Jake

I think the tag is there but they probably won't overturn as it's too uncertain.

Yandy isn't hitting 40 homers a year but every time I see him he's an absolute menace to deal with. Takes great ABs and makes a lot of hard contact.

Main thing is when you have a guy making such loud outs, you need the coaching staff to make it clear to him that he's doing everything right and the only mistake he can make is trying to change what he's doing. Sometimes guys get into "fake" slumps where they just have bad batted ball luck but it turns into a real one as they start messing with their swings/approach trying to get different results.

Brutal luck for our hitters in that inning. Should probably have a couple runs on the board.

I think it is most likely that Quero would actually benefit from time in AAA against easier competition and with fewer eyes on him. He's tried to make some adjustments to be less of a defensive hitter but so far it has made him lose the benefits of being defensive (hard to strike out, good swing decisions) and none of the benefits of being aggressive (power hitting). The truth is probably that he was mildly overmatched in AAA last season but he was able to slap his way into some production and rode that wave to the majors. But he was once a player who could hit a few homers and I think if he wants to be that guy again he would probably do well to go back down and work on stuff.

I saw last season Venable being questioned about the batting order and his response was essentially that he couldn't explain the reasoning as it was produced by numbers crunchers. As best as I can remember, this was more about the order than the personnel. I actually think it's probably good to have sabermetrics people having heavy input into that kind of thing but man if I was hired as a manager I'd want to make it my mission to understand the process producing those recommendations. And I took it as a sign that today's big league managers must be able to check their egos a good bit considering how many things they are being asked to delegate to other people.

As we speculate about what would happen if Acuna does not get released and instead is a regular for the rest of the season, worth considering the fact he had played over 100 MLB games before this season and was an above-replacement player (on the strength of defense and baserunning). Might need to allow for the possibility that he will not have a .400 OPS forever (expected stats indicate that his deserved offense so far is more "normal bad" than "horribad")

Kyle Lodise has a very strange set of statistics so far... 126 wRC+: good, well above league average production .693 OPS: huh, league and park adjustments must be going crazy to turn this OPS into a 126 wRC+ .161 AVG: hmm, must really be slugging it .258 SLG: what??

The majority view on this message board and the near-unanimous view of national baseball media was that the Sox should not have picked up Robert's option because that constituted overpaying him. If that assessment is remotely correct, then the return for him in trade is immaterial because the Sox had an asset without value and got rid of it. And even among those (like me) who thought he was worth keeping around at $20M due to his upside and the possibility of getting something in a trade, not much could be expected given an approximately market rate of pay for Robert. Getting what appears to be a Leury Garcia type of player in return is not some travesty. Cease trade is a completely different animal because he had multiple years of team control remaining and had a better track record of performance at the time. Although the book has not yet closed on that trade, it is looking quite brutal relative to what Cease appears to have been worth at the time. Maybe Thorpe and/or Samuel Zavala will change the verdict in the long run, but it has undoubtedly been a disaster up to this point.

Most obvious explanation for Antonacci being called up today instead of yesterday was the desire to not give him his first MLB at bats against a left-handed starter.

Noah even seems wound up in the postgame interview.

Watchability of the team is going to be a good bit better when he's back.

Some useful graphics on Edgar: vs. last season: Existing issue with whiffing on high pitches has gotten worse. More important, last year he mitigated it by not chasing pitches up and out of the zone. This year he is chasing them way too often and getting no benefit (i.e., he's not a guy who sometimes tomahawks a bomb on a high ball)

Send Mune down!!!

His whole approach was geared towards late decisions last season and it kinda-sorta worked. Took slow, short swings and let the ball get very deep, with a very extreme push bat angle. Very similar to Luis Arraez. This year it's not way different but he's hitting it more out front, not as push oriented, swinging the bat slightly faster, and paying a big price by having worse plate discipline and missing more often.

Driveline broke Edgar

More loud contact from Pereira

Mune hit that pretty well, just a smidge underneath it.

Scored a base hit because the ball was absolutely murdered so it's not really a routine play. My guess is the Statcast modeling on that play won't hit him very hard either.

He had to lunge to catch it because it wasn't thrown to the spot so he gave up on it

I don't think the most ordinary baseball game ever played will be what triggers a fan walkout

Kyle Lodise has been trying a very strange strategy as a pro: the hitter who never gets any hits

Trying to get a little too much out of Sims

There's a bullshit run right there

Not a bad outing overall for Noah. Would probably be in line for the win if he just made a better fielding decision in the first. I assume he'll get his slider under control before his next start. Seems like the stuff plays.