CaliSoxFanViaSWside

Oh no you mentioned the S word. The Sox are doomed ! ?

If I'm not mistaken Colas has taken a walk in 3 straight games. Maybe he's making progress. That's what I've been waiting to see. He can hit with his eyes closed in AAA but he has to take more pitches, be more selective and take his walks.

I tend to agree. The likely scenario is that it doesn't matter. However if you truly want to climb out of the big hole you dug yourself into then you must explore every option that could work to your advantage. It's not smart to keep giving TA the most AB's on the team. More about that later. I was also thinking Yoan was a good guy to replace TA at the top but Yoan is actually swinging the bat and not looking at as many pitches. I wouldn't want him to start looking at more pitches just because he's leading off now. Unfortunately his BB% is at a career low 3%. He cannot seem to find a fine line between being a good hitter while still getting the 8%+ BB% However, Benintendi's BB% is 7.9 and he's a positive base runner while Yoan is not. Yoan's slugging is also higher but he hasn't done well with RISP but he has done very well leading off an inning and hitting when there is 1 out. So I actually like the order Benintendi 1, Yoan 2 , but only against a RHP. We're not even sure yet if Yoan can bat RH. I don't think he has hit RH yet since he came back . Benintendi is also fine against a LHP but then I'd put Burger 2nd. AFter that just mix and match depending on the handedness of the pitchers so do what you can to get Moncada, Sheets,Grandal in there against RHP. Burger is now hitting RHP pretty well. However he's been hot at home but not on the road. He's also killing it while playing DH but not when he plays the field ( a very respectable .831 OPS but BA and OBP way down). So just keep Burger at DH all the time and perhaps he will start hitting better on the road. Of course this will present a problem when Eloy gets back. Unfortunately we have to rely on a small sample size for most of this. In the last 6 games since he got off the IL he's hit .500 which coincides with being at home and not playing 3rd base except the 1 game Moncada was out of the lineup because a LHP was on the mound May 18th against Logan Allen. That was the worse game Burger has had in the 6 games (1for4) and Grifol batted him 4th. While the sample size is very small as to not draw too many conclusions the recent data shows that perhaps when you move Burger into the middle of the lineup make sure he's at home and playing DH. I mean eventually we'll have to see if he can hit on the road as the DH. But in those 6 game his OPS is right around 1.300 with 1 double, 1 triple and 3 HR. A new manager comes in and says he supports sabremetrics and data analysis but you then have to start thinking small sample sizes do make a difference because of health road vs home statistics , RH or LH pitcher and ride hot streaks. I wouldn't break it down much more than that and get into stuff about which position in the lineup you hit best at. Lineups should be constantly changing based on a few key factors and sticking guys into permanent lineup spots is just plain stubbornness . I'd consider all of this temporary until TA shows he's healthy and can hit some fly balls. His sprint speed is 40% and that's just not TA . He's babying his leg. It's senseless to continue to lead him off not just from a statistical standpoint but also from a health standpoint. His Average Launch Angle is -0.1 . That is not a typo. You can no longer afford to give guys the benefit of the doubt when they aren't producing just because of his name. You have to take advantage of everything you can do for better offensive production. If you don't you get what you deserve to keep losing.

I thought they had back to back series wins like you said earlier but I thought "hey these are professionals" I'll go with what they said over what I thought.

I'm just going by what the post game show said so if it's wrong blame them !

1st back to back series wins. 11-8 over their last 19 (.579 win percent)

It's there.

Gio pitches well enough. Burger with a big double with the bases loaded to drive in 3 . Sox now 1 game over .500 against the Central. Lopez gets the Sox out of a big jam. Kelly continues to look great and Graveman finishes it off with a perfect 9th.

You and Mr. Pick to Click are probably the only 2 that made a pick

Woo ! The Joker is smokin'.

TA not good. That pitch was center cut. GB rate so high.

Lopey ! Sox dodge another bullet.

And Vaughn was hitting .417 with RISP before that K.

Big knock by Burger !

whew ! Damage averted.

This game has some good vibes so far. Real good defense.

Nice 1st inning for the Sox.

