Jake

I'm a little unclear on what Will was supposed to do today. His starter went 3.2 innings. Hicks is a converted starter who looked utterly dominant in his first inning of work. Pretty clear we weren't going to let him pitch to Gunnar, who is instead faced by Murphy who is IMO the more trustworthy of the two lefties left in the pen. Gunnar is a hall of fame talent and hit a screamer that snuck out of the stadium. s%*# happens, should have hit more earlier today.

Kinda funny because although Gunnar smacked that thing, he hit it too low to get out of that part of ballpark more often than not...but the ball carried more than you'd expect. So somebody is getting the ball to carry today!

The difference between these two teams appears to be just Gunnar Henderson and I guess I can live with that

They know what's coming so they just stick the bat out and it finds the corner twice in a row

Alexander using so much pine tar he couldn't get the bat off of his hand lol

Imagine getting jammed by a 98mph sinker in this weather

I'm calling for a complete and total ban on splitters until we can figure out what the hell is going on

Hicks getting a lot of mileage out of high sinkers so that's interesting

Did that last night too. Very strange.

My god hitting in the cold really sucks

On one hand, Acuna hit a pitch well up and out of the zone there. On the other hand, it probably would have been a strike to some other guys on the team

These shadows must be brutal with the way guys are reacting to pitches right now

Orioles happy to swing at some BS

IMO there is no skill involved in catching foul tips, it's completely random

Take note, we finally played back in that situation

Very glad that nobody covered second there because Newcomb was ready to initiate a disaster

To defend Quero, the most ineffective challenger in MLB per Statcast, there was no pitch in the Alonso at bat that he could have won a challenge on.

Was a pretty good play from Lenyn there, but Newcomb didn't get over quick enough. A lot of lefties struggle to cover that against a decently fast baserunner.

Very strange outing for Shane. I find the low velocity in the 4th inning to be concerning but maybe he's just not very stretched out to throw 100 pitches yet. He was averaging 96mph in the first, 92 in the fourth. Arsenal in general was quite different from last time out...interesting to see him throw so many curveballs to right-handed hitters.

And TBH, I'd feel differently if it was Leasure doing it. I think he's a real nice arm, but if you want him to take down good righties early in the game, I'm okay with losing him later. Grant's on another level, I want to put him in the highest leverage spots until further notice.

I'm with you. I think it is a stupid strategy TBH. I'm open-minded about openers but it's supposed to gain you a platoon advantage and ideally you don't use your best relief arm for it. In this case it only helped with platoon splits in Kay's start and it of course has always deprived us of him later. Today is effectively a wasted game especially given that he's going to need at least a couple days of rest after going 3x in 4 days (I assume).

My hunch is Quero felt distracted by the runner on that last play but also I assume it was a hit and run so it certainly shouldn't have taken him by surprise. Another one of those luck things: Sox hit balls with xBA of .270, .540, and .280 in the 9th. One of them was a hit so that's about neutral luck...but if either of the first two had been hits, the game would have been tied. Instead the last was hit in a way that got the runner to the base safely but not in a way that could score the runner. Nice game from the pitching staff, iffy game from the offense, ultimately it's decided by random stuff that won't be repeated.

We'd still be playing if not for Hays blowing out the hammy

He had been getting a lot of mileage out of the high breakers but if somebody went up there looking for it the outcome is predictable. No harm no foul really if he can lock it in from here

Every year the Sox are doomed to sign a competent veteran corner OF who will blow hamstrings at inopportune times that cost you a game