Record Date: 4/17/2022
The Chicago White Sox win their third straight series to start 2022 and currently have the American League’s best record at 6-3.
Rundown
Intro: How have the White Sox pulled off this good start?
3:29: The Vince Velasquez Experience
6:10: White Sox bats are cold
10:25: Jose Abreu’s change in approach
22:08: Golden Cog of the Series – Dylan Cease, and Michael Kopech leading the starting rotation
30:03: Jose Ruiz’s new trick
34:47: Cleveland series preview
40:47: How many wins would be satisfactory on the seven-game road trip to Cleveland and Minnesota?
47:39: P.O. Sox
What happened to wearing the throwback uniform today? And with Eloy wearing red items, why not bring back the early 70s red pinstripes on occasion?
Any chance Oscar Colas makes his major league debut this season? He’s had an outstanding start to his year.
How much longer do you think the bullpen can hold up covering 12-15 outs?
Power rank the AL central so far into the season… I will also be at the game Thursday in Cleveland
64:47: Bonus P.O. Sox (Patreon exclusive content)
How pleasantly surprised should we be by some of the performances from fellas in the Minors?
Tanner Banks will not give up an Earned Run all season. Publish this.
When I finally succumb to my inevitable heart attack, will it be following an Aaron Bummer appearance or a Liam Hendriks appearance?
Maybe continually benching the guy leading your team in OPS early on isn’t a good recipe for offensive success
Yeah, I’m sure platooning-ish Vaughn was the plan, but why not play the hot hand? If a guy is seeing and striking the ball that well during any point of the season, ride that wave.
I also really don’t like—and never have liked—the idea of platooning Vaughn. I saw Dan Z say the same thing in a FG chat recently. Vaughn is your top prospect, 3rd overall pick. He needs to learn how to hit RHP. If he’s not going to hit vs. RHP in Chicago, send him to Charlotte to do it there. (But… he should do it in Chicago…)
As I have said a few times now I have just never seen a team screw a guy over worse than Vaughn. I mean rushed to the big leagues, multiple position changes, inconsistent playing time. Its just insane. Outside of 2 or 3 guys on this roster no one else has his offensive upside and its like they are trying to make him fail.
I dunno, perhaps they have the wrong damn manager? I mean seriously. TLR’s lineup choices have been bad on easily over a dozen occasions the past year. When Vaughn plays, he sometimes hits 9th with Leury 6th. A 10 year old can see how stupid that is.
I’m not convinced that TLR is any better than Renteria. He might even be worse.
Eh, I wouldn’t go that far. The context of the pandemic changes the calculus quite a bit. t’s not exactly fair to say, “well, he was drafted, he played a little in A ball, then the next season he was in MLB.” Starting 2021 in AAA would have helped, probably, but I didn’t necessarily have a problem with him starting in Chicago, either.
And as for the position changes, I wouldn’t say that screws him over. It’s an added layer of challenge, to be sure. But if he continues to play a passable corner OF and he hits, the dude is going to really cash in at some point in a way that he wouldn’t if he was 1B/DH only.
Re uniforms, I’ve been looking for a 39thirty flex cap with the 1983 navy/white/red for several months…during which time multiple stupid hat styles have been introduced (do I have something against cheetahs? No. But I don’t want a cheetah print Sox cap so that I can blend into the local flora…I just need a new 1983 cap because my old one is falling apart…).
I blame Rob Manfred, and nothing anyone says can convince me that it isn’t his fault…
Former Mariners front office member/Fangraphs and Forbes analyst Tony Blengino has a name for when aging sluggers emphasize pull power over K rate: he calls it “harvesting.”