nrockway

Does Banks have a foreign substance in his hat? What was that all about. it wouldn't surprise me, occasionally he looks like a good pitcher.

See I was wondering if Robert had been intentionally walked more times than he's actually walked. It's 2 to 4, pretty close.

fifth time's the charm

lol

The Nicky Lopez ball is at $60 (1 bid), Brebbia at $60 (0 bids) The Korey Lee ball at $100 (4 bids), Soroka $60 (0), Montgomery $90 (3), Flexen $60 (0), Jordan Leasure 60 (0), Bryan Ramos 80 (2) and last but not least.....TIM HILL BALL, I might buy this one. $750 to meet John Schriffen. Zero bids. You'd have to pay me $750 to waste my time meeting and greeting those guys. John is gonna feel like I did when I was auctioned off for charity and nobody bid on me. It wasn't for a particularly good cause and I didn't want to follow through with the duties I volunteered to do, but it still hurt.

The payroll is a function of bad decisions made years ago though. Moncada, Eloy, Benintendi aren't all of a sudden making giant contracts. It's a reasonable point that it's wasted money, but it's barely any money in the grand scheme of things and relievers are pretty much a crapshoot anyway. you rather they waste money on relievers making no money than, I don't know, sign Giolito to the contract that the Red Sox did. Or pay Lance Lynn 11 million dollars like the Cardinals did. Or pay Sean Manaea twice as much as Fedde etc. The reality is, this front office hasn't given out any contracts actually worth complaining about yet. Like, Maldonado is probably the worst one and he's only here for a year. There simply hasn't been an opportunity to yet. Will Getz give a Benintendi-esque contract to some bum this free agency? I guess we'll have to wait and see, but add up all the guys who have come and gone since last season and how does the dollar amount compare to Benintendi and his negative WAR? We could see a dumb contract given to Pete Alonso or Cody Bellinger or some overpaid second tier free agent, I wouldn't rule that out.

Thorpe was good but he threw a lot of 91 mph fastballs right down the middle that didn't really get punished. I get that his changeup is very good and his fastball plays off it, it just feels like he's tempting fate every time he throws it in the zone (two were hit for doubles). Still, he made a lot of good hitters look silly.

I think when it comes to the Sox, he just says whatever the organization wants him to say. I don't think he's reporting a secret, I think he's just a mouthpiece and the Sox probably don't want the world to think he's about to be fired.

steal home. wait, I meant strike out on a pitch a foot outside.

The Mariners can walk this off without swinging the bat.

Kopech is a fucking idiot

hitting homers AND taking walks. 21st century baseball at last.

there's actually some power in the lineup now. it's a gamechanger if Julks can keep it up.

More Vaughn Propaganda (MVP)

I think in all of the anti-Getz fervor, people forgot how incompetent the new Astros front office is.

I’m glad he gets to be paid handsomely to be with his family and not block Korey Lee’s development. Don’t have any thoughts about this, I thought ATL retained his salary or sent cash. Seemed like a “no risk, low reward” move from the start. The issue is and always was Maldonado, any one of Chuckie, Perez, Hackenberg is probably better than him right now whereas healthy Stassi is likely better than all of the above.

