Jake

Side note about spin rates. Was surprised Jace Fry leads the pack on the Sox. His cutter, which somehow has more spin than his fastball, had >2600rpm and had a 50% whiff rate last year.

Was up by about 70rpm in his first start

Ricky pulling the plug at the right time today

I should add that I think this is much different for hitters. In their case I think it's common for guys to get into a bad state of mind that hurts their production

I've been very anti-Palka from the get-go because of his defense but I'm very surprised by how much he's struggled at the plate so far. And it's not like he's been hitting rockets all over the place and having them caught.

If he's opening up it's going to throw off his timing and it wouldn't be surprising at all to see him missing along the path from high and inside to low and away (to a righty)

It's hard to get into a guy's head and it's not like you can make a clean separation of mind and body, but I apply a high level of scrutiny to claims that a guy would be good if not for being a head case. Maybe a guy just isn't good or is having a legitimate problem and fixing it is not a matter of just thinking differently

There we go

I suspect the gameplan was to throw some strikes. He's had far better luck getting the fastball in the zone than anything else so it doesn't surprise me that's where he's going. That's especially true out of the stretch where most guys are better locating their fastball than their offspeed pitches

Holy cow does this Seattle team make a bunch of stupid mistakes

Coop calls the pitches now?

Here's the thing: The new arm action is a huge change. It was and is a big risk. It's not all that surprising that he's going to fight his command when he's revamped the most important part of his motion. Mix that with the fact he's always struggled with repeating himself, it's to be expected that the change to his motion might cause new problems with repeating his delivery. The hope, which I think is reasonable, is that this particular change will be more repeatable...but he has to get used to it first and he just hasn't had many reps.

Those 0-2/1-2 high fastballs that are accidentally thrown down the middle have a habit of getting hit very hard. Had some good luck on that one

In fairness to the umpire I wouldn't have thought twice about ball 4 in the second AB if it weren't for how bad the call on ball 4 was on Smith's first time up

Two times now Mallex Smith has walked on a pitch in the zone

Would like to see Eloy get under something

I loved that AB against Beckham. Right when the curve got established he came back with a slider and Beckham had no idea what he was seeing

He immediately throws two 4-seamers that didn't run like that and gets his guy. You're welcome

So far looks like Giolito doesn't really know where it's going. If he keeps letting his fastball run away from his spot he'll be in trouble

If Yoan's Ks are restricted to ones where he swings through a strike I think we'll be happy with the end results

You know his sprint speed so far on Statcast is right at league average. I think he just is really non-aggressive on defense so he's never running hard for a ball. Might be more upside there than it looks like

Ricky pulling the right strings baby

Please tell me Cordell is in right field

Yoan makes it easy for me to not foist all of my hopes upon Eloy

Have to say Eloy almost always looks like he's half-assing it on defense