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Teams are going to line up for Kimbrel this off season. They're smart enough not to let a 2 month sample size affect their evaluation on a player of Kimbrel's caliber. Plus when they really dig in and understand just how horribly the Sox have handled his situation they'll be even more in on him.

We can still win this series. We just have to score more runs than Houston and you can take that to the bank

Imagine being a manager and knowing you have 5 fresh relievers and 1 who hasn't been successful on back to back and pitched yesterday and say to yourself, let's go get the former in the biggest moment of the game and season. It's honestly amazing. I can't get over it. I was cracking up

Outplayed, outmanaged and totally exposed as the team we all hoped they weren't. So many different decisions and outcomes to be upset about. This hurts.

Everything people have been bitching about with respect to this team all season reared its ugly head today. Bad positioning? Yes. TLR making an inexplicable move? Yes. TLR not using the bullpen correctly? Yes. Add all that in and you blow a game you were leading in half way through.

Is he drunk? Serious question.

TLR wasn't HOF quality in 2011 with his bullpen phone meltdown in game 6. That shit basically cost them a World Series game. He was too old 10 years ago.

Transfer Parkman's ban to this guy

He’s not going to give you a response as he ignores anyone who doesn’t bow down to his superior baseball intellect.

Get this fuckin cubs bullshit outta the game thread

While walking with the kids this evening I thought to myself; well isn't this what I kind of expected after how we have been playing for about 2 months? Literally nothing has changed just because it is the playoffs now. LaRussa is still making weird decisions, the starting pitching isn't being efficient, the bullpen is blowing games, and the offense is still awful with RISP. Instead of trying to figure out the best position for our players to be in and trying to get home field La Russa was too busy trying to rest people as much as possible. Why did we not try Kimbrel in the closer role for a couple of weeks and see if anything changed? Why did we not try to shift more and see if it helped us? Or putting our bullpen guys in the best position every game to see how they should be used in the playoffs? We settled and this coaching staff let them settle.

Everyone talking about holes being exposed and it being problematic for the future... I honestly came away from this game realizing that this team is a good manager and strategic analyst away from being tied 1-1 going home. Those are certainly much easier to find than good players. Team hasn't played well and with proper leadership and decision making could honestly be in a great position to take the series. The players are fine. It would be nice to have a better RF and 2B, sure, but the Sox have a SS, 1B, CF who have balled out. They have a Catcher who is fine and a weapon easily when compared to others, and a 3B who is flashing leather and making big plays. Teams problem is they're a little sloppy, and they have not been put in a position to succeed.

The Madrigal trade will go down as one of the worst in White Sox history. I hated it when it went down and nothing has changed.

Why would anybody be excited if Hahn goes and TLR stays. Seems like worst case scenario

Hahaha Get The Fuck Out of here Tony

2 starts 2 CG's 18 IP 1ER 17 K's 1BB 7 hits Let's go!

My Mom loved the Sox but died in Feb. 2005 and never saw a White Sox World Championship. We did go to the 2nd game of the 1959 World Series with my favotite uncle.

How can anyone defend TLR at this point? Those runs are 95% on TLR being a horseshit manager and a fucking dinosaur. The announcers even mentioned there was a huge hole up the middle, which doesn't make much sense, since sinker ball pitchers tend to have a lot of balls go up the middle. Three straight hits went RIGHT through that fucking hole. Then you have Garcia in RF instead of Engel, who absolutely makes that catch. His stupidity completely sabotaged this game, without even taking into consideration Kimbrel being a useless fucking twatwaffle. Fuck TLR.

The Sox literally probably win this game if kopech comes in for 3 innings in the 5th

The only suspense at this point is whether Kaat is getting fired for his Yoan comment.

The key mistake was taking Engel out. Why would you forsake his elite defense so Cesar Hernandez could bat for him with nobody on base. In a game like this you go to the best defense you can late in the hame, not away from it.

