Jake

Schweitzer is in the minors. Castillo is the last man in the pen

Yeah that would have been fine by me. I don't really have a strong opinion either way since I don't know really know what to expect from Noah at this point.

I was okay using Hagen to keep that guy parked on 3rd base and go through the heart of the order. Noah would have had a very hard time keeping that inherited runner from scoring.

Newcomb has gotten longer rest than you might expect a few times this year so I wonder if that may be in play here. He also got shelled last time out so he may not have been at 100% that time for all I know.

Guardians faced the minimum in the final 4 innings

Kind of ironic how that one goes. He's been missing all over the zone with his slider but it was basically working because it was mostly avoiding the heart and going to locations that would be uncomfortable to hit, like up and in. Then he misses by not very much (relatively speaking), but it's close enough to where the batter expects a lefty slider that he smashes it.

One thing I haven't quite worked out is why Murphy has (slightly) reversed splits. Normally I'd chalk it up to small sample size but it's been following him around for some time in his career. Guy who throws 4 seam, slider, and curveball from the right side seemingly should be pretty strong against lefties and doesn't have a great weapon for righties.

Braden continues his run of bad luck

Strike

Sit down son

I think Peters must have just not realized quite where he was on the field because he had time to slow himself down and maybe veer off but he just didn't. Probably lined himself up for the fence but not the post.

I'm really surprised that Peters hit the fence that hard

They have totally figured out Sandlin's cutter. Yeesh, quit throwing it

Walk and then two squared-up liners. Gotta make some pitches now.

Looked over at that Cleveland game and holy crap is that Oakland lineup uninspiring.

PitchCom

There's a selection bias in any analysis of payroll vs. wins. Teams increase their spending when the team is good. White Sox fans know this best. Sox had a low payroll, then they got a good young core, then got up to about 6th or 7th in payroll, then they stopped winning, then they hit rock bottom in payroll again. Most franchises try to avoid throwing good money after bad. A few don't like throwing good money at anything of course.

I think a lot of things are being overanalyzed right now

That shouldn't be used to evaluate fielders, it's just about how often balls hit that hard and high are hits/outs. Ignores the pull/push aspects and the positioning of the fielders. In this case, I think it's going to make it look like a slightly harder catch than it was but we'll see.

Venable said they are probably starting Kay

Similar

I think it just speaks to his difficulty tracking the ball and not knowing how to time/position the dive. You can see how his glove ended up upside down as well so if you teleported him a few feet closer the ball may have hit the back of his thumb instead of going into the glove.

As for the velocity supplying the power, the physics on it would basically play out like this: on a ball hit real high like that, every extra mph on the pitch is going to add maybe 6 inches to the batted ball distance. That's assuming that the batter will strike the ball equally well regardless of pitch speed which of course isn't true.

Playing in is still the right thing to do regardless of throwing anyone out. It's the "no singles" alignment basically.

You can see the route he took here