8 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

How was it an easy grounder?

It was pulled right down the line...over the bag.

It would have been a single regardless.

If you fault him for not diving...who is to say if he dives and gets hurt then that's not even a worse outcome?

Vargas isn't hitting now either.

Uh, no, it was to his left. And he did dive. They had to get Acuña's bat in the lineup to even have a shot at this one.

3 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

So why even bother to utilize analytics?

Let's just go back to TLR's hunches/intuition...

We have numerous threads every year with Pecota and Steamer and FG and bWAR and fWAR.

Most models said Meidroth would lead the team...and he's leading all 2B and yet thre are current threads about trading him.

If it's meaningless to debate and discuss...why bother to predict anything?

Utilize whatever metrics you want, just don't cite them ONLY when they confirm your priors.

Not necessarily directed at you specifically, but it's a pet peeve of mine here generally. A lot of people here only mention expected/projected stats when they match their previous perceptions and then suddenly don't care about them otherwise.

1 minute ago, WestEddy said:

Uh, no, it was to his left. And he did dive. They had to get Acuña's bat in the lineup to even have a shot at this one.

I guess it’s true for this one game, but reading this is hilarious.

4 minutes ago, Lip Man 1 said:

They definitely need to get some mojo back, maybe if Teel is activated that will help. Coming off the Braves and Dodgers series I expected some letdown but they looked pretty awful this road trip.

Winning 1 in NY was ok but being swept by Detroit is horrible especially when they had a chance of winning every game.

7 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

Acuna can hit dingers from any position on the field but for the one position held down by an elite defender.

He's also an elite defender at shortstop. The difference between Acuña and Montgomery in a larger sample of tries is negligible. Are you actually proposing that Acuña play 1B on Vargas' rest day?

4 minutes ago, WhiteSox2023 said:

I guess it’s true for this one game, but reading this is hilarious.

Acuna's hitting all of .213...that's some hitting eh?

5 minutes ago, WestEddy said:

He's also an elite defender at shortstop. The difference between Acuña and Montgomery in a larger sample of tries is negligible. Are you actually proposing that Acuña play 1B on Vargas' rest day?

Where is their proof Acuna is elite at SS? Everything I see on fangraphs shows Colson is way, way better defensively at SS.

2 minutes ago, Lip Man 1 said:

Acuna's hitting all of .213...that's some hitting eh?

His 1.023 OPS in June leads the team. So however bad you think they've been at the plate lately, literally everyone else has been worse than Acuna.

9 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

So when are they meaningful and when are they irrelevant?

Keith Law said he could be an All Star based on what evidence exactly?

Everyone in the world that knows baseball could have looked at Gonzalez's milb career up until now...two home-friendly months at Charlotte and now a 500ish mlb ops and predicted he wasn't suddenly going to go on a homer binge in the majors.

Advance scouting will dissect every single weakness at the major league level that teams don't care that much about in AAA.

Are you saying that playoff odds are run off of advanced stats like bat speed and barrels? How did this convo jump on over to Gonzo? You could probably answer your own questions about what Law saw in Gonzo by reading his article. Law says he has All-Star upside with a caveat:

How the White Sox’s Jacob Gonzalez went from first-round bust to potential star - The Athletic

Through his first 10 games in the majors, Gonzalez has more than held his own, with nine of his 17 balls hit into play above 95 mph for a 52.9 percent hard-hit rate, with four of those above 105 mph, so the hard-contact skills he displayed in Triple A appear to be intact. If he can improve his swing decisions now that he’s facing big-league pitching, with his chase rate over 30 percent in that small sample, he has real All-Star upside, with 25-homer potential and a long history of drawing enough walks to keep his OBP above the median.

11 minutes ago, fathom said:

I’m gonna go with the guy at SS who has shown impeccable timing on his plays his whole career.

You'll have to be more specific. Acuña also fits that description.

8 minutes ago, Lip Man 1 said:

Acuna's hitting all of .213...that's some hitting eh?

In the preceeding 10 games to today, he's slashing .429/.455/.476. I understand that his stats on the season are worse. If the changes he's made are finally clicking, it's not really relevant to assume he's going up to bat with the same game plan and mechanics he had at the end of March.

So, yeah, that is some hitting he's been doing recently. Any good manager would do well to get a player on a .429 run into the lineup instead of looking at what he did 3 months ago and making judgements from that.

