SoxBlanco

I actually like the aggression there from Grandal. Unfortunate that the ball was out of the zone, but I like that he’s trying to do damage there instead of taking a walk. There are situations to be patient and there are situations to be aggressive. I also thought he should have been aggressive in the 4th inning when he took a 2-0 pitch right down the middle. He ended up walking in that at bat, but perhaps we score more runs if he puts a charge into one.

Doesn’t Grandal have like a .400 OBP over the past 15 games? His power is definitely not there yet, but I wouldn’t call him useless.

Hey hey hey, let’s not get carried away. They only played putrid for 6 innings tonight.

I completely forgot that game 163 is no longer a thing. So unless we go 5-1 or 6-0 against Cleveland in our last 6 against them, we will have to finish a game ahead of them to win the division. Now, if we end up tied with Cleveland and it's not a situation where both teams faded in September, then there's also a chance we could be a Wild Card team.

I didn’t watch a single pitch in innings 5-9, missed what seems to be one of the best wins of the year, and I don’t regret it.

Time machine.

Is that when you took your first bribe?

This has been one of the worst stretches of starting game threads I can remember. Maybe that’s why we keep winning.

What happens if we make the playoffs and get swept first round?

Wow, they lost again today? Can’t believe we are tied with them. As far as this thread topic is concerned, I’ll start thinking about momentum if we win tomorrow.

If you trade one of the KC losses with one of the Detroit wins, we basically split every 2 and 4 game series and took 2 of 3 in every 3 game series. Story of the season. Decent, but not good enough.

Decent prediction so far.

Maybe we can try winning the first game of a series tonight. We’ve lost the first game in five of the last seven series, and yet we haven’t lost any of those seven series. Even more ridiculous is the fact that we’ve lost the first two games in THREE of those series.

It’s truly remarkable that the Sox haven’t lost a series since the July 4-6 series against Minnesota, considering they seem to lose the first game of every series they play in (and they’ve lost the first TWO games multiple times).

We’ll get some BIG energy if there’s two on and two outs this inning.

This matchup reminds me of the Sox (Sale) vs the Braves in 2016 and Houston (Verlander) vs the Tigers in 2019. The latter was possibly the biggest betting favorite ever. The former was also a huge betting favorite for the Sox. Both Sale and Verlander got beat.

June 23

Lucas gave up the same amount of earned runs in the first inning that Cease has given up in his last 58 innings.

Who’s in CF when Engel is in RF?

If we go 1-2 against Oakland, it’ll be the most disappointing series of the season so far (and that’s saying a lot). Oakland is so bad this year, and we’ll have Cueto, Lynn, and Cease.

I actually enjoy the Benetti/Hummel combo.

The next 19 games will probably let us know if this team will make a playoff push. People kept calling the Baltimore series an easy series, but the next 19 are all against teams that are worse than Baltimore (Texas is the best team with a record of 43-51). So make a prediction on how the Sox fare over these 19 games. Feel free to add where you think that puts us in the division on August 15. For reference, this is who the Sox will play: @ Colorado (2) Oakland (3) Kansas City (3) @ Texas (4) @ Kansas City (4) Detroit (3)

The post you quoted was from over a year ago, but it fits this year pretty well right now.

Gotcha. Thanks. Would be great if something clicked for him like it did with Cease this year.