Sox must have really worked on "fundamentals" in the spring didn't they? 3-10 RISP, three errors.

It is what it is -- Kenny Williams

10 minutes ago, Lip Man 1 said:

Sox must have really worked on "fundamentals" in the spring didn't they? 3-10 RISP, three errors.

It is what it is -- Kenny Williams

To paraphrase Ozzie, is it too little emphasis on the "fundamentals" that leads to a lack of "fundamentals"? 

Nah, just too many horse bleep players.

7 minutes ago, chitownsportsfan said:

To paraphrase Ozzie, is it too little emphasis on the "fundamentals" that leads to a lack of "fundamentals"? 

Nah, just too many horse bleep players.

I think it's both, remember in Ventura's first year when he was having mandatory pre game practices on fundamentals they seemed to be much better at those areas, which is partially how they stayed in the race until collapsing the last two weeks.

And the 2005 Sox could beat you via a blast, a bloop, a bunt or a stolen base.  

32 minutes ago, chitownsportsfan said:

It's a decent start, we've got a really, really, really long way to go. Need about 4x that amount of decent players. The good teams usually have 30-40 WAR. We'll be lucky to get 5 this year.

Yep, you have a few guys that can project as possible major leaguers but likely towards the bottom of the order.  Still severely lack in impact prospects on the offensive side.  No 2-5 hitter to dream of besides maybe B. Montgomery.

6 minutes ago, Lip Man 1 said:

I think it's both, remember in Ventura's first year when he was having mandatory pre game practices on fundamentals they seemed to be much better at those areas, which is partially how they stayed in the race until collapsing the last two weeks.

And the 2005 Sox could beat you via a blast, a bloop, a bunt or a stolen base.  

It's just bad players. We only remember half the errors these bums make because it's a 2-2 games instead of 6-1 due to lack of talent at everything baseball, not just "fundamentals".

Again, I get it, it's an easy thing to point to and lord knows we aren't good at it, but it's just downstream of shitty rosters.

So our favorites have lost three in a row and four of five. Not good. Just studying the box score seemed like that was a very dull game. Was it? We did get 10 hits. Should win on nights we get 10 hits; won't happen too often.

2 hours ago, chitownsportsfan said:

And Bill James was right 40 years ago when he said 1 run games are basically crap shoots. 

Glad to see Bill mentioned. He still lives in Lawrence, Ks. He even lived here most of the time during that multi-year stretch he had with the Red Sox. ... I will never forget Bill in his yearly Baseball Abstract (in which he rated and had a comment about every player in the game which was neat) said flat out the cliche that a slugger needed someone to "protect" him in the order was bunk. Let's say Big Hurt batted fourth. According to cliche, it was vital that Hurt had a stellar hitter batting fifth in the order so in theory the pitcher would have to pitch to Frank out of fear of facing the strong No. 5 hitter who was protecting Hurt because of that player's status as a studly hitter. James said it made no difference at all and throughout life I've gotten in many arguments arguing the point.

Edited May 1, 2025May 1 by greg775

2 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

38-124 pace

Little surprised we dropped the first two vs. the Brewers. Sox have been OK at home.

Greg lauding the grandfather of sabermetrics was not on my bingo card, but thus is the current era of Soxdom.

9 hours ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

Robert 2 hits today SB and CS. Still not sure that wasn't a catch in the 1st but I doubt it gets overturned if challenged . The glove was not clearly under the ball so most likely a trap.

Grounded into a bases loaded 1 out double play, too. 

“It's cool,” said Smith of pitching against Milwaukee. “Definitely want to throw well against everybody, but yeah, cool to see some faces. I saw the scout that signed me to the Brewers [Taylor Frederick] this week, so cool to connect with him. On the field once you get in there, you're not really thinking about friendships.”

“Maybe not his sharpest night, but our defense put him in a couple tough spots where he had to extend innings there and pitch more than he probably wanted,” White Sox manager Will Venable said. “We just gotta tighten up defensively behind him, but I thought Shane did a good job.”

ChiSox.com

18th in team defense fWAR, 16th drs

bottom 3 for fielding percentage after last night

 

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=fld&type=1&startdate=&enddate=&month=0&sortcol=22&sortdir=default&team=4&qual=80

Only Vargas Thaiss Amaya Sosa grade out positively on def  Taylor also +

Shocked Robert is in negative territory   Baldwin -0.4 and Quero -0.2 slightly negative

Benintendi and Vaughn less so

Edited May 1, 2025May 1 by caulfield12

fWAR Sh.Smith #36 Davis Martin #70 Cannon #83 out of Top 93 pitchers with 30+ innings

Smith #11 in MLB era

"Pretty self-explanatory," Murphy said. "Just not commanding the zone, not throwing strikes, and just not giving the team a chance to win."

"It was more of a message to Tobias than it was anything else," Murphy explained. "I knew we had a full bullpen, but still. This is how we're going to do it, man."

It's the second instance in two series of Murphy sending a message through aggressive benchings. He pulled Sal Frelick and Caleb Durbin midgame in St. Louis on Saturday—the former for missing the cutoff man, and the latter for getting picked off first base. Wednesday was different, though. Frelick and Durbin made isolated mistakes, but Myers repeatedly failed to find the strike zone, and the Brewers stood no chance of winning if he remained in the game in that form.

 

"I don't remember who said it---I think it was a quote in Jim Bouton's Ball Four---but someone once said "Baseball is an ass". The Sox have to feel that way after somehow giving up six runs despite Chourio & Yelich going a combined 0-10, with most of those ABs really, really ugly."

Edited May 1, 2025May 1 by caulfield12

10 hours ago, Lip Man 1 said:

Sox must have really worked on "fundamentals" in the spring didn't they? 3-10 RISP, three errors.

It is what it is -- Kenny Williams

It's weird that baseball chose to keep track of errors, since only one team in history ever makes them. 

- Me

https://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/team/_/view/fielding

27th-28th 

White Sox and Rockies fielding percentage

26th (23)/28th in errors