Jake

Throwing the splitter made sense to me you just can't throw it in the strike zone. You're trying to end the at bat with a strikeout and he's fouling off your best strikeout pitch. You see if he'll chase the splitter in the dirt and if he doesn't, you hope you've opened up the high heater for a whiff on the next pitch. He just left it over the plate. I expected him to throw a backfoot slider instead. I just hope he missed it due to honest to goodness bad release rather than not trusting his catcher to block it.

To be fair, we ended up in a very similar situation thanks to the infield single from Antonacci. But obviously that same contact from Antonacci would have ended the game if the runner was already on third. Can't necessarily assume everything would have been the same if the bunt was successful of course

Pitcher has one of the sweepiest sweepers in MLB so it likely looked a lot like a strike if you didn't pick up the spin

You are surprised that a callup from AAA is not as good as most of the major leaguers? Isn't that exactly what you would expect from players? And now we're mad that she made what appeared to be a correct call at first base because New York reviewed it and called it wrong?

I'm fine with bunting Rikuu. I did not like bunting with two strikes because this is allegedly your god-tier contact bat and the success rate of bunts even with a good bunter is not high enough to risk it there.

Coin flip game, we lost this one. Good news is the 2026 Sox don't seem to let the bad games roll together

Her ball/strike calls rank near the bottom of the league, but that's why she has not been promoted to full-time status because that too is merit-based. The other guys in AAA will have to get better to get those call-up opportunities.

Bell can just tag Sam and then the base and it's over

She is not a female ump, she's a minor league ump callup. Those callups are 100% merit based and determined by metrics

At this point, 1B has not been touched. Only chance to save the game is for Sam to get off the base and hope that Bell tries to tag him without getting the out at first. But Bell already has him pinned down and once Sam tries to leave the base Bell wisely touches the base with his foot (just barely) and Sam has nowhere to go but out of the baseline. And Acuna still needs like 15-20 feet to score

Only way Sam could have prevented the loss is if Bell made a huge mistake

I hope somebody asks whether Nishida was explicitly told to bunt with 2 strikes or if that was on his own

Tough break. Way out in front but swinging for contact pays off

Game over man

Yes, I'm just assuming Bell doesn't touch first base first if Antonacci wasn't right in front of him with nowhere to go

Once he's out of the baseline, he's out. But if he would have run to second, they would have just turned a conventional double play

Well by then it was just a desperation play to try to stall for the run to get home before a tag out but it was all over anyway. I think he was unsure whether 1B ever got tagged so he hoped Bell would chase him into the bullpen rather than get the third out

no-win situation there. You don't know if he's going to catch it on the fly but if he does, you have to get back to first. If he doesn't, then you're boned either way

He's clearly swinging for contact

Okay we just need some contact from....Munetaka Murakami

Two strike bunt is insane to me

Interesting decisionmaking to let Banda pitch to Grichuk but not Hill. I wonder if their data says Grichuk can't handle heat.

Ballsy play to go to second by Vargy and it looks like it will pay off bigly

ah, I'm off my game. Yeah he's never gone 3 in a row in his career AFAIK

They get a good break to start the inning