Jake

Far too early to say whether Colson has turned the corner towards a MLB promotion, but I think it's fair to say that his trip to Arizona changed something for the better. On one hand, the bar was set very low by his early season play. On the other hand, there's no doubt other things were being tried to get him to snap out of it and they weren't working. Nice job to those involved in the unorthodox decisionmaking.

If Gowens can have a nice little run of starts, I bet he goes to AAA. Seems to me that he's got a chance to make it. He's been extremely consistent across levels at generating strikeouts and limiting the walks. Would like to see how he does at the AAA level where he'd finally be age-appropriate and he'd see some serious punishment for giving up hard contact. I think he's had some tough breaks in AA this year that make the ERA inflated relative to what he deserves.

I'm going to be annoying and point out that Wolkow has struck out in 44% of his plate appearances during this short run of power hitting. Not really showing that he can find a way to generate enough contact without giving up his power. I hope he figures it out as he seems like a nice kid and of course I enjoy the aesthetic of a giant dude playing baseball.

Yeah his splits certainly pointed that way, which tbh is true for most guys who ever swing back and forth between those roles. Benefit out of the pen is if you start getting lit up you can usually get taken out before it gets very bad. I am not super optimistic that Wilson will pitch well enough to stick in the pen the whole season either but it seems like McKinven loves these ex-Brewers so maybe he gets a very long leash.

My positive spin for Baldwin is that although I think his defense in the infield has looked a bit worse than I expected, he ended up getting thrust into the outfield where he showed flashes of potential. Yes, we saw the bad plays that are frankly unsurprising for a guy who is not an outfielder — struggled with the wind, struggled at the wall and going back — but he also made some rather nice catches. Too rough around the edges to feel comfortable using him in the MLB right now, but maybe if you give him a couple months of reps in the minors he can build on the good and iron out the bad. Then you have a really multi-positional bench piece. Brooks also showed more pop (as a LHH) than I expected to see so I think there's a chance he's a MLB bat, even if it's fairly marginal in the long run. You need depth pieces. He didn't have much time in AAA before his call-up last year so it's reasonable to think IMO that he can genuinely benefit from consistent ABs in the minors right now. Josh Rojas and Vinny Capra may not be around for all that long; same could be said for the trio of veteran outfielders (Slater/Tauchman/Benny). There will likely be more opportunities for Brooks to show whether he's learned something from this experience.

Well, Bryse Wilson looks like a disaster so I'm open to trying someone new to hold down those innings. Seems like there's a chance Houser will also be a disaster and basically no chance that he does a great job, so it's hard to get too excited. And our internal options to take a rotation spot are looking truly horrific, which is unfortunate. You would have hoped that a guy like Nick Nastrini or Jairo Iriarte might be ready to get MLB starts but they really, really aren't.

The pitching situation in AAA looks like a serious s%*# show. I acknowledge that many of the guys showing command problems down there are guys who have always struggled with walks...but some guys have gotten worse and I don't think a single significant one has improved. For instance, I would have assumed that somebody out of Nastrini, Iriarte, White, Wikelman, and maybe Dunn would have pitched well enough to get consideration to get some MLB starts in the case of injury (e.g. Martin Perez) or ineffectiveness (e.g. Bryse Wilson). But none of them look remotely ready even for emergency duty. I'm not sure if Nastrini is even being considered as a starter anymore and it looks like Wikelman has been demoted to bullpen duty as well.

Deliver me my Benny and Tauchman ASAP

Baseball

Good news: tying run to the plate Bad news: it's Michael A. Taylor vs Munoz

Galaxy brain idea for the Mariners would be to IBB Palacios to ensure Vaughn gets up in a double play situation 😅

Fun fact on Luis Castillo's slider: it has for most of his career been a very high-quality pitch for him despite the fact that, on average, it has 0 glove side movement. But between the low arm angle and massive run on his sinker, batters basically perceive it as a big breaker. It's a non-mythical gyroball. He's a very interesting pitcher to me.

Regarding the Yoendrys sweeper, the one he's throwing tonight is a completely different pitch than the one I mentioned having good metrics earlier. 3 mph faster, literally 7 inches less sideways movement. Statcast has him throwing changeups as well, which he normally does not do and the ones he threw tonight are much faster and a lot more movement. I guess Katz has him just rebuilding the whole arsenal on the fly. Still appears to stink, though

Nice of John to say Yoendrys has good stuff when I think that is very much a matter of debate

Tonight specifically, Palacios and Vaughn have probably had the best looking trips to the plate. LouBob and Vargas each crushed one as well. My comment on Elko was more in general though, not that I care too much but I just don't generally feel like he looks like a guy who is going to do something positive when he's up there. Hope he gets rolling though and I appreciate the couple homers

Here are the results on Cam Booser's three pitch types. Guess which one JRod flicked over the left field wall? (it's not a trick question)

Elko not very hitterish

Following up on this, I guess it's the sweeper, Statcast says it has a lot more sideways movement than the average sweeper and it appears to be a new pitch this year (threw one last year with very different movement). Wonder if the Sox will try to get him to do the Steven Wilson approach and just throw it basically all the time. Despite all that movement on the sweeper, batters have done okay hitting it and they love hitting the rest of the stuff he throws

I've tried to do the dive on Yoendrys and I just can't see what made the Yankees, Dodgers, and Sox want to give this guy a paycheck (inning-ending strikeout notwithstanding)

An offense that sucks will make you really hate your relievers

Sox getting back to anti-luck ways of 2024

Leasure and Eisert are probably your best relievers right now

Woops

Glad to see Venable giving Davis this inning. It's not like you've got great options in the bullpen, so let's see if Davis can keep going with the low pitch count.

Even New York is screwing Vaughn at this point