-sheet-4-20-26/

f*** that noise. We're the f'ing WHITE SOX. We don't pamper these wimps by forcing them to do a year+ at every level. We throw them to wolves and let them sink or swim. Call up Braden and let's see if he's got the stones to make it in this league.

Sucks that he'll be gone before the team is competing. Would be awesome if they could figure out an extension before free agency, albeit very unlikely. Would be great to have a Japanese star long-term. They adore baseball over there.

First time really watching Noah pitch. His arsenal is fun to watch. 97 mph sinker, 97 mph 4-seamer, 90 mph cutter and a wicked slider. Looks like they're molding him with the exact arsenal that Crochet uses.

The White Sox are dead last in MLB in total revenue. They trail the #29 team by about 20 percent. What doesn't make sense is to keep doing the same things they did to make them dead last.

And with that rousing victory the Sox now move into only 3rd worst in MLB RD at -31 through 1/8 of the season. Fire him? EXTEND HIM!

River Edge Lab ideas from the Rahm era. https://www.chiriverlab.com/sites/railroad-bridge-edge Airline Trail - Chicago River Edge Ideas LabAn idea for the Air Line Bridge Edge from Studio Gang to help develop parks and public spaces for Chicago’s riverfront.

The one he hit today, where his lower body was way out ahead and he basically just flipped at it and hit it out to left center, was among the most impressive displays of power I can remember seeing.

This is my guess based on everything I've seen. I know there's text that says 'Phase 1 is the ballpark' but that contradicts the renderings. Pure speculation on my part, just piecing things together: #1 - The entertainment district: Bars, restaurants, retail, a riverwalk, and parking Silver line - This would be the primary walking route from Roosevelt to the ballpark: The Riverwalk leading to the bridge. Yellow line - Cars would enter via 18th & Canal, keeping traffic coming from 90/94 west of the river and cutting down on some of the Roosevelt congestion concerns. Rideshare drop off could be down there, too. Red line - Bridge to the Fire stadium (the most speculative/made up thing here. I don't even know if it's possible, I'm no engineer) #2 - Phase 2 must be Ishbia's Northwestern Medical project I've seen mentioned a few times