Autumn Dreamin

Boyer on Mune's impact there (emphasis mine): He also talks about consulting with their AZ neighbor Dodgers and Chicago neighbor Cubs for contacts on building out those Japanese connections, and the prospect of Mune as a White Sox in a future Tokyo series. Landing him was a stroke of luck, but now that they have him I think the goal is something more than a short term flip.

More than 2 years, I think they pay him (for a number of reasons, some more telegraphed than others)

Mune still making front pages even with Shohei's on base streak as competition. Lots of Sox specific context; they talked to Brooke Fletcher and Merkin about Mune's results so far, his work ethic/personality, fan engagement, etc. Merk compared him to Abreu, hence his picture there.

Player of the week honors for both guys too:

His arm angle has lowered from 35 last year to around 30 now, and it's apparently had cascading effects on how his stuff plays. Less deception, worse control, and his sweeper has gone from one of the best pitches in the game to his worst offering. He's missing in the zone too much and guys aren't whiffing on the mistakes when they are in favorable counts and can narrow down what's coming. After the Twins start he said it wasn't health and thought he maybe needed to change the fastball mix. After the most recent start, he said he feels like he knows what the fix is but didn't specify. Hope he figures it out, love watching him when he's on. But another bad start and an IL stint wouldn't surprise me, even if it's a phantom one.

Yep! Anyone one before him or posing a threat to hit after him makes pitchers sweat just that much more. And he's no burner but has better speed underway than a lot of guys in that high HR%/BB% archetype. He's more capable of going first to third or scoring from second on a single than a Schwarber for example. Currently ranked 6th in sprint speed for 1B, around league average overall.

He's been struggling with sliders and offspeed early, but he has a good eye and doesn't chase so he forces fastball counts by getting ahead. And contrary to the offseason worry, he just demolishes fastballs. He's hitting .250 and slugging .750 against them, and that's underperforming his expected stats of .311avg/.834slg If he improves vs. breaking stuff even a little, he'll be such a challenge to pitch to.

The individual HRs were so fun that I'm still processing the bigger picture of Mune going 5-12 with 3 HR, 3 BB (5K), 7 RBI in the series lol And two of the homers were off LHP

This is not the best source to use, since it splits stats by player team and backend BP arms are among the most commonly traded assets at the deadline. Just at first glance, it leaves out Mason Miller's post-trade Padres tenure, where he went 2/5 on save opps. Sorry quoted wrong post

Last season's saves leader (Estevez, 42/46) had an 87.5% save rate. Chapman (32/24) was the only pitcher (out of 8) with 30+ saves at a rate above 90%. If you lower the threshold to 20 saves, Jansen (28/29) and Hader (27/28) make the cut which would be 3/21 closers. Which is fine, if that's your bar for elite, the top 10-15% probably makes sense. But by these standards, only a handful of closers are even at a "tolerable" 85%. Mason Miller, who most would call elite, I guess should be grateful he just managed to keep his spot at that rate (22/26). And the Brewers were lucky to win so much with their just barely tolerable 83% save rate from Megill (30/36)? It's an inherently high noise stat due to small sample sizes. Only ~17 guys got 30+ save opps last season, and nearly all of them will have also pitched 20+ innings in non-save situations that won't be captured by the stat at all. It's a cool stat for when guys are on wild streaks or for comparing the work of really established closers over time, but I'm not sure there's a less predictive stat than any relievers "save rate" over a five game sample. Jeff Hoffman (2/5), the guy who literally closed over Dominguez in Toronto last year, is worse if we're going by 5 SVO samples.

If the Sox manage just one more win before the month is over, it will be their highest win total entering May since 2021. March-April records: 2021: 14-11 2022: 8-12 2023: 8-21 2024: 6-24 2025: 7-23 Though to be fair to the 2022 team given the late start to the season, they were at 15-14 by May 10th.

The key for Dominguez seems to be throwing only ONE pitch per AB that surprises both himself and the batter at how far off the plate it is

Quietly 0 runs in 8 outings this month with 9 Ks and a ~1 WHIP.

Crochet still looking uncharacteristically rough. 5 IP, 5 ER, 7 H, 2 BB, 8 K vs. Detroit. Dingler got him for a double and a HR. ERA at 7.88, might be hard to recover enough for a Cy case.

Zavala heater continues

The Sox losing challenges on defense is still a W for me, because it suggests EQ's framing is improving enough to get the call in the first place.

Agreed. No rush on promoting him in my opinion. And whatever time he has left in the minors, I'm fine with 75%+ of it being in Birmingham anyway.

Okay...? You still need your 7-10 and 15-22 HR guys to chip in with their occasional pop so it's not all left up to Mune and Colson. If they had none of those guys, you'd bemoan the lack of them.

Love EQ getting strikes for Schultz, heat check on that last one though. Probably Noah's last inning.

Another stupid fake HR, what a shame

All the more reason to enjoy it while it's happening?

God I just love him so much