nrockway

good for him, I didn't think he was a major leaguer.

Anyone watching Skenes debut? First inning: 2 K's, a walk to Bellinger, a hard hit flyout to deep center. Throwing his fastball at 101 but struck out Suzuki on 3 nasty looking breaking pitches. Second inning: ground out, hit by pitch, walk, single. bases loaded. uh oh. got out of it with no runs scoring. Fourth inning: prominent slugger Nico Hoerner homers to left field. Fifth inning: infield single, double, his day is over. Final line: 4.0 IP, 6h, 3 ER, 2 BB, 7 K. 84 pitches. 2 WHIP, 6.75 ERA. I think I prefer Nasty Nick. not Skenes related but the Pirates play-by-play guy called b2b homers as "back to back chicken shack". that Grateful Dead song popped into my head yesterday for the first time in like a decade, funny coincidence and a good call.

b-b-b-but the framing! fangraphs already has him at 13 WAR on the season.

well clearly it wasn't a wasted roster spot, they got a prospect out of it. that was ostensibly the rebuilding strategy from the get go, sign bums and hope some of them play well enough to be traded for something. If Robbie Grossman got that, what might Pham or DeJong or Wilson net? Or Fedde or Clevinger. Feels worth mentioning that DeJong has actually been good, much better than Rosario or Anderson on both sides of the ball.

well lookee here, this is like that time I thought Elvis Andrus was gonna hit 2 home runs and he nearly did. oh wait he didn't. I should probably watch the end of this game. I'm leaving this post up in disgrace. or did he? I'm confused and a little drunk.

speak american or get ouddda here!

I'd go further and send him to Arizona to practice hitting offspeed pitches. He just can't do it. can't really hit fastballs for that matter unless they're 89 mph and in the middle of the plate

I wasn't hung up on this anymore, I wasn't even thinking about LuBob. Then Schriffen had to say "oh he was at 90 percent but now he's at 70 percent and we want him back up to 90 percent". What the f*** does that mean? I don't think anybody knows. just say 69 percent. at least that's funny.

Would like to see Ramos play some 2b. I’m optimistic that we have a pretty good infield coming up with Montgomery, Gonzalez and Baldwin joining Ramos in a year or two, but I wonder how they all fit. I would guess Colson moves to 3b and Gonzalez sticks at short, so it would be nice if Ramos could play 2b

wow, we get to hit against Carrasco. Why did Cleveland bring him back? I think Vaughn is going to hit his first home run this evening.

Hey soxtalk, do you think Chris Getz would’ve collaborated with the Germans? His hair is a little too blond for my liking. Untrustworthy.

I unironically want to watch a rotation of Crochet, Eder, Bush, rushed Schultz and Patrick Corbin. In lieu of signing Patrick Corbin, I like your converted pitcher idea, except let's do Colas since he's supposed to be a two way player and fits with the left-handed theme.

Yeah I mean I don't think Sheets has proven himself yet to be a 'good' right fielder, my point in saying "good enough" is that if his bat keeps up for the whole season, his defense seems improved enough that he could probably stick there. I've been Gavin's biggest hater but he's genuinely impressed me this season. To me he's clearly better at right field than Grossman was, and the World Series champs just gave up a prospect for that guy. I hope he keeps it up and proves me wrong.

Corner outfield is where you stick your sluggers and hope they can play defense well enough to not give up more runs than they produce. Kyle Schwarber was a starting outfielder on a team that went to the World Series. Yes, to an unbiased observer, Gavin Sheets is good enough defensively to justify putting his bat in a major league lineup. That’s not white sox apologia, that’s just a basic understanding of how professional baseball is played. You seem to want to deny reality to make a point about how bad the Sox are. This team is bad enough that you don’t need to make up things on top of it to help make your point.

