Jake

Old friend Boston Smith posting a .411 OPS in AFL after a notable dropoff in his production post-trade.

I see nothing but punishment awaiting in the ALCS, so there's not that much riding on this other than you hate to blow a 2-0 lead and hate to lose to your talentless division rival. Either way, the money is in the bank for a really amazing and fun season. Hope there's at least one more fun moment in store.

I would assume they go with Burke as long as he remains effective. If he gets in much trouble early, I'm not sure what plan B is. I suppose Newcomb is likely to relieve him almost regardless of the situation. Then they will likely try to get 2 from Newcomb, perhaps pushing to 3 if it goes smoothly and efficiently. After that, I don't know who else would be due up. I assume Grant will get a save situation or really any final inning. But if Burke + Newcomb doesn't get you 8 innings, which I doubt it does, I'm not sure who the next man up would be. Maybe Hicks or perhaps Hagen depending on matchups.

My wife has been a "fan" of the Sox since we met almost 15 years ago, but really started locking in toward the latter part of the 2025 season. She's at the point of being able to call out what Steve is going to say before he says it even with not that much time listening to him. I see that as a sign of Steve losing his fastball. Running out of things to say, repeating himself a lot. His old nemesis Hawk used to be accused of being able to be reduced to a soundboard as well, although Hawk could always surprise you (not necessarily in a good way, depending on your taste).

As I see it, this game is (as is usually the case) too hard to predict. Playoff home field advantage is to the tune of about 52% win percentage, so that's pretty much how I'd handicap it. Burke is the Sox's best bullet remaining and wasn't compromised between starts. Sean Newcomb is probably the next best bullet and he should be ready to handle a couple innings. I think there's enough rest for the Sox to get through the game. We'll see about the effectiveness. I was heartened by the quality of ABs the Sox took against Williams and Smith in the 9th inning (not you, Benny). Williams is a beast but this is 7th time the Sox will have seen him this season. Sox have done a pretty great job of finding ways to keep games winnable against him despite how well he's pitched against them. They'll have to be as ready as ever to grind like hell and get him out of the game as quickly as possible. Cleveland has two really good lefties in the pen but Sox have gotten to each of them at least once in this series. Cade Smith is as good as they come but he's pitched in every single game thus far and looked quite mortal in his second inning in the 9th on Thursday. Cleveland's offense is still primarily comprised by a bunch of slappy frauds begging to get lucky when you put free baserunners on. It's a winnable game to be sure, but it's baseball and there's a decent chance the outcome is determined by basically random stuff. Let's hope the luck is in favor of the Sox.

Easy to overrate the deadline haul of the Guards IMO. Griffin wasn't good for them. Adell not good either although I don't think they expect much and he's played the role that was expected as one-dimensional lefty masher with no defense. Lowe hasn't hit for them either. I don't consider Bailey a deadline acquisition but he's been good for them. They also paid handsomely for him, giving up a legit SP prospect and a first round draft pick. The others were acquired with the kinds of middle class prospects that Getz rightly said the Sox didn't have to spare. Castillo trade has been an epic fail. Joey Bart died immediately after acquisition, so I don't really hold that against anybody especially given that Teel ended up returning shortly afterwards and Romo had a weird hot streak late. Brazoban struggled and then got hurt. He's part of the longer term plan so we'll see how that goes. Sox ended up needing about 4 more starting pitchers before all was said and done if they wanted to go further than the ALCS. I think all the Sox wanted to accomplish was making the playoffs, which they did. And in case there were bad feelings about only getting the wild card, they went ahead and won that to break even. I won't be losing sleep about the trade deadline.

In this clip, I thought he sounded pretty bad but then was pleasantly surprised with his home run call so maybe he's still got a little bit of juice in him. But he's 85 and has lived pretty hard. I've wondered/worried about how he's doing.

Sure, I'm not complaining about the Sox, just the way the league sets this up.

It's baseball, just about anything can happen. Being the best team and playing better than the opponent doesn't even guarantee success. So yeah, it makes sense to feel nervous even though a lot of bad things will have to happen for the Sox to end up dropping the entire series.

By the way I'd like to complain that the biggest game the Sox play in over 20 years is happening in the middle of the afternoon on a workday. I have a lot of flexibility at work but couldn't make it happen for this one. Probably won't get to see much until the 5th or 6th inning. Super annoying.

Do we have much insight into the plans for pitching today? I would guess they'd like to get a couple innings out of Newcomb. We haven't yet seen Cleveland's lineup for today so it will be interesting to see what they do...but I'm guessing they will use a lineup that is geared towards left-handed pitching. Sox don't really have trustworthy right-handed pitchers available, so it would be kind of a dare: you can use your best pitchers or you can match up, but you can't do both. That leaves an opening for Fedde, Davis Martin, or Sandlin. If you get them to sub in the vs. RHP lineup, then you can go with Hagen at some point (although he might be preferred for dealing with the tougher matchups). I also think this might be the game we see some Noah Schultz, provided they can find him a pocket of lefties. If Cleveland takes a ~3+ run lead, I think it becomes even likelier that we see Davis or Noah on the mound. That said I think Noah has a better shot of pitching in a close game than Davis.

No idea of the punishment, but there's no way players should be allowed to use cell phones or communicate with outsiders during. Wouldn't shock me if the guys telling this story are embellishing the timing of when they heard back from guys.

This is reminding me of when they said there was going to be a surprise guest at the DNC and it ended up being Leon Panetta

I didn't put too much thought into it but I thought it was just a well-placed hit when watching it live

Peters was subbed out of the game when the Sox were down by a run and Sabrowski was on the mound. I recognized the risk at the time but I think it made sense.

I'm curious whether Hagen was considered available.

To be fair, they kept smoking it early in the count for the most part

Grant was hot ass but we win anyway. Go to hell Cleveland

Scorer gave it to Hudson (lol) already

At least in the White Sox lore, he's already done it IMO. Two huge single-game performances for him that at least lock him into playoff hero territory. He can be bad going forward but you'll never be able to take away these two games.

No doubt you start the 9th with Grant now. You can let him have at least a couple batters of leash.

110mph exit velo for Miguel there. Getting some good hacks in

Sox have said they see his game-planning ability to be so high level that they wanted to keep him with the team even when the AAA season was still going because they prioritized his duties as a quasi-coach above his readiness to return to action

I'm assuming if he ends up in trouble, Newcomb is the guy for lefty hitters. Not sure who the Sox would go to if you have a more right-handed part of the lineup

At this pace he could actually finish the game lol