Look at Ray Ray Run

This is also the point every citing lineup analysis is ignoring entirely. In Tango's research he is assuming you are starting your 9 best players and when he says lineup construction he means the batting order; not the personnel. Tony was legitimately starting lesser players nightly which has a much larger impact on expected runs. The batting order itself is relatively meaningless as sequencing is pretty non-predictive, but batting the WRONG players has a significant impact on runs scored over the duration of a season.

To all the LaRussa stans in this thread, these questions still have not been answered in the endless back and forth: 1. What has Tony LaRussa done well in his time as manager? Just please name one or two things. 2. What is man management? Renteria had his teams playing their ass off every single night. It's May 10th and there have been multiple reports of the players asking WTF is this guy doing here. Is that man management lol? When Ricky was here, the bullpen was lights out. I still argue Ricky should have been fired because in the playoffs it looked like he was going to have a heart attack every time they showed him and you gotta be calm in those spots as the manager. 3. Where does LaRussa improve the team - in what facet? I see people in this thread giving LaRussa for playing Vaughn in LF - huh? He would sit his ass all the time for a guy that is not even in the big leagues anymore. He has let Billy Hamilton and Leury Garcia consistently hit in HUGE situations late in the game. He said he was looking for a single with the tying run at the dish in the 8th inning and 1 out. Would the Sox have won all those games? Obviously not. Could they have won one or two of them if their manager didn't insist on letting Billy Hamilton hit? Maybe. So... what has LaRussa done well?

I think this has been stated ad nauseum but the results of this group of players will not change how bad Larussa is. Bad managers can win baseball games and World Series. This teams results will be in spite of their manager not because of him.

This is the same poster who ripped renteria endlessly for every move he made. Meanwhile there was no mutiny or bad words spoken about him by players. This is exactly why you can't take these "positive" larussa posters seriously. And I've been as positive about the roster as anyone. Doesn't mean I have to be blind when discussing the idiocy that is Tony larussa.

You've been doing this as long as I've been posting here, and this team hasn't been the "best" or "most talented" group in baseball... since I started posting here. This has been your shtick since day 1. Sox are real good this year, but there's a long way to go. Celebrating in May has never been something Sox fans should be doing.

The saving grace of this season will be that the AL Central is bad and the AL in general is down. The Sox should be able to dominate this division (no mush) and beat up on a lot of bad AL teams. They're damn good, but they'll need Luis and Eloy come October (if they get there*) *have to add that given the historic track record of rooting for this team.

I gotta ask, why do you post here on a baseball fan forum? All you do is cite, via your thoughts and opinions, a deferrel to what you deem to be professional authority. Everyone who's opinion disagrees with a coach or manager, you tell them how they're not employed in either profession so their opinion is meaningless. So again, why are you here if everything is meaningless and trumped by the decision making of these people you deem unflappable geniuses.

You know what's tiresome about all your posts? They're usually slanted and riddled with absurd whataboutisms. Shut up, jaysus.

Tim out here strutting that stuff picking up the load. I also want to bring attention to 7's defense this year. Guy said he would sure up the errors and inconsistencies this off season on that side of the ball and he's done exactly that. It has been underrated so far but he's been elite there this year. Guy just keeps getting better and better every single year, and the defense has been phenomenal this season.

Got it. Thanks.

Missed the game for mother's Day stuff, can someone help me understand why kopech was pitching in an 8-1 game?

What are his political views? Don't even know. To be honest, I was driving to get lunch and at a light. Read the post, didn't even see who it was from, replied and came back to see a post throwing a fit that I chose to respond to him. So in this case, yes. Sometimes you know I like to poke the bear, but sadly this wasn't even one of those cases.

Hmm, maybe because I don't care who posts what and don't follow you around because you're posts aren't important to me? I don't care what your username is, you posted something that was incorrect and I corrected it. If you feel you're above that, and think you should post free of any commentary to the contrary of your viewpoint maybe you should consider not posting on public message boards? Again, this self inflated sense of importance you have about yourself really gets in the way of basic conversation. All I said was that that part of the post was wrong, and then corrected what LaRussa actually said; you've now gone on to write multiple posts getting oddly defensive and making this a personal vendetta in your brain despite nothing personal being exchanged from my end. I've said this before, but get over yourself guy.

I watched the post game conference and you misrepresented what he said. Then implied he was helping g his player by doing so. I didnt address your other points because I had nothing to say about them. Is that ok with you? Take your condescending poor me nonsense somewhere else. Sheesh.

