Balta1701

Then listen to Lillian and acquire Naquin while DFAing Pollock. Vaughn is so bad out there it’s worth risking Eloy getting hurt to play Eloy in LF and Vaughn at DH. Getting Vaughn out of LF for 40 games is like adding a win.

It’s just a minor piece but worth saying again - Andrew Vaughn is awful in the OF. Just terrible. He currently has the worst OAA in all of baseball- literally the worst in the big leagues. If a lineup includes him in LF, it has a major problem. He can take over out there for 2 or 3 games in an emergency but should never be there otherwise.

All right, no, because the run differential is telling us who this team is. Their run differential is worse than the Orioles and Rockies and only a tiny bit better than Detroit. That is legitimately awful. Teams can occasionally make the playoffs with a negative run differential, no team this bad has been over .500 in recent years. They are 5 wins better in their record than their expected record. This is the case because they have been genuinely successful in close games, but their record in close games right now is better than any team’s record was in close games last year. If you want to credit the manager’s bullpen usage for a part of that I can’t disagree, for a legitimately bad bullpen he has gotten a lot out of them. But we can see what that has done. They have only a few reliable arms out there, and they can’t pitch them 120 times this year. So they save those arms for tie games or tight games, and the other team has a 2 run lead - it becomes a 5 run lead. The bullpen can’t keep things tight when they’re this weak. Getting Lynn back will help, but 1 pitcher does not make up 75 runs to turn this into a contender. They will slump downwards this year and they don’t have enough help coming.

At least one person I saw suggesting that this could be he took a hit to his carotid artery and the shock caused his body to overcorrect regulating his blood pressure. So legitimately dangerous here.

So Josh Harrison batted second and came up as the tying run. Sigh.

Oh yes 2015-2016 were utterly miserable. Don’t forget how awful those experiences were just because it’s been a while. They traded away MVP candidates to get to 78 wins. They wasted Chris Sale and made him so frustrated he shredded his uniforms. People retired to get away from that clubhouse.

Cmon Tim tie this up

So far this year, his K rate is up, his walk rate is the same, his hard hit rate is down, and batters have outperformed their expected stats. This sure looks like an unlucky stretch.

To be fair if you say that every veteran Rick Hahn acquires will quickly bust you will have a stellar record of predictions.

Bringing your guys back too early and having them get hurt is not a curse. It’s your staff.

What the absolute f***? So far in this game on gameday audio I have gotten ads for a Red Sox podcast and for a candidate in the Democratic primary in the San Fernando Valley. Im rather confused.

When did Brent Morel become a CF?

If we are thinking of what the Braves did last year, finding 3 or 4 decent players available for cheap does make sense when the team has this many guys struggling. That would mean the team would have to move several guys out of the lineup if they continue playing poorly. Naquin fits the mold of one of those guys. However, I would much rather see Eloy in the OF than Vaughn any more. AV is just terrible out there right now. Screw the injury risk Vaughn can play out there once someone gets hurt, at least Eloy can move a few steps towards a ball in the air.

They don’t. Both show: 1. Extra checks start in June ‘21. 2. Keuchel’s spin rate goes up for 6 weeks, highest of his career. 3. Your vertical line to start August 4. Spin rate starts declining. 5. Decline continues into ‘22. If you can make sense of that in terms of the ban and gear checks, please do so. I can’t.

Do you see how you put the vertical line after July 2021? Here’s game by game last year. His spin rates peaked in July after the checks.

It’s almost impossible to see anything game by game so here’s monthly. The season to season changes look way bigger than anything that happened in June of last year. There are some changes over time but if you can point to any factor and say “here’s the clear signal!” Then you’ve seen something I haven’t. The 2020 spin rate spike is interesting though as that was his last dominant stretch.

Tepera has a 4.26 ERA this year, his walk rate is 66% higher than last year and his k rate is about 40% lower so far. Only looks good compared to Kelly.

The likeliest way to do it to me seems to be to have his next start listed as TBD in a couple days when they lost preliminary pitchers then swap him and VV when that turn comes around.

With how this season has gone, step 1 was to stretch Lopez out for 3-4 innings rather than using him as a 1 inning limit guy.

Down by 4? What do you mean? Banks comes in when they’re down by 2 because games like that are unwinnable. You know, like how he was used last night.

Them: “there’s too much revisionist history on this site.” Me: “Here’s the 5000 words I wrote in a 2019 thread on the theme that Rick Hahn is the worst GM in baseball.” (you’ve got me on being dumb enough to like the Kimbrel trade because I didn’t look at any of his advanced stats and just assumed RH had. Oops.)

Grandal still has the 6th largest difference between his expected slugging based on contract and his actual slugging and 7th largest difference between his expected and actual wOBA. While the ball or other physical factors may well play a role in this, it’s notable that some other guys who were at the top of those lists a few weeks ago like Merrifield and Abreu have performed better lately.

The other missing answer is October of 2016, when JR decided he would let Rick Hahn do this rebuild rather than fire him like 29 other franchises would have. He can still have compliments on the 3 big trades, but the drafting and development failures, the poorly thought out it trades, the inability to find usable big league pieces from guys cast off by other teams during the down years, and the free agency failures all are contributing to this team right now. And it’s remarkable how much that sounds like the reasons Hahn should have been fired in 2016.

White Sox 3-7 hitters are 1/15 with 4 Ks.

Audible boos on the radio