The Kids Can Play

You got that right! LOL! As Rick Hahn and his outstanding FO analyzed the draft board in June of 2017, the Sox braintrust decided with the their #2 pick and 49th overall pick to select a first baseball in Gavin Sheets from Wake Forest. It made a lot sense since we already had Jose Abreu on the roster who hit for 33 HR's 43 doubles, 102 RBI's with a .304 BA in 2017. Of course this was after Jose coming off 2016 with 34 doubles, 25 HR's, 100 RBI's and .293 BA. Heaven forbid with that high #2 pick if Hahn and the FO didn't need a different positional player or maybe even a pitcher.

Yes he is bad and such a smart Grifol move to start him over Burger.

Simple! He is not a good hitter and is completely overrated. Due to the fact is a former wasted second round pick, Sheets will be extended a longer leash before the Sox would ever consider letting him go, especially from our inept front office who drafted him and would once again have to admit their failures in drafting and developing the prospects they evaluate as good and then and draft and not develop. Btw, we bitched about our loser hitting coach Menechino last year. Where in the hell is our new guy Castro on working with Sheets and improving his batting approach?

Horrible lineup if you are trying to win the series! Why is Sheets in right? He sucks there. Plus he has been hitting for zero power with zero home runs or extra base hits. Yes Burger is not that great at third, but Hanser Alberto sucks too. He has already made two costly errors. Why not Colas or Burger at DH? Why Grandal? I have serious questions to if Pedro knows how to put the best lineup together, or if he is even will be a good major league manager. This is all the fault of the players on this team who can't stay healthy like Eloy and Moncada who force this ridiculous weaker lineup.

I get that he was made at the pitcher, but if the ump would have granted the time-out none of this would have happened. I'm not so sure that many pitchers in baseball would have stepped off and not thrown the pitch. Regardless of what TA was mad at, the point of my comment you seemed to have missed, was TA is extremely sensitive lately and all I was doing was just agreeing with the poster.

Yes and also "Ask me after the parade!"

Agreed! I love reading about old Sox history, even if it was before my time.

He really has become way too ultra sensitive lately. Besides this episode, TA totally over reacted to the ump not granting him a time-out a few games ago. Plus before the season started, he complained of how the media and fans were being too critical of him and the other Sox players last year. This is clearly the wrong guy to be our "Face Of The "Franchise."

Ok my bad!

Ok my bad.

You know another aspect of the this BS extra innings rule is if the fact when the runner on second scores to win the game, even it's it not by an error, the scoring run is an earned run charged to that pitcher. The pitcher didn't even put the runner on. Why should he take a loss and receive an earned run to his record? In a normal 9 inning game if a reliever comes in with a man on second he inherited, and allows the winning run in the bottom of the 9th, he does not receive the credit for the earned run. To your point I do agree walking the first batter makes sense. Of course it is risky for the Sox vs the good fielding teams because our infield defense right now sucks!

You are absolutely right good organization would have fired Hahn by now. Unfortunately we are not a good or smart organization, because sadly, we are owned by the worst, if not one of the worst owners in baseball who simply has checked out mentally and could give a s%*# about winning. Its too bad our apathetic owner doesn't understand how to not only terminate his losing front office, but then as a result of firing this losing front office, be smart enough to go out and find a successful FO person from another winning organization and culture. Look what the Dodgers did several years ago when they went out and hired the GM Andrew Friedman from the winning Tampa Bay Rays organization and promote him to president of the Dodgers. Friedman has not only made the Dodgers one the best teams in baseball, but also has kept their farm system strong (ranked #2) as one of the best, besides spending the proper free agent money. Now back to the Tampa Bay Rays. Oh yeah, they still keep winning every year with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. Once again they are off to a good start at 11-0! Keep in mind they are doing this with the #28 payroll at $74,537,681 million with the #6 ranked farm system. Of course our stud visionary GM Rick Hahn has the 11th highest payroll at $183,189,626 million with the 26th ranked farm system. Until the Reinsdorf family is completely gone and some new owner comes in who has the money and passion to seriously want to win, this team will continue be irrelevant and and a non-playoff organization. Unfortunately this will never happen until either Reinsdorf passes away or the fans once and for all boycott the home games and refuse to go to games.

