Jake

Pham is a psycho and I doubt he'd fake an injury with his career on fumes. And the risk:reward for the Sox to fake an injury for so litlle benefit doesn't make much sense. I'm curious why they didn't activate the beloved Drew Romo.

Wesneski great game, Sox pitching great game, TOOTBLAN and slow catcher on the bases burns you (and a shaky defensive play or two as well)

I think it's funny how Statcast lets Hader call that a sinker when it's a dominant riseball 4-seamer

Last blown save by Hader: July 2025

From what I read here, Will is too into platoon matchups and also not enough. FWIW, Newcomb has neutral/reverse splits and pitcher split overrides batter split. Seems like we had decided it was his game to lose long before any particular batter got up though.

Welp, probably not going to pull this one out. That's what the 3 game lead is for. On the bright side I'm pretty sure the Sox are the better team which is usually not how I feel when playing teams around .500

I think those are especially tough to overturn. Wish they got it right initially

Most likely explanations from Venable about Romo: 1. Says he should have run for him 2. Says Rogers has something going on that made him only kinda available 3. Says Romo has wheels

Seems like this is Newcomb's game to lose

Newcomb won't be perfect forever.

They'll re-score that but you want him to make that play

A lot of tough breaks in this game. I don't know if someone else would have scored on the single with how hard the ball was hit and how great Smith's arm is, but I would have liked to see.

Still getting screwed by Romo

That turn towards second seemed to make Tristan think the Astros were going to turn two

Brutal

Oh my god why are you letting Romo bat

Do the job.

Wonder whether the Sox are trying to stretch Newcomb out.

Well there's only one guy on the Sox who is seeing Wesneski at all and he's not up for 6 or 7 more batters. Get Wesneski out of the game please!

A couple nice hacks from Braden.

I'm not gonna believe he's gone until he's gone

Hot damn

Glad they showed the replay there, it was a far easier catch than the one they blew dead when Sam dropped it.

Play was called differently when Sam was involved earlier this season.

.103 xBA for the Astros in this game. Sox pitching did very well. A ball that would be about 5 steps in front of the warning track in Chicago is all they got.