Jake

see what happens when you guys b**** about strikeouts

Broadcast wasn't very clear about the shift rule but here's how it works: It's about where the fielder is when the pitch is released. It looked to me like Altuve got off the grass by release. If the fielder who violates the rule is the first defensive player to touch the ball, the batter is awarded first base. Otherwise, it's an automatic ball

quoting before deletion

Ullola has big big rise on his fastball and you can tell our hitters are looking at it that way.

Well I root for the Sox regardless. But it's a lot easier for me to root for White Sox Chase Meidroth than White Sox Paul DeJong or Jake Amaya or whatever.

Ozzie said something in one of the final pre/post game shows...along the lines of the past few years, he wasn't a Sox fan (I take this as him being dramatic about how pathetic those teams were). But this season is obviously different. This season, he said, he's not a fan of the Sox but he's a fan of these guys. Or something like that, it's hard to parse Ozz-ese. I agree with the sentiment though. I root for Sox players because I'm a Sox fan, but the 2026 team is filled with players I want to root for who just so happen to be White Sox. Reminds me more of the Sox teams when I was a kid in the mid-late 90s and early 00s.

Good point that his last handful of games he was probably playing hurt. I had forgotten about that.

I notice that Blubaugh had reverse splits this season, so that must be part of what the Astros are thinking about with him starting the game. Of course, Hagen also has reverse splits (which is technically good for this lineup) but I don't really believe that will be true in the long run.

There's one regular on the Sox roster who Colson out-hit in the final two weeks of the season: Tristan Peters

I think he's referring to Davis Martin

Yeah I mean, I'm on board with playing him. Sox should be pushing the chips in and he's a very legitimate lottery ticket. Sure, the most likely outcome is that he posts an 0-fer series. But he's one of the few guys in the series with the talent to win the whole series singlehandedly.

As far as Colson batting against lefties is concerned, it's often best not to pay too much attention to a specific batter's platoon splits BUT Colson has continued to be much more competitive against lefty pitchers all season and there are scout-y reasons to believe that's kind of a legit phenomenon. In the final two months of the season, Colson struck out 49% (!!!) of the time against RHP and "only" 31% of the time against LHP. This is consistent with his overall season trend and strikeout rate is the least affected stat with small sample sizes. So if you're going to play him against RHP, you're definitely going to let him get hacks against LHP.

Don't need the full compliment of pitchers for a 3-gamer. Some teams would be leaving off starters, but the Sox have some more trust in those guys which is understandable. My read of Houston's lineup is that it's very right-handed and they aren't likely to be doing a lot of pinch hitting to match up. That makes managing the pitching easier too. Pham buys the Sox another opportunity to pinch hit when needed. Luisangel on the other hand is a skeleton key that can both buy you a very fast runner when you may need it as well as making it far less likely that you accidentally pinch hit yourself into not being able to field a major league defense.

Teams had to submit their playoff rosters to the league 15 minutes ago, so we should see how that looks imminently.

Suppose Hagen goes 1-2-3 in the first. I will be most curious to see what happens next. I expect there to be a gaggle of righties after Yordan in the batting order. Do the Sox try to get 2 or 3 innings from Hagen, or do they just transition to the bulk righty of their choosing once the dragon (Yordan) is slayed?

Yeah, I will always be a big fan of Frank, but he has always been insecure and the other things that go along with being an insecure person. I think it's easy enough to chalk it up to his background or whatever so it's not like I think he's a bad person or something, but it's hard to deny even if he has sometimes been right to point some of the fingers that have been pointed. Some of the fingers pointing at him were right too.

I posted in a game thread or somewhere about the fact that Colson's foul ball rate has skyrocketed in August and September. An overwhelming amount of his contact has become foul balls. If you whiff like 30% of the time and 75% of your contact is foul balls, you're going to strike out a ton of the time. I have become increasingly convinced that the path of his swing is out of whack, making it hard for him to hit anything hard into play. The other problems with him would be much less noticeable if he was hitting one into the seats every 15 plate appearances or so.

If you liked Caray and Piersall, I think the closest you're going to get is Schriffen and Plesac. Main difference is Schriff and Plesac are high on life.

I had to just mute some folks who were annoying (either because it's their nature or because they are farming engagement for some media venture). Helped me have some Sox stuff on the timeline without too much BS

I like Stephen a lot but I have my doubts that the Sox could lure him away from that job even if he aspires to be on television for all 162. I bet the pay is great and who wouldn't like spending so much of their time in Southern California, which BTW is where he grew up.

I can see how Connor is more like the platonic ideal of a "good broadcaster." I think he does a good job at what he does currently. He and Steve have zero chemistry, despite the fact that you would think Steve would have much warmer feelings towards a "standard broadcaster" type of personality. Yet Steve seems to really like Schriff. The secret sauce, IMO: you cannot approach Steve as an equal. His ego is too big and he will be cold to anyone that does not suck up to him. Schriff, who is at least 50% domesticated dog, badly wants to please people which very much includes Steve. I'd be fine if the Sox want to replace Schriffen but I won't be impressed if they just hand it to Connor. That said, I have a strong suspicion that Steve is not that easy to work with so maybe I am not being totally fair to Connor given that I have pretty much only heard him call games with Steve (often on short notice).

I'll sadly note that Doyle's xwOBA is actually lower with the Sox than with the Rox this season. Expected stats pick up the improvement in the past little while, but the expected stats seem to think he didn't improve that much and just got some lucky outcomes. He's had a couple infield singles and seeing eye ground ball singles that are probably propping him up a bit — plus I bet a couple of those homers could have just as easily been doubles. He needs to keep working. His K rate spiked this year and I'm not totally sure why. His chase rate went up a bit but not by a ton. Makes contact in the zone reasonably well. Might just be getting really free-swinging with two strikes.

Well, I think it makes sense not to mix the two systems by re-seeding. If it's all about record, need to play a balanced schedule (which I would hate as I live on the east coast). Otherwise, have to treat winning a division like it's better than failing to win a division. This system will help the Sox more than it hurts them. FWIW, home field advantage in baseball is very small. Home teams win about 54% of the time in the regular season, more like 52% in the playoffs.

I believe it came from a few competing interests: Didn't want a one-game playoff anymore for competitive reasons (too much randomness in the outcome of a single game) Players did not want to reduce the number of regular season games MLB did not want the postseason to end any later in the calendar year (supposedly the TV partners are ready to move on to other programming by late fall, plus the weather gets cold in some markets) So 3 games was the shortest way to go beyond a single game and by playing them all in one place, you don't have to add a travel day. I'm sure rewarding the division winner with a significant home field advantage was a motivation too.

Would improve the experience if the mute button also made me not see posts with quotes of the account involved