chw42

DJJ matches up much better defensively. I also like his energy on the court a lot, even though Javonte is also a high energy guy. The +/- for Javonte in his last 2 starts don't lie though. He's not fit to be a starter on the team.

Yup. Springer was out for a lot of last year. If he stays healthy that lineup is probably just as good as it was last season. We may have less weak spots but we don't have the type of impact bat that Vlad Jr. is. Don't get me wrong, Robert might get somewhere close to that one day, but he's not there yet.

The funny thing is that when they've had huge leads in games, they've let the other team cut it down by at least half almost every time.

c Well said. I don't know how we can look at what happened in the 2nd half and in the playoffs and think that there's nothing wrong with our coaching staff.

I'd easily rather have the Jays offense over ours, even if they lose Semien. Brewers have the best top 3 in all of baseball for starting pitching. Most of those teams don't have the balance the Sox have though.

Wow right after he resurrected his career too. He didn't hit great in the 2nd half but he was still alright. I'm guessing he's just not all there health wise.

I think this was pretty evident after they lost McCullers. We even hit Garcia and Valdez pretty hard. We really did end up facing the best version of the Astros.

Soler just hit a Pujols esque bomb over the train tracks. 446 feet.

I think with the new rules this year, DeRozan and his mid-range game benefit quite a bit just because the efficiency of the league goes down a bit without all the free points the refs were giving to the Trey Youngs and James Hardens of the league. Plus I think there's a lot of value in having a guy who's good in the mid-range late in games. Especially when the Bulls have had so many issues closing games last year. LaVine, as great as he is, really has not shown that he's a consistent 4th quarter scorer. DeMar brings stability to the team down the stretch. What really bothered me with the DeRozan criticism from guys like Hollinger is that he's been an efficient offensive player over the past few years in SA. His TS% was almost .600 last year. It's not like he was scoring 20 points on 25 shots. You'd think he was Jalen Rose or Ron Mercer with the way some people ragged on him.

He had shot the ball terribly until tonight. They really needed him too cause he was one of the only guys keeping them afloat in the third quarter.

Bulls looked dead in the water today down 19 in the third. They're probably gonna win by double digits. Crazy how good this team is.

Can't be walking Martin Maldonado with this Astros lineup. That's your one break in the lineup.

Snitker did what Cash got destroyed for in last year's WS. He pulled his pitcher after 5 when they were rolling. But it worked out for him so he gets the praise for "trusting his gut" while Cash got killed for it in the press and all the old school guys said sabermetrics was killing baseball. It's a results oriented business, I guess.

Ugh. I remember he grimmaced and looked at his hand after one of his shots against Toronto.

They tried so hard to give this one away. I know Vucevic is sick and probably should not have played tonight, but my god he was awful in the last few minutes of the game. Toronto exploited his inability to defend and I'm not sure what Lonzo was doing on some of those inbound passes. This is a game they lose last year cause they definitely would have lost without DeRozan hitting some tough shots when nobody else could get anything to fall. The real schedule starts this weekend. I'll reserve my optimism until I see how they play against better competition.

Yeah those spin rate increases do seem a bit sus. His fastball velocity did go up 3 MPH compared to his average. The extra velocity alone could be responsible for some of the spin increase (up 80 RPM vs. his yearly average). His velocity and spin rates were down by a ton in his first start and they said he had some knee issues (not sure if that's legit or not, they could have just been buying time to warm someone else up). But the fact that he never went to the rosin bag and kept going to his hair does seem suspect as well. Before we yell the Astros are cheating, Cease goes to his hair after almost every pitch. He actually does use rosin though, so it could be just rosin + sweat. That's why I the bit about Garcia never going to the rosin bag was interesting to me.

Seriously, he looks slow for someone who ran a 4.4.

Dodgers were clearly not as good offensively without Muncy. Losing Kershaw hurt because it forced them to start guys like Scherzer and Buehler on short rest. Roberts also kept using Urias and Scherzer as relievers and that made the problem even worse.

Zach having a bad shooting night and they're up 25 after 3. I think that might be one of the biggest differences with the team this year. There's so many good scoring options that if LaVine has a bad night, DeRozan, Vooch, and Lonzo can pick him up.

Lonzo and Caruso are so pesky on defense. Bulls are getting tons of turnovers.

Altuve's been making errors left and right but looked like a 5x gold glove winner against us.

Of course he gets hurt after he gave up 1 run in almost 11 innings against us.

Well that's even worse.

He's already 23 too, so if he has an .813 OPS between A ball and AA (where he hit for no power), I'm not sure his ceiling at the ML level is going to be all that high.

Yes DRS does account for shifting, which actually means that the team being worse defensively is not only because of the lack of shifting.