SoxBlanco

It’s not the fact that he didn’t throw. Based on how he caught it, he had 0% chance to throw him out. But I can’t fathom how somebody playing a competitive sport (professional or not) doesn’t sprint behind that ball and come in with full momentum and heave it home. I’ve played enough sports in my life, and I’m a very competitive person, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that if I was in CF, that play would have looked a lot differently, regardless of how unlikely it was to get him out.

East to say that in hindsight, though, isn’t it? Had he continued to hit in AAA, nobody would have been like, “Not the move I would have made, but glad it worked out.”

A good friend of mine coaches the team that beat Sloan in the semifinals. Final score was 1-0, and it was only the second earned run Sloan had given up all year. Insane. His ERA skyrocketed up to 0.30.

Streakers.

Mason Adams squaring off against our old friend, Matthew Thompson, tonight.

You thinking Griffin and a discount?

Mason Adams with a strong start. Only one hit and one walk. 6 innings of shutout ball. 6 strike outs. Nastrini also pitched 6 scoreless. He did walk 5, but he struck out 10.

First full game I’ve watched all season. Really incredible that it took until June 18. Great job, Jonathan.

Fedde went 8 and a third back in April once.

Good to hear. I was just reading about how he isn’t going to make it.

I know. That’s exactly what I said in my post that you quoted.

Yeah, I understand what was called. It just seems like a strange rule to me. If the batter is automatically out on the infield fly, then what is Vaughn really interfering with? I guess you need that to be the rule to avoid an unrealistic scenario where a base runner shields the fielder from ever getting to the baseball on an infield fly and a different runner scores from third or something like that.

Also, I didn’t realize the batter and the runner are called out during an interference call on an infield fly. I just had to look it up to confirm. Isn’t only one guy ruled out during a regular interference call?

Exactly. I might (key word “might”) be able to get behind the call if the catch happened right after the “almost” collision. But he ran around Vaughn, ran forward another ten feet, and then camped under it for a bit. It had no effect on the play. And it was an infield fly rule. It’s baffling.

The more times I see this replay, the more I think it might be the worst call of all time.

This would be a much more informative post with a name attached to it.

Why do we care about protecting the bullpen? Honest question, as I might be missing something. The way I look at it is that either... Our team is so bad that it won't matter if our bullpen is taxed. It's a lost season anyway, so why worry about the bullpen? Or... We do care about the bullpen, because there's always an outside chance we could compete in our division. And if that's the case, then I'd want Crochet making his starts in the big leagues to start the year.

Did you remember to subtract 81, since we won’t need a pitcher to cover the bottom of the ninth for any road game this year?

Lost in the Cease drama tonight was Nastrini pitching 3 scoreless with 7 Ks. Not bad.

Did you think I was being serious?

We’re so back. At least 95 wins this year.

If the Sox are very confident that Thompson will never amount to anything, the time to trade him is right now. However, you aren’t going to get a young prospect for him straight up. So you make this trade, hope Horn pitches well enough, and then you flip him for a young prospect. It would basically be flipping Thompson for said prospect, but the only way to get there is this indirect route. I have no idea if that’s the actual plan here, but that’s what I’m going to tell myself to feel better about the trade.

Totally agree. You can never know that for certain. You can feel strongly that somebody might never become a major league player, but you can never know for sure. However, the job of the front office is to make moves like this if you feel strongly. The person I quoted says it makes zero sense to make a trade like this. I was simply pointing out that the trade DOES make sense IF you feel strongly that Mena will never amount to anything.

Unless you are confident the pitcher traded will never amount to anything.

I think what he was trying to say is that you claimed Mena falls into the category of pitching prospects that we have quite a few of. So in that regard, we do have a surplus of those types of guys. So why not turn one of them into an outfielder when we have very few OF prospects?