Jake

Sox are playing with house money, no reason to be conservative with it. Take a big swing and see what happens. Plus, the rotation is in horrible shape, it's not like you have Bob Gibson at the top to ensure he is ready to go for game 1. Burke is burned out and wasn't ready to go on regular rest and he's the closest thing to a trustworthy starter right now. Sox will be using pitching chaos in the playoffs.

I don't actually think there is much of a difference between Taylor and Smith. Very similar by the various metrics and Taylor has been given a much harder job constantly pitching multiple innings per appearance.

3-game series between teams that are very similar in talent is going to be unpredictable. Home field advantage in baseball is smaller than any other sport (about 54% win rate for home teams) and it's smaller in the playoffs. Anything is possible, including of course 2 and out for the Sox.

Team with literally no pitching exceeds expectations by about 20 wins. Fans: this manager sucks!

Maybe Sox fans can stop being insufferable now

I remember at one point Romano was leading 3 teams in saves and he had like 8 total for the season lol

I think the circle of trust in the pen is basically Taylor, then Hagen, then Newcomb, then Hudson, then Hicks, then Brazoban/Noah/Richards

Jeez and he barely even hit it

It has been entertaining in September to see people get mad at Will for picking the wrong reliever when every single reliever performed poorly and therefore there was never a right choice

The Sox are a plucky, morally upright team that is marginally better than the Guardians but has not had the benefit of absurd luck and the forces of evil

Let's be clear: Cleveland sucks

Rockies are crazy for not running on Peters

Good pitch to hit, hit it hard, double play

Baseball

This season has been awesome. The team isn't built for the playoffs and there's no reason to care all that much about the seeding or matchups. Try to have a little fun.

Yeah if you look at the spray chart for balls hit that hard on that launch, they're basically always gone unless they are hit towards center or hit in a big ballpark (Rate plays small in the gaps)

Something I noticed with the data on Colson: at contact, his bat is more angled to the pull side than it was last season and that angle has been increasing over the course of the season. Also, compared to last season he is letting the ball get a few inches deeper (although he still hits it more out front than average). But this means his bat is more angled to the pull side at contact and contact is happening earlier in the swing path, i.e. the swing path is extremely pull-oriented. You'll notice that 1. he doesn't hit inside pitches well because he can't keep them fair and 2. as of late, he has a ton of loud contact that is pulled foul regardless of pitch location. In the first 600ish PA of his career, the rate of foul balls per contact for Colson was around league average (which is 52%). Since August, it has cranked up to about 75% as his bat angle has continued teetering toward the pull side and he keeps launching pulled liners. If you have a propensity to swing and miss and all your contact goes foul, you're going to strike out a lot.

Unless there's something you're getting from Colson when working one on one that makes him appear to be incorrigible, you are 100% starting with him as your SS next year. Much of the upside of the team is in his bat. He's had extended runs of good play in MLB. He has also bounced back from horrible play before. Just as important, you basically have internal options to deal with it if he falls on his face again. It's a great gamble because it costs you nothing and it's not like it would have made any sense to try to acquire some big-time SS from outside the organization.

Pinch hitting Colson was the right thing to do, just didn't work out. This is more of a comment about Acuna really.

The 15 days you have to sit out after being optioned don't apply in the event of an injury to the big league club is my understanding

Tough luck continues for Braden

Main thing about Houston is they have Josh Hader and their ballpark strongly favors right-handed hitters which the Sox don't have so many of

.020 xBA on a Rocchio home run. Wind must be howling there lmao

I don't really believe that managers have much of an impact. But if I did, I would only be able to conclude that Venable added 10-15 wins

Thorpe was reported to be part of the taxi squad. That said, I'm not sure that his 15 days are up and they didn't use the Castillo IL trip to circumvent that.