Jake

I was waiting for that cutter the entire AB

Right now I think the righties are really locking in on the sinker/4-seam speed band. Noah will need to make them respect the offspeeds.

I've grown to accept that the goal of ABS isn't purely to make the calls perfect, but rather to add another skill that can differentiate the players and teams. I do wish there were one or two more challenges per team though so guys could let it rip more often.

Maybe if he had thrown it in the zone, Naylor would have hit it well enough to carry to an outfielder!

Romo was always scouted as a good defender, and both his throwing and framing are grading out fine, so I assume the issues with balls getting past him are probably not going to last. As far as decisionmaking with ABS challenges, that's a new thing for everyone but he's clearly not good at it yet.

Just keep filling up the zone

The cutter afterwards also barely nicked the zone.

Incredible swing from JRod, but the ump and Romo conspire to screw Noah on that one. Two pitches that ABS would have rung him up on.

I've been keeping close watch on the Statcast expected stats. Like nearly all players on Charlotte, his actual production is well ahead of what's expected. That said, he's tops in expected stats among the remaining players in Charlotte. Ranks 40th out of 338 full-time AAA players in xwOBA. So he's legitimately hitting well. His xwOBA is a notch higher than Tim Elko's was last year. So as I see it, Jacob has certainly hit some chipshots over the short porches in Charlotte, but he's also hitting the ball a ton better than he did last season and better than most AAA hitters. Whether he can keep that up or if it's somehow not able to be translated to better competition, I don't know. One thing he has over the Wilkins and Elko types is he's not that old and he doesn't have to hit that well to be a useful player since he's a middle infielder. Even better, a left-handed hitting one. Of course, for now the MLB club seems to have infielders in spades so IDK what you do with Jacob besides see if he keeps it up in Charlotte.

FWIW, Fisk was definitely a weight lifter in his Sox era...he credited heavy weightlifting with saving his career. He also gained about 30 pounds shortly after joining the Sox (although IIRC he did not attribute that to weight lifting and worried that he was getting fat). He was reputed to lift weights to exhaustion in a way few players those days were willing to do. I also remember a story that when Jeff Torborg banned alcohol from the clubhouse, he'd be sipping beers in the weight room in his postgame workouts.

Vahn Lackey vs. RPI Top 25: .186/.333/.326 in 12 games

Across professional sports, there's about 30-40% rate of reinjury within the same season with hamstring injuries. Even higher when you add in other injuries to the same leg that may come from compensation. It is not necessarily an indictment of the White Sox if a guy has a nagging issue with the hamstring (especially Austin Hays of all people). Let's wait and see what we hear on Teel. In context, Venable's comment about a setback seemed to just be acknowledging the fact he wouldn't join the team in Seattle as they originally expected. Whether this costs him a couple days, a week, or more is TBD. Although they could be hiding the ball, if the knee injury was serious (like an ACL) the trainer would have known from a physical exam the moment it happened.

I'm glad we can still find some things to argue about. Shall we discuss the LouBob trade as well?

Would appreciate if Cleveland would stop winning every game. They practically look like a juggernaut right now

Before CHSN fully cements this as the greatest game ever, bear in mind that El Caballo hit a 12th (?) inning walk off grand salami against the Cubs. There might be some other competition too. But this was a great ending for sure

2 games above .500, didn't embarrass ourselves against the Cubbies

All it took to get him to homer was putting him into a fly ball situation

My man!!!!

Didn't know Benny could do it like that

I will say that the thing about our all-bunt team is that their success rate isn't exactly the reason I call them that. More the attempt rate

Nice job to hold it together for Davis. This guy is like 18 months removed from indie ball.

Isn't it the all-bunt team? Not the worst thing for the situation lol

Keep it to 1 and you have a reasonable target to get yourself 1 as well

More lucky results for the Cubs

I'm a little nervous about walking the bases loaded given that Davis is not a reliable strikethrower and Bregman is a pretty patient hitter