Jake

A's feeling the effects of the old White Sox strategy of playing first basemen in the outfield.

Noah has a nice first-pitch strike rate going and an almost perfectly average zone rate in this game so far. Some uncompetitive misses though as he again has absolutely no control of the slider and seems to be trying to figure out how often to throw it given that fact.

3-2 slider at the top of the zone and breaking in off the plate and he's totally ready for it. That's interesting.

May be about time to shut down Oppor. One thing I picked up at Spring Training when chatting with some of the families of minor leaguers: they felt like Christian was fundamentally a good kid, but also that he was perhaps arrogant and not easy to coach. That said, they thought he had noticeably grown up so maybe that's not such a live issue anymore. Either way, whatever he's doing right now is really, really not working.

Yes and if he gets the pitcher out, he still has another guy to pitch to (I'm assuming the pitcher would be on instructions to not swing so no double play possibility)

The pitcher on the mound for the Sox walked in the losing run two days ago so I suspect that may have played a role in deciding not to walk the bases loaded

Games like these are decided by basically random events. Neither team did much to go out and win it. I'm at least glad to see good games at the plate from Mune, Colson, and Pereira

Really not a bad game but it gets more irritating as it goes along

I think Benny should have scored there

Everything going exactly how we planned

Was hoping Sam had a little more speed than that

What kind of Mickey Mouse dugouts are these that Hudson can't even stand up tall without hitting his head? 😭

Big Game Bryan!

I guess Grant probably isn't available with just a day of rest following a 35 pitch outing. I don't think Will really has any good options for this game.

Don't really want to walk Kurtz because I worry about him walking Soderstrom. But you don't want to lose to Kurtz here either.

Oakland learning not to challenge this White Sox defense

I guess all roads lead to Bryan Hudson anyway. Is Grant Taylor not rested? We saving him for something?

FWIW, even though he has a couple soft hits, Antonacci has clearly hit into some hard luck as well.

Who will we see for innings 8 and 9?

Leasure is a pretty good reliever but not the kind of guy I'd want to bring in knowing he's going to see two power-hitting lefties. Of course there aren't a lot of good options to cover all three of the remaining innings. Is Taylor available?

Top is Sherm Lollar with 32 WAR. About halfway to HoF really. Fisk doesn't get credit for his youthful indiscretions with the carmines. I'm thinking more in the Abreu-Konerko-Lemon tier.

My (somewhat?) hot take is that Teel will retire as the Sox franchise leader in catcher WAR

I'd probably slot into the relatively positive fan camp but my frequent absences from Soxtalk can't be totally blamed on the White Sox. I can only read the same conversations about Chris Getz and the various rushes to judgment about every player and other Sox-related person so many times

Caleb's at 26% K-rate. Not alarming but don't want it any higher either. I wouldn't promote him if it was any higher almost regardless of the rest of the production.

Soft singles stink but more often than not when they turn into a run, there's a walk mixed in there