Jake

It's annoying not to have him, but I don't really feel that alarmed. From what has been said about it, it seems the "setback" was merely that when they pushed him all the way to full-speed sprinting, he was continuing to feel the catch associated with the initial injury. I don't think we have any particular reason to believe that he reinjured it...it's just not fully healed. Or at least it wasn't a couple weeks ago. Brooke said during the broadcast in LA that he had reached a stage at which the main focus was his ability to bounce back after full speed workouts and that he had just reported not feeling sore after such a workout. I believe it was during the pregame show so I can't find a recording anywhere since CHSN doesn't seem to archive much of anything. Wouldn't surprise me if the Sox are trying to be as cautious as humanly possible with it. Best data I can find is that in pro sports, about a third of players who pull a hamstring will have a recurrence of it within that same season. And when it recurs, it's usually worse. So they are trying to protect him. And, of course, it's not the White Sox propping up those 33% recurrence rate numbers. It's hard to keep guys perfectly healthy. Bright side is there's not really a ton of risk of a serious long-term problem that extends beyond this season. Just a matter of getting him 100% and being as sure as you can be that it's not about to snap back (pardon the pun). Then you avoid injuring some other part of his lower half from compensation.

It would probably be best for Edgar to start getting consistent reps against lesser competition. For the White Sox, I don't know that it makes sense to send him down before Teel returns. Just give him a backup's share of the playing time.

Crazy to leave Bido on the roster over Leasure.

I've been getting into baseball cards lately but I don't fully grasp the Pokemon and other games. Are people playing the tabletop game with them? Is being good at the game solely about getting a powerful card? If folks aren't in it for the game, then what determines whether a card is desirable — you're just a Charizard stan or whatever? I have an easier time understanding sports cards even if there are some aspects that defy common sense.

Urena was vulnerable earlier in the game but he really found a groove. He's made a lot of good pitches and the changeup is a seriously great pitch.

As for Bido, this situation is really the only reason he is on this team. I assume he's going to wear it for the next inning or two, then he will trade seats with Trevor Richards.

Forgettable day for Noah, but I'm not too concerned about him. He's got some stuff to work on but ultimately a lot of unlucky bounces burned him up early in this one. As for the team in general, my benchmark continues to be avoiding 100 losses. That's looking more likely. It's a real MLB team that will have good times and bad times.

Forgettable day for Noah, but I'm not too concerned about him. He's got some stuff to work on but ultimately a lot of unlucky bounces burned him up early in this one. As for the team in general, my benchmark continues to be avoiding 100 losses. That's looking more likely. It's a real MLB team that will have good times and bad times.

Noah running out of juice. 30 pitch innings will kill you

Hell of a play

Just noticing that Noah hasn't really thrown his cutter where he wants it today either. Got an out throwing one down the middle that last inning, but he hasn't really used it much

Oh and correct me if I'm wrong, but did Kelenic giving up the extra base end up changing things very much? At least a couple more baserunners after that, right?

I would have liked Colson to make that throw but TBH I thought it was not clear that the runner would be out because of how slow-developing the play was

Go back and watch some Aaron Bummer innings from a few years ago, lol

This game for Noah is mostly defined by unbelievable luck by the Angels with soft contact. But for the rest of the game, I'm watching the sweeper. He still isn't locating it well at all and it's making him more predictable than he should be. He either misses it badly or throws it up in the zone when he appears to be aiming for the back foot. That's part of why D'Arnaud felt comfortable going up there and waiting for a high 4-seamer.

In my experience, sunglasses only help in certain situations. I think this is a case where the ball went directly into the sun and for that the sunglasses don't help.

Yeesh when it rains it pours

Just has to get through this inning without cooking his arm. The only good wood this inning was D'Arnaud who just guessed right on one. That's baseball sometimes.

Hopefully Bove is just reminding Noah that LAA isn't seeing him well at all, so just keep attacking and pitch over the bad luck.

I'm relatively optimistic about the Sox but I find the Royals to be pretty interesting. Witt looks like he's on track to be an inner circle hall of famer, for one. Maikel Garcia looks like a really nice building block, albeit with some risk that his bat ends up a little more in the average category. Carter Jensen is a really exciting young player even if he hasn't totally proven himself yet. I still have every expectation that Jac Caglianone is going to terrorize the Sox for years. Never trust a pitcher but Cole Ragans is a dude. I suppose the main downside with that KC organization is that it appears basically all the big talent is already in MLB with no obvious reinforcements on the way from the minors. Some of those young big leaguers they still expect to take steps forward, but if they don't they won't have many fallbacks. So there's a lot of projection going on. They don't seem to have a great foundation for pitching going into the future, but I have a feeling most teams would look like that if you looked very closely.

I'll say something positive about Edgar: his framing looks like it may have significantly improved. Still not good, but not necessarily so bad that he couldn't possibly hit his way into positive value like it was last season. Of course now he needs to find a way to regain the offense he lost.

He's hitting the ball about one inch further out in front on average as a LHH this season compared to last season, still fairly extreme relative to others in the league in terms of letting the ball get very deep on him. Bat is still oriented towards the opposite field at contact more than almost every other hitter in the league, but not quite as extremely as last season. One thing I notice looking at the Statcast data on this is that his center of mass is 6 inches closer to the pitcher this season compared to last (partly due to his feet being more spread apart, I think). That's probably going to cut down on reaction time a bit.

Zeferjahn is super interesting. Conventional wisdom says sweepers don't work against oppo hitters. But that's his main pitch against oppo-handed hitters and he is much more effective against oppo-handed hitters than same-handed. Hitters are whiffing against his sweeper on about half of their swings against it (see Colson and Kelenic in this game). Batters were .074 against it entering this game. He's doing something very deceptive but I'm not sure what it is because its shape is very good but not a total outlier or anything. Main thing I notice is it drops even less than most sweepers...maybe why those guys in the 9th were swinging under it.

Welp, I think the Sox outplayed the Angels by a little bit in this one. Just didn't get the points. Oh well, hope they take the series tomorrow.

Romo expertly whiffs on an obvious strike to bait D'Arnaud into challenging