Jake

I could see Acuna getting it figured out and becoming a nice player. But if the Sox could find a utility guy who can actually hit lefty pitching (Acuna has generally not had platoon splits as a pro, not to mention the overall poor production), it's probably time to pull the plug. Lots of chatter on Twitter about Jorge Mateo who also doesn't really hit lefties any better than righties but is probably a slight upgrade over Acuna.

I feel like Sam was doing everything he could to make contact against a pitcher he apparently wasn't seeing too well. Amazing job by Pagan to never give in and throw him ball 4 because clearly Sam was just trying to hang in until he got the ball 4.

I'm not a fan of an endless ballgame but I'm not in love with how a lot of these Manfred games play out. No perfect way to do it I guess, especially since teams seem unwilling to leave a pitcher out there for long which is what tended to bring extra games to a close in the past (reliever would end up wearing out and giving up runs)

Hawk was rather notoriously full of s%*# (god bless him), but there's some real insight into his proclamation that "you make your own luck." If you strike everyone out, you're not going to see a whole lot of bad luck. And when you're batting, your strikeouts are going to lock you out of any good luck. Of course you're always searching for some balance since we know you can go too far in the other direction.

Tough loss. Great start from Burke. You hit some homers. Reds get 4 lucky hits in a row all in one inning. Then they hit two lazy flyouts to beat you with the Manfred man. Outplayed them in this one but you'll have to do the next two with a worse starter and no closer.

I think it was a tough call for Will but it worked out. Do you make Tanner, who has shaky control and no experience, go for the save in a tight game? Or do you go with Richards who has mostly gotten the job done mostly via smoke and mirrors? Knowing there's a risk that if Richards has a bad inning, McDougal has to be the one to come in for a very high-pressure save. Ultimately I think the plan all along was to try to hold Cleveland there while hoping the Sox could get a little insurance to reduce the pressure at the end. I doubt Grant was available. You're going to show your ass at some point when the bullpen has to cover 8.

I'm starting to think we may have to treat Richards like a normal reliever who needs occasional rest

Sox have Joey Wiemer playing LF for Charlotte. Has a .900 OPS in MLB this season in 30 games. Statcast says there was some luck behind that number (presumably the Nationals agreed with that assessment)

I remember the early-season hype about DeLauter having 4 homers in his first 3 career games. Now he's on his 101st game and only has 12. A fine rookie season nonetheless.

That's one of those Cleveland deadline acquisitions btw. Who's running that team???

Hagen's velocity over time in that outing. Whether he runs out of gas or just lets off the throttle to try to combat the poor command is unclear

Given the construction of the lineup and just generally how the game is played nowadays, I don't think there should be quite as much of a prohibition on making the first out at third. Mune isn't exactly a get him over, get him in type of guy. Of course you'd like him to come up with ducks on the pond. I wonder whether they would have IBB'd Mune with a man on 2nd and nobody out.

Hard to see...might be safe but will we get the right angle?

How in the world did they get him

Two scoreless from Hagen and you're all mad!!

In AAA, Hagen's best pitch for being in the strike zone was the cutter by a small margin. I think that's why he keeps going to it after the 4-seamers sail.

IDK what he was trying to throw there. Shape was more similar to his 4-seam than anything else, but it had a lot more drop than his 4-seam. And less spin, but not enough less to look like his changeup. Maybe a sinker. But I've seen him be pretty inconsistent with his movement so it might just be a particularly poor case of execution.

Hagen kind of breaks the rules because he gets rather good results on the heater even when he's not letting it loose in terms of velo. Just a matter of throwing strikes. Noah different in that even when he gets his best velo, he doesn't normally get that many whiffs because the shape isn't good.

Sam has all the traits of a speed player except for the speed

Welcome to the Hagen Smith experience

Took my now-wife to this doubleheader in June 2013 that was wet throughout, including a half hour rain delay between the games. Not including the rain delay, the combined near 8 hours of gametime made it the longest doubleheader in history (probably still stands?). https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHA/CHA201306281.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHA/CHA201306282.shtml Shortly after they announced there would be no postgame fireworks because it had gotten too late at night, Addison Reed blew a 3-run lead, capped off with a go-ahead Nick Swisher HR by the bad guys. It's always nice to have a day at the ballpark but that Sox team along with mother nature did their best to try to make it miserable. IIRC a lady got smoked by a foul ball and had to be ambulanced out of there too...but maybe she was the lucky one.

Some things I know from personal experience as a guy who pitched with a bad shoulder... It can be hard to get fully warmed up. There's "I'm loose" but you're still feeling like there's something gumming up the works. After you've really been laboring for a while, it feels like you finally have full and smooth use of your range of motion. You do not believe you're hurt. You know something's off, but you're telling yourself it's conditioning, your routine, your mechanics, etc. And sometimes it's true! By the time you're hurt, you've had numerous times you've troubleshooted problems with the way your arm felt via all those things. You think if you're hurt, you're going to be completely unable to pitch. Since you can pitch like 85% good, you must not be hurt. So it can drag on until your effectiveness is so down that nobody lets you pitch anymore.

Sox may have noticed a trend with his expected statistics such that his season had mostly turned around by those metrics, although the Dodgers beat his ass so thoroughly that it had the effect of strongly bending the curve upward just from the one game. Since mid-May, his worst start by xwOBA was .339 ... other than the nearly .600 xwOBA start against the Dodgers. One thing that is for certain is there are no teams paying attention to bWAR for player acquisition because they aren't really paying attention to ERA. I think there's probably some diversity as to what exactly they do put weight on. Every metric was pointing towards a little bit of bad luck for Castillo, but whether the luck was a run of ERA or a quarter run of ERA depends on your system. I think there's plenty of ways to feel pessimistic about Castillo without looking at his ERA, although a few ways to see signs that he's going to give you some useful innings.

Jairo is out there throwing almost all fastballs and not getting a ton of strikeouts as a result. He's keeping the walks mostly in check which was a problem for him in the low minors. But the low strikeouts also limits his upside. And it's not obvious why he's getting way with such a fastball heavy approach. He has an unusual release which is something Bannister talked about when Jairo was acquired. Both low angle and very high extension so it seems to come out of the middle of his body which is a weird thing. Not sure what the upside is unless he comes up with a swing and miss secondary pitch, though. Between the release point being almost center cut and the fact he seems to like his changeup, he has almost reversed splits, propelled by the fact he strikes out lefties a lot more than righties.