Wtg Rick Hahn. What a stud GM! I'm thinking he might be up for executive of the year going from 28th to 26th.

There is no one in any of the four Sox minor league teams to call up that are ready or productive at all levels. Again thanks Rick Hahn for a great job of not only building a World Series contender as arrogantly promised from the start of the rebuild, but also keeping a keen eye on the minors and developing a strong farm system. Great job Rick, as the latest rankings for MLB farm systems has the Sox at #26.

I couldn't agree more. I've mentioned this numerous times at nauseum here...whether we want to call it the baseball gods, bad karma, horrible owner, horrible front office, horrible scouting and development of players, especially pitchers, the Sox organization will always be in the baseball hell of mediocrity, as long as POS Reinsdorf is the owner of the Sox.

Too early? How about now after his pathetic 2 errors yesterday? Stat line thru yesterday: .167/.200/.190/.390 All four stat lines are the worst on the team. It's one thing when he couldn't hit, but now he is a liability in the field. We can find others in the minors to come up and have these horrific stat lines and errors. Keep in mind besides his contract option, the A's actually let him go because his hitting production was bad and going downhill quickly. Last year when he hit .271 in 43 games for the Sox, we are now finding out that was probably an aberration. Prior to his last season with the A's before being released, his prior 3 consecutive years were the worst in his 14 years at the time of release. He had a BA of .194, .243, .237 for a 3 year average of .236 and only averaging 318 AB's a year. Prior to those three declining years, when he was actually a decent player, during the prior 11 years he was hitting .275 and averaging 569 AB's per year.

Andrus is the new Luery who can't even hit his weight at .158! I'm really questioning Grifol so far on his choice of players to start each game. I don't know how much longer before the Sox FO ends this Andrus experiment that has gone terribly wrong and DFA him.

I agree with you and let's hope Lynn and Giolito can make huge turnaround pitching performances like Kopech just did.

Let's go Cease, give us another stud like outing. Can the bats please wake up and get back to scoring a ton of runs. That shutout with the number of weak groundballs and lazy flyouts was embarrassing.

Indeed it is, as the Twins are 21st in runs scored, 22nd BA, 23rd OBP%, 25th SLG% and 26th OPS%, but their pitching is #2 in ERA in baseball at 2.48.

I always feel bad for guys in sports that get horrific injuries when they are doing the right thing. I always feel bad when the accident is just damn bad luck. If Cruz made the proper slide, I would be totally taking a different stance and feeling completely bad for the dude. However regardless of his size and athleticism, he made a stupid play and unfortunately for him, he is now paying a severe price for it. Btw, if this was reversed and Cruz came away injury free and the victim was Seby who incurred broken ankle or perhaps even worse a torn ACL, then everyone here would be calling this dude out as a dirty player.

It is clearly unfortunate and I understand fully why Pirate fans are upset. The fact still remains though, Cruz made a stupid decision. It's that simple! It's crazy Pirate fans or anyone are trying make him this poor martyr. Is this any different than the dumb decision that Eloy made at the end of spring training in 2021 when he went up to attempt to catch a ball that was clearly going to be a home run in a meaningless game and tore his shoulder? When that happened the Sox fans and all SoxTalk posters felt bad for Eloy, but on the other hand, we were all pissed at Eloy for being so stupid. s%*# happens...especially when you attempt dumb s%*# things!

That possibly could be the case, but that is only because he initially attempted to run over Seby. Then at the last second, because of his dumb decision, he realized, oh what a dumb move I just put myself in.

Actually he isn't accident prone . The fact is he is a young, immature and careless 24 year old. That slide was reckless and if he would have done a proper slide, probably wouldn't have broken his ankle. Furthermore this is the same person back in Sept, 2020 who hit a motorcycle and killed three people as you mentioned. Yes he was found not guilty with a fine and probation stipulations, but it was reported by various sources he was under the influence of alcohol while driving. Additionally, Cruz was out at 1am during this crash, which at that time of peak Covid 19, was a curfew violation in this Dominican Republic town. The DR town had instituted a mandatory curfew law of not being out after midnight, in order to curb the Covid 19 crisis.