nrockway

Berroa gives up a home run to his first batter, meatball fastball. two home runs...

Colas doubled off a left-handed pitcher ?

I watched an "interview" of Chris Getz with AJ Pierzynski and friends last night. They asked him about Pedro and he sounded pretty frank that Pedro would be out of a job if he doesn't get good years out of Eloy, Moncada, Vaughn, Robert -- "the core". That the manager's only job is to get the best out of his players (duh) and that will be reflected on how those players perform. At least that's how I interpreted it. Seems like a reasonable barometer anyway. I don't know how much of last season's dumpster fire can be pinned on Grifol. He certainly didn't help. I think he was the wrong hire to begin with but I don't see what it hurts giving him another year, maybe he can actually be good at his job under appropriate working conditions. Beyond potentially being good at his job (I don't believe this), keeping him around another year might signal to his replacement that there's some job security in this manager position. haven't exactly shown a strong track record there recently. probably scares away proper candidates.

Two backward K's for Monty. Both strike 3 calls were very close, very good pitches. I guess you like his patience but he's gotta swing the bat too.

He's got Montgomery out twice but he's not fooling anybody. 7 hits, all singles.

McGreevy getting BABIP'd. Lot of soft contact singles and ground outs. First run scored on Oscar's single that went through the right fielder's legs lol.

Jake Woodford getting the opening day start.

https://youtu.be/yVLyWzIxhrQ?t=346 Benetti on this call is so funny. "bummer he didn't hit a home run...oh wait that's a good thing".

Missed the game, first opening day I've missed in who knows how long. I guess there comes a point in life where you can no longer play hooky to watch baseball. Was Crochet really that dominant? 8 Ks to 0 walks, 6 IP, 87 pitches is just incredible. 87 pitches is most shocking to me. Good for him. Dylan Who? Who Sale? How'd the defense look? On the other side, 3 hits and no walks is pretty fucking pathetic but I guess it was wrong to expect differently. If they can't touch Maeda or Flaherty, there's a serious problem (there wasn't already?).

This seems like the best case scenario for Drohan and the team. Maybe he misses the whole year and can be sent back to AAA. He seems like he has talent but shouldn't be on a major league roster yet.

I think it's telling that the Sun Times got a quote for this story from everybody in the world except Benetti. They called up Dave Sims and got a quote, did Benetti tell 'em to shove it? Probably. I think the most awkward thing for Benetti is returning to Chicago and realizing he has to live in Detroit now instead. Bummer.

https://www.mlb.com/news/kevin-pillar-re-signs-with-white-sox-after-release Pretty fucked up. Pillar seems very candidly pissed off in this interview. I think Grossman takes his spot the moment he looks good in AAA. I think it's hilarious and sad they waived him just to re-sign him for $2mil less. These guys really hate Oscar Colas.

Pillar. Maybe Shewmake. Probably Pillar, I thought he got DFA’d.

cool, I was just going to pirate it like I've done for the last decade. I'm probably still going to do that out of principle.

Really thoughtful and love when athletes do this kind of thing, I just think he should rename his initiative to "Going, Going, Caught at the Warning Track". somehow I'm actually excited for opening day. Excited to see what Crochet can do, mostly. and just happy baseball is back. I'll try not to think about whether or not our players are intentionally throwing games because we already expect nothing out of them.

I think there is a question about ethics when it comes to funding a criminal, vice-peddling enterprise. I think there are questions about whether or not Mizuhara's "access" to Ohtani influenced the betting market or that Mizuhara was extended that line of credit because he could provide information on the Angels that would influence bets. That being said, I think Ohtani's involvement is the least interesting component of this story, I'm just glad it has to do with him because it shines a brighter light on a major problem developing in this country than if it was Shintaro Fujinami's interpreter. Maybe you guys heard about Jontay Porter in the NBA, he allegedly took the "under" on himself in two games and faked injuries so that he would be pulled early on. He (allegedly) placed an $80,000 bet on himself which paid out $1.2million or something thereabout. It's amusing because, although he's a "two-way" player (minor league call up basically), he's skilled enough that he would've probably gotten offered a multi-year, multi-million AAV contract this coming offseason. So if a guy who has a proper NBA future ahead of him is throwing games, why wouldn't other, less-talented players be doing this? It calls into question the entire legitimacy of the NBA. Who is throwing games and who isn't? If this is happening in a league where players are paid very handsomely, why wouldn't it be happening in college or the WNBA or what have you? Why should we think this isn't already happening in minor league baseball or god forbid the big leagues? It frankly seems easier to do this in baseball than any other sport and not get caught. Just throw a meatball pitch or "get fooled" by a pitch in the dirt and strike out. It's especially egregious that you can bet on every single player's stat line rather than just the outcome of a game. I'm prepared for every professional sport to go the way of horse racing. What a shame. Again, I don't think Ohtani is betting, I think he was negligent and naïve. This is wholly a result of Murphy v NCAA and the leagues' collective greed and lack of morals, I don't really care who's getting caught for it, the system is corrupt and this will obviously happen.