Who saw this coming!? The people concerned about this happening were told all kind of things. You're over reacting, they have a big lead in the division. Resting players is more important or see you later is my favorite. I wish I was wrong but unfortunately this isn't shocking.

So fucking ironic that the bullpen is the thing that lets them down after spending so many god damn resources on it.

This was supposed to be what we brought Tony LaRussa here for, and everything about these first two games he has failed at. I would have still rather had Ricky than this show.

This team needs Ventura. He actually positioned pretty well from what i remember. But yes - this is glaring and the club is getting crushed by the little things which go pretty significantly in the analytics.

Welp. This one is on Tony. Just comically bad pen management. Horrible.

When did Alyson make that Tweet? The Sox have awoken since then.

And the Astros are 0-2 in legitimate World Series.

You have an odd definition of a decade.

When a team walks 9 guys in a god damn playoff game they don't deserve to win. Fucking pitch better.

Dusty isn't putting together positional cards. I've been harping on the White Sox defensive alignments all year. They're atrocious. They're one of the three worst teams in baseball in runs lost to positioning. The Sox aren't a terrible defensive team (they do throw the ball around too much), they're simply not positioned properly and metrics are against things like xBA. LaRussa has screwed them there, all season. His explanation for the defensive positioning today was comical. Look at the charts, the Sox went against what everyone else did multiple times. They're stuck in the stone age because their manager is a complete moron. And honestly, I like Hahn for some things but I'm not excusing him for this. He knows it's bad, I guarantee it, and he doesn't have the balls to push and override the horrible decision making defensively.

lol. I swear this has to be a troll job at this point. I literally pointed out in the trade thread that Kimbrel was not the same pitcher and had a good stretch of baseball but he was the same volatile guy he had been the two year prior and was just on a good streak of 30 innings. He had been trending downward for 5 years. His volatility was very well known at this point. I'm amazed someone could possibly come in and say "can't blame the front office" for giving up 12 years of control for a guy who has been one of the worst relievers in baseball since the acquisition. It's literally their job to do that. "Who could have possibly seen this coming?" Uh, like 10 random strangers on an internet message board.

Lololol

If HFA doesn’t matter, then why does someone like Yoan have no power on the road, etc? I’m amazed at how many people are negating now much it means in terms of crowd support and performance.

And most of the 9% were old crusty types. "I WONT HAVE NO CHEATER ON MY TEAM", "TLR FORGOT MORe ABOUT BASEBALL THAN THEY EVAH WILL KNOW"

It never looked good. I'll never understand why Sox management donated Madrigal to the Cubs.

People have been pointing out the lack of shifting by the White Sox all season long. Turns out, defensive shifts are important. Turns out, not shifting properly can cost you runs. And wins. I really hope TLR gets his stupid drunken ass arrested for drunk driving again after this season, and the Sox are forced to can him. Because my biggest fear is that this piece of shit sabotages this team for the next few years. There's zero chance Reinsdorf allows him to be fired.

He's saving Kopech for a game 4 that might not even happen.

Jason Bennetti can shut the fuck up about the postseason

this series is like a random team has won a lottery to play postseason baseball against a team that belongs there

Hahn and TLR + staff minus Katz should be gone but they won’t

At least the Field of Dreams game was cool

REMINDER WE GAVE UP OUR 3RD OVERALL PICK FOR THIS SHUTDOWN RELIEVER

dude you're incredible. you've single handedly walked into this thread, took a huge steaming dump, and then when repeatedly asked to clean it up you started throwing it instead. unfortuently when you reply to me the ignore feature doesn't work properly and I have to look at the fecal matter you call posts. also, the game was fucking over every time I posted it yesterday. today is a new day but you're still hung up on cubs shit and yesterday, get the fuck out of here.

I have a real good feeling about this one.

Framber is a beast, I doubt the Sox can hit him. Lucas is going to have to throw a gem giving up 1 run or less for the Sox to have a chance.