sox Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
How much difference can it make to have a manager who is awake?
How much tangible difference a manager makes on a baseball team over 162 games has never been quite nailed down. It’s generally thought the best ones might only add a couple wins, and a truly bad one might only take away a couple wins. Most are just there, which is kind of why front offices stopped ...
The White Sox want you to know they’re just dumb, not evil
One of MLB’s biggest problems, and it spreads to other leagues as well, is the amount of buck-passing that seems to take place when there’s a serious issue. Whenever there’s someone like Mike Clevinger being investigated for domestic abuse or something else awful, a team is waiting for the league to...
If only Mike Clevinger had a plate in his leg
It should be said at the top that it’s not clear that there’s too much the Chicago White Sox could have done before signing Mike Clevinger. It’s easy to say that they should have known, and maybe if a team was really looking for reasons to not sign someone they could have found the investigation by ...
The Red Sox actually paid someone
At Monday’s Winter Classic, John Henry appeared, as the hockey team he owns (the Penguins) was playing the Boston Bruins at the ballpark he owns (Fenway Park, as owner of the Red Sox as well). Henry is more reclusive than a lot of owners, so it’s hard to know if he’s as deluded as some billionaires ...
Does Boston's Chris Sale still hold any trade value?
Boston ace Chris Sale is set to be 34 years old in 2023. He has a career 3.03 ERA and is the all-time leader in strikeouts per nine innings and strikeout-to-walk ratio. From 2013 to 2018, Sale never finished worse than fifth in AL Cy Young voting. He’s also pitched only 48.1 innings since the start ...
Jeff Bagwell, you won the World Series, clown!
I didn’t realize that Jeff Bagwell had become that guy at the end of the bar who tells you about the time he saw the original The Wall Tour every single time you enter the place. Not what I would have picked for him during his playing days, but here we are. ...
Can someone please explain how Josh Bell won a Silver Slugger award?
At the end of October, MLB announced their finalists for the Gold Glove awards. Every MLB fan collectively put palm to face at the sight of Juan Soto being named a finalist for the NL right field Gold Glove. Thankfully, he didn’t win the award. MLB coaches and managers dodged a huge bullet with that...
The warm glow of MLB Hot Stove’s warming glow: AL Central
We continue our whip around the baseball offseason by looking at the American League’s worst division, which was won by a team that wasn’t even trying to win, the AL Central....
It’s never been easy to win a World Series
The past 24 hours or so have been filled with shrieking referendums on the MLB playoffs and its structure. Not that this structure is really all that different from what came before. But the hope, expressed by yours truly as well, was that making the lower-seeded teams play one or two more games bef...
MLB Wild Card Series predictions: Rays-Guardians, Mariners-Blue Jays, Phillies-Cardinals, Padres-Mets
The MLB playoffs begin today, and with that, eight teams will battle for the chance to compete against the Dodgers, Braves, Astros, and Yankees. Yikes! What an awful prize that is, am I right?...
The Yankees should be stripped of the Evil Empire moniker if they let Aaron Judge walk
No one could’ve predicted that Aaron Judge’s contract season would feature 62 home runs and enough memories for Yankees fans to blubber on about for seven lifetimes. I’d be interested to see what the non-New York fan reaction would have been if Judge’s historic season came in a different uniform. ...
Tony La Russa is done in Chicago
After two seasons at the helm of the Chicago White Sox, Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa stepped down Monday due to health concerns. La Russa had one year left on his three-year contract....
Best non-MVP seasons in MLB history
The MVP Award is the pinnacle of baseball. Anybody who wins that award has cemented themselves in the annals of baseball history, and while one win doesn’t guarantee enshrinement in Cooperstown, it’s still one of the highest honors a baseball player can ever receive. The only bad thing about the awa...
The White Sox’s year finally dying the death it deserves
It’s not that you have to go back all that far for a season by an MLB team that was as disappointing, confounding, and overall just as big of a waste of time as the 2022 Chicago White Sox. It was just last year that the San Diego Padres acquired every player that wasn’t nailed down, and then finishe...
At least we know Gabe Kapler isn't to blame for the Giants' underwhelming season
The San Francisco Giants have been one of the biggest disappointments of 2022. That was expected. We couldn’t expect Brandon Crawford to have another career year at 35 years old. Brandon Belt, Darin Ruf (no longer with the team), and Mike Yastrzemski have all had down seasons. Kevin Gausman is gone,...
Tony La Russa was every bit the human gallstone you thought he was
It could end up being the pacemaker that saved Chicago, going down in history along with other objects we revere like a lamp next to a cow, disco records, and all the dirt we moved to reverse the flow of the Chicago River to send our shit to St. Louis (where it belongs and they deserve) to name a fe...
The most uncomfortable at-bat ever
I join many others in giving MLB hitters a hard time. The need to lift and drive has added an untenable amount of strikeouts to the game, and it can be frustrating watching guys simply pound contact right into a gaggle of fielders shifted over. But we also try to defend them as best we can, given th...
The Yankees could finish with a worse record than last year
October of last year may feel like an eternity ago, but take yourselves back for a moment. The Yankees were 92-70, securing a wildcard spot on the last day of the season. They lost the wildcard game to the Red Sox in a game where Gerrit Cole didn’t make it through three innings....
Sad Diego: Padres underperforming and underwhelming post-deadline
On paper, the San Diego Padres got better at the trade deadline. In reality, they’ve gotten worse — and are very quickly becoming the laughingstock of the MLB....
Craig Kimbrel pitching his way off of Dodgers’ postseason roster
Craig Kimbrel needs to be left off the Dodgers’ postseason roster....