Chicago White Sox

What backup catcher “outplayed” him prior to last year?

Glad Charlotte came to play last night

We were third in HRs last year and 5th in ISO. We replaced the worst DH in the league with a legit power hitter in Mercedes and a RF who hit one HR with a guy who will hit 10+. Other than 2B & RF we have hitters at every position that should all hit 20 to 40 HRs. If healthy and if Tony doesn’t overplay the slap factory we should have plenty of power.

As long as he can rip some doubles & triples I honestly don’t care much about HRs with him. Especially when the rest of the long-term lineup (assuming Cespedes or Colas eventually own RF) is filled with power hitters.

People keep referring to this as a NL rule, but the reality is it was an update to a rule implemented last year that applied to all teams. This update only exists because they got rid of the universal DH and as such they had to determine how to handle pitchers in the event they were the designated runner in extras. All mangers were made aware of the rule change and given that every team plays inter-league games this should have been relevant info for each of them. If you want to critique the broader coaching staff that’s totally fine, but it’s not fair to position this as some weird one-off NL rule IMO.

Yup, and both the defense & base-running have radically improved since an ugly start. He looks like a nice piece to the puzzle even if his ceiling will always be capped due to a lack of power.

Nick Madrigal update: wRC+ = 121 OPS = .765 K % = 100th percentile OAA = 62nd percentile Sprint Speed = 79th percentile fWAR = 0.5 (~3 win FY pace)

How is it a “fucked up NL rule” exactly? We play 10 inter-league games on the road. And it’s not a complex rule at all. I’m sorry but Tony is not deserving of a free pass here.

It’s basic common sense. Even the guys in the dugout questioned it immediately because it’s seem very unlikely Major League Baseball would force you to run your pitcher in such a scenario. Turns out there was a rule for this and one that is super easy to understand if you’re actually doing your jobs and reading all the rule changes for the current season. Zero excuse to not know this rule and even worse is Tony not questioning it himself after people came up to him about it.

Again, who cares if the announcers didn’t know the rules? They aren’t in charge of the in-game strategy. And this idea La Russa should get a free pass because he’s an “AL Manager” is absolutely ludicrous. It’s 100% unacceptable he didn’t know that rule and that has NOTHING to do with his advanced age, his 10 years away from the game, or his questionable character (the main reasons people didn’t want him). If Tony was actually managing like a “Hall of Fame baseball person” most people would be fine with him right, but we simply haven’t gotten this elite tactician that we were promised. Instead we’ve gotten a guy who been a huge detriment to the team and has been far worse so far than his predecessor many here (including myself) wanted to see fired. I have no idea how anyone could be watching these games and still feel the need to defend La Russa, especially after his lack of awareness could have resulted in our highly paid closer getting injured. And by the way, it wasn’t his lack of understanding of a rule that contributed to the loss, it was the many other decisions he made late in the game like having Leury steal and not putting Winker on 1st with an open base. Our offense scoring zero runs and Tony making poor tactical decisions aren’t mutually exclusive and can both be reasons we lost the game.

3-3 on the night now.

Imagine trying to solve our CF problem by casting aside one of the hottest hitters in baseball to sign a DH who hits like Billy Hamilton.

No...god no...please god no.

Fully disagree on the idea to steal. Why are you playing for two with the bottom of your lineup up and your star closer scheduled for the 10th? With a runner on 3rd and one out, you have to do everything possible to optimize your chances of getting a single run. Winker was a really bad decision too, but playing for two with one of the worst hitters in the last half decade up to bat is the definition of insanity.

Great post Balta!

What in the world are you talking about? We all know you wanted to hire your buddy Tony.

We’re not paid to know the rule and neither are the four people you mentioned, so who cares?

It’s really bad although the one positive is Tony is actually getting ridiculed for it all over the place. That probably won’t change anything, but it puts a tiny amount of heat on him.

Lol...there really is no hope. La Russa is going to do things his way and we simply have to pray we can somehow overcome them. I still think we can win the division, but our margin for error will be incredibly slim with Eloy & Robert out and Tony actually costing us games on a somewhat regular basis.

I’m just playing around, it’s 100% inexcusable to not know the extra innings rules.

I’m 100% not serious...lol.

Plus it’s the bottom of the order. You play for one there all day and hope that Tim, Nick, Jose, & Yoan can win it in the 11th if it comes to that.

To be fair, the rule didn’t exist in Tony’s time, so how should he know these things?

This is a fantastic analogy

I agree although Grandal does have make some adjustments and stop pounding the ball into the right side of the infield.