Balta1701

Wtaf?

I have no idea what to make of this. An entire infield can’t turn into Chuck Knoblauch just because two games got rained out in Cleveland without something else happening.

You sure seem to be right. This is a F***ing weird week.

Oh no Hahn would be out of TLRs way.

I would still imagine that Hahn takes the fall.

Wtaf

I hate to be at this point but I'll say it anyway. The White Sox would be better off if Leury Garcia got hurt tonight.

He is the Chicago White Sox beat reporter for the Chicago Sun Times newspaper. Presumably he had an autocorrect issue, in that he typed a tweet onto his phone while standing in a room listening to LaRussa and a minor typo in that tweet caused autocorrect to convert the word homestand into a close but different word guess, then he tweeted it before he saw the typo - in part because he's multitasking and trying to not miss anything else LaRussa says.

No, he's right handed.

The White Sox's 2-5 hitters in this lineup are 24 for 131 on the season, a robust .183 average.

Presumably Harrison is still hurt.

Literally all of those key details are because they had the pitcher with the highest WAR in MLB bullpens and the AL Saves leader. Aside from "Middle of the pack in holds" everything else you just noted was "Liam Hendriks is quite good".

He's right handed and there's a righty on the mound. This one's easy.

AJ Pollock is a fine center fielder. He's better in CF than he ever will be in right because his arm is his weakest spot. Frankly we're better with Pollock in CF and Engel in RF if both are playing. The debate should be Sheets vs Engel.

I'm just gonna be content that Vaughn isn't benched.

Whatever it was that happened to Foster I believe he pitched yesterday, so this basically buys them a day or two to see how Robert responds. Same game they played with Pollock earlier.

While it’s a fair point, it’s someone’s job to make sure he is. Whether that’s Katz or someone worse I won’t say.

There’s zero chance of that and even then I wouldn’t do it. There’s enough pitching on this team that even if they’re on pace for 85 wins, they’re a postseason threat and can be trying to add at the deadline. You’ve got to be talking about >5 games under .500 at the deadline before I’m convinced about selling the survivors.

The idea that this team will be totally out of the race by the trade deadline seems so far fetched that in that case sure it probably makes sense to trade some of the survivors. I have a hard time figuring out how that’s even possible though - we’ve seen white Sox teams implode because of bad coaching before (2013, 2011, 2016) but none of those were nearly this talented, and none of them had a 12 team playoff race.

All right a more rigorous list of thoughts. Basic question - how have things looked in the context of what I expected before the season? 1. The White Sox are banged up and have crappy depth. This was an issue the whole offseason so nothing unexpected here. 2. The top starters have been better than expected, the back of the rotation appears to have quashed all hope. Depth is an issue. Injuries are an issue. This will be a problem all year - guys will come back but other guys will get hurt or hit innings limits. Nothing unexpected here. 3. The offense is off to a slow start. They are low on power, some guys are streaky, they may have an OBP issue, they have some injury concerns, and they have a major issue against righties. This might be a little more of a worry than I thought - I don’t know that I could pick out who would struggle but some guys struggling early is unsurprising. Injuries are unsurprising. Weakness against righties is unsurprising. Maybe Grandal struggling is a bit worrisome, maybe the bad start for Robert is a bit worrisome. Vaughn hitting righties is a positive. 4. The bullpen has been perhaps as expected. Bummer is maybe a little worse than expected, Sousa, Banks, and Ruiz a little better. Hendriks still having HRitis might be a worry as I was hoping that was random last year, but we will see if that continues. 5. The rest of the division - Detroit off to a slow start as a young team is unsurprising, they may be a danger to get better as the season goes along. Minnesota getting off to a slow start is positive for the White Sox- Correa will be better than this, but they are still losing games. Cleveland looking healthy and playing well is a legit worry as they are a really well coached team with potential. Whether they can sustain a season I don’t know, but they at least look like more of a threat than I though a month ago. 6. The white sox’s manager is already as bad as expected. Make it harder for him to give away games with the bullpen and he will give them away with the lineup. While this is rotten it simply can’t be surprising. 7. Ok here’s one. The defense and focus. Last year Anderson had 10 errors, he has 5 already. I think the White Sox have missed more cutoff men than they’ve hit, I’m not sure Luis Robert knows what one is. Last year, this team was average defensively outside of their backup catchers. They upgraded their backup catchers but they’ve downgraded on defensive focus and fundamentals. They’ve also had “sh*tshow” games against a division opponent early in the season that I’m not sure we saw at all last year. We know they are poorly coached, but last year we didn’t see this bleed over into the everyday plays and into the focus level of guys on the field like we already have seen this year. Overall, the division might have one extra threat, but most of the rest is well balanced except for the last one. If the poor coaching infects other parts of the team, as we have seen this week already, then that’s an actual reason to worry.

We saw last year how stubborn they are about moving guys from the bullpen to the rotation with Kopech in the 2nd half. We're seeing it again right now - they'd rather start VV, Keuchel, and Lambert than remove Lopez from the pen. They might try Banks with a start at this rate before Lopez?

"You get a piece of it, you can rename it."

I'm genuinely sorry.

There are 3 righty starters this weekend and Pollock is back. We're going to learn a lot by whether he starts 3, 2, or 1 times.

Minnesota is starting 3 righties this weekend, none of them are close to Bieber quality, and Pollock is back, so this will be interesting to watch in the context of their righty struggles.