9 minutes ago, fathom said:

Where is their proof Acuna is elite at SS? Everything I see on fangraphs shows Colson is way, way better defensively at SS.

Acuña has regularly been scouted to have above-average to elite range, glove and arm by Baseball America and Fangraphs.

18 minutes ago, WestEddy said:

He's also an elite defender at shortstop. The difference between Acuña and Montgomery in a larger sample of tries is negligible. Are you actually proposing that Acuña play 1B on Vargas' rest day?

Acuna is not an elite defender at SS lol. He's been negative there this year (small sample) and doesn't even have significant enough mlb innings to fully assess let alone compare him to Colson who has nearly a full season of elite work over there. Saying the difference is negligible is literally just lying.

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by Look at Ray Ray Run

21 minutes ago, WhiteSox2023 said:

I guess it’s true for this one game, but reading this is hilarious.

I do agree that is incredible, but Acuña's on such a run right now, you might even sit Braden a game to let him get his head together, and you have Acuña in the OF.

Venable is a point A to point B guy but appears to not be a B to C guy. He overmanages way to often.

Not sure if its him or the organization but his bullpen management is ridiculous

20 minutes ago, Harry Chappas said:

Venable is a point A to point B guy but appears to not be a B to C guy. He overmanages way to often.

Not sure if its him or the organization but his bullpen management is ridiculous

He definitely doesn’t have the horses in the bullpen but I’m not a fan of his.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by The Mighty Mite

29 minutes ago, Harry Chappas said:

Venable is a point A to point B guy but appears to not be a B to C guy. He overmanages way to often.

Not sure if its him or the organization but his bullpen management is ridiculous

Well it's not just him specifically as the Sox bullpen has been horrific the last several years. Just far to much dead weight, trash and guys hanging on for dear life in the bullpen. It's a combination of bad managing and awful talent acquisition.

46 minutes ago, Autumn Dreamin said:

His 1.023 OPS in June leads the team. So however bad you think they've been at the plate lately, literally everyone else has been worse than Acuna.

Weren’t you just complaining about people ignoring the stats that don’t fit their narrative? Or does Acunas 100 abs prior to June not count?

I'm hoping today was the same inflection that the Seattle series was for Koch in 2004.

Hell the Twins are now only 2 1/2 back of the Sox, looks like they won't be 'selling off' either.

What a division! Every team in it has a minus run differential, amazing.

38 minutes ago, Harry Chappas said:

Venable is a point A to point B guy but appears to not be a B to C guy. He overmanages way to often.

Not sure if its him or the organization but his bullpen management is ridiculous

Can I remind people this is his second season as a manager? Hes learning on the job.

10 minutes ago, T R U said:

Weren’t you just complaining about people ignoring the stats that don’t fit their narrative? Or does Acunas 100 abs prior to June not count?

Can you show how the stats from April and May are meaningful? Like, does he stand at the plate and decide he needs to balance out this recent hot stretch with strikeouts to match his output from the previous 2 months? If the changes he's made over the winter and spring are finally starting to show results, what would make you think he's going to change back to the way he was swinging the bat previously?

Acuña isn't going to be a batting average or HR leader. But he was hitting worse than his career norms. It is possible that the changes took, and he's now a slightly different hitter than he used to be. Or he's the same hitter he used to be, he's just pulling out of the slump he's been in for 2 months.

Jeff Agrest covered the game for the Sun-Times, he just got back with me and said he asked Venable about playing Acuna at short instead of Montgomery (he moved him there in the 10th inning).

According to Jeff, Venable told him he feels Acuna and Montgomery are about the same defensively.

Make of that what you will.

14 minutes ago, Colome's Hat said:

Can I remind people this is his second season as a manager? Hes learning on the job.

And I'm not sure what previous years' bullpens have to do with Venable's bullpen usage this year.

1 hour ago, vilehoopster said:

Potentially their worse series of the year. This is a terrible series to get swept. Terrible just terrible to choke two wins away, and the Sox did choke them away.

Detroit was on the verge of giving up the season and breaking down their team, trading off assets. Now they’re gonna be fired up and make a charge for the division.

If the Sox could have won 2 out of 3 (yesterday and today), Detroit would have been done. Now they’re gonna be in the hunt in September.

Not that I wanted the Sox to lose this series, but it honestly is in their best interests in the long term if the Tigers convince themselves they can compete and don’t trade Skubal. Don’t want them to reload their system.