Jake

Nishida putting his arm up to keep Peters away on a ball hit directly to him lol

I'll be keeping an eye on the whiffs for Rikuu because the Ks jumped from "unbelievably low" to "just under league average" when he went from AA to AAA.

Romo stole the RBI from Rikuu so the only option now is to go back to back

Batted ball luck for my White Sox!

Can Rikuu hit a homer in his first game and then never again like he did in Charlotte?

Benny playing well means no defense, no running, crappy at bats, and an 87 wRC+ in the month that he is said to be playing well. He is arguably a MLB quality player but I don't like the fit on this team. He might have a little more production in him but I'd rather run the youths out there.

I'm ready for Benny to go

Leave Colson alone, Zebulon!

Crowd goes wild for Rikuu's first catch.

Definitely not exactly "fair" but I assume the game being in the daytime is due to the holiday and is non-negotiable.

The moment I've been waiting for

My guess is that on one hand, it's clear some folks in the Sox org really love Rikuu. Probably believe the on base skills are legit and that he's a great clubhouse guy, etc. On the other hand, upside is extremely limited so if you "ruin" him by not giving him much playing time not all that much is lost. And as far as Gonzalez is concerned, I think lack of speed makes him a little less appealing as a bench option right now anyway.

Thanks, that's helpful. I can replicate that. It's just a small sample (of players and college seasons) thing. Add more players and seasons in MLB and the BB% correlation goes way up. Also, BB% correlation goes up even if you keep the players and MLB seasons the same if you include the entire college career BB% (presumably because college seasons are so short so you're benefiting by getting a better measure of the amateur BB rate).

His fastball velo is concerningly low despite the strong results

"Luisangel, we have bad news. We have to let you go. Turns out we have an even smaller guy."

Rikuu's K rate jumped from 9% in AA to 17% in AAA. So I will be a little fearful that it will jump further and really erode his ability to contribute. Somewhat interesting that he had the 17% K rate in AAA (which isn't bad for a normal hitter, to be clear) in spite of superb chase rates (18%) and zone contact rates (91%). His .310 xwOBA is only average for AAA but he has such an extreme style of play I'm not sure whether you can apply Statcast expected statistics to him.

I would have to guess he replaces Acuna, although the team becomes very left-handed in that case. And I don't think he's capable of playing SS and last time I watched him play outfield, his arm was playing badly enough that they were tagging from first on him. That said, I'm a big Rikuu fan so I'm very happy to see him get to taste the big leagues.

Sox send a sleeper agent to undermine and steal info from our division rival and you're mad?

Look at the bright side: teams usually play much worse at home the first series after a west coast road trip!

Excellent play from Luisangel

This pitching staff gave up runs in disappointing fashion?

Don't love using Davis here but you don't have that many options.

The fact that the best reliever on the team still gave it up makes me feel that you may as well have just grinded it out with Noah. Now you're just as bad off with the score, you burned your best reliever ahead of a long stretch of divisional games, and you're going to burn a bunch of other arms to cover the final 3 or 4 frames. All in the effort to hold the game at a tie. Smart to get Grant out ASAP afterwards rather than compound the error.

So yeah, I would have preferred not to bring Grant in

FWIW, Schmitt has no L/R splits this season. Reverse splits last season.