Jake

Having left-handed Kyle Teel pinch hit for Slater would have been an all-time insane managerial decision. Slater has had a decent season but had a bad game against some of the league's best pitchers. Best not to overthink it

Hopefully just him dialing it back a bit after a very high-energy debut

Taylor's heater has so little armside movement that the shape is almost like a bad cutter. I have a feeling it isn't always like that. When Dylan Cease first came up to the big leagues, his fastball was doing that and it made his fastball not play very well until he figured it out. On the bright side, the shape of Taylor's slider is incredible. He might want to consider a slider-heavy attack if he's able to get it over for a strike.

First time Taylor generates a swing and a miss as a big leaguer. Needed it too.

Very surprised by Taylor's inability to get any swings and misses

I feel like Sox were outplayed tonight BUT not by so much that they couldn't sneak out a win. Last year they just never got those games where the other team was hitting into loud outs and lost because of it.

Any subscribers to the CHSN streaming service in here? My dad has constant issues with the stream quality and I don't know whether it's something with his home internet setup or just a janky service from Jerry and the boys. CHSN customer service doesn't want to talk to him (and only do so via email).

This is a hellish jinx on my part but I think Eisert is probably the best pitcher on the team right now

Tough luck outs continue for the Astros. And a horrific strike call goes the Sox way to start the next AB

What

Rojas has been a pretty useful player throughout his career on the strength of good defense and not-bad offense. For whatever reason both of those have stepped back so far. If he's playing hurt then I think he should stop doing that.

Nice job LouBob, helped avoid losing the lead on bad batted ball luck. Instead we will likely win because of good batted ball luck in the Shane Smith portion of the game

I'll wait for Steven Wilson to give up contact harder than 94mph today before I get too fired up about his performance. He hasn't been nearly as good as his ERA suggests but he's low on my Sox enemies list.

I'm curious about why Connor McKnight's mic so frequently has connection/reception issues when I don't remember that ever happening to Brooke. Does he have giant hands smothering the equipment or something?

Smith is getting absolutely pounded. Very fortunate the Sox are ahead. I hope Venable sees what's happening and knows to have a quick hook if he gets much traffic next inning.

Colson fixed whatever it was that regressed between 2024 and 2025. It's not clear that he fixed whatever caused the regression from 2023 to 2024. Pretty simple.

Answering my own question: good folks at Sox Machine report that indeed he demanded his release because in Houser-like fashion, he thought he'd done enough to get a MLB deal. Turns out he was right.

Is Altavilla a guy who had opt-out rights? Did we cut him because he said he was going to opt out?

Jerry surely wants some certainty about the stadium situation, but it's been such a low point for the Sox that biding his time for a while before sticking his hand out might not be the worst idea.

Not totally sure what to think, but for the time being my interpretation is mostly that the Sox didn't want Lee to languish in AAA just so 30 year old Matt Thaiss *might* make the MLB team marginally better in the near term. And as we know, there's more young catching coming behind Lee too so the logjam was not about to get any better. Don't see a lot to love in Baker, but maybe the Sox have some kind of idea about how to get him back to an .850 OPS guy.

I don't remember his remarks well enough to be sure he literally said "I have no regrets" but I'm confident that the substance of his post-game comments was effectively that he had no regrets. I'll mention that as I remember it, the tone and wording of the questions he got about the play arguably kind of led him in that direction. Vibe of some of the questions was sorta "what was your thought process on that totally not stupid play in which you showed your hustling mentality"

I don't know exactly how he'll be as a color guy, but I'm a big fan of Plesac's on MLB Network's studio shows. FWIW, contrary to some of the other comments, I've been thinking that Schriffen and Stone have had a pretty good rapport as of late. I don't necessarily mean that about the objective quality of their broadcast, but just in the "these guys like each other and are having a good time" way. It was especially apparent after Steve had that time off and came back. Steve's energy level has been dropping a bit since then so maybe this break is well-timed. He's getting old and the team isn't all that exciting, so he might need to be taking time off to be able to bring it. All the more reason to be trying out some legitimate options for his successor. Plesac is a Sox fan, has lots of MLB and TV experience, and is a high energy guy who probably can take the grind in stride if he ended up taking the role. Frankly, as good as Stone's reputation is, I've never enjoyed him all that much so I do have some bias. Jason brought out a good side of him and John doesn't do a bad job either. With Hawk was a toxic mix because they are both so very arrogant. Jason is more deferential and clearly has a similar sense of humor so it worked reasonably well. John is figuring Steve out but John is (IMO) overly deferential so there's nobody willing to contradict Steve on the broadcasts even when he is not infrequently wrong about something. While I wouldn't necessarily make the choice of Steve's successor based on what suits Schriffen best (which would imply Schriffen is some kind of franchise player to build around), a fellow high-energy guy like Plesac might work pretty well.

Taylor post-game seemed to confirm what I thought, that he believed the guy would just look once and pitch no matter what. His wording made it not clear to me whether the coaching staff told him to do it ("I had the green light"). He has no regrets but I do. I'll admit that it's a great play by the Rangers regardless, you just don't want to let them beat you like that

I don't blame Venable for that I guess, since Rojas has had a f***-up at 3B almost every game he's played there and has looked horrible at the plate (Sosa's spot was due up in the 9th against a lefty closer). Managing a bad team is hard I guess.

He has focus lapses there like he did at 1B, but he's a very talented fielder so he can still come out ahead when playing in the middle infield. A good hands guy who hits like a 2B is basically wasted at 1B since 1B so rarely get difficult fielding plays but they can really screw things up if they make mental mistakes. The way I see it, if winning today was most important you would just have Vargas at 1B and Lenyn at 3B (well, you'd also not have Capra in but that's another story). But we want Vargas to develop at 3B so we get a little worse at each position for the long-term gain...which I can support but it has some possible downsides as we have seen.