Autumn Dreamin

It's admittedly super annoying that the Tigers kept up their habit of not holding leads (over 25% of their losses are games where they blew the lead in the 7th or later, 20+ games) and not winning away games against the division (3-19 on the season) but our Sox can benefit from those things too in a couple weeks. Meanwhile, the Guards are .500 since August 1 (including both Detroit's anti-clutch bullpen and that exceptionally soft patch vs. the Rockies/Angels) which has netted them no ground in the standings. So like you said, just take care of business. 37 games left between theirs and ours, 16 going the right way gets the job done. Win the tiebreaker and hopefully the series next week and it removes a lot of the sweat factor.

Between this and Beni last week, maybe we've got a pattern of guys showing out on "their" magic number day? Lots of low numbers left to keep it going: Newcomb #15, Colson #12, Chase #10, Teel #8, Doyle #7, Mune #5... And of course, you won't want to miss the Acuna #0 clincher performance.

Your first place Chicago White Sox finish the season series 8-5 vs. the Twins. They are 14-6 vs. MIN since last August. So Ted was right, the Twins are in fact not the White Sox. Lots of good in a complete team win, but a moment of extra recognition for Hagen "K-gen" Smith: After his 4 walk debut, Smith has allowed just 6 walks in the 14 innings since, dropping his season WHIP to 0.940 (0.786 if excluding the wild debut). He has a 12.94 K/9 and a teeny tiny .096 BA allowed. His 37.1% strikeout rate is top 10 for pitchers with 10+ IP this season, ahead of guys like teammate Grant Taylor, old friend Dylan Cease, and division foe Cade Smith. Good pitcher.

Sure, you can win in the postseason without hitting HRs. The Royals did win it all as a bottom 10 HR hitting team in 2015. But they are one of only ~4 teams to do so this century, and no one else has done it since. Every WS winner after them has been top 13 or better for HRs during the regular season, 8 of the 10 have been top 10, and 6 straight have been top 4. The 2005 White Sox were top 5 in HRs for the regular season and had the 4th highest % of their scoring from HR in the league that year. I made a related post about the "Guillen Number" (so called because of people underselling how HR-reliant those Sox teams were) when this came up in a different thread a little while ago. All scoring goes down vs. postseason pitching, but the instant offense of HRs remains more reliable than stringing together multiple hits in the right sequence. Hitting a HR off ace pitching is hard, but getting multiple base hits off of them in an inning is even harder. As a result: the percentage of runs scored via HR in the playoffs is higher than in the regular season teams that score a higher percentage of their runs via HR lose less offense vs. playoff caliber pitching/defense the win% of teams who outhomer their opponents goes up in the postseason compared to the regular season (where it's already high) The exact magnitude of these effects can vary from year to year, but it's consistently in the same direction (and large multi-year sample sizes show it routinely as well). That doesn't mean that the best HR hitting lineup always wins it all. The rest of the roster matters and all of the little other things that go into winning baseball have their own effects too. The most valuable postseason asset (after health) is still a pitching staff that's elite at run prevention. But it's exactly because good pitching beats good offense that you're actually better off "living and dying" by the offensive outcome that most directly puts runs on the board. No one hits a postseason HR and wishes it was a walk+steal or double to give the next guy a chance to (contact, BABIP, and defense allowing) "manufacture a run" instead. (Related side note: TTO guys don't strikeout meaningfully more often in the postseason, but they do actually homer (and walk) slightly more. So against elite strikeout pitching, "swinging for HRs" doesn't magically make sluggers more likely to K than "swinging for a base hit"... it just makes them more likely to hit a HR.) If you're interested in more analyses about HR offense in the postseason: https://www.mlb.com/news/homers-are-still-the-key-to-winning-in-playoffs https://www.mlb.com/news/home-runs-to-play-major-role-in-october https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/17470/overthinking-it-what-does-everyone-have-against-homers/

Won't be getting any assistance from Luis against the Guards next series after all

Statistically, HR-based offense actually translates better to postseason baseball than small ball reliant offense.

Fedde has a 1.04 ERA in 5 starts vs. MIN as a Sox (2024 and 2026). 26 IP, 3 ER, 24 Ks to 7 BB, and a 4-0 record. He's held them to a .416 OPS this season. Solid 3.00 ERA overall since June, that's some quality innings for a value price.

That's a new one

AAA has Statcast data, here's Sandlin's summary: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/player-scroll/game?gamePk=816612&player_id=689818 Were you looking for something specific?

Hopefully it's more entertaining when we get our turn again

Detroit is 2-18 in division road games lol

With the HRs tonight: Sox become the first team in MLB with two 30+ HR hitters this season Colson first primary SS to 30 HR this season First time Sox have had multiple 30 HR guys since 2019 Vargas has just the third 30 HR/30 double season from a 3B in Sox franchise history (Ventura, Crede) Colson 3rd youngest Sox with a 30+ HR season

WS clinches a playoff spot behind Umberger's strong start, a 3 IP save from Jake Curtis, and multi-hit games from Wolkow, Mogo, McLain, and Jeral Perez

Not sure they look that much different to me outside of the hot streak vs. COL/LAA. 5 shutouts in their last 20 games, feels like this place would burn down if the Sox were going scoreless 25% of the time.

Would be fantastic if they can also wear out the Guards staff enough to give them an edge for the rest of the series too

He only threw 59 pitches in his rehab start for Charlotte, so definitely on a limit tonight

11-0 Cleveland loss goes final Detroit up 5-1 in the 6th over MIN

So many things get so much easier to manage with this version of Dart

Position player on the mound for Cleveland down 10-0 About to drop to the 6th lowest home win% in MLB