Jake

Absolute rocket from Vargas to the wrong man

Spotted on Twitter. Sox lineup a year ago today:

If you told me the Giants would be the laughingstock of the league, I would have put big money on Arraez being the ringleader of that circus. But, not at all.

Is Pedro Grifol coaching this Giants team?

Mune learning a changeup

I had to go chase this one down (no pun intended) using data from relatively recent college draftees who reached MLB. Correlation of college BB% with MLB BB% is about 0.5, which is pretty substantial although far from perfectly predictive. It has a similar correlation with chase rate in MLB. Only college hitting statistic that is more correlated to itself at the big league level is K%, at 0.67, which is quite high. Other correlations of note include ISO (.4), HR% (.4), HBP% (.3). OPS/wRC+/wOBA all almost exactly zero correlation though which is fun — obviously if you let the worst college hitters play MLB, they would also be bad in MLB and you'd see some correlation. Somewhat interesting is college K rate isn't correlated to professional chase rate, but is highly correlated to professional whiff rate. So BB rate is your best amateur indicator of plate discipline. Obviously most players get worse at everything as they move up the ranks which explains much of the noise. Not always easy to guess exactly which skills will get hit hardest and if any of them will hold on or even improve.

I would have hoped we wouldn't need to use Tyler Davis in this game but I guess you don't want to take any chances. Let's put some more points on the board so there's no need to keep burning the good arms

Needs to make the transfer but I suspect it was going to be bang-bang at first

Letting Davis's ERA wear it a little bit to save the bullpen

Yeah I remember him rattling off the '05 team's starting lineup and rotation to Chuck Garfein

Dead air into the break lmao

Losing the double play there not ideal. Even in the early innings, he threw several non-competitive pitches to the glove side like that

Edgar blowing a challenge for no reason

Only one well-hit ball this inning (from Arraez), so no need to push the panic button. Just finish the job

Just keep throwing strikes

Gotta make some pitches now. Get Hicks loose!

I tend to not blame managers for much, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Vitello may be a joke

I almost wonder if he muffed it because he realized he was about to need to win a race to the bag

Borucki wasn't going to cover regardless of Devers muffing it

Eldridge got good wood on it, but Mune said no.

To be fair, putting Hicks out there would be the ultimate heat check and gives you a chance to really humiliate them (and a chance to humiliate yourself which is familiar territory for the Sox)

Anatomy of a big inning

Giants feeling like the 23-24 White Sox

That PA is an example of what has made me really optimistic about Mune. He's not always the same hitter. He tries to adjust to the scouting report and the pitcher and he often does it successfully.

Textbook nice piece of woodwork from Mune there