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1st back to back series wins. 11-8 over their last 19 (.579 win percent)

It's there.

Gio pitches well enough. Burger with a big double with the bases loaded to drive in 3 . Sox now 1 game over .500 against the Central. Lopez gets the Sox out of a big jam. Kelly continues to look great and Graveman finishes it off with a perfect 9th.

You and Mr. Pick to Click are probably the only 2 that made a pick

Woo ! The Joker is smokin'.

TA not good. That pitch was center cut. GB rate so high.

Lopey ! Sox dodge another bullet.

And Vaughn was hitting .417 with RISP before that K.

Big knock by Burger !

whew ! Damage averted.

This game has some good vibes so far. Real good defense.

Nice 1st inning for the Sox.

I don't think it decreases dramatically. It depends on how well they pitch. There's a finite number of prospects teams will give up in a trade. Obviously, it becomes less with each passing year , however teams will still pay a premium for top of rotation guys for a chance to win a World Series. There's still plenty of time left in this season for both Kopech and Cease to right their respective ships IF you wanted to get good value this coming off season. But I suspect the Sox will hold onto them given their dearth of starting pitching with Gio and likely Lynn gone at the trade deadline. I know a lot of people can't resist speculating about trades and player's values but for the moment we are still talking about Hahn doing the trading and the Sox scouting department evaluating players to trade for. I couldn't convince a whole lot of people here that Outman was worth trading for because he was unranked but so far ( and I DO stress so far) , he actually would've been worth trading for. MLB is full of stars who never looked like they were worth much or their trade value took a big hit at some point. But it's imperative , if the season is a lost cause by the 2023, deadline to get as much as you can for Gio. It would make things easier if the Twins ran away with the division. The worst possible scenario is the Sox actually getting back into the race at least as far as Gio or Grandal is concerned. Conversely getting back into the race would also mean a lot of the players are doing much better and increasing their worth. I certainly wouldn't be upset with losing Gio, Grandal , Graveman and Kelly in trades if at the same time TA, Benintendi, Robert, Vaughn, Eloy, Clevinger, Cease, Lopez, Kopech, Moncada, Colas, Sosa, Crochet and Hendriks all picked up their games.

For those who didn't click on it : Michael Kopech is the first pitcher in baseball history to finish a game with 8.0 IP & 10+ SO while facing the mimimum number of batters (24). Hmm don't know why the tweet showed up when I used your link when I didn't see it in your post. Anyway ,nice but kind of useless. That's just modern baseball. The other pitchers, however many there were, who went 8 innings and K'd10+ facing the minimum, probably went out there for the 9th.

I don't think anyone can expect very many long term contracts that reach into a player's mid to late 30's to produce high value. You always pay for past performance. I know it's bad that the Sox can never sign great players to long term contracts but there will be many more players added to that list if they get injured and PROJECTED value becomes even more worthless. Just look at all the great or once great players ahead of Benintendi on that list. It's the price you pay for excellence. Dealing with middling FA increases the odds of a bad contract but it also limits your losses. Regretting the signings of Grandal,Keuchel or Benintendi with projected results is folly. Grandal is 65th on that list and he only has a few more months to go on his contract so most of the results are in. Basically it was a pretty good contract. Where's Moncada ? He's 66th right behind Grandal .All we hear around here is that his contract sucks. Maybe he was projected to be better because of 2019 and they are slow to bring his projections down. You shouldn't be putting any faith into lists like this or using them as a basis of fact. They might give you some idea of bad contracts like Miggy's being near the end but the fluctuations on the end results are just too unpredictable because of future injuries and using projections. Plus I have no idea how they are figuring out the 2020 short season. Did players contracts get prorated from the original contract and if so did Trade Values figure that in or just take the total value of the contract when it was signed ? WAR values were understandably lower because of the 60 game schedule in 2020 but what the players were paid, if prorated, then should be reflected with an adjusted total contract and not the original contract.

Kopech isnt a FA until 2026 so there is plenty of time for him to become a much better starting pitcher and by turning him into a relief pitcher you ax all of his potential as a starting pitcher and most of his value. There was really no reason to currently talk about him becoming a reliever. Great FA starting pitchers get big money that the Sox never attempt outside of Wheeler. Hendriks signed with the Sox so I'm sure that will drive home the point. He could be worth a lot more than he is now so why destroy that by putting him in the pen ? They do need starting pitching and better ROI when trading and there aren't many guys left on the Sox who will command a lot in a trade.

I don't see how contract value can be determined until the contract is up and you have the results the player posted during that contract. They say they keep that list updated so Benintendi being 17th in the 1st 2 months of a 5 year contract doesn't seem that bad. It might be accurate currently if it's a list of guys still playing or not officially retired like Strasburg because of injury but seems very unfair to players who just started playing under their current contract.

But some times garbage can be worth something. It this case it was worth a win.

I often think people on this board beside a few forget that. I mean I understand peoples frustration with fire him ,DFA him, send him down, trade him for various FO people and players , but there was an awful lot of Kopech talk about making him a relief pitcher and it just mystified me. The kid is still an infant starting pitcher and pitched a lot of really really good games last year before his injury. You just don't come back from a long layoff all that confident in the knee or the ability to pick up where you once were that easily especially when it was the 1st extended good starting pitching of your career in the majors. After all , baseball is a game we know requires a vast amount of patience with young players who have missed a LOT of time. Plus it's not like the Sox have a plethora of starting pitching. Reliever talk was so weird. Long way to go before I'd go there.

Guess I was beat to the punch. That don't happen often. Usually it's like ,so what this sucky team won, and no one wants to bother making the Winners thread ?

Kopech !!!!! 8 innings 1 hit, 10 K , 0 walks. Graveman with the 1-2-3 9th. 27 batters minimum faced. Final White Sox 2 -KC 0

Looks like Grandal is OK and playing a day game after a night game. Lineup is all RH except for 10D. Moncada not playing against the LHP which jibes with what I heard about him not being able to hit RH.

Probably should. No need to get sucked back in . I'm never one to say they are out of it by record alone but a lot of poor performances would have to do a 180 . Crochet and Hendriks would have to be better than we have a right to expect them to be and they have 0 starting pitching depth and always have injury issues. That doesn't even take into account how bad the FO is.

It's actually shocking that if you did that same graphic with Burger and Tim , Burger would win by a nose.

They still sign Venezuelans but it's the lack of impact Dominican players over the years that has killed them when there are so many good Dominican players in this sport. I don't consider the Pacific rim players to be a big problem. Those older players would normally be up the Sox alley but they are usually more expensive signings and you never really know how their talents are going to translate. But the influx lately of Ohtani , Suzuki and Yoshida were pretty good players. However Yoshida cost the Red Sox a $105.4 M investment. Sox would never pay that for a Japanese player. Suzuki was right around $100M also with the posting fee included.