Autumn Dreamin

Wild sequence of events.

I was going to joke about you jinxing him as he proceeded to give up a few, but then I looked at his previous start where he gave up 8ER in 2.1IP to the Angels. His ERA on the season is higher than any of our starters, his WHIP is 2.25, and he's only managed 6.2IP through two starts. Of course, a small sample size doesn't say much about what he'll be for the season...but presumably, if Hahn had signed him for that price, everyone would currently be accusing the org of trying to cheap out on the international market or something rather than complimenting the scouting department.

Some notes and speculation on post-Katz lab Clevinger, based on pitch data from his first start: His velocity is up. After averaging 95.5mph in 2019, the fastball was down to 93.6mph last year. Against Houston, it was back up to 94.7mph and might still gain a tick or two. The slider has ticked up slightly from 79.9mph last year to 80.5mph. It averaged 80.7mph in 2019. The most interesting thing? It's possible he's changed the shape of his fastball to more closely resemble what it was back then too: 2019 Fastball: 12.2in drop, 5.3in break 2022 Fastball: 14.2in drop, 8.7in break 2023 Fastball: 11.9in drop, 5.7in break With the old shape, the combo was very effective and both pitches had a negative run value. Last year, the fastball was a neutral 0 RV and the slider was his worst pitch (6 RV). Katz is a big fastball/slider tunneling guy, and I suspect the 2019/2023 fastball shape tunnels better with the slider (which hasn’t actually changed too much), making both more effective (negative RV on both through the obviously small 2023 sample). Remains to be seen how it holds up and how/if/when they work in his other pitches, but the numbers stood out to me and I assume this was at least one of the potential fixes the team thought they could make. Another interesting tidbit: 2018-9 Clevinger was a much faster worker, averaging the now standard pace of ~15 seconds between pitches. Last year, he was at 19 seconds. Maybe that was impacted by the TJ/knee recovery, but it’ll be interesting to see if he’s also a “helped by the pitch clock” candidate.

Thompson through 4IP scoreless, 1H, 2BB, 5K. At 72 pitches, I wonder if he gets another inning.

Ah, you beat me to it!

Does Rodon not count?

The SF bats have gone quiet every other day all season. Their runs scored: 0,7, 0, 12, 3, 16, 1.

106mph EV 392ft for Romy

At a certain point, the overwhelming desire to have your cynicism validated, to the extent that you ignore any success regardless of magnitude or duration in favor of focusing on any failure regardless of magnitude or duration, is indistinguishable from rooting for failure. As you say, it's a way of people setting themselves up to "take some pleasure" either way. "I hope they prove me wrong" isn't some kind of bold statement in that case...It's stuffing your face with cake and saying "And I'll have another one too!" Nice deal if you can get it, I guess. If the team wins, drink victory beers with everyone else, comfortable in the knowledge that the persistent, public pessimism will go largely unremembered. And if the team loses, rely on that same vocal performance of cynicism to prove (to who?) that you never believed anyway and knew they would lose all along. It's like a "heads I win, tails you lose" version of fandom. Or maybe more like "heads I'm happy, tails I'm smug." I don't know. I just wish there was a single pocket of online Sox fandom where conversations weren't so dominated by people acting like they're afraid of being "caught" believing in the team in the event that they underwhelm in the future.

Billy things.

Come on, everyone knows the first 7 games are perfectly determinative. That's why the Sox made such a deep playoff run after their 5-2 start last year, and why the 1-5 Phillies will be competing with the Royals and Nats for the top draft pick this year. I'm not even sure why they play the other 155, honestly. Give the Rays the WS.

Once you realize that some people have a lot of their personal identity wrapped up in feeling personally aggrieved by the baseball team they voluntarily watch, this kind of question answers itself.

White Sox fans: How many chances is Jose Ruiz going to get?! Also White Sox fans: Why didn't we clear a roster spot for optionless 35 year old Bryan Shaw and his 5.40 2022 ERA?!

Painful way to K.

Webb says he doesn't think it was ejection worthy, but the HP ump clearly wasn't trying to endear himself to the Sox in any way today.

FYI

Home runs in 4/6 games too.

Yeah. Hustled out an infield hit on a grounder to short that loaded the bases and contributed to a 3 run bottom 7.

Based on results, I'm pretty sure that's what he's swinging.

Gavin "Barry Bonds at GRF" Sheets

There was a game last year where Cease lost it in his last inning and loaded the bases with two outs. They went to Reylo, and he came in and got the K in 3 or 4 pitches. Seemed to be huge for his confidence then, hope it helps him find himself here too.

Cease got squeezed in the first AB of the game.

This was the Luis AB before Tim's ejection. 3 and 4 were called strikes. And then that last call to Gavin...