Jake

Somehow, every time I check Colson Montgomery's stats, he's just stuck at 92 wRC+. Very hard season to interpret for him. Not a disaster, but he's really treading water.

Honestly this article gives me the impression that Jerry is funding TLR's travel and expenses while giving the possibly mistaken impression that he is occasionally listened to when he shares his views. I think they are just letting an old man hang around the ballpark because that's what he loves to do

I think Colas should focus on getting his OPS above .800 in AAA before we melt down about which level he's assigned to.

Eloy has had some bad batted ball luck this season so I don't think he's played as bad as it looks in the box score. He's a MLB-quality hitter, this Sox team needs him around from the standpoint of someone who wants the team to not be the worst in franchise history.

I would say it still doesn't make much sense that we traded Burger. And the main way it could have made sense was if we realized we were getting a steal, which we clearly weren't. I hope Eder turns out okay, but it looks like his stuff immediately regressed and he started flirting with the yips. We're slicing and dicing his in-season splits in May just to get his ERA under 5.

I'm finding the evidence of a "surge" in TJS to be mixed. Cherry-picked example from a month ago: Although in the longer term, obviously there are more Tommy Johns than, say, 15 years ago. I still can't help but wonder how much of this is related to more players getting the surgery rather than retire and how much is that, generally, we're coddling injury-prone pitchers all the way to the majors. "Coddling" sounds pejorative but I really mean it as a description — are we protecting guys so much that rather than flame out as a 16 year old, they make it to pro ball before the inevitable strikes? I don't know.

In an analysis like this, I tend to totally discount the negative WAR values — we could demote or get rid of those guys if there was a need to immediately improve those spots. And, of course, Sox are playing a longer game here. Shuster is probably the most key player. Hasn't been super impressive yet, but he's got a while to potentially return value. That's true of Gowens also but he's much more of a long shot. Shewmake is under control for a long time as well but it's getting harder to see how he becomes a good player. But sure, let's put him in AAA and see if he ever figures something out and/or gains 25 pounds. Bummer has a 0.2 fWAR but also a 0.0 RA9/WAR because he once again has a worse ERA than FIP. Unlike last season, his Statcast xERA matches his ERA. Bummer is at least doing something a little different so far, cutting his walk rate in half. But his fastball velocity has dropped another mph (after a mph drop last year) and his whiff rate has dropped a lot perhaps as a consequence. So part of the evaluation concerns whether you think Bummer would have gained value if the Sox held onto him.

Emblematic of the whole discourse that the column misquotes Schriffen at the key moment. Scoop Jackson quotes him as saying "for all you haters" Didn't sound right to me so I played it back and indeed he said, "for all the haters" — you know, language that implies the haters are not part of the people watching NBC Sports Chicago But I guess people hear whatever they want to hear

My main take on this whole thing is: it ain't that deep

Even the worst teams get hot, have some lucky wins, etc. That's what the Sox weren't having at all in the first 25 games. They played as badly as possible and managed to win even less than their piss-poor performance deserved. I don't expect any fundamental change going forward but hopefully it's a sign that Hawk's old adage that every team will win 50 and lose 50 will hold true for the Sox.

I've been a member of Soxtalk for more of my life than I've not been a member of Soxtalk...

Ask Hawk who he would hire/promote/fire if given the powers of GM and you'll figure out who knows what they're doing. Just keep everybody that Hawk wants to fire

Had to look this up on Statcast: Colson Montgomery has struck out 33 times this year, 17 of them looking. No major leaguer had half of his strikeouts looking last year and of those with high proportions of strikeouts looking, none of them were high strikeout players (so usually, if a lot of your Ks are looking, it's partly because you're so hard to strike out by swinging). For April 2024, Colson is an extremely high strikeout player.

Once Lenyn screwed up that rundown with the Sox I knew he was on his way back down. It has seemed at times like the MLB struggles are more than just hitting. I hope he gets another shot but I also felt it was understandable that we didn't want to see him any longer after his most recent run.

Just FWIW, Sox are paying Benintendi no matter what. If we tried to make him play in AAA, he could just walk away and keep the money.

FWIW, let's not assume Cease would have had a good start to the season with the Sox. I think the clubhouse is toxic to good baseball right now (I'm not talking about guys being nice/not nice to each other).

From publicly available information, Pham is quite plausibly the best healthy player on the White Sox right now. He should have been signed 3 months ago. There is value to making extremely modest efforts at avoiding being an all-time laughingstock. I'm starting to think it's harmful to everyone in the clubhouse to be absolutely horrible, so I'm okay with signing some real live major league baseball players in hopes that not all of them wither and die when they get the White Sox reverse Midas touch.

Weak hits and umpire conspiring against Crochet today

If you'd like to feel a bit more pessimistic, Colson's HR only had a 91mph EV. Doubt it gets out of many/any MLB ballparks.

Yeah I remembered us letting go of Alan Thomas and then at least one additional trainer after Hermie retired. I generally feel like players determine the results more than these other things, but whatever is going on isn't working. We'll have new players soon enough, we'll see if the staff changes as well.

We have too many injuries. But, it's not surprising that a lot of them come when running to first. I'm certain that must be the single most common injurious play for position players. Much of the game you are almost required to stand still. When hitting, you remain in place but do a very different sort of high effort movement...then you must suddenly turn and run full speed. Usually turns out okay, until it doesn't. But the sudden need to go full speed in a game that doesn't otherwise require you to run fast that frequently seems like an obvious area of risk especially given the starting position post-swing. Two different guys blowing out adductors over a week and a half definitely strikes me as odd though. I hope Reinsdorf, who presumably cares about the massive investments made in these players, might be willing to pay an outsider to audit our training and rehab situation.

We seem to readily accept the unpredictability of baseball when thinking about the possibility that good Sox teams may end up not being successful. But we don't apply that logic when things are down. With at least a modest effort at competitiveness, you absolutely cannot rule out the Sox being in the playoff picture in the next 3 years. That might involve a not-actually-great team catching some lucky breaks and sneaking in, but that's baseball. Once you're in the playoffs, who knows what may happen. I know we haven't been blessed with a lot of playoff appearances and trust in leadership is at an all-time low. But it's still baseball. Inept organizations regularly encounter modest success. The only way to ensure you avoid success is ship out everything that isn't nailed down.

For reference, murderer's row in Norfolk also looks absolutely mortal by these metrics. Seems like something funny going on with the numbers.

FWIW, Colson Montgomery has an xwOBA of .188, per Baseball Savant. Not sure whether there are any special caveats when looking at expected statistics at the AAA level.

You build your batting average on balls hit like that, nothing wrong with it. It's the other at bats I'm worried about