Jake

I'm of the opinion that managers don't really matter but Ricky is very bad at the one thing managers really matter for

Would be a good day for Banuelos

Lopez definitely off to a weird start this year. Hard to know what's going on since at times he and the Sox have suggested he has some unspecified focus problems

Where has Kikuchi been hiding that nasty slider boring in on the knee caps of a righty

Wow a horrible idea goes good

My hot take is there's much more upside in playing Engel than there is in playing Palka (especially when Palka has to play RF)

He was down this inning but I wouldn't overthink it. Probably a mix of the adrenaline wearing off and spending most of his time in the stretch

Today he's relied on the changeup almost exclusively for offspeed. Did the opposite his last time out.

Oh boy that strike 3 to Eloy was nasty

Yeah baby!!

You can rest assured that Narvaez has not figured out pitch framing

Moncada's righty swing looks a little weird to me right now

You feel for Kikuchi here because he has a good argument for deserving to be out of the inning at this point. Once the pitch count within the inning gets up, it can really wreck your whole day. He's gotta stop this rally pretty efficiently to be able to last long.

We must not be seeing Kikuchi all that well with how we have been so consistently late on his fastball

Nice to see the Mariners shitting the pants

FYI, Reynaldo averaged 96 in the first, topping out at 98 (or 97.7 to be precise)

My hope for Madrigal is that he's a .750 OPS guy with great fielding and baserunning. His downside is being Chris Getz.

This is the second-lowest 5-game K% Moncada's ever had and the second-best 5-game wRC+. He hit poorly in the only other 5-game stretch with a lower K%. The only 5-game stretch with a better wRC+, he struck out in 41% of his plate appearances. He's swinging at strikes a bit more often than his career norms, but what stands out more is the amount of contact on pitches in the zone. He's chasing pitches just a bit less than career norms, but this is impressive when considering he's gotten more aggressive in the zone.

It's not like it really matters, but this doesn't make much sense. Covey faced 10 batters, 1 of whom he intentionally walked and another who reached on error. Of the other 8, he got 4 out. What about that run changes your mind about having him in the pen vs Jose Ruiz, who hasn't pitched since the end of ST? Again, this really isn't important, but I'm very confused about what kind of decisionmaking process leads to this move.

I've had the same weird feeling since draft day of feeling like he was the right pick and also having pretty low expectations for him

I honestly have a hard time saying Robert has a higher ceiling than Moncada and it's meant as nothing negative about Robert

I think they're clearly too low on Kopech and Cease and probably too high on Madrigal. There are a number of guys in the 45/50 FV that it's easy to see climbing up these kinds of lists soon.

Starting the year after his big defensive season in 2013, he's still been one of the most valuable 3B defenders https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=3b&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2017&month=0&season1=2014&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=20,d

Great start for Gio and to be frank I think this was the right amount of time to leave him in.

I thought he was trying