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Ohtani may break out of his slump if DK does anything but stay low and away against him. If he gets anything inside or out over the plate it's going 425+ .

I'm thinking we see guys like Tim and others get days off for the next 9-10 games. For the last 8 or 9 games we see a very close approximation of the playoff lineups.

Hopefully he picks it up a bit down the stretch. Sox aren't in any hurry to decide if they will pick up the option next year. Whoever plays 2nd base next year may just be a placeholder for Romy Gonzalez, Yolbert Sanchez or Popeye Rodriquez. Sanchez has been tearing up AA since his promotion from WS while Popeye tore up WS before he was promoted to Birmingham. Romy was doing well at Birmingham before he was promoted to Charlotte and was also tearing it up in a small sample before he was promoted here. Whichever one can show an affinity for defense and also draw some walks of those 3 eventually wins out. But they all have had great seasons .

Yea many of us wanted him and thought it was practically guaranteed we'd get him. It was disappointing he went to the Brewers instead. He's been playing great, way better than he was in Az. Some didn't like his on base skills but it's been .353 with the Brewers while only playing 3B and 1B. He's at 27 HR's on the season, 5 with the Brew Crew along with 6 doubles and 2 triples. Since Sept. started he's been on fire.

Aren't the Sox now doing a 6 man rotation ?

Thanks for playing. I think you might be a bit optimistic on your HR totals. There are only 18 games left in the season. I'd love if Robert hit 5 more, Eloy 4 and Sheets and Moncada 2 apiece in the time remaining. Eloy in the last 20 games has hit 3 HR's. But in his 1st 10 games returning from injury he hit 5. 8 in 151 AB's Yoan has hit 3 in his last 26 games. Since the start of August 2 in a 116 AB's but he does draw many walks. Robert in the 28 games since he returned has hit 7. 7 in 116 AB's Sheets has hit 3 in his last 10 games . Officially 3 HR's in last 27 AB's. 9 in 118 AB's for the season. I'll go a bit more conservative and say this is how it finishes. They all finish with 11 .

When Eloy got off the IL and started hitting bombs everyone thought he would pass Moncada easily but he has slowed down since. Here's the race: Moncada 11 Sheets 9 Eloy 8 Robert 8 Does Moncada retain the lead ? Whats the order of finish between Sheets , Eloy and Robert ?

I'll take 5 scoreless from the pen any time. I don't care how bad they look when they don't give up runs. Gio gave up 3 in 4 innings looking good, K'ing 8.

Reading the game thread after a game is so much better than during the game. Mike Wright got more insults than accolades for Sheets. I don't know what it takes for people to understand he's just an arm taking up space saving our actual bullets for games that mean something.

SILK !

I just relax and accept whatever decisions the team makes. That being said your post makes a lot of sense. Of course I also might have reasons to question Rodon as the starter of the opening game. Since he's been rested a lot in the 2nd half I'm not real sure he would be allowed to go more than 5 and possibly 6 innings. Ideally you would want a strong start and not use too much of the BP in the first game. That would suggest using Gio or Lynn in the 1st game. However there's also the fact Lynn hasn't fared well against Houston . I think TLR is more the type to say Lynn has earned the right to pitch the opener unless there is still a question regarding his health. Then there is Giolito who dominated the A's last year in the playoffs which has to count for something. He may be one of those guys who ends up having a stellar post season career.

Kopech has pitched enough innings this year to get 150+ innings next year if what Cease and Burnes and possibly others have done from 2020 to 2021. The only thing I would question about what I just said was that Cease and Burnes did that while also pitching previously to 2020 while Kopech missed 2 years .

I was just about to post that and apologize to you. So Vaughn is now on the 10 day IL so Romy sticks around a little longer.

You just said thanks when the guy sent you the transaction page. If you read it TA is back.

While I also agree that he will not be in the starting rotation I do not rule it out. I certainly do not agree that he's been handled badly. His college career was not exactly filled with massive success and health. His debut with the Sox was short and sweet and he got injured. I think the main goal for him this year was to get him through the season uninjured and to try to improve his pitch mix. He's still basically a 2 pitch pitcher with an occasional changeup thrown. You need more than 2 pitches to start. I'm not sure how anyone thinks he should have been handled. He has the talent to contribute to the White Sox so he's doing that in the capacity he can handle because of his lack of a strong healthy body of work as a starter. The Sox could not afford to keep him in the minors to have him starting there and risk injury . They just don't have that luxury while they are contenders to keep a talented arm down on the farm. I said at the beginning of the season I'd be very happy if he could just make it through the season healthy . It might not be the goal others had in mind for him but that's always been my main concern with him. The Sox can build on that .

