Chicago White Sox

Ramos getting the start at 2B tonight which is also nice. Weaver with his 5th bomb of the season. Polanco hit one as well, didn’t realize he was even on the roster.

Lambert going to dominate tonight.

Probably just breaking him in...either way great news to see him at a full season affiliate.

Abreu, Yermin, Grandal, & Vaughn all in a row, so much for breaking up the slow guys...lol.

Oh wow I did not know that...thanks!

Yup, instead he’s going to pout about how mean Twitter is for calling him out for being a fraud.

Agreed

No one should be surprised by it. My point is Eloy gets hurt all the time as well, so when combined with Eaton’s own injury history you’re looking at quite a bit of playing time likely opening up at some point in the corners. I just feel like given those considerations along with leveraging a rookie DH, we should had a better insurance plan than what we have now.

He rumored to part of the SoxFest-timed Joc Pederson deal along with Bummer & Laz Ravera IIRC.

Does anyone know the extent of Bryce Bush’s injury? What a bummer it is that he continues to miss so much development time.

And that’s fine if they didn’t want to wait, but ultimately no one should be surprised when Eaton misses a ton of games or ends up being inefficient as the season wears down. His body simply can’t endure a full season and remain productive. Honestly, it’s just frustrating we’ve had this massive hole in RF for two straight years and now will have to trade away prospects to fill it.

Mods - Can you please change the title to “Sox @ Astros”?

Alright boys, the Sox are coming off a tough loss last night and are now at risk of losing their third straight game for just the second time all season. The momentum is in the Astros’ favor right now, but we have our stopper on the mound tonight. Lance Lynn, one of the most bad ass players to ever baseball, enters today with an AL leading 1.51 ERA, an 88th percentile xwOBA, and 1.9 fWAR on the season (19th overall | 6th in AL). All those numbers were even better prior to a shit start against the Rays earlier this week. Point is Lance has been damn good this year behind his fastball heavy arsenal and that’s not going to change tonight. Sure, you could point out that the Astros are one of the better teams against 4-seamers & cutters or that Altuve, Brantley, & Alvarez have all roughed up Lynn in the past. None of that matters right now as Lynn can still taste the stink from Monday’s loss and will be even more amped up than usual. I’m confident he gets the job done tonight as the true ace of the staff. For the Astros will be lefty Framber Valdez, who will be making his 5th start of the season due to a spring training injury. Valdez has pitched very well in his first four starts, putting up a 1.41 ERA, 3.48 FIP, & 85th percentile xwOBA. Framber’s arsenal is built around a sinker that he uses to induce ground balls at an elite rate (64% over his career). He supplements that with an excellent curveball (93% percentile spin rate | 47% whiff rate), a changeup used to keep RH hitters off balanced, and the occasion 4 seamer. His weapon is no doubt the curve, but surprisingly we are one of the better teams in baseball against curveballs. We also remain the best team in baseball against LHP, although our dominance has started to trend in the wrong direction as of late. Overall, I really like our odds tonight. In terms of the lineup, the only person who has really faced Valdez is Goodwin and he’s been very bad (SSS). That’s perfect as we should be rocking an OF of Vaughn in LF (if available), Engel in CF, & Leury in RF. Given Valdez’s ground-ball tendencies, I would try to space out the four slow guys by batting Grandal 2nd, Jose 4th, Vaughn 6th, & Mercedes 8th, but I don’t anticipate happening. Regardless, we need to take advantage of our opportunities tonight as Valdez doesn’t walk a lot of guys or give a lot of HRs. We can’t leave 11 guys on base again and can’t have our managers throwing away outs early in the game. If we can avoid those two pitfalls, then I think we’re going to win this one. Let’s fucking go!

Hate being that guy, but it’s time bump this thread and realize what a disaster the Adam Eaton signing was. A ton of great takes in this thread, with so many people knowing from the get go this wasn’t likely going to work out for us. I’ll give the Sox credit for their other offseason moves, which have seemingly worked out well, but the inability to address RF over the past several seasons is a major failure for Hahn. Meanwhile, Joc Pederson has a wRC+ of 130 against RHP, which is not too far off his 2018 & 2019 production. We wouldn’t need to trade from a weak farm system to solve the RF problem had we just waited him out. The team would also be in much better shape against RHP with Joc’s left-handed power bat. Pederson was always the perfect fit for a team looking to fill a key hole the cheap and we somehow botched. Finally, the real reason I’m bumping my post is because of that last sentence and it’s an important lesson learned going forward. We can’t field a roster filled with guys who routinely spend time on the DL and not have quality depth. @fathom and myself, amongst others, called it out immediately that relying on Eloy & Eaton to be healthy over a full season was very risky and would likely lead to stretches of overplaying bad backups without a quality depth addition. And while Engel is a very nice 4th OF, he’s not a good everyday corner OF when used for extended stretches of time. I get it’s easy to say “most teams don’t have great depth”, but if we were going to roll the dice on Eaton in RF plus a rookie at DH, we should have invested in another bat that could have been part of the mix at both spots. It’s really that simple and I think both Hahn & Jerry deserve some blame for not mitigating that risk.

That’s why you target rentals.

Agreed. I’d still target rentals to minimize the prospect cost, but we’re past the point of worrying too much about giving some B & C tier prospects.

I’d still rather not move those guys if possible, but I agree we can’t let one or two of those prospects hold us back from filling a major league need during our window.

Fully agree. Escobar isn’t a perfect player, but he’s the best option for 2B that won’t be overly costly. Adding some power to the bottom of the lineup will help us immensely.

This is a great team when healthy no doubt, but we can’t let beating up on the Tigers convince us the offense is stronger than it is. Reinforcements will be needed, at least for the playoffs.

Yeah, there are very few prospects I’d be worried about moving.

That’s the dude we need!

Even if they can, something else could go wrong. We don’t need stars in 2B or RF, but we definitely need upgrades.

But I do have faith in La Russa forcing the front office to make a couple win now moves.

They can’t just bank on Eloy & Robert to fix all their problems either. We need a RF & 2B IMO.

Fuck