He definitely looks...good enough. Seems to make routine plays at least. This was a fun game to watch. Ramos was awesome, specifically that bizarre play where he tried to run over Maldonado. Wasn't expecting Flexen to K eight, I think he was throwing a lot harder than he usually does right? He looked dominant. Why didn't he just try throwing the ball 3 to 4 mph faster earlier on?

you would think they'd just let Carter see lefties. Why not? Yeah he has a .250 OPS against LHP so far, but seemingly they have the lineup to allow him to get reps against them and still have a competitive lineup. I can't imagine platooning my team's young star with gross,man, are they gonna do that his whole career?

Professional sports shouldn't be a business for this reason. What other industry can you torpedo the quality of your product, alienate all of your clients (fans), be out-competed by every one of your competitors and still manage to turn a profit and be in a position to turn a profit for the next 100 years?

Definitely confusing. Why did Texas trade anything for Robbie Grossman? Why would they even give up cash, let alone a player? Yeah he hit the ball decently for them last year and Langford is on the IL, but you'd think the defending champs might have a different outfielder they could select for a couple of weeks rather than giving up a prospect for...Robbie Grossman.

Well, that's what he said and what the quote derives from. "I was bad and the team was bad and being bad isn't much fun". I don't think there's anything to read into here unlike the Lance, Middleton, Kelly remarks (actual knuckleheads). I wouldn't blame him for being upset anyway, being dicked around in trade rumors all summer while still doing promos as the "Sox's ace". Yeah it's "part of the business", but it has to be tough. Still he's had ample opportunity to express his displeasure publicly and he's only ever criticized himself. Cease was one of the good attitude guys on this team, and the other non-cancerous pitchers on the team seemingly respected him as a leader and as someone to emulate. I don't think he's "taking shots" by any stretch of the imagination so much as he's giving a say-nothing diplomatic response about a situation that the pretty much every baseball fan is curious about: "what the f*** happened to you guys?"

I think there might actually be something to this regarding the Sox and Marlins. Fools gold teams that eventually collapsed and revealed serious organizational deficiencies. Maybe Ng really took after her old buddy Kw and infected the Marlins with Sox issues. jokes aside, this got me thinking, I’ve been watching a bunch of Dodgers games lately (sue me) and you watch them play and see an organization that actually sets its players up for success. Muncy was talking about preparation and how their coaching staff gets them ready to hit — it was a far cry from Luis Robert’s mantra “I just know their velocity”. Consequently, you see guys like Pages get called up and set the world on fire despite having serious flaws in their game. I’m certain the Sox hitting woes as a team is more reflective of the coaching than it is the individual players. Schriffen had a bit about our hitting coach who said plainly “I let the guys do their own thing and they can come to me if they need help.” That’s BS and it clearly isn’t working. Scouting and preparation is half the battle and I don’t feel like there’s an impetus from the coaching staff to do any of that. At least on the hitting side of things, I’m probably a minority that thinks Katz does an OK job.

Probably not. But maybe. Then again probably not. I think he has the range and arm to be decent at 3B, just not the health. I'm kind of hoping the Cubs trade for him, they could use him.

4 runs in 2 innings on 54 pitches. 4 walks, 0 strikeouts. Terrific work, Clev. Maybe 5 days from now he can lower his ERA to a single digit. That would be something. Or he gets cut, that would be fine too.

He started off really hot then went 2-26 over a week long stretch then went on the IL. Probably he was playing hurt and it tanked a small sample size of plate appearances. I still think the Burger trade was a good idea, but he didn’t forget how to hit. Frankly I think he’ll get even better and combine the two parts of his game that hit for power and hit for average into one complete package. Provided he can stay healthy which is a big ask. He’s kind of old but he’s not a finished product, I bet he could become an average defensive 3B too (Max Muncy with speed).

I fielded a groundball and threw it to the first baseman for the out. I think coach's brain exploded. I actually feel bad calling him a jerk in the other post, he was a good man that took kids' baseball a little too seriously. "you guys played terrible, get the f*** out of here!" "coach we're 11."