chw42

The fears about this crowd were greatly exaggerated. They're still rowdy af today.

Had our starters just repeated their 1st innings this series we would have swept them already.

Alright now we gotta make sure he doesn't pull a Cease and lose all his adrenaline the rest of the game.

AMPED

Throw the slider. A fastball on 0-2 like that in the zone is risky.

99 There we fucking go

I'd play the infield in here against McCullers. Runs will come at a premium.

Crowd seems fine to me.

Altuve ambushed Carlos, just like some predicted.

Let's face it, if Carlos can't throw hard on the first pitch in front of a home crowd in the playoffs, his shoulder is fucked. If anything, the adrenaline alone should make him throw 95+.

What a throw by Kiermaier. Honestly, I thought going on Martinez's fly out to RF was a better bet than running on Kiermaier there with 1 out already. You don't have a whole lot to gain to get on third with 2 outs.

I hate when people say he only throws fastballs. Yeah, they're variations of a fastball, but a cutter and a 4 seamer are very very different. You'd think he's up there like Jake McGee or Richard Rodriguez throwing 94 MPH 4 seamers every pitch with the way some people talk about it, but that's not what's happening at all.

Houston was 10th in wOBA against sinkers, 2nd against the cutter, and 5th against the 4 seam fastball. It could explain why he was throwing his sinker so much in game 1, but he kept missing with it.

I hadn't seen the emails were beyond the remarks that leaked a few days ago. Must be weird to have a homophobic head coach if you're Carl Nassib.

Oh damn. I guess he really lost the team.

Obviously

It's ok, the Dodgers are probably gonna shit all over whoever comes out of the AL.

One thing to note if the Red Sox hang on and win in 4. That means we'd be the only game on Wednesday if we win game 4, moving the start time from 8:07 PM Central to possibly a normal start time.

For percentile, the higher the number, the better.

It wasn't his starter. I'm guessing he left him in to try and get Verdugo. I'm not sure why he had to face Martinez.

Also, I'm not sure how smart it was to use McClanahan in a reliever's role when he hasn't really done that this year. It clearly didn't work cause he gave up 5 runs when he went 5 scoreless in game 1.

5-0 Red Sox already. With the way the Rays hammered Sale in game 2, I really did not see this coming from Boston.

No he's 65th percentile in accuracy and 87th percentile in consistency.

The umpire is gonna matter, because Hamri had a huge zone for game 1 that benefited McCullers. In fact, his zone accuracy and consistency was worse than Hallion's last night and we really didn't hear that much complaining about it. Vic Carapazza will be behind the plate in game 4 and he rates as above average in accuracy and consistency: https://www.umpscorecards.com/umpire.html?name=Vic Carapazza. He actually umpired a game for McCullers this year against Minnesota. A game in which McCullers gave up 4 runs in 4.2 innings, one of his worst starts of the year. Here is the strike zone for that game: The scorecard may say he has a huge zone, but it looks like he switched his strike zone mid-way through the game or something. Seems like there were a lot of calls McCullers did not get on the corners earlier in the game.

In the 2 regular season starts against us, McCullers only gave up 4 hits. Of those hits, 1 was on a change up and the other 3 were on sinkers. We had zero hits off his slider or curveball. In game 1 of the ALDS, the Sox had 2 hits on the sinker and 2 on the slider. After watching some of the games in which McCullers coughed up some runs, it was pretty evident that you either hit his sinker or he hangs the curve or slider. That's how he gets in trouble. You're not gonna hit his wipe out slider no matter how hard you try. And if he's got the sharp break on the curve or it dives out of the zone, good luck. As he tired in the 7th in game 1, he started hanging his slider and the Sox hit 2 lasers for singles off them. This matchup really is about Lance McCullers more than it is about the White Sox offense. If he is executing his breaking pitches, you really just have to tip your cap. However, if there's one pitch the Sox should be able to hit, it's his sinker. The Sox were one of the best sinker hitting teams in baseball this year. We basically decided to not swing hard in game 1 on them, because we averaged an exit velo of 86 MPH on 10 balls in play on the sinker. That approach will not work. You have to hit his sinkers hard and hope he hangs the breaking stuff. The approach really should not be around trying to hit his breaking pitches. I think it was extremely uncharacteristic of the Sox to have such weak contact against the sinker in game 1. We may hit a lot of grounders, but we usually hit them pretty hard.