chw42

We're trying very hard to make this interesting.

Goodwin what are you doing?

lmao Leury swung at a ball that hit him in the foot

In a game we should probably be winning by 10, we still somehow have to sweat it out.

Leury Garcia more valuable than TA confirmed.

Kimbrel is broken. I'm not sure if putting him in the closer's role alone is going to fix his issues. His fastball is down half a MPH with the Sox than it was when he was on the Cubs. You can maybe attribute this to him not having the adrenaline of a save situation. This velocity is more or less similar to what he threw with the Cubs in 2019 and 2020. He's also throwing the fastball for a ball 42% of the time, up from 34% with the Cubs in 2021. Even when Kimbrel was bad for the Cubs in 19-20, he only threw his fastball for a ball 36% of the time. The biggest difference is how his curveball has looked and performed since he moved to the Sox. Below are 3 pitch heatmaps of his knuckle curve. The 1st is his time with the Cubs in 2021, the 2nd is his time with the Sox, the 3rd is his time with the Cubs in 2019 and 2020 (when he was pretty bad). 2021 Cubs 2021 White Sox 2019-2020 Cubs His map with the Sox looks a hell of a lot more like his map with the Cubs in 2019 and 2020 than in 2021. Granted, maybe his location hasn't been quite as erratic, but he's clearly throwing the pitch more out of the zone and towards the left handed hitter's batter's box. If this is the shape of his curve, there's no way he can effectively throw it to left handed hitters without hitting them (which he did in his outing against Oakland). It may explain why he's struggled with lefties so far with the Sox and why he's throwing the knuckle curve about 5% less. His curveball with the Cubs in 2021 was mostly in the lower part of the zone or out of the zone, but not enough to hit a left handed hitter. I read this FanGraphs article earlier in the year that stated how Kimbrel kind of fixed himself in ST: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/craig-kimbrel-is-dominant-once-again/ If you've watched him so far, this looks like it's happening again. He's missing with the fastball a lot glove side and his curveball is once again inconsistent and all over the place. Whatever he did in ST to fix himself, he's gotta do it again. A change in roles alone won't fix him.

Cause his curve to lefties would literally hit them lol. He threw a few knuckle curves in the zone today, so that was good to see, but he's been extremely wild with the curve recently.

Would have easily been 0-8 had TA not rescued the team on Friday.

Oh cause we've hit Ray and Berrios so well this year.

Position players should be ashamed of that performance.

It sure as hell feels like Kimbrel doesn't want to be here

Vaughn, Mendick, and catcher here. This game is over.

What a waste of a start from Lynn. Also, if we can't hit Manoah, we sure as hell ain't hitting Berrios or Ray.

This all started cause we couldn't get fucking Reese McGuire out.

How the hell does he spike a pitch that badly? Holy fuck

Lmao of course

Kimbrel is basically Ruiz with a 94 MPH fastball right now.

WALK VLAD

Seby can't catch anything...

That wasn't a foul ball.

Kimbrel throwing 94. This isn't gonna end well.

In parking lots?

How did a catcher beat that out?

At least Lynn can't lose despite pitching a gem.

He could have told the ump he wanted an intentional walk at any time. It's not like that at bat looked competitive at any point.