CentralChamps21

9/30: Tampa Bay beat Houston last night to clinch the #1 seed. Houston waits until at least Friday to clinch their division and is now 1.5 ahead of the Sox for the #2 seed. A win by Toronto over New York, as well as wins by Boston and Seattle, have tightened up the wild card race even more. New York now 1 game up on Boston, who is 0.5 game up on Seattle and 1 up on Toronto. Oakland was eliminated with their loss to Seattle. In the National League, Atlanta now up 4.5 over Philadelphia in the East and clinches today with a win. San Francisco and Los Angeles both win to keep the Giants 2 clear of the Dodgers in the NL West. Key early week series wrapping up today: Boston at Baltimore, NY Yankees at Toronto, Philadelphia at Atlanta, Tampa Bay at Houston, Arizona at San Francisco, San Diego at LA Dodgers.

Is this going to end up as a save opportunity for Liam?

Couldn't we at least get Burr for the 9th?

I'm not talking about the playoffs, I'm talking about next season. You can't turn Vaughn into a weak side platoon DH at his age.

If everybody is healthy, I'm thinking something like Engel 2/3 in RF, Sheets 2/3 at DH, and Vaughn the other 1/3 at each.

How else do you ever get them both in the lineup?

I would much prefer a 2b, since we have Engel, Sheets and Vaughn to cover RF.

So the top six guys in the lineup can't hit this guy but Leury and Gavin can.

Reds are only allowed to hit it to CF apparently

Should have stuck with the curve ball

Tampa up 3-0

Sometimes I it won't let me imbed it.

Can Rodon really be effective with his fastball at 90-92?

Doesn't matter. The umpire's union says jump and MLB front office says how high, so if Timmons said TA made contact, that suspension is getting upheld.

Timmons was the 2B umpire, so that was the guy who was restraining Jose. Once Sheets comes out to take Abreu, Timmons heads into the scrum and disappears into the middle of it. I guess some contact happened in there.

Very weird that this would be the first place it gets mentioned.

That is it.

https://twitter.com/JRFegan/status/1443318867972009984?s=19 Anyone else notice a problem here?

If you're going to take advantage of platoon splits, Moncada should bat 1st vs RHP and Anderson vs LHP.

Anybody else worried that Tepera hasn't been activated yet?

I definitely wouldn't make a change now, a week before the postseason starts, but I think next spring it's worth exploring whether the Sox might be better off with people other than TA and Jose holding down the 1 and 3 spots in the order.

There's a day off tomorrow, and the full lineup needs to get a few games in together.

Every pitcher saw the highlights of this. If even once in the postseason a pitcher has this in his mind and gets a bit more of the plate with his inside pitch it was worth it.

You have 3 guys you can rely on to be good and give you 160+ innings in Gio, Lynn and Cease. You have one guy you can count on to give you the innings but not to be good in Keuchel. You have one guy you can count on to be good but not likely the innings in Kopech. Then you have a total wild card in Lopez. Barring keeping Rodon or acquiring another starter, I think they might rotate Kopech, Lopez and Keuchel through the 4-5 spots to start the season and let things sort themselves out.

I get that Soldier Field is a historic site in a scenic location, but the 1920s shell was never going to be able to hold a suitable 2000s stadium. It was always going to end up with the Bears looking for another site, only now some South Loop areas that might have worked in 2002 are no longer available. A retractable roof stadium can bring a Super Bowl, NCAA Final Fours, Big Ten football championship game, bowl game, etc. From the city's standpoint, having this in Arlington Heights still brings some hotel/dining revenue to the city, where not building it at all brings none.