Jake

I don't love the fit, but one way to look at it is that he showed he's not going to be a star playing the 4 all the time, so it's worth taking a shot at developing him as a 3. In other words, the Bulls probably want him to be like Melo, only playing the 4 when you're playing small lineups. And with the Bulls personnel, you're not going to play small very often. You're going to have a really long starting lineup as far as wingspan is concerned: Dunn – 6'10" LaVine – 6'9" Jabari – 7'0" Lauri – 7'0" RoLo – 7'5" And the bench has length as well: WCJ – 7'5" Hutchison – 7'1" Portis – 7'2" Holiday – 7'0" Valentine – 6'11" Felicio – 7'0" Blakeney – 6'8" Payne – 6'7"

I think what I'd say is you're right that boredom can do that but also it's something that is speculated to be the cause of bad play much more often than it really is the cause of bad play.

This is based on basically nothing, but I always had the gut feeling that Rondon wasn't beloved by teammates

This may very well be the end of the road for him. Wouldn't shock me if he ends up working for the Sox. Also wouldn't shock me if he wants to play in the Mexican League for 5 years.

Disappointing, but it's been a great season for him. He's hit better with more walks and fewer strikeouts at a higher level. He should be well-prepared for AA next year and once you're at AA, you're only a short run of good play from the big show.

Disregarding the weird recent conversation, I thought Tim answered the original question in a near-perfect way.

Find it interesting that a guy who has tested positive for a banned stimulant has a sweating problem.

I didn't mean to imply that he turned into Lucas Giolito, but in that year he was not himself in September. He had a 4.11 ERA and .790 OPS against, we lost 3 of his 6 starts, including a loss to Detroit and a shellacking as we made our last gasp at the end of September. For his career, this playoff workhorse has a 3.78 September ERA (overall career ERA of 2.93) with a surprisingly high HR rate. He also owns an 8.38 ERA in his one postseason.

All I know is that his famed poor September pitching played a role in the Sox blowing their best chance to make the playoffs in his time here (2012).

I think the appropriate attitude to have is to just memory hole him for a few months and hope he forces his way back into our consciousness.

While it very well may be completely undeserved, I'd be surprised if Giolito doesn't at least get a handful of turns through the rotation next season.

There's always a place for the eye test — I felt like Avi was going to be fine by watching his at bats early this season despite the fact his numbers were no good because he was hitting the ball hard. That said, there is really very little justification for throwing out the defensive metrics as useless. They aren't some weird computer thing divorced from what's really happening out there, they are based on humans using the game tape to judge the speed and location of batted balls and using years of data on equivalent plays to see how often the balls are fielded. Nobody's eye test can unite the single play observation with the data in that way. When people say the fielding metrics aren't reliable in small samples, they don't mean that they are meaningless in small samples. They mean a half season of fielding data is about as informative as 40-50 games of hitting data. We pay a lot of attention to 40-50 games of hitting data and see it as basically informative even if things are liable to change as time goes on and with the knowledge that a small number of games may play an outsize role in determining the season total and may not replicate in the long run. For outfielders, we have even better methods now thanks to Statcast when it comes to judging an outfielder's ability to catch the ball. It builds on the same logic that UZR, etc. do but with extremely accurate measurements. Soon I expect us to have similar information from Statcast for infielders and I expect that to really affect the game once we do. I'm sure the teams are already generating these metrics for their own use and MLB's good people are still haggling over the best version to present to the public.

I wish Omar could hit when Kevan Smith isn't on the roster. Kind of diminishes his value that he can't.

The best evidence that advanced fielding metrics are not useless is the fact that by and large they identify as great fielders the same people who close observers of the game do.

I could hear it on the Reds broadcast. Riggleman says he wants to put him on base, the umpire says Riggleman needs to give the hand signal, not just a verbal request. This is repeated by both parties one time. Riggleman says "do your job!" and then umpire says "you do your job!" and then I lose the audio and Riggleman is running out there.

In a different situation that play by the RF would be really impressive.

Yoan always looks half-surprised when he smashes one to the right field corner. I don't know if it's something about his balance as he finishes his swing but his reaction is weird.

I do remember some discussion about his spin rate at the time, I'm just not convinced the Nats were thinking about it. FWIW, low spin rate is associated with more movement and higher ground ball rates. What we used to call guys with a "heavy" ball turn out to have lower spin rates. A common thought from the get-go was that the worst thing would be to have typical spin rate because that's what hitters' eyes are most attuned to.

I would wager that it was much more about a mixture of on-field results in MLB, velocity drop, and Giolito's mental state that made Washington unsure about him. I suspect MLB teams have much more uncertainty over the practical meaning of spin rate than what is being expressed here.

Also, on the Cincinnati broadcast they showed a brief interview with Don Cooper pregame. Coop said that Giolito has been "mentally tied up in knots" since they acquired him and it's something they're still working through. Also said they've been trying to ramp up his velocity lately.

At least now he's getting pounded while throwing with velocity. As for whether he's tipping his pitches, he definitely tips the curveball because the release point is in a different spot. It's pretty clear from Statcast that it's 4-8" higher at release than the rest of his pitches.

The fact that the bulk of the missed time is due to a thumb injury makes me less worried than I'd otherwise be. I had what I believe to be the same thing happen to my thumb when I was playing ball and it took a long time to start feeling normal even after the pain had subsided. I always felt like if I wasn't careful the ligament felt like it could easily get re-aggravated. At any rate, I'm not worried about a prospect who has weak hand ligaments. If he was constantly getting serious hamstring or knee injuries or something like that, I'd be more concerned.

I do think this can help Cousins go to other teams next year in FA and say "I know you might have thought a team can't win with a player like me on it, but that's what happened in GS."

I don't know the schedule but have noticed the updates seem to come in batches. Can't find any documentation about it, though.

I would say that the main difference between Yoan and pre- and post-injury is between his ears. That's not inconsistent with some of the other explanations given here (e.g., a bad approach can make a player pull off the ball). Yoan is dealing with failure right now and probably has some maturing to do. I suspect he's not reacting well to the missed ball/strike calls in particular.