I'm right there with you. Ken Berry was my idol , Chet Lemon was good. Outside of those 2 haven't seen many decent ones.

Man that last Cease outing sucked . The funny thing was when he was throwing strikes his pitches were nasty . He was getting a lot of K's. His slider was nasty and so was his curve. He obviously couldnt spot the fastball. He must've thrown like 15 pitches too high with it. But he kept throwing it and it hurt him. Wouldve been nice to see him just say screw the fastball and try curves, sliders and changeups and see how that went.

it's difficult for me to project the rest of September and October and here we have a thread about the starting rotation in 2024. Mind blown.

Not sure how you reached that conclusion unless you are counting time with the Cubs. Kimbrel's ERA in August was 7.15. Tepera was 0.77. Bummer 2.79. Crochet 3.21. Ruiz 4.76 ,Kopech 6.97. In Sept it's a small sample size but Ruiz, Wright and Crochet all have 0.00 ERA's. Bummer 2.25, Kimbrel 3.86. Tepera 7.36 but if we are making excuses he was victimized by a popup triple that was a lot more catchable than Kimbrel's extremely wild pitch and the the line drive that Robert missed. Kopech 8.31 but at least he looked great against Boston lately. I know it's the nature of relief pitching to be inconsistent in small sample sizes since one bad outing can skew numbers . August was terrible for Hendricks, Kopech and Kimbrel so that was not ideal for winning games. Hopefully September is much better for all of them.

There were a lot of wrong people saying just spend the money for a starting pitcher especially Garrett Richards rather than trade for Burnes. Back in January the Sox had basically spent all their money and only had around $8M left to spend which turned out to be true. From 1/20/21 on ( the height of the Burnes speculation) all the Sox did was sign a bunch of people to minor league contracts including Lucroy and sign Rodon (2/1/21). I had said if the Brewers wanted Crochet I would ve been fine with that . Had we traded for Burnes, the Sox still may have resigned Rodon. Imagine this years and future staffs if that had happened. I actually brought Crochet's name up before the speculation that the Brewers wanted to swap out Stievers for Crochet in the list of prospects headed back to Milwaukee. There were also a ton of people who said you don't give up so many prospects for a guy who hadn't proven anything yet. I'm sure many of those would still stick to that argument despite Burnes season this year. Those people are not GM types. A good GM has to risk signing young talent before it becomes expensive and if you wouldn't take that risk for Burnes I don't know who they would actually trade for when there was an immediate need for a high quality cost controlled starting pitcher. The Sox obviously took a risk that Rodon could pitch 150 innings so thinking Burnes couldn't do that too didn't seem like much of a concern. Cease has also basically went from about the same amount of innings as Burnes last year and is also over 150 IP. Cease is right near the age that Burnes is and his progress this year bodes well for good things from him very soon. In retrospect, we still have only a few of those prospects left now with Madigal and Heuer gone for Kimbrel. We can never be sure if adding Crochet would've got that deal done . I have reread the whole old thread and it does seem that there were legitimate trade talks between the Brewers and Sox for Burnes. Just how far they actually got is another story.

If you think he's out there showboating instead of trying to preserve a win you have lost your mind.

This and especially on a line drive which are misjudged often plus there's wind, sun, sky and the type of spin on the ball hit at high velocity that affects how it carries or slices . Everyone expects way too much from outfielders. Blaming Robert when Kimbrel was once against terrible is just poor judgement.

Flash did very good, others not so much. Burnes has proven to the doubters he is a stud. Luckily Sox got Rodon for a much cheaper price than Burnes would have cost and Lynn was also resigned. Madrigal, Heuer and Pilkington ( not mentioned anywhere in this thread) are all gone now for moves made to improve the Sox in the short term that have yet to work out in the shortest portion of hoped for impact. . Burnes has 5+ WAR and is at 152 IP. Is he slowing down at all or missed any starts ? There was a decent amount of concern about how many innings he could go this year in this thread.