illinoisredsox

As I posted yesterday, when you play a team is almost as important as who you play. Bad teams, even White Sox/Rockies level bad, have good weeks here and there over the season. Good teams have bad weeks. Catch any team when they are in one of these extremes … The Pirates have won 9 out of 12; they are in a good stretch right now. It’ll end soon, but that doesn’t matter today.

Yeah, Fred seems to have forgotten or more likely never knew Breslow was around 11th person they contacted about the job; most if not all of the earlier candidates declined to even interview.

Was ERod really the Sox #5 in 2018? Guys like Pomeranz, Brian Johnson and Hector Velazquez combined for 34 or so starts and Eduardo was certainly better than those guys. ERod went down with some injury in mid July (was that the ankle after which he never covered first again?) which I think influenced Dombrowski to get Eovaldi. He was definitely #5 when he came back in September and had a pretty bad month. Arroyo was definitely #5 in 2004.

A little premature on the best top 4 starters talk. We have no idea what we have in Tolle except potential. Let’s see what happens once teams get a book on him. Agree totally with your take on the #5 starter. By definition, a #5 is not a great pitcher. You hope they can keep you in the game most of the time and your offense can score enough to win.

It’s not always who you play but when you play them. The best teams will have bad weeks. The worst teams will have good weeks. Even the Rockies and White Sox will have a couple good weeks over the course of a 6 month season. The Pirates are way better than those teams. Catch any team at the wrong or right time and anything can happen. The Sox have caught Pittsburgh at a bad time (from a Sox viewpoint).

Or realize that other teams have major league players too, even poor teams. The Pirates have been playing well the last couple weeks. I think they came in having won 7 of their last 10. They aren’t a real good team, but they aren’t close to White Sox/Rockies level.

Were you actually watching? He was losing effectiveness in the 6th. One could argue whether he should have come out for the 6th, but he was done when Cora pulled him. And since he hadn’t even come close to 100 pitches in the minors, why would you think he could all of a sudden do it in the majors. The Sox offense scored one earned run. I said last night the pitching matchup did not favor the them. Skenes is not a just a good pitcher, he’s a great one.

Im guessing Bernardino since he’s mostly a medium leverage guy who has options. Don’t know how the September call up rules apply re. whether he has to stay the normal 15 days or not.

Skenes goes for the Bucs tomorrow; he’s only 8-9, but his ERA is 2.08. The pitching matchup does not favor the Sox no matter who they put on the bump.

Mocking a couple of our more vociferous naysayers. One was never here today; notice how another one disappeared every time the Sox took the lead but showed back up when Crochet (who definitely wasn’t sharp today, it happens) allowed the tying run to score.

Slaten and Refsnyder activated, Moran sent down, Lowe on paternity leave.

Lefty opener will go 3 innings max. Bulk guy is right handed, hence the lefty lineup for one time through the order.

They didn’t show it, but more than likely he was going hard to first and didn’t initially see what had happened on the play, probably overrunning the base. He then saw the catcher running back to the backstop and decided to go. Unfortunately, he’s slow as molasses to begin with and whatever’s going on with his knee didn’t improve his speed. I’m thinking it was just bad judgement by a rookie. No way to know what the first base coach was telling him.

They’ve had a pretty good record since the end of May. I think they are 5-6 games over .500 since then. Their awful start sunk them.

Bradish had serious stuff tonight. That slider changeup combo was downright nasty. Literally looked like they dropping a foot or more in the last 2 feet to the plate.

Sox aren’t even at the top of the AL in Ks. In fact, they are 4th. Angels have over 100 more than anyone else, but the Mariners and Tigers are next. Crazy game.

TYPM is really going to complain about how Cora managed a team to 119 wins and the World Series title? There’s a lot that one can criticize Cora for, but that season is not one of them. The Martinez rant is both comical and sad. JD batted 3rd in 73 games in 2018. He slashed .317/.379/.594/.973 with 21 homers and 68 RBIs in those games. When he was forced to hit 4th in 77 games, he was so devastated and his routines so adversely affected that he was only able to manage .344/.425/.663/1.088 with 22 homers and 62 RBIs. Mookie missed 26 games that year. He was out for 15 games in late May/early June with some injury and BR game logs show they took it easy with him for a few days when he came back. So his rest days were in the area of 10 non injury related, or about 2 a month, with some of those in late September after the Sox had clinched everything they could.

I figured as much. You’re going to wimp out.

Rodon looks on tonight. This pitching matchup didn’t favor the Sox, and if Carlos is in a groove, how May pitches probably won’t matter.

Hey Fred, still waiting for that list of at least 14 Sox players who suck. You promised it Thursday night. Where is it?

Campbell never really struggled at any level. Anthony had a couple spots along way where he did, if only for a short time; Salem in 2022 and 2023 were his low points covering about 65 games (he hit around .200 overall, so he had to deal with some failure). I think Campbell was brought along too quickly. Prior to this year, he had played 137 minor league games (roughly 1 minor league season). Even now he's under 200. By contrast, Anthony played over 300. Betts played 299. Mike Trout played 291. Mentally dealing with failure is part of baseball. I'm a huge HS wrestling fan, and I can't even count the number of multi-time state champs I've seen who you think will do well at the major collegiate level and just disappear because they can't adjust to the fact that everyone there was just as dominant in HS as they were. Campbell is struggling on the field for the first time in his life; virtually all players go through this. A bad first year means nothing (look at Mike Schmidt's rookie stats). A good first year means nothing (Joe Charboneau).

That might make it Hicks proof. It might make it Eaton proof.

With Hicks warming, thats a 3rd.big run.

With Hicks warming, that’s another big run.

With Hicks warming, that’s a big run.