Jake

Minnesota looked like they were going to be a pretty good team when they got Jimmy but now it's a pretty sad situation over there. It's become clear that Wiggins just isn't going to be that good, KAT's defense is a question, and they now have to ship out Jimmy because nobody gets along.

I do think Palka has played himself into being the priority between himself and Davidson, but what to do with Davidson isn't so clear. At this point, Davidson is a very similar player to Mark Reynolds, who has had himself a long career but has never been a particularly valuable piece. I'm not sure how much defensive ability Davidson has at 3B at this point since he's played so little there and he has clearly put on some weight since he last played there on an everyday basis. Matt took a huge step forward this year, so for the Sox you have to ask whether you think he has it in him to take any more steps forward. It would make things easier if Palka could play the outfield, but he's just been so bad out there I feel like it may not be fair to our pitchers (or our fans for that matter) to play him on defense.

Part of Moncada's recent change has been effectively eliminating — for the time being — his problem with making contact with pitches in the zone. Note that he hasn't improved his contact rate by just taking more pitches in the zone. His contact rate has gone up along with this swing rate and pitches in the zone. As of right now, he's having the best 15-game run of in-zone contact of his career. Over that span, he's made contact at a rate well above league average. We'll see if he can keep it up. The flip side is that we can see his terrible run in late July/early August was driven in part by a shocking drop in his contact rate at that time. You have to wonder what was going on physically/mentally during that period of about 3 weeks when he struck out in nearly half of his plate appearances. Note also that Moncada has been making more contact on pitches outside the zone while retaining his elite selectivity on those pitches: He hasn't changed overnight, but these are fairly positive trends.

If a team was offering me Dylan Cease for Nick Madrigal, I'd do it.

If you haven't seen a pretty significant change in Moncada's approach over the past month-ish, you've had your eyes closed. It hasn't turned him into superman, but he has definitely been working on things.

FWIW, Anderson somewhat recently emerged from a rather deep slump and is now hitting pretty much like his typical self...which isn't great, but is good enough for someone playing shortstop and doing it quite well defensively.

Reynaldo has been absolutely pitching his ass off.

Don't forget to watch the baseball games and appreciate the many ways you can end up at the same season statistics

There's basically no way he returns to the minors outside of a possible (but unlikely) rehab assignment. Only persistent ass-kickings in MLB would get him sent down, in which case you won't care about his service time.

If Kopech suffering an injury that has a high repair rate is what foils the rebuild, it was always destined to fail.

His 21% K% over his last 15 games is his lowest 15-game K% as a major leaguer.

Side note: I think this seals the deal that we bring back Shields, probably on a 1-year deal rather than his option.

Similar to Ohtani, it's good that it happened now compared to potentially having it blow out in Spring Training next year. We can second guess until the cows come home, but chances are this was unavoidable without a far less aggressive innings regimen for him. I don't care about the team control, these are the chances you take and it may well have kept our competitive window earlier than it would have been if he had to miss most of 2021.

I don't understand what this is rewarding: So is he the top pitching prospect now or is he being rewarded for pitching best?

Found it weird they didn't bother to quantify their assumptions on this. You have lots of data, both in terms of scouting grades and automated projections, that you can take and cross-check with future results. Why not do that instead of rely on your gut feeling that a certain type of pitcher (great 3-pitch arsenal, unimpeachable statistical production, but no "feel") doesn't pan out?