caulfield12

Aka Yan...

Baez and Story will be the names. Semien, Seager, Correa are going to be too expensive or getting longer term guaranteed deals. Simmons is the other choice to hope for an offensive rebound.

Should we go with another starting pitcher as insurance for Kopech, as Lopez would be first man up...assuming they still plan to start Kopech? Or do they add a value guy like Conforto or Baez rebounding from a down season on a one year "make good" deal (assuming we won't spend $17.5+ million guys here)? If we did sign Baez, we wouldn't need Hernandez or Leury, so the hit to payroll actually wouldn't be all that far off from balancing...which is going to be critical if we plan on keeping Kimbrel around. Maybe the best case scenario is trading Kimbrel for a backend starter...but wouldn't it be easier just to sign the next Robbie Ray, Taijuan Walker or spend the money on SF Giants' front office members to identify FA pitching? Of course, Hahn wants to prove the value of his two acquisitions and TLR loves himself some Leury.

Can she also fix Kopech?

As always, depends on pitching. Not easy to replace Ray and Semien. TB isn't going away and Red Sox will have Sale for an entire season.

That was all on RR experimenting and a cushion into the playoffs. He wasn't wrong on Rodon, of course, just not his role last year.

Colome and Bummer were so much better, Marshall and Cordero too.

Love the enthusiasm...although it's more fitting for Abreu or Robert's comeback perhaps.

Do we actually want a non-save situation, lol?

The crazy thing is teams like the 2014-15 Royals and 2002-2004 Twins blew less than five games all season in the 8th. That's just 2-3 weeks for this Sox team.

Kudos to a rookie pitcher for not wetting the bed... Now who does LaRussa go to?

Has Tepera pitched multiple innings this year?

Here comes the dreaded 8th again.

Aardsma, etc.

Can't imagine winning at Houston with this bullpen, and that's without even considering Verlander coming back...

Semien looking brilliant now signing the one year deal after a disappointing 2020 season.

Yes, they have had stretches this year where they actually played better without him because everyone keeps waiting for him to be Mike Trout and do something dramatic when he's in the line-up...he was 0/6 tonight, tied the game in the Bottom of the 15th against Knebel, but they still lost. It's hard to win with 1 1/2 or 2 1/2 starting pitchers or whatever they're down to. When all is said and done, they're probably going to wish they held on to Quantrill and Patino instead of going for it this year. No matter what happens, not making the WC game if the Reds are the opponent is going to be a pretty massive disappointment, considering less than two weeks ago they were 17 games over .500 and Tatis had one of the best individual games of the entire MLB season. Even Dodgers vs. Padres head up, it's still the Padres up 7-5 in the season series. Dodgers swept, then SD won 7 out of 8, then the Dodgers the last two in SD, including the crazy game last night (now it's 4:26 p.m. China time and the game just finished about 30 minutes ago.)

Simple, being overweight or obese has nothing with the health problems related to Delta that are plaguing the rest of the world at this time. There has always been more of a correlation with age than any single factor at play. While being overweight certainly exacerbates conditions for the hospitalized patients, there's zero evidence (for example) that a healthy person without a vaccine is better off than an obese or fat person who has been doubled vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine, especially Moderna. Simply looking at the UK, Israel and USA in isolation doesn't do much of anything. Now perhaps if you could prove that Sweden had more overweight people than Finland/Denmark/Norway...and that their death rate or health outcomes have been similar despite completely different approaches to the pandemic, you'd have a more interesting conclusion. But not one that necessarily backs up your hypothesis.

That doesn't explain all the current problems in the Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, etc. There's no way to compare countries without controlling somehow for their health care systems, how universal enrollment in systems is, public vs. private hospital standard of care, etc. The fact of that matter is that the bottom 33% in terms of economic mobility in the US (there's obviously some overlap with nutrition/obesity/poverty) receives a much lower standard of care than in the UK and Israel. Many of that bottom 33% is currently unvaccinated, as well. There's also a tremendous amount of distrust directed towards the government, the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals in general.

Millions to Rodon and Boras Corp for sure.

Then you're down a starter for 2022, unless you rely on Lopez (shudders). And you're also basically admitting Kimbrel was a failure, because there's just no way you have Kopech, Kimbrel and Hendriks all at the back of the pen for 2022 again (and pay two closers $30+ million to NOT CLOSE). Not all three of them together in the pen. That's just a poor allocation of resources. It makes sense then (if you were keeping Kopech in the pen) to replace Kimbrel's $16 million with another starting pitcher, but then that all depends on how good you believe Kopech will be as a starting pitcher, right? In general, starting pitchers have a LOT more value to baseball teams than closers, much higher fWAR, etc., but the White Sox are trying to test out that theory...or maybe upend it...as we speak.

Right, they're now 1 game under .500 again since the ASB and have been stuck in that band or range between 16 and 21 games over .500 for seemingly two full months. Part of it is the timing of when playing the better teams (see this recent stretch of 4 playoff contenders that we're just ending), another has been the Royals playing us much tougher this season than last and also the Tigers making significant progress, albeit falling back a bit in the last couple of weeks now. For a day or two, DET actually passed the Indians or were at least tied with them. We're putting a lot now on Grandal and fixing the bullpen...because "fixing the bullpen" has been the center of the discussion since the very beginning of the season, with that Angels' series where the pen scuffled in 3 out of the 4 games.

Sure, but Kopech can only be used a couple of times per week....not 75-90 games in a season.

But who in God's name can they trust to throw the 8th? It has been a graveyard all year. Marshall, Heuer, Foster, Bummer, Ruiz, Burr, etc. Jimmy Cordero, lol?

Right now, it feels more like 2000 and 2008...but at least 2008 we were missing Quentin but the offense suddenly got hot for that final week, at least Alexei did. The 2000, 2006 and 2012 teams (feelings as the season wound down) are the closest I can think of. Obviously, this team has more talent, overall...but I hope the solution isn't just let's wait for (Jimenez/Robert/Grandal).