Oh that's interesting, thanks. Hadn't heard the song before. I would imagine a homage, I suppose Hank was dead by the time this song was written and I would imagine country music writers in the 1950s would have respected him deeply. I was joking about the plagiarism comment, everyone just says that about him these days. also love how you've formatted this post?

then he plagiarized it but I don't think you're correct. anyway...

sort of amusing how many ways JR has figured out how to lose. oh, we're actually good this year? better create a work stoppage.

right, I just think it's a funny way to write the article, like the Sox made this incredible gambit to "sacrifice offense" when realistically Elvis and Tim just sucked at everything last year and probably deserved to be replaced. still think I'd rather see Shewmake than Lopez personally. as someone named Nick, I think it reflects poorly on him that he still goes by Nicky and I think that has something to do with his relative lack of baseball talent. I could see Nick Lopez hitting 1.000 OPS and winning a gold glove. oh yeah, that would've been a proper reference instead of the Hank Williams song he performed once.

I have not but I'll keep this in mind. I am near Fountain Hills on the far east side of the metro area just before you reach the mountains and there's not much of anything over here. Yet. They're building it as we speak. There's a community over here that doesn't have any water and refuses to strike a deal with the city of Scottsdale because paying for public services is communism. Paying a private business 10 times the amount to drive it to you is freedom. Nonetheless, they're building some giant subdivision across the highway from it despite, you know, not actually having a water source for the residents. Somehow they have water for several golf courses though. I can't judge that too harshly because I really want to play at the Troon North Golf Club. The PGA came here a couple months ago and it's reasonably affordable too once all the snowbirds go home. An incredibly beautiful course, it just seems wrong to be building golf courses in the desert. but I digress... There is a Rosati's over here, however, which is actually pretty good. at least it's better than the one in the South Loop I would order from sometimes. I think what worries me about going out to a brewery/bar in Arizona is that I have to drive there and back and I'm not well known for limiting my alcohol consumption. DUIs out west are a regional pastime (just ask TLR) but one that I don't want to partake in. I have some sympathy for the act because I blame it on the infrastructure (I think I wrote a post about this a month ago on this forum for some reason). Something I miss about Chicago is being able to just walk over to my favorite bar, the Falcon Inn on 53rd Street, order a pitcher or two and watch sports all day and not worry about getting home. I can't do that here but I can take a walk and see horses and owls and hawks and roadrunners and javelinas and every so often a rattlesnake; which is also a pretty cool thing and probably better for my liver. So I guess that's all to say I don't really have any recommendations, just that the McDowell Mountain foothills are very beautiful, the climate is much better than you'd expect out of Phoenix. And if you're a golfer, you might enjoy the Troon North course.

Thanks! I used to "pre-game" at home then take the 55 bus to the red line; or if I was with a woman, take a cab to the ballpark. And now I live in Arizona and have very little interest in driving an hour to watch the Sox play spring training, though I did watch a NASCAR race nearby Camelback Ranch a couple weeks ago and felt guilty throughout that I wasn't a couple miles north watching the Sox lose. Despite earplugs, the good baseball Lord took away my hearing for several days for this transgression. Irrelevant to baseball, but it's interesting how much the spring training facilities in the Phoenix metro have changed in my relatively short lifetime. My dad used to take us out when we were kids and now 20some years later, the area has completely grown up, it's no longer a little suburb of Phoenix, all of the untouched land has been turned into apartments and now they're converting agricultural land into apartments. One wonders how the metro area can supply water to all these people and the hundreds of thousands more people they're building for but I guess that's for my kids to worry about. On tailgaiting, none of my friends have ever liked baseball, let alone the White Sox, so I've never really thought about tailgaiting at Comiskey; when I attend games it's usually by myself and I'll just chit-chat with surrounding fans. It's sort of amusing how standoffish fans have been lately, I don't know if it's because the Sox suck or if it's because everyone in Chicago is depressed. Even one of the employees yelled at me for no good reason (I opened my beer can myself instead of handing it to him to open and that apparently bothered him). I used to live in a building in Lakeview and our floor would get together every so often for a party. Some of these guys worked for the Cubs and everyone else was a Cubs fan, except for this one woman who was a Sox fan and would always talk in a thick accent about how great the Sox tailgaiting was. I kept quiet because I don't like the idea of acres of parking lots and think the Cubs actually have a better set up in that way, I think I'd rather drink in a bar than a parking lot, though I'd rather be surrounded by like minds and I don't think I could be caught in a Wrigleyville bar ever again in my life.

oh right, the incredible bats of Tim Anderson (.582 OPS) and Elvis Andrus (.662 OPS). oh yeah, Elvis is a free agent again by the way, I bet he's so lonesome he could cry (I don't think that was an Elvis song....whoa mama). I'm not exactly optimistic about this team, I just don't see any way it could be worse than it was last year.

personally, I just want a hot dog and a beer. That's a lie, I want 7 beers.

I get the feeling that Grossman will see action pretty quick if Fletcher can't hit. If Fletcher, DeLoach, Colas figure out how to play baseball, then I don't care all that much about the Pilars or Phillips's of the world asking to be let out of their contract. Grossman seems better than most of the bums we signed to minor league deals in the outfield (Phillips, Ortega, Payton, etc.) and I bet would see major league time before the rest of them. I also wonder how likely these guys are to ask for a release because if a minor league deal with our Sox is the best they can do, they probably don't have a ton of options stateside. I imagine with Grossman, he was asking for a major league deal with actual money attached and didn't get it. And so the White Sox offer him the best opportunity to earn a major league role. In that sense, you're probably right that he asks for a release if he doesn't join the major league team early in the year. Although, if he doesn't get called up it probably means Fletcher or whoever is actually performing. Still, I don't see it as terrible to give the young outfielders some actual competition. Oscar is probably fuming, but maybe he should play better baseball if he doesn't want his boss to keep signing 30something scrubs at his position.