Greg Hibbard

A few reasons for optimism: 1) Jose's K rate is better than his career rate, and so is his walk rate. This means he's actually seeing the ball well still. 2) Jose's BABIP is absurdly low. 3) Even though his GB% is way up, his hard hit rate is way above career norms. This all suggests to me that there may be nothing fundamentally wrong with Jose except that he's hitting hard grounders in the range of the fielders against him, at what appears to be a very unlucky clip over a relatively small sample size.

Gutsy win. Shows that the team has potential if it can start to put things together. They’re still like 9-5 in May

HELL yeah

LFG Liam

Yoan back to normal?!? uh it’s been what, 4 games since he’s been back? Yoan Moncada will not hit a home run every night.

Nothing out of your analysis indicates that you think that any players will perform way above where they have been to date - which even if they aren’t .800 OPS up and down the lineup, they aren’t all this bad. You really can’t believe twe will continue to get sub .632 OPSes out of seven different players covering about 5 positions in the lineup over their next 550+ PAs. I’m sorry, but that’s not sustainable no matter whether these players are done or just cold. They will get hot or we will make changes. We will get more WAR out of these lineup positions.

I don’t understand people thinking this is potentially a third place team. Even if severely underperform, this team will be in it until the end because nobody else in the Central is very good. 83 games might win this division if the Sox play poorly. Are we equipped to win in the postseason? No. We should still easily win our division if we get fully healthy.

I get being frustrated by the injuries, but im not going to write him off a player with only 1000 mlb PAs. See Yoan Moncada’s first 1000 PAs….

But to what extent is 33 games a large enough sample size to be an accurate predictor of the rest of the season? More specifically to the Braves, they were -22 through their 16-17 start last year. I know what the response is to all these Braves comparisons, but if run differential is supposed to be indicative of future playoff success…in that case it wasn’t.

Yes, I agree it’s hard to be optimistic. But rather than throw in the towel and say “well, it’s a doomed season” I suppose I would counter with 1) TLR won 94 games as a manager last season, and 2) Hahn acquired who everyone in baseball thought were good acquisitions in Kimbrel and Hernandez. As we all know, he has been dead right about some things (Giolito, Robert, Moncada, Anderson) and dead wrong about some others. I think identifying what pieces we need is the key. I guess what I would say is I would much rather identify four black holes in late May than have mediocre to garbage players get artificially hot and then come back to earth when we need them most (cough 2000 cough) We just need guys who are NOT black holes in the lineup. I actually am optimistic that if we manage Lynn’s workload he’ll hopefully be ok. Kopech and Cease honestly look mostly great (not always - like every pitcher). I’m not concerned that the rotation and bullpen wont round into form - I’m skeptical of four players in our lineup and I think that’s much easier to fix.

The jury is just way out on this, and everyone is in a huge rush to call this season one way or another - it’s been a bit exhausting. These first six weeks have been an extended spring training because of the lockout. A bunch of teams are playing inconsistently all over both leagues. Yes, some red hot teams, and some nice starts from teams you expected to be there. Baseball is still a marathon and we are 20% done. We just got a huge piece back in Yoan that we literally didn’t have for the first 5 weeks and the dividends paid off in that Saturday win vs the Yanks. Now we have Vaughn back. Next we get Eloy and Lance back. We lost today, yes. We are still going to lose 70-75 games this year no matter what, even if things go as right as possible moving forward. Are we going to be some worldbeating team even at full strength, as-is? No. I don’t think anyone even thought that going into day one - I think everyone was rightfully concerned they didn’t add more in the off-season and that we knew this team had flaws. From my perspective, given the lockout and the state of the offseason market, i always thought the front offices job was going to be - stay as healthy as possible, and identify needs at the deadline - and open the pocketbook and go for it. It seems to me that Pollock, Engel, McGuire and Leury may not be viable major league assets moving forward. Abreu may be done and we need to evaluate that in real time. We need to add veteran journeyman players from sellers. I don’t think that will be hard if we make a financial commitment to do so and are willing to part with certain assets.

Will be at the game tonight, sec 139. If you see a dude in a black shirt with jellyfish on it come say hi. LFG!

Remember that time last night people said some stuff Yeah I don’t either - cuz it was just one game hell yeah

2005 was not always fun on this board, in or out of gamethreads, particularly in mid September.

Ok, “not at all” isn’t accurate. Certainly not more than anyone else who made errors or our relievers who game up all those runs.

No, his defense has not “essentially” cost two wins. Not even close. Last night his defense did not cost us that win more than Gavin Sheets’ error cost us, or Moncada’s. So many different individual events happened that cost us *that win*. Why single out TA here, and hang it only on him? Why not our illustrious relief pitching that threw 8 RBIs to Naylor? Why is it him who we hang the loss on and not those guys? I’m so sick of the meatball mentality that we hang a loss on “one guy” or another. It’s myopic and inaccurately describes the complexity of this entire game. There were several things that happened last night that cost us that win. Just like there are several things that happened to cause all losses we have incurred. You’re also saying that Tim’s offensive WAR is below as described metrically - that it is worth 1 win when all available metrics describe it as worth more than 1 win (baseball reference has it as 1.4), but you’re saying that his defensive WAR at -0.3 is inaccurately calculated - that it is actually -2.0 at least. We have these metrics for a reason and they have been modified frequently. Why do you think your armchair analysis is more accurate? Can Tim play better? Absolutely. Do I wish he didn’t make those errors? Yes. I don’t hang that loss last night on Tim Anderson. Not at all. Sorry.

I disagree completely. There are a ton of glaring black holes all over this lineup that are currently producing at a triple A level, which is what is making this team dysfunctional at a major league level. That is what is totally unacceptable. Whether it’s a few folks having cold streaks or just being bad - I don’t know. However, if those pieces are fixed, this is a much better team. It’s not some intangible thing - the data says to date we are playing bad baseball and not executing.

No, I’m sorry, he doesn’t need to get better. Tim Anderson is just fine - in fact he is contributing more than enough. Why are you singling out TA when he is producing far more than, say, Leury Garcia, Gavin Sheets, AJ Pollock, Reese McGuire, Josh Harrison - who need to produce like they aren’t AAAA players. Even established veterans are struggling. Why single out Tim when he is producing at an all star level despite his errors?? How about we instead hold the other players to a major league standard. Reese McGuire has a -0.3 WAR. Yasmani has a -0.2. 7 players have a negative WAR on this team. It’s unreal.

Ok. What other shortstop available to the White Sox is going to put up 1.1 WAR over the next 24 games played?

Tim’s overall performance as a player is not even close to being anywhere near a problem. As bad as he had been defensively this season, he’s one of the best offensive shortstops in the game. Put up or shut up? Dude has a 161 OPS+ this season. How is that not putting up? I get not liking the errors and the way he performed last night, but Tim Anderson - the entire package as a player - is not a problem on this team.

I might hate AJ Pollock as much as I hate Cody Asche and that’s really saying something.

That Pollock groundout to the pitcher looked like progress. Pretty soon he’ll be grounding out to shortstop like a real major leaguer

The bottom of this lineup makes Leury Garcia seem like Frank Thomas

Is there some reason why a wrist contusion like this would take months to heal?

Let’s score 8 runs in the bottom half. Screw Cleveland.