Chick Mercedes

His ERA is basically the same as last year. Night and day is not the term to use imo. He’s up. He’s down. He’s medium. Although he maaaay be slightly less mercurial the last month or so, idk. We’ll see at the end of the year. But maintaining consistency will be key. His stuff was lights out last night. As I said earlier, imo he had no business giving up any runs at all with that stuff. I think it’s mental. You think it could be physical. Whatever it is, the presence of “it” makes him not untouchable. We shall see, but he reminds me of Floyd Bannister. Always expect more with that impressive arm but you don’t really get it. So far anyway.

If he was able to maintain his mental focus it would be out of the question. But he generally can’t hold on to that focus for long. So, while you don’t shop that, you also don’t hang up the phone. I wouldn’t trade it for a rental, no.

Leave him be and be glad he finally took defensive improvements seriously enough to fix.

Hoyt without the diverse arsenal and powdered nose

Kuechel being in the rotation would be a weak factor for looking away for sure. Top talent left handed starting pitching doesn’t grow on trees The Sox should make a serious effort at minimum. If it is off the table that is a surprise and a downer especially if the team goes to the Series and he does well.

Rodon is the best pitcher on the team save for Kopech probably. Would not let Kuechel preclude keeping Rodon. Kuechel is on the downslope

The short term nature of this deal still leaves room for Rodon imo.

Delete

Yay! 38 million

Stoney was saying he didn’t pitch, but he was there, and that has some measurable fatigue factor to it that he can take some extra time.

Hard to say for sure how long Kopech could go, but me personally, I don’t have a problem with running him out there. Bet he would be fine. Damn sight more comfortable with that than Cease with the thought bubbles over his head under the bright TV lights.

Fair enough. Just saying, Kopech starts before Cease does.

I said from the beginning that there was no way in hell Sheets should ever play over Eloy. Not one at bat.

I watched the game until after Cease unraveled and lost focus. He had no business giving up any runs tonight with the stuff he had. He should be out of the playoffs rotation. Kopech in. Playoffs is all about focus and mental toughness.

Perhaps the Sox owe his agent a solid.

Montgomery divided his time among 3 sports. He’s probably mostly self taught to this point just going on natural talent.

Well Kopech seems to have already filled the right handed relief deficit. Unless he is transitioning to starter. Quite honestly, I prefer Kopech starting games postseason than 1 or 2 guys currently in the rotation.

Almost sounds as if he is Marcus Semien. Hope so.

Well that requires a bit of Rodrigues and Ramos education, help a brother out. I would expect a guy that is bandied about as a number one organizational prospect to bring a lot of tools and game to the table. What are we talking about here? I

Its an innocent uninformed inquiry. Relax Kemosabe

The Sox are built like a train to last. We were all pretty hopeful on a theoretical basis based on prospects etc, but you never know. This fanbase was pretty conditioned to be paranoid about anything working out because we aren’t used to nice things and have a lot of baggage lol. The change is probably a combination of commitment to winning which was more or less there to an extent already, but with a nod to finally ditching Kenny Williamsism for a more traditional approach all the other kids were doing. The Sox still have pioneered some things along the way, like these early long term contracts.

It would be hard to argue the Sox wouldn’t be in better shape in the present and future if Machado was here though. An unfathomable pile of assets that Hahn would have an easy time flipping forward indefinitely. They can still do that if they want, just not as extreme of an embarrassment of riches as it would have been. But we happy. I don’t think the Sox really put themselves in a situation to compete for him realistically with the deal they offered. The Sox approach was runninh a Jedi mind trick on Machado’s agent…..take this deal, we think it is better, even if it is not the deal you want. So you know, we could not have it our way like Burger King, he was never gonna be ours. Losing out on Manny wasn’t a loss because we were never a good match for his market.

The situation at the time was that the Sox desperately wanted to step up in class as a team, and Machado was a way to get it done. There’s a hella lot to be said for an infield of Machado, Anderson, and Moncada. That was the way to look at it. Replacing Tatis Jr as best as humanly possible is kind of the cleansing move fans were thinking about in the back of their minds imo. It would have been very expensive to wash away the original sin, sure. But the Sox have maintained and progressed somewhat anyway, which is nice. When you look at the money it is going to take to pay some of our guys on their next deals, Machado’s deal would have likely necessitated a trade or two down the line, rolling some assets forward. Depends on how you view it, it is probably not a forgone conclusion either way which is preferable. But adding an extra asset like Machado was always going to be a huge move forward, again simply as an additional asset to the mix rapidly growing the team. Or something that would have made the organization whole again (almost)

I keep seeing (Rodriguez) name mentioned. So what is his claim to talent? Defense? His hitting seems a little above league average, but nothing special. And Ramos. Ramos DHs half the time and hits about league average. I assume league average is about .250.

Cool. Gotta say, I love Shirley’s bulldog approach on these upside highschoolers. The Kanny kids are having problems and he’s like fuck that. I am going back in. If he fails it won’t be because he didn’t dare to take risks. Glad to be a team that is aggressive.