Autumn Dreamin

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...

Guess he found two?

Meh, he pitched a scoreless 2IP against them in game 1 when everyone else got shelled.

What's with these SF pitchers?

I got the impression that it was the following AB that really set him off. He wasn't yelling at Webb.

I mean, the calls on Robert were obscene though.

Don't envy the AAA team that's going to be facing Liam and Crochet in their rehab starts soon.

Two pitches, same amount off the plate, two different calls.

Every time Luis tries to take pitches.

Karinchak walked off by the A's. Second time in the series that Cleveland's backend guys have given up 9th inning runs in Oakland. It's almost like bullpen arms can be a little volatile to start the season...