Is Diekman the perfect example? He's an aged middle reliever who was terrible over the course of 30 innings with the Sox, true, and good with TB over 45 (so good they didn't want to pay him $4mil). I would probably not consider that to be a useful sample size or Diekman a particularly good candidate to critique; he's a pretty marginal player in the grand scheme of things who also wasn't here for very long to make such a determination. Relief pitchers have year-to-year ERAs that are all over the place, how much of that is the Sox fault? Remember the Dodgers thought they could teach Lynn a new pitch and it worked for like one outing before he was back to giving up 5 homers per 9. I guess 'the margins add up' is the counterargument, but there are very few players I can think of that I'm upset about the Sox not keeping (besides the aforementioned Tatis and Semien who were traded before getting the chance to play better). Specifically, I'm thinking about pitchers who are "better" now than they used to be. southsider compiled the list, thanks, but does anyone look at that list and think to themselves "wow we really squandered Aaron Bummer's potential as a pitcher"? One could argue that developing pitchers is about the only thing this organization has a recent track record of doing effectively. I think more star pitchers have been produced by this team in the last decade or so than it's produced pitching busts, from Rodon and Sale to Crochet and Schultz and a couple in between. I think Reynaldo Lopez is the best example, not Diekman, because he's been incredible this year as a starter. I also sorta think it's not sustainable, we watched him pitch long enough, but maybe Atlanta really did open something up for him. We also got good trade value for Lopez who, in retrospect, may have been the more valuable piece than Giolito.

I thought the quote about it being useful for development but not for in-game adjustments was interesting. I wonder how "analytics" influences that beyond shifts, platoons, pitch selection, things like that. which pretty much just seems like common sense and not advanced math, like, do coaches need some advanced motion-capturing system to know "hey this guy can't hit a curveball, you might want to throw him curveballs".

This quote stuck out to me too. I've been racking my brain, who's actually playing better? Is it Jake Burger or Tim Anderson? Giolito or Hendricks? Abreu? Fat Lynn has a sub-6 ERA so I guess that's a step in the right direction. Cease has rebounded from last season but his ERA is still over a point higher than it was in 2022. Reynaldo Lopez is the only guy I can think of who's actually doing better, but one wonders how long that'll last. If you go back far enough, maybe Marcus Semien, but that's probably more to do with the team giving up on a 23-year-old for immediate "success". Basically I don't think there's anything to read into here. Players picked bad teams that are often in the news for being bad or having a lot of rules, what a concept.

uh oh, don't the White Sox know he needs to throw a perfect game at BHam before he's ready? Then pitch another 300 innings against 35-year-old washouts in Charlotte? Poor Drew Thorpe, his career is over before it got a chance to begin.

Henry is fucking things up on two continents! Reinsdorf wishes!

I dunno why people upload these videos of themselves and post it on youtube or twitter or whatever. Have they never heard of a message board (ie soxtalk)? Or are they illiterate? I think it's both, sometimes I think I'm reading dumb comments on message boards, then I remember that the majority of Chicago sports fans never actually learned how to read or write.

I like how the Red Sox announcer was talking about what a terrible organization this is (on that Crochet move to first), then the terrible organization he works for loses two in a row to that garbage team. Hilarious. He knows who his boss is, right? He knows about his other sports-related endeavors, right? That his boss is just about the only guy worse than Reinsdorf? What an asshole. I hope the Red Sox never make the playoffs again, somehow that team is even more unlikeable than the Yankees are.

DeLoach is kind of a troll. I love it. First that flyout he refused to get out of the way of, now that calling of a timeout with 1 second on the pitch clock, causing Bello to kick the ball and maybe eventually give up 5 runs, that's going to happen soon, right? That Oscar/Deloach flyball reminds me of last season. Luis would call off the other outfielders every single time he had a slight chance of catching the ball; and his teammates were never happy about it, especially Oscar. Big Boy Colas gets the start in CF, so he's going to emulate the bad habits of LuBoba last year and DeLoach apparently wasn't happy about it. I guess if the CF calls for it, you should back off, but Colas is such a moron and not a CF that I'm not sure I'd let him call me off either. I wish Colas had an IQ above 70, he might be a good player. Sheets grand slam, DeJong will hit a home run later apparently, Kopech will maintain his 10 BB/9 rate, good game, time to go dig some holes.

Much better booth interview today than either Buehrle or the Bolingbrook gymnast. Some kind soul has donated millions of dollars to Sox charities and it's going toward pancreatic cancer research and caring for patients with terminal diagnoses. A really awful disease, chances are we all know somebody who has fought this. At least this organization can do a little bit of good.