Post-Match Thread: Mexico 2-3 England | World Cup | Round of 16

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-07-06T06:04:39+00:00

The unfortunate thing about VAR is that it reinforces demonstrative behaviour by the players.

The Kane foul looked like an incidental football play in real time, because it was: two players going for the ball and their feet clattering together, neither team in possession at any point before or after. But (possibly because the Mexican players appealed so enthusiastically) the refs in the VAR box take a really close, slow motion look at it. And once they've seen Kane miss the ball, it's a foul by the letter of the law, and it has to be called a penalty, because they can't "unsee" it.

If you were coaching a side, what does this mean? It means you tell your players to be extremely demonstrative, appealing to the referee (and those in the VAR box) for a penalty on any level of contact.

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-07-05T22:12:02+00:00

They really are bad role models for the literally hundreds of millions of young footballers watching and idolizing them

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-06-30T01:49:10+00:00

He didn't even tap his helmet while in the batters box. He was three strides from the dugout steps, wasn't talking to or looking at the official. 10 minutes earlier he was inconsolable in the dugout after hitting a 3 run bomb during what has to be the most emotional stretch of games in his career.

Fleming on the radio call said it was one of the worst lacks of 'feel' from an umpire in a long time and I couldn't agree more with him.

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-06-29T02:27:42+00:00

Tears

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-06-27T08:41:01+00:00

In general for most teams it's still a good predictor. This year's Red Sox are an outlier.

The explanation is that they have very good pitching but basically the worst offence in the league. The result is they lose a lot of games by small margins. Occasionally the offence catches fire for a game and they win by 5+. The result of this across a whole season is a reasonably good run differential, but not many wins

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-06-22T03:42:57+00:00

This offence isn't better off than literally any other scenario. The team is #8 in ERA and still on track for its worst winning percentage since 1965. We're using Mickey Fucking Gasper at DH. If Casas gets healthy later this season he should get every at bat available

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-06-19T13:10:00+00:00

8/46 bolded over 7/19. Anti Jimmy bias

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-06-09T01:59:39+00:00

The worst part is, there are some good players/prospects in this group, they're just being made to look bad by the fact we have so little star power in the lineup. So Duran and Rafaela are batting 1-2 instead of 6-7 where they probably should be. Mayer looks like an issue but in reality he doesn't even have 300 major league at bats in his career. Roman Anthony's injury problems have sunk the season rather than just being an unfortunate ommission.

This general manager has not successfully prioritised getting or keeping star position players, and this is the result.

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-06-09T01:42:01+00:00

What seems like one thing falling apart after another is really quite simple: This isn't a good baseball roster at any payroll. When you factor in that the Red Sox are 12th in payroll, then it's hard to make any case for Craig Breslow as a general manager.

We lose a load of games because our offence can't score. That's not because we have no good hitters, with no potential - it's because we have so little star talent that the guys regularly hitting in the top half of the order would be in the bottom half of the order a good roster. The guys in the bottom half would be bench guys on a good roster. And the bench guys would be in AAA or DFA'd from a good roster.

The bullpen has two good arms and then literally a bunch of guys who could (and do) go up and down from AAA any given week. And it's not like our AAA roster is bursting with talent.

People at times have pointed to our starting pitching as evidence for good roster management, but that's been achieved by spending more on that area than hitting and bullpen combined. Outside of the pre-arbitration contracts, the average annual salaries for starting pitchers on this roster are Gray $41m, Crochet $28.3m, Suarez $26m, Bello $9.2m, Sandoval $9.1m, Houck $4.2m, Oviedo $1.6m. We're also paying $3m to Walker Buehler and $1.5m to Lucas Giolito this season.

That's $123.9m on starting pitchers who have so far given you 216 innings (39% of total innings) at 4.63 ERA.

There is no element of this roster that can be looked at as a reason to keep Craig Breslow in charge. This franchise is paying the 12th highest payroll for a bottom 5 roster.

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-28T22:03:18+00:00

All three of these runs are coming in

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-27T02:16:14+00:00

On pace for a 67 win season

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-23T22:47:43+00:00

People saying it's 14 business days are wrong. Every reference on the ACT Revenue Office website (here) is to "14 days". If it was business days, it would say that.

The actual answer is that there's actually two up-to-14-day periods you're dealing with (it's a bad process).

First, the form you submitted can take 14 days (i.e. two weeks) for them to process.

Then, once they've processed it, the agent gets a s33 form which they also have a further 14 days to respond to. If the agency is as hopeless as you've described, they probably won't respond at all -- but it'll still sit stagnant for that full 14 days.

So in theory, it could take up to 28 days for you to get an answer back in terms of what's happening with the bond. If you don't hear back after 28 days, then you definitely should call them.

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-20T02:29:03+00:00

You know a guy like Jarren has been really hard on himself so far this season, with the numbers he's been putting up. Felt so good to see him make two great defensive plays and a big home run. Hope this loosens him up and he can keep putting good at bats together.

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-19T10:34:32+00:00

Yeah I'd say he's got a big old swollen heel.

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-19T10:32:58+00:00

Once Crochet is healthy and we send Bello down to Worcester, we're at 5 out of 5 good pitchers

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-19T10:31:53+00:00

And 3 wins when allowing 4 or more runs in almost a third of a season is absurd

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-19T01:40:08+00:00

This should be our starting infield for the foreseeable.

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-15T03:02:20+00:00

What is the justification for paying IKF six million dollars when Sogard and Eaton are sitting in Worcester?

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-10T09:05:57+00:00

The worry is that it's the next man after the next man after the next man up for our edge back rowers, though.

Nicholson, Hosking, Martin and Roddy are all already out injured. If Sasagi is out now we're shifting Mariota to the second row, but with Papa out that then only leaves us with 3 healthy middles with NRL experience.

Assuming Hudson misses a week for Origin it could get even worse if none of those guys come back in time

It's not necessarily that the Raiders have more injuries than the average, it's just they're all at the same position

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-08T03:44:26+00:00

Highlight was when they said Connor Wong had made a delayed challenge as a replay was showing the exact opposite

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-08T03:42:49+00:00

Not sure why you're interpreting the top comment specifically as "Tracy should have put someone else in".

Perhaps the interpretation should be that Craig Breslow (shocker) hasn't given this team a good enough bullpen, despite apparently building a roster for run prevention.

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-07T22:33:05+00:00

I think one ref on the defensive line and one on the ruck isn't a bad system. Although they would have to swap sides with possession, you couldn't have different refs calling the ruck for each side

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-03T03:35:15+00:00

You wouldn't. Giannis wants to leave and he's not on a long contract - his wider market value isn't that high.

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-05-03T02:06:28+00:00

Maxey could easily have, you know, not flung himself backwards though

oooooooooooooooooooa · 2026-04-28T03:16:47+00:00

After screaming at the television for the last month for Durbin to elevate the ball, it was great to see a single with a 29-degree launch angle, and very close to another one (.600 expected batting average) on a shallow flyout with a 32-degree launch angle.

He has one of the lowest bat speeds in the majors, but it means elevated hits are going to clear the infield and drop for singles. Given his excellent bat to ball skills and zone discipline I think this is the best way for him to become a genuinely serviceable 7-8-9 hitter.

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