I don't think it decreases dramatically. It depends on how well they pitch. There's a finite number of prospects teams will give up in a trade. Obviously, it becomes less with each passing year , however teams will still pay a premium for top of rotation guys for a chance to win a World Series. There's still plenty of time left in this season for both Kopech and Cease to right their respective ships IF you wanted to get good value this coming off season. But I suspect the Sox will hold onto them given their dearth of starting pitching with Gio and likely Lynn gone at the trade deadline. I know a lot of people can't resist speculating about trades and player's values but for the moment we are still talking about Hahn doing the trading and the Sox scouting department evaluating players to trade for. I couldn't convince a whole lot of people here that Outman was worth trading for because he was unranked but so far ( and I DO stress so far) , he actually would've been worth trading for. MLB is full of stars who never looked like they were worth much or their trade value took a big hit at some point. But it's imperative , if the season is a lost cause by the 2023, deadline to get as much as you can for Gio. It would make things easier if the Twins ran away with the division. The worst possible scenario is the Sox actually getting back into the race at least as far as Gio or Grandal is concerned. Conversely getting back into the race would also mean a lot of the players are doing much better and increasing their worth. I certainly wouldn't be upset with losing Gio, Grandal , Graveman and Kelly in trades if at the same time TA, Benintendi, Robert, Vaughn, Eloy, Clevinger, Cease, Lopez, Kopech, Moncada, Colas, Sosa, Crochet and Hendriks all picked up their games.

For those who didn't click on it : Michael Kopech is the first pitcher in baseball history to finish a game with 8.0 IP & 10+ SO while facing the mimimum number of batters (24). Hmm don't know why the tweet showed up when I used your link when I didn't see it in your post. Anyway ,nice but kind of useless. That's just modern baseball. The other pitchers, however many there were, who went 8 innings and K'd10+ facing the minimum, probably went out there for the 9th.

I don't think anyone can expect very many long term contracts that reach into a player's mid to late 30's to produce high value. You always pay for past performance. I know it's bad that the Sox can never sign great players to long term contracts but there will be many more players added to that list if they get injured and PROJECTED value becomes even more worthless. Just look at all the great or once great players ahead of Benintendi on that list. It's the price you pay for excellence. Dealing with middling FA increases the odds of a bad contract but it also limits your losses. Regretting the signings of Grandal,Keuchel or Benintendi with projected results is folly. Grandal is 65th on that list and he only has a few more months to go on his contract so most of the results are in. Basically it was a pretty good contract. Where's Moncada ? He's 66th right behind Grandal .All we hear around here is that his contract sucks. Maybe he was projected to be better because of 2019 and they are slow to bring his projections down. You shouldn't be putting any faith into lists like this or using them as a basis of fact. They might give you some idea of bad contracts like Miggy's being near the end but the fluctuations on the end results are just too unpredictable because of future injuries and using projections. Plus I have no idea how they are figuring out the 2020 short season. Did players contracts get prorated from the original contract and if so did Trade Values figure that in or just take the total value of the contract when it was signed ? WAR values were understandably lower because of the 60 game schedule in 2020 but what the players were paid, if prorated, then should be reflected with an adjusted total contract and not the original contract.

Kopech isnt a FA until 2026 so there is plenty of time for him to become a much better starting pitcher and by turning him into a relief pitcher you ax all of his potential as a starting pitcher and most of his value. There was really no reason to currently talk about him becoming a reliever. Great FA starting pitchers get big money that the Sox never attempt outside of Wheeler. Hendriks signed with the Sox so I'm sure that will drive home the point. He could be worth a lot more than he is now so why destroy that by putting him in the pen ? They do need starting pitching and better ROI when trading and there aren't many guys left on the Sox who will command a lot in a trade.

I don't see how contract value can be determined until the contract is up and you have the results the player posted during that contract. They say they keep that list updated so Benintendi being 17th in the 1st 2 months of a 5 year contract doesn't seem that bad. It might be accurate currently if it's a list of guys still playing or not officially retired like Strasburg because of injury but seems very unfair to players who just started playing under their current contract.

But some times garbage can be worth something. It this case it was worth a win.

I often think people on this board beside a few forget that. I mean I understand peoples frustration with fire him ,DFA him, send him down, trade him for various FO people and players , but there was an awful lot of Kopech talk about making him a relief pitcher and it just mystified me. The kid is still an infant starting pitcher and pitched a lot of really really good games last year before his injury. You just don't come back from a long layoff all that confident in the knee or the ability to pick up where you once were that easily especially when it was the 1st extended good starting pitching of your career in the majors. After all , baseball is a game we know requires a vast amount of patience with young players who have missed a LOT of time. Plus it's not like the Sox have a plethora of starting pitching. Reliever talk was so weird. Long way to go before I'd go there.

Guess I was beat to the punch. That don't happen often. Usually it's like ,so what this sucky team won, and no one wants to bother making the Winners thread ?