Jake

There's another stat that was developed as a way to compare relievers on equal footing: shutdowns and meltdowns. Basically, if your team's win probability goes up appreciably because of your pitching, that's a shutdown. If your team's win probability drops appreciably, that's a meltdown. Today's outing for Seranthony falls just short of a shutdown because the Sox's chances of victory were too high to begin with. Same goes for Hudson's outing today, FWIW. On the season, Seranthony gets 3 shutdowns and 2 meltdowns. There are 30 pitchers with at least 3 meltdowns this season so far. Griffin Jax and Justin Bruihl lead the with 5 meltdowns (they each have 4 shutdowns as well). Lucas Sims is in a several-way tie for 3rd with 4 meltdowns (he has 1 SD). Cincinnati's Tony Santillan leads the way with 9 SD (and 0 MD). On the Sox, Leasure has 4 SD to 2 MD and Hicks has 3 SD to 1 MD. Chris Murphy 0 SD and 3 MD. Last year's MLB SD leader was Andres Munoz with 46 (against 8 MD). Note that not all saves count as an SD and you can get a MD without blowing the save (if you give up runs that make it much more likely your team loses even if your runs don't tie the game). All-time leaders: Mo, Hoffman, Lee Smith, Kenley Jansen, John Franco, K-Rod, Aroldis, Goose, David Robertson, Kimbrel (in that order). Top single season: tie between 1990 Bobby Thigpen and 2008 K-Rod with 50 apiece.

Wildness is part of Seranthony's deal but the number of extreme misses we've been seeing can't be normal even for him

No ability to stay on top of the sweeper for some reason

Hudson is a different kind of funny because all his stats scream "guy with fantastic stuff" but then you turn on the TV and it's just lurch throwing lob balls up there.

Seranthony is funny because he somewhat relies on a splitter but he throws a splitter like most people would, AKA with absolutely zero idea where it will go

Barlow's curveball is an excellent pitch and hitters have had nothing for it this season. Have to beat him on the other stuff.

89mph 4-seamer down the middle. Try and hit that! (they can't for some reason)

Not sure whether Seranthony is available. He's thrown more pitches in the past 3 days than anyone else on the team.

Braden has enough whiff in his game that I really worry about the consequences of being too aggressive promoting him. Not to mention that you want to give him reps from both sides of the plate. Entering today, he only had 6 plate appearances against left-handed pitchers all season.

Guessing they were willing to stretch Noah's pitch count a bit to get him in line for his first official W

I was reading that as about the White Sox record for a second

Wonder how many pitches they let Schultz throw.

Colson takes a pitcher's pitch out of the park

There goes another one of those Sacramento specials

The ball was smashed on a home run trajectory. No need to over-analyze it.

I think he's bunting on his own for the most part.

A's are collectively rocking an .072 xBA in this game thus far.

Hill is just a nice MLB bench player. Easy as a Sox fan to forget the distinction between "not a good hitter" and "can't hit" but he's in the former category rather than the latter. He can hit okay and as we've seen, he does everything else decently enough.

Just as Gonzalez's season numbers were returning to his norms, he nudges them back up. And that one was no cheapie whatsoever. At 107.3mph, I wasn't 100% sure he had a swing that could hit a ball that hard in the air. Good for him, I hope he's figuring something out.

Springs must have a strange release/angle as the hitters seem to be pretty frequently having trouble pulling the trigger on grooved heaters of around 91mph.

A's feeling the effects of the old White Sox strategy of playing first basemen in the outfield.

Noah has a nice first-pitch strike rate going and an almost perfectly average zone rate in this game so far. Some uncompetitive misses though as he again has absolutely no control of the slider and seems to be trying to figure out how often to throw it given that fact.

3-2 slider at the top of the zone and breaking in off the plate and he's totally ready for it. That's interesting.

May be about time to shut down Oppor. One thing I picked up at Spring Training when chatting with some of the families of minor leaguers: they felt like Christian was fundamentally a good kid, but also that he was perhaps arrogant and not easy to coach. That said, they thought he had noticeably grown up so maybe that's not such a live issue anymore. Either way, whatever he's doing right now is really, really not working.

Yes and if he gets the pitcher out, he still has another guy to pitch to (I'm assuming the pitcher would be on instructions to not swing so no double play possibility)