This.

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“How do you get to be president and you’re stupid?” Donald J Trump - 4/10/25
When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace turns into a circus. - Turkish Proverb

now to take the mets as a huge favorite and make it a profitable day

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Giolito was ok. The post game keeps acting like it was some fantastic start.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Yeah 3 runs in 6 innings is fine. It's not ace stuff but sometimes you gotta take it.

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I guess I'll pick it up in the bottom of the third watch until they get the 7, then fast forward to the eighth on out.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Team of destiny

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Last time the Sox were 18 games over .500 was 2008

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

And this team hasn't been hitting on all cylinders yet.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

When you consider who is being added in August/September, this group has the potential to be the best Sox team of any of our lifetimes.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Let's win the World Series first and let the debate begin. If only that 2005 team had a healthy Frank Thomas. All time great discussion.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

2005!

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Podcast dropped today on the debate of 2005 vs. 2021 rotations.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Sox Math is awful, and Jason Benetti is a virgin and a dork.

With all the injuries, a garbage dumpster bullpen, and a taxidermied corpse for a manager, they're not doing that badly.

Everything but the starting pitching and closer looks to be a mirage. And Grandal is the poster boy. The man has 21 hits in 195 PAs. 10 of them dingers.

But stacking wins is stacking wins. I'm for it.

The pitching has been great, but the offense (Abreu specifically) is going to have to carry the weight at some point for a stretch of games.

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Grandal gets on base though. The offense has been very good. Especially considering how many regulars are out.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

That's my point. You got a .150 hitter leading the league in walks and an offense semi-decimated with injuries, yet still perform. The explanation? A mystical button pusher.

I've occasionally had discussion about whether a theoretical player who played twenty years without ever getting a hit but walked three times every game should be a Hall of Famer. Grandal is not far off from that player being actualized.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

12 of those 21 hits are for extra bases

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He was incredibly fortunate to have pitchers nibble around during a 2 month slump. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.

Beat the Rays but still behind them per ESPN logic. Adam Frazier as a target is interesting.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/316 ... r-top-five

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Obviously my theoretical player is an exaggeration. And there have been players whose stock has risen after their careers were in the books due to the modern fascination with the walk.

You raise an interesting point with your comment about "nibbling". For the first half of my life walks were considered something a pitcher gave rather than something a batter took. Then that got flipped on its head.

I think the truth is somewhere in between. Obviously there are some batters who are better at reading the strike zone than others. There's a funny story about when Barry Bonds was a batting coach and Giancarlo Stanton asked him how to handle a late breaking slider. Bonds said, "You just don't swing at it." Thanks, Coach!

But if a pitcher is purposely less worried about putting you on base than he is about you making contact, is taking the walk really a victory? Stone likes to point out all the time how the top run producers will often go get pitches out of the zone.

Either you're scoring a run or driving one in. Otherwise what are you really doing? I'm not bashing a guy like Joey Votto, he was clearly a great offensive player. But when you're satisfied with talking that walk, you're putting the onus on some other guy to get the job done, and it's almost always going to be a guy who is paid less than Joey Votto.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

Seems like a Frank Thomas critique. Talking a walk puts pressure on the pitcher, and it's how the modern game is taught and played. It might be boring, but getting on base is something the Sox haven't done for years.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

I don't think Frank ever went to the plate looking to walk. In fact, it seemed like he was frustrated and he heard people complaining that he "walked too much" which caused him to expand his zone and made him less effective. I don't know that you can "walk too much", but there is a line in there where a pitch is a ball but still hittable and some guys can go get it and others are happy to take the walk.

Do you want your middle of the order guys looking for walks? I'm not sure. I don't think it's simple as ex post facto claiming Ferris Fain should be in the Hall of Fame.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

Right, because it used to be when a pitcher got to a three ball count, he threw a fastball. It usually didn't matter what the situation was or who was at the dish. 3-0, 3-1, 3-2, a fastball was coming. So if the pitcher missed with a fastball, yeah thats on him.

Now guys are so comfortable throwing breaking stuff and offspeed pitches, that anything goes on a three ball count. This has been a recent change. Even as recent as the late 2000s, you were pretty much guaranteed a fastball on a three ball count.

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I said this MANY times in the Rizzo v Abreu thread. IMU would chime in about how Rizzo's OPS was better, because he was taking walks. I said I would take a 1st basemen batting in the middle of my lineup who drives in runs 10 times out of 10 over a guy like Rizzo who didn't hit as many homers or drive in as many runs because he was concerned about his .350 OBP.

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Walks are more tolerable for a pitcher because Ks are more tolerable for a hitter.

Would you rather have a hypothetical team full of guys that walked 90% of the time and were automatic outs the remaining 10%, or hit home runs 25% of the time and were automatic outs the remaining 75% of the time?

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The former would be much better for producing runs, even though the latter would have a much better OPS.

If memory serves, the geeks have determined that OBP is 1.8 times as valuable as SLG.

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If you forced me to choose between the JORR approach and the geek approach, I suppose I would have to trust that the geeks are smarter than I am, have put in the time, and have operated in good faith, and go with them. However, JORR's approach makes more intuitive sense. In a pressure-packed situation, a guy taking a walk always seemed a like a let down to me. Unless the bases are loaded, he's basically passing the job over to the next guy and saying "Here. You go ahead and win the game."