Spare Parts: A.J. Pierzynski meets the pope

Aside from being credited as an unspoken driving force of the turnaround on the South Side, Pope Leo XIV's White Sox fandom had taken a back seat to weightier matters like speaking out against the war in Iran.

But the pope's baseball interests came to the fore once again when A.J. Pierzynski was afforded an opportunity to meet with the pope at the Vatican Wednesday, which is the sort of thing that reminds you that His Holiness knows who Michael Barrett is and has an opinion on him.

Ken Rosenthal, a colleague on Pierzynski's Foul Territory network, talked to Pierzynski about it and wrote it up, and there are two big updates to the lore:

No. 1: While Pierzynski handed over the final out of Game 1 because that's the game where mild-mannered White Sox fan Robert Prevost was spotted in the stands, he was actually at both World Series home games.

His reaction to receiving the ball Pierzynski caught to end Game 1?

“Oh my gosh, he was like, ‘This is unbelievable.’ He was like, ‘No way, this is the ball?’ And he literally said, ‘I was at Game 2, too. But nobody knows that. They didn’t find me.’”

No. 2: Pierzynski said that the pope is keeping tabs on the first-place White Sox.

“It was kind of as I was walking away,” Pierzynski said. “I said, ‘Hey, White Sox are in first place.’

“He just looked at me and goes, ‘Oh, I’m watching and paying attention, don’t worry.’ And he just kind of smiled at me.”

One day later, the pope spoke to members of the Italian Swimming Federation to extoll the virtues of sport on the body and spirit. Let's see if reengaging with a flawed White Sox team during a pennant race changes his tune.

Spare Parts

• MLBPA proposes ban on prop bets on individual players -- ESPN
• MLB wants maximum 5-year deals for free agents changing teams -- ESPN

Of the parts of proposals revealed during the latest round of CBA negotiations on Thursday, the MLBPA's is the one actually worth mulling over, because there's momentum in other sports to eliminate individual prop bets, especially since unders can't be easier to hit.

• More than 100 MLB players ranked the best and worst organizations: Inside our anonymous poll -- The Athletic

Although Chris Getz has made massive strides in overhauling the White Sox organization, reputations have a wider turning radius. The Sox still finished with 21 votes out of 73 respondents for teams with bad reputations, but at least two teams received more votes this time around. Last year, it was just the Rockies. Perhaps Randal Grichuk, who has been former teammates with more players than most, can evangelize on their behalf.

• Updates on updates to updates -- Pebble Hunting

Does Will Venable pull successful starters too soon? Maybe, but if he's guilty, so is the rest of baseball. Sam Miller sees a future where complete games are treated like no-hitters.

Just as “140 pitches” got replaced by “120 pitches,” and then “120 pitches” got replaced by “100 pitches,” “100 pitches” has now been replaced by “90 pitches.” Drew Rasmussen got pulled from a start the other day after 84 pitches; his line was 7/1/0/0/0/9. Logan Gilbert got pulled from a start after 87 pitches, with a 6/1/0/0/0/9 line. Kris Bubic: 7/2/0/0/1/11, 83 pitches. Max Meyer: 7/1/0/0/1/7, 83 pitches. There are dozens of starts like this. You can’t dominate more than those guys, and you can barely dominate more efficiently than those guys, but they’re still pulled after six or seven.

There are, meanwhile, only seven complete games this year, and six of them are shutouts. That last detail—I’m breathless. In Justin Verlander’s first season in the majors, there were 104 starters who were allowed to go nine innings in a non-shutout. In what might be Verlander’s final season, there has so far been one.

• Buster Posey didn't just fail to meet the moment, he made Giants' pride controversy worse -- San Francisco Chronicle
• Buster Posey wants it to be 2010 again and so do you. But I have bad news... -- The Athletic
• San Francisco radio hosts barred from asking Giants CEO any Pride Night questions -- Awful Announcing

It's kind of incredible how the Giants have made their Pride Night fiasco last two weeks by unsuccessfully trying to redirect attention to the on-field product, which is the second-worst in baseball. Insufficient answers are better than no answers, because the public act of flailing at least shows a base level of concern.

• The faces of baseball -- The Bandwagon

Shohei Ohtani was the top vote-getter in the National League during the first round of All-Star fan voting, but the top vote-getter in all of Major League Baseball was Ernie Clement.

• Nick Madrigal elects free agency -- MLB Trade Rumors

When a former White Sox is DFA'd from the Angels, there usually isn't anywhere else for him to turn. Madrigal rejected a minor league assignment, probably because 34-year-old Yolmer Sánchez is hoovering up all the utility playing time with Triple-A Salt Lake.

• NC Dinos secure 11-4 victory in Matt Davidson's emotional farewell -- Chosun.com

Matt Davidson has spent the last four seasons overseas -- one in NPB, and the last three with the KBO's NC Dinos, which came to an end with his release after Thursday's game. He's not having a bad season, but with a strict limit on foreign players, teams are pretty aggressive with turning the spot over, so the end came suddenly, and with lots of emotions.

On this day, Davidson hit a two-run left-field timely hit off Jung Da-hoon in the bottom of the eighth inning, putting NC ahead 11-4. After reaching first base, he raised his right hand and waved to the home crowd on the first-base side, bowing his head in a final farewell to NC fans.

In the top of the ninth inning, Davidson stood at first base as usual. The NC dugout and players were already in tears. Park Geon-woo repeatedly wiped away tears with a towel, nearly sobbing, and second baseman Park Min-woo, standing next to Davidson, was also seen with tears welling in his eyes through the broadcast.

• The State of FanGraphs 2026

I always share FanGraphs' annual updates because 1) it's a critical independent baseball media company, and 2) David Appelman usually draws attention to issues that are bedeviling sites of all sizes. In this case, it's the way AI results in Google searches have really hampered discoverability.

Put simply, AI is taking our content and repurposing it in a way that could make it so that there’s no need to actually visit the site. Indeed, changes to many popular search engines mean many people unfamiliar with FanGraphs might not even discover the site in the first place. Just think about the AI results you see on Google. How many people are going to click through to our Brewers Top Prospect list, a piece that took days to write and edit, when Gemini will serve up much of Jesús Made’s scouting report, tool grades and all? If there’s ever been an existential crisis for online publishers, it’s this. Whether it’s Membership or advertising revenue, our business model depends on visiting the site, and AI seems poised to keep people away, eroding the link between writers and readers.

This is an opportunity for me to once again thank everybody who subscribes to Sox Machine -- maybe even the pope, although I can't trace an account directly to him. But even if you don't or can't join the site, sharing what we do -- passing along links to stories, subscribing to our YouTube channel, recommending the podcast, forwarding a (free!) newsletter -- to fellow White Sox fans counts as valuable support that we can't appreciate enough, especially since it requires more work to find it on their own.