Autumn Dreamin

Nice gesture by the Sox to celebrate Mune's 250th pro HR He broke a Japanese record as the youngest player to reach that milestone across NPB/MLB

3-0 lead for Kanny early. 6 pitch HBP for Fauske, 6 pitch BB for Carlson.

It's precisely because the staff isn't good enough to perform like this consistently that the bats need to show up when they do. Just go like 4-15 with RISP instead of 2-15 and it's a won or winnable series.

If this staff is giving up an average of 3 runs/game, the bats just have to be able to win one of them. Especially at home. Get a timely hit or two.

Yeah, 5.1 IP from this pen with a meager 2 runs of support is just a tough ask. If this score holds, you've gotten 3 ERA production from your arms over these two games. Bats need to show up.

Gunnar's been tougher even. Over 1.000 OPS vs. "only" .939 for Bux.

Gunnar is a Sox killer

Pretty good inning from Hicks there

Even if he challenged one and won, doubt he challenges the second. Basically the same pitch and Rogers got the call both times.

Nice contact for Colson off a quality lefty

They've shifted Quero to playing left knee down full time and I don't think he's as comfortable with it yet. Last year he was about half and half left and right knee down.

Smith's 3.2IP, 1H, 0ER, 5BB, 8K line officially a first in MLB

Vargas makes that play

Sure, that seems about right for the vibe of this game so far

What a wild stat line for Smith through 3. Maybe the bats look stiff because they are standing out in the cold for 20+ minute innings with no balls in play?

It's just shorthand for regression to the mean, but from a level of underperformance rather than overperformance (which is what most people think when you don't include the "positive" modifier.) Not sports specific, you'll also hear it in economics, politics, and other areas that deal with trendlines. A bit different than just "progress" because the implication is returning to some expected level established by a previous sample size. I suppose "progression towards the mean" would carry the same meaning, but eh.

Rogers is an incredibly tough lefty, so if they can't get him out early then the hope will be to salvage a game tomorrow. Hopefully Smith can show some positive regression today, though the O's hit him well even when he was in good form last year.

That sucks, I'm a big Brooks fan and he seemed due for a big year. Hope his surgery and recovery go well.

Don't think they start the clock on Antonacci, who probably needs a few more OF reps anyway. Dru Baker is off to a hot start in Charlotte and had a solid spring. RHH keeps the same lineup balance. 26 and can play CF. Murray also played some OF with Tampa, so maybe he gets a look there.

A couple tidbits from BA and FG's respective prospect chats: That last note on Smith is especially interesting.

Eh. Their WP% in the 9th of this game peaked at 33.4. Their WP% in MIL, in the game where they saved him for leverage, peaked at 15.6 in the 9th. The only way to treat this as a "zero chance of winning" game is by working backwards from the fact that they didn't...in which case, both usages were a waste because they lost both games. In an absolute statistical sense, tonight's game wound up more winnable in the end, and that's before even getting to the impact of Hays' bad hammy on the first run against. So is it worth something to have Fedde leaving the game today with a 43% chance of winning in the 7th, compared to leaving with a 22% chance of winning in the 5th of his first start? If Taylor doesn't get his 3 outs then someone else would have had to. Does Fedde get them third time through, or does a different reliever if you hook him before that? If not, then are the Sox facing worse odds in the 9th than being one swing away? Does it take more than 3 arms to finish the game? Does BAL get to save their best arms? Does that impact pen availability/performance for the rest of the series? With Taylor opening for Burke, he left with a 88% chance of winning in the 7th, compared to a leaving with a 16% chance of winning after the 4th of his first start. In the latter scenario, you can theoretically save Taylor for a more winnable game* but what if the former scenario actually makes the game more winnable to begin with? *In reality, they couldn't actually save him, because he (and the team) needed innings, so he got "wasted" on a <10% win probability game anyway... Saving him for leverage on a below average team will mean some number of non-leverage "work" innings that are guaranteed to be less meaningful than any outing as an opener by default. Neither route is perfectly waste free, they just have different uncertainties. Saving Taylor could just as easily mean you traded a one hit away home 9th today for him pitching in a decided game on Wednesday or Thursday if there's no leverage spot before then to get him off the bench. Despite Taylor's absolutely elite stuff, the performance of the bullpen and the "starters" behind him have both been better with him opening in this handful of games. Obviously, a larger sample size would be needed to control for the effects of home vs. road, opponent variance, and players/teams just settling in to the season. But if the pattern continues, and Taylor opening gets an extra ~4 innings from the starters in a series combined with better bullpen performance courtesy of reduced workload + better pockets, could that have a larger cumulative effect on winning than the marginal difference between an early 0 and a late one in an individual game? Especially when you can't project how many games will have late leverage value to cash in on at all? I just think it's possible on a situational basis, and I think it's interesting that they're trying it. It's certainly led to more winnable and more watchable games in a VERY small sample size this week. I expect Taylor will still get leverage spots when the matchups for a series suggest that's better. Last year vs. TOR, he opened the opener and closed the finale. It doesn't have to be a pure either/or unless you're determined to only use Taylor in games where his inning individually is most likely to decide the game in a vacuum. In that case, I agree that he absolutely should appear almost exclusively in save situations. My thought process is based around maximizing Taylor the player and the staff overall both being higher priorities than maximizing potential leverage opportunities specifically.

Large language model, a la ChatGPT. Because obviously no actual person would make the mistake of trying to have a productive baseball discussion about baseball decisions on a baseball forum, of course. Maybe one day I'll learn that it's much easier to just go around having the same two arguments in every thread while spamming negative reacts instead.

It's not kanji in and of itself, it's the font. Like imagine seeing the back of a jersey in comic sans or something.