Our cleanup guy with a line drive double.

Gore doesn't have it either. Make him get it over.

Gameday: Chase Meidroth is on a tear, slashing .327/.386/.577 with 3 home runs over his last 57 plate appearances

one of his best swings as a RHB. Good job kid.

Great job Braden. He has been doing really well going the other way

8 hours ago, BigHurt3515 said:

We need Burke to come back to form tonight and let's win the series.

It may be a struggle against lefty pitcher, with Acuna, Rogers, and Doyle in the lineup. But we have our best pitcher on the mound to counteract.

B Mont.. there we go!!

they gave him an error? that's tough. that's a double.

This home plate umpire is the utmost professional.

It’s also slick that as some of our heavy hitters are scuffling, other guys seem to be picking up some slack and showing out in taking a leap in their development at the dish.

Gotta get Burke to settle in the zone quickly.

Braden has been going oppo lately it appears. Wonder if these are conscious adjustments he's made and he's progressing as a hitter.

Braden has been swinging it and between him and Peters that's super helpful given the woes of Colson and Mune.

Just catching up and after reading posts from that top of 2nd, I was thinking we’re down 2 or 3 😂

36 minutes ago, Autumn Dreamin said:

Statistically the Sox and Rangers were BOTH lucky yesterday, in that both teams made a lot of contact and got a bit more out of that contact than expected.

The expected outcome of all the Sox BIP yesterday was 18.9 total bases, and they ended up with 21. A little lucky, but a .325 xBA producing 14 hits isn't wild.

The gap between expected and actual total bases for TEX was actually larger (and their .211 xBA producing 11 hits was the "luckier" result) so when you simulate that game repeatedly with the same contact, Sox still win more often than not.

On the other hand, the Guards "should" have won yesterday's game only 25% of the time:

https://x.com/mlb_simulator/status/2092480382037831705

Putting the ball in play a lot produces a pretty wide band of outcomes, which is some of the idea behind "creating your own luck." If you make garbage contact 10 times, odds are that a couple will fall eventually, sometimes in the right order to score on.

Guards also try to deny contact to the other team (which the Angels made very easy 🙄). LA put 7 fewer balls in play last night, which increases the impact of any one defensive play made by the Guardians. "Robbing" 1 in 23 chances is a bigger swing than robbing 1 in 30, and getting 30 BIP yourself creates more chances that one will fall. That's why they feel so "lucky".

But it's also a pretty limited approach. It can win you close games against other poor offenses (which is admittedly a big deal in this division), but you can't just count on putting 30+ balls in play and having 10 fall every game (which is why they are bottom 3 in runs/game). If they give up more/harder contact, they struggle to keep up and they'll get shutout ~10% of the time almost by default.

That approach worked for the 2014-15 Royals because of contact ability (outside of Mous Hosmer Gordon Cain), run manufacturing late innings with Dyson/Gore and that historic bullpen.

Good job Doyle!

Yes... f***!

Looked safe. Should have challenged.

Let’s go!!!

1 minute ago, Bad Hombre said:

Just catching up and after reading posts from that top of 2nd, I was thinking we’re down 2 or 3 😂

Did you know that Burke’s pitch count was elevated lol?

Nice job Doyle! Don’t like running into an out though

Well nice to see Doyle get some hits the last two games

Dumb play by Doyle when we are killing Gore. And no outs

Doyle giveth Doyle Taketh away

Doyle doomers in shambles this series.

Doyle > Rogers > Acuna in a pretty much must win game

Can't run into outs like that. It was too risky.