This is flat out wrong. Larussa said he called for the steal and said he'd do it again and didn't regret it.

You've got better things to do than get worked up over this... better things like getting worked up about people getting worked up over this. Amazing stuff.

There are national reports that the players themselves are ALREADY questioning their manager, and the Sox manager has been the laughing stock of baseball multiple times and it is only May. Please save this narrative that it's just standard "blame the manager" nonsense that exists. Also, save us the narrative that it's normal to make a couple mistakes. If that were the case, LaRussa wouldn't be a national story and we wouldn't already have rumblings coming from this dugout. Remember in Rick Renteria's tenure, we never once heard of the players being unhappy or frustrated - with the lone exception being Keuchel saying everyone needed to be a bit more serious. 1. LaRussa was never a "genius." This perception is so broken. The guy won and went to a World Series with two of the more loaded teams of his generations. 2. What does life expectancy matter? Cognitive function decays as you age, this is simply not debatable. It's not based on life expectancy, but on duration of the brains life. 3. Belicheck and Saban are not even 70 years old. Tony LaRussa is 76. He's the oldest manager to be given a non-interim job in like 50 years (maybe longer). 4. The game has changed a little since Casey Stangel managed - not sure if you've noticed. 5. Everyone and their mother questioned the LaRussa hire when it was made, because it made no sense. Didn't fit the personality or the need of this team. 6. LaRussa had been in a front office for the previous 10 years and there had shown he really didn't know what he was doing. See the Arizona trades to the Braves and etc. There was no defending the LaRussa hire. It went against everything the team claimed they wanted, and aspired to get. Since the hire, we learned he had a pending DUI and now his Animal Care Shelter is under scrutiny for - you guessed it - racist remarks and harassment. It also wasn't his first DUI, so this idea that he's "ashamed" so it doesn't matter is kind of nonsense. Being a MLB manager is a privilege, not a right. It is a job that should be earned, not given. LaRussa has looked lethargic and acted crotchety. We do not need to wait until the end of the year. The teams production and results will not change how poor of a decision it was to hire Tony LaRussa. Bad managers can win World Series because the games are decided by the players 99.99% of the time. Sadly, this year, our manager has some managed to effect games in a negative way more than even most bad managers do. There was no justification for hiring Tony LaRussa outside of the owner wanting to put his friend in charge of his well oiled machine as a favor. Attempting to justify it may not be moronic, but it's certainly misguided and to me completely incomprehensible.

and now you're restating about things being restated over and over again and not at all discussing the topic or baseball in general. Weird take, for sure. Would be a pretty dead forum if only entirely new thoughts and ideas were presented and never updated or restated, don't you think?

Oh my. 1. Why would I make a ban bet based on two players not on the White Sox production over the next 10 years? 2. You are arguing Mookie Betts is a concern (.7 fWAR) despite a 7 year track record of being one of the best players in the world, but people showing concern over Tatis (.5 fWAR) are dopes and wrong despite Tatis barely playing more than an entire season worth of games in his career. Do you not see the irony in that? And before you argue games played, Betts has played TWO more games and out produced Tatis this year. The year where we should be concerned about Betts. Oh and Tim Anderson wasn't paid 250 million dollars to be one of the best players in baseball and was known as a raw asset. Thanks for playing.

Lol the guy leads the world in errors and can't throw to first base with a banged up shoulder and thats not a concern but Mookie Betts has a 767 ops in 25 games after winning a world series and dominating his first year after signing and that's a big concern. Caufield cracks me up.

It's amazing how people think the announcers are the ones that should know lol. Might be the dumbest excuse I read over and over. The league told manager in spring, not announcers. My goodness why do people carry water for larussa so much? If rules change in my profession it is MY job to know that. If my bosses don't tell me and I fuck up because of it I can't blame my bosses for not holding my hand. If I am the one who attends to meeting or session regarding the rule changes and fail again its not on MY team for not reminding me. A part of jobs and careers in leadership is responsibility. The people in this thread who want to blame everyone but the guy in charge who was told about the rule is completely laughable. And there are way more rules in my career than the game of baseball and they change much more often than in baseball. This is all such nonsense.

People who cite this honorable angle thing never ask why ownership doesn't pay a guy more when he clearly outplayed his contract. Weird how that works.

All Tony's roid dealers got out the game and retired 15 years ago like he should have. We good!

I really wish people would stop quoting David Samson.

He was a star who played for Tony LaRussa. What star who has played for Tony LaRussa ever didn't have those whispers?