Jake

Funny-boned him

Lopez often gets on these runs where he becomes a perfect representation of the old command vs. control distinction. Tonight he's been throwing a lot of strikes but he's really not spotting it. It's hard to generate swings and misses if you're pretty much just aiming for the middle of the zone and generally not missing by much.

Lopez has a nice little cut up there

Look at all these non-cheapies

That Bell double this inning was hit 92mph. This is the only ballpark in MLB where it's a hit

"There hasn't been a cheapie in the bunch" says Steve, despite the fact they have mostly been cheapies

Don't know what to make of this outing for Lopez since he's gotten about 3 innings worth of outs

Acceptable outfield defense means Pittsburgh has only 2 runs, for sure

His DRS for his career is -1 and it's 0 this year. His career UZR/150 is 4.5, 1.9 this year. Statcast has him as 1 out above average, though we know that will be 0 after the whiff earlier today. EDIT: "His" referring to Delmonico's

Unpopular opinion but I don't think Delmonico looks bad on defense. It would appear all the major fielding metrics agree with me, today notwithstanding.

Entering today, Statcast expected Palka to catch 92% of the balls hit to him this season if he were an average defender. Actual catch percentage: 69%

Please spare me another month of Palka playing defense

Should be a good test for Lopez. They really didn't hit him very well last inning, but mentally he might feel like he's getting his ass kicked. Has to just buckle in and forget about it

One hell of an unlucky inning for Lopez

Don't worry, Zack and Seby are on their way

Here's all of his starts with us:

I'm ready for Avi to come back.

Well the one