nrockway

Depending how the rest of the season plays out, I hope they think about adding a real player in free agency. Could you imagine Kyle Tucker on this team? Perfect fit. Never gonna happen. Pete Alonso isn't gonna happen either. Naylor or Hoskins seem like realistic targets, but also like fool's gold. If they trade Luis, Mullins would be a really good replacement too. I think Tucker would transform this team though, swap out Benintendi's (lately good) production for Tucker's consistent .850 OPS/solid defense/5 WAR and suddenly the team's biggest hole is it's biggest strength. Realistically, we probably don't sign anybody high value. Win a little bit in 2026 with the internal group and then maybe players will actually want to sign here.

I didn't see a game, but I watched my friend's graduation there. It's a cool park, they even had the fountain going. To my eye, I thought very well-maintained for its age, although the city and state might be skeptical. I would plan on it being much hotter than Huntington Beach. Maybe not an issue for a night game, it'll probably be very pleasant, but if you end up going Sunday I would anticipate being uncomfortably warm. You should definitely go, I suspect it's another one of these parks that is scheduled for deletion.

St. Paul Saints the new best show in town...well in the adjacent town.

Sure, but what if they just re-signed him as a 30-year-old if he's productive? I'm a big fan, I think it would've been a shame if he was uneventfully traded for a lotto ticket. For a real player? Sure, but that wasn't gonna happen. I think if he's healthy into his 30s, he's still at the very least an every day player at a hard-to-fill position (especially if you're the White Sox and allergic to signing/developing outfielders).

i don't think the pope would approve of this thread.

What if this guy was just a Sox the rest of his career? I'd be OK with that. Who else is going to play center field? I'm sort of glad they didn't trade him, we weren't getting anything back and there's no point in dumping him.

Curtis Mead hasn't been 'good', but he's not far removed from being a top prospect. Pretty good value IMO, certainly better than nothing. Also he's Australian, so that's pretty cool. Maybe he'll say things like "crikey, mate!" when he hits a home run. Still, not super optimistic that the Sox can take a struggling young hitter and 'fix' him if the Rays couldn't. Maybe the Fuller hiring has actually been helpful though.

Flex was very good for the Cubs until July. He gave up 2 earned runs in May and June then 13 in July alone, in half the innings. I think he'll land somewhere, he can definitely 'eat innings'. For some reason a baseball team is paying Kyle Freeland 16 million dollars to be Chris Flexen, so why not pay Chris Flexen $750k to be himself? He gave an awesome interview in spring training and then was excellent across 4 starts before injury. Really too bad, he was good trade fodder and an easy guy to root for; he also seems like a guy who could stick around next season. Like another poster said, he sure beats Clevinger on vibes alone but also beats out any of the AAAA pitching depth. He could definitely start on a good team (presuming he continues to pitch at a ~4ish ERA into his mid-30s).

I don't really care for the baseball postseason because I don't think this is necessarily true. If you're a good team, you'll have a great record over 162 games. Just about any team can get hot over the course of several weeks and the "best" team often does not win the World Series. Aaron Judge is thought of as kind of a "choker" in the playoffs because his OPS of .752 is far lower than his career regular season OPS of 1.025 (nuts. had to check, didn't think it was that high). The 1.000 OPS comes from 4800 plate appearances whereas the .750 is across just 262. Is Judge actually a choker or is it not enough of a sample size to make a determination? On the other hand, the baseball postseason is fun because every team that makes it has a shot unlike in the NBA or arguably NHL. "Cindarella runs" only happen in sports where there isn't a 5/7 game series or in sports where 'randomness' is a major factor that has to be accounted for. Again, arguably, why baseball is a fun sport...it's pretty random but the data starts to take shape after 160 or so games. To the point about 'extra rest', I have to imagine it's more beneficial to just have a couple days off to rest and recover after a long, arduous season. A week of good sleep has to help, right? Maybe you develop a little bit of rust, but is there any evidence of this happening after, say, the All-Star Break? Are players extra rusty or does it average out because everyone took the same amount of time off? I'm sure you could take all of the all stars in the history of the sports and look at their week before/week after splits and see if there's anything significant there. I doubt it. So basically, I agree with you that 'rest' isn't hurting teams, but I disagree that the 'good' teams always win in the playoffs.

Yanks seemed like a logical trading partner to me, but I would've expected a pitcher and a bat going to them. Hopefully Getz asked about Spencer Jones for Houser/Slater(or whoever) or even proposed Houser + Robert. Didn't think Slater was going to return anything at all, but I've actually heard this guy's name before so he must he good.

Just the sort of thing they're known to do, innit. But you're right, the path to the NL Wild Card is pretty easy this year.

If Vaughnie can keep the cubs out of the playoffs, he’s the most useful player the Sox have had in years. Keep up the good work, AV!

same thing happened to his nobody teammate weeks ago. now we have an actual good player who is gambling on the game. of course this would fucking happen, the federal government needs to outlaw this garbage.

Montgomery 2.0 up to Double A too. Gonzalez looks OK to me, but worse than anticipated. I was happy the Sox drafted him. Didn't expect a great batting average, but where's the power? His OPS is a different story if he hit homers like he did in college. Maybe he can figure it out. Otherwise his defense looks fine, maybe he competes for second base. Hopefully it's not him and Ramos competing for a spot in Charlotte, still hopeful both guys can be contributors.

That sucks and I didn't know he wanted that. He probably could've made it happen if he really wanted. Absolutely love that he's immortalized in those big geeky glasses though. Timeless look, timeless slugger. Congrats to Mr. Allen!

Can’t win em all.

Need to reserve tix for our guys like the padres do when the dodgers come to town. I’m not paying those north side prices!!

I don't think he was ever gonna play in CF. I doubt the Cubs do anything with Alcantara or Caissie until the Tucker contract situation is resolved. Unless it's for a star player. Maybe they re-sign Tucker and prefer to keep their young outfielders anyway, and Tucker plays more at DH/1B as he ages into his 30s. Michael Busch is probably more expendable than Alcantara is...actually, I didn't realize he was having such a crazy year. Really wanted that guy on the team and I was about to say "he's probably more in the Houser tier" but, man, he's playing great. I wonder if we could get an actually interesting player like Alcantara if Houser is packaged with Jonathan Cannon or someone else controllable/semi-valuable...like Luis Robert. Giolito and Rey Lopez for Quero and Bush worked out pretty well for us and terribly for the Angels, and no team is as desperate as they were that season or ever will be again, but maybe someone is pretty close. I feel like the Yankees desperately need pitching and it's embarrassing that they're 5.5 back from Toronto. Spencer Jones seems more 'acquirable' than Alcantara IMO. His prospect status has fallen a bit and he's not pushing Judge or Dominguez out of the corner outfield. lol, Stroman just exited after giving up 4 runs in 3.2 innings.

I'm fine with it from our side, I think it's frankly a good sign that several players are "killing it" at Charlotte and will never see the MLB team. Lee and Ramos I'd actually like to see, Ramos might've finally busted though. I'm just like, if you're the Rays or any team and you're making a trade, why this guy? He's going to play for probably a couple of weeks and the Rays are only 1.5 back from the Wild Card. If you're dumpster diving the Sox farm system for a 'free' infielder to serve as depth at SS/2B, I might've taken the guy who has a reputation as a 'defender' if neither player can hit at all. I'm also thinking to myself that the price tag for Amaya was a little too high for TB...that's a joke 🫠

good news. thanks for the link, never seen this site, bookmarking it

I see this trade and I think "but why?" then I remember Jake Amaya and I think "but why" even more, Amaya is pretty much better at everything and neither of these two guys are any good. Kim and Lowe are injured (10IL), so it makes sense the D-Rays might need some infield depth for a week or two. But why Gray? Is he really better than CoCo Montes? His name isn't better. I guess they drafted him and he debuted there. Trust the AAA player you know, but I suspect neither one of these guys can hit in the majors but at least Amaya can sometimes play good defense. Maybe Gray is a good defender, I don't actually know.

this game's getting rained out anyway, isn't it?

I think if he watches baseball 162 times a year for, like, 4 or 5 years, he might start to actually like the sport. Sort of like an arranged marriage, you grow to love the person/bat-and-ball game over time, and maybe that love is stronger and more meaningful than it otherwise would have been had you actually wanted to marry the person/talk about baseball every other day out of the year. Maybe your parents know you better than you know yourself, Sox fan. I think in this analogy, Brooks Boyer is Sox fans' mom. I like Schriff's attitude, I like his calls when interesting things happen. They're goofy but amusing. He's very jocular, just seems like a nice guy. My favorite thing about Schriffen is that he can actually track the ball off the bat when it's hit somewhere meaningful. Benetti was so funny to watch because he has absolutely no depth perception and could not for the life of him tell if a ball was going to be a home run or not. I watched some Detroit game this year where the batter CRUSHED a home run, an absolute no doubter, and Benetti is like "maybe...maybe...it's going back..." and the outfielder wasn't even trying to go for the ball. Way gone. Context clues, Jason! I think he's better at basketball and football for precisely this reason. Schriff has "the tools" to do the job but does he have the "passion"? I'd call him, like, a 60 FV prospect and he's just in his second year...but you're absolutely right, I've been listening to the radio broadcast a lot more this year and it's far better (and easier to justify listening to at 1:00pm on a week day). Can't let Stone off the hook either, he's been pretty bad for a couple years now. Not crazy about Plesac, but the Beckham/Schriff games have been pretty good. I'll give Schriff credit, last night he talked about how the Sox were 'punishing' the fastball, and they actually were. I don't think a producer told him that, I think he just saw it and thought it would be good information to tell the audience...which it was. Hot take: get Brooke Fletcher in the booth. That was a good baseball hire, can we credit Getz for that one? The Friday night home games are a definite success for the marketing people in the organization, the games are fun to watch and I think the team feels the energy because they're like 7-1 in those games.

"heard ya made a great hit" quick-witted, 10/10

I was thinking the same thing, he shouldn’t have swung! But he’s been here for like two weeks and doesn’t know his teammates’ tendencies probably. Let’s hang on to the win! We’re so used to “winning” rarely when it’s 1-0 or 2-1 or whatever; these guys can hold a lead when they’ve scored 11 or whatever.