I really think they make a big run in the second half to win the division. They seem to be getting healthy and players who were terrible will return to their career norms.

I hope they have a plan to manage Kopech's innings. He's already at 20% of his modest career highs and has shown fatigue lately. He needs to be skipped over a few times throughout the next 70 games and his innings each outing strictly limited.

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

First series is big. Win 3 of 4, and they've passed Cleveland. Lose 3 of 4, and right back where they were 10 days ago.

After Cleveland, 6 straight series against bad teams. Sox might be bad too??? but still a long stretch of series they will be favored to win.

The thing is the Sox don't even need to win the division, they just need to get into the playoffs and be healthy.

If Lynn, Giolito, and Cease are healthy and pitching to their potential, that is the best 1-2-3 in the AL for the short series in the first round.

In the next round they can add Kopech and Cueto, and that's the deepest 5 man rotation in the AL.

If the Sox don't win the division, they aren't making the playoffs. A wild card team is not likely to come out of the AL Central.

Also, Cueto > Lynn right now. Forget skipping Kopech. Skip Lynn because he sucks right now. Its because of his two shit starts that the Sox didn't ride into the break on a 7 game winning streak.

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I think he's shown a bit of a twisted knee. He's 26 and and it's 3 years since his surgery. If not now, when? When he's 27?

I'm fine with skipping a start in august and then september but being on a 80 pitch count stunts the growth. How do you learn to get guys out a 3rd time if you never do it?

in regards to Kopech, current playoff pitching philosophy is to only let the starter go once through the order and then the manager's foot is on the top step. I think I'd do that the rest of the year with him

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

We've maybe overlooked that the Twins did not play well over last weekend and have not played well for a month. In other words, the division is putrid and the Sox ending up on top of it isn't much of an accomplishment.

The only reason they’re not sellers right now is the division is a steaming pile.

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I dunno, that AL east is going to play each other a bunch in the second half, all of those team can't keep winning if only because each game has a winner and a loser.

Agreed. The bar for this season being a success is a World Series appearance. Anything short of winning the pennant is a failure. IMO, the Sox "coming back" to win the division would not change this.

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The Sox have not been soo successful in my lifetime that I will sneeze at a division title

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

Set the bar higher, GD. They tanked/sucked for the better part of 10 years and so far have two playoff wins to show for it. Another ALDS exit essentially puts this season on par with 2014 or 2015.

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They should have been successful for the last 30 years. Don't find excuses for a shitty franchise who has had plenty of money since the ballpark was built and competing against tiny markets. They should be the
Yankees of the Central every fucking year.

I'm all in. As much as I have hated the first half, I love the game.

And I need to support my little league kids. For the love of growth.

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

I wish I could find some excitement / enjoyment for the 2nd half, but I just can't....this team just is a fraud. They're not good.

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Six of the last nine game the Sox play are against the Twins: @Minne, @ Padres, VS Twins. Not breaking any news, but its going to come down to those final games.

It would be very White Sox of them to clinch the division by winning game 161, put the B squad out there to finish the season, then lose again 3-1 in the ALDS.

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Assuming they do win the division, the AL central winner likely plays in the best of three prior to the ALDS, but again, I think the White Sox are the toughest out in a best of three of all the teams in the AL who are likely to be in that series.

Oh, that's right. They changed the format.

It would be very White Sox for them to lose in that Wild Card round.

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Right now, I see a team that seems totally incapable of beating a good team in a 5 or 7 game series. I don't see that changing in the last two and a half months. Their pitching might be fine, but they're not going to score if they don't hit homeruns, and they're just not going to hit enough of those.

Also, winning a wild card round does absolutely nothing for me. We sat through three years of watching the organization intentionally put out shit. I'm going to need to see a World Series title.

This team seems much worse right now than the group that was thoroughly outclassed by Houston last year.

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Giolito goes tonight. For those who like a little action, he's given up 1 run in 13.1 innings against cleveland this year and is going on extra rest. Meanwhile, Quantrill has given up 8 in 12.1 innings to the white sox.

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

Here's my major problem with this team, and I don't really blame LaRussa as it seems to be organizational. Ozzie and Ventura did the same thing.

This team has been built to just slug the living shit out of the opposing team. Granted, they have had a lot of injuries and the optimum lineup has rarely if ever been in tact. Nonetheless, you have a team that has been built around hitting the baseball.

So you won't hear me complain about defensive shortcomings. That's a tradeoff that was made in assembling the team. We have all these sluggers and we'll live with the mediocre defense and a lot of defensive errors and we'll just slug our way past them. Okay, fine. That's one way to build a team.

But here's the problem. They constantly make defensive errors and give the other team extra outs and runs that shouldn't have scored. But then when they get on offense where they're supposed to slug their way over the defensive errors, they are being compromised by sacrifice bunts and giving up outs on the bases. So you have the worst of all possible worlds.

They have good pitching. If they want to play pitch and putt on offense, sacrificing with two runners on, stealing for no good reason, etc. they should build a team that can lock down on defense and try to win games 2-1 and 3-2. Instead, we get terrible defense and the potentially slugging offense is taken out of its game by constantly giving the other team free outs.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

And JORR, they are a terrible baserunning team (speed and execution) which just adds to the clogging of the bases and waiting for the XBH.

I think the problem extends to personnel:

Abreu- it wouldn't surprise me if he hit 30 by the end of the year, but he's also old. Therefore, it wouldn't surprise me if he gets hurt or just never hits a bunch of them in a streak.

Jimenez- he has to stay on the field. Also, there's a very real possibility that, as a hitter, he's closer to Dayan Viciedo than he is to Jose Abreu.

Andrew Vaughn- he may some day develop into a 30+ home run guy. However, for the time being, he seems like more of a solid OPS guy.

Luis Robert- see Andrew Vaughn

Yasmani Grandal- better than the two headed monster of McGuire and Zavala, but needs to stay on the field.

Moncada- if I could figure this guy out, I wouldn't be posting here, but would have a job in professional baseball.

Robert going on DL with continuing light-headedness and blurred vision. Uh-oh.

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Cut the tumor out and let's get going.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

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It's selling time. This team might luck into making the playoffs, they are not good enough to win the whole thing.

Hard to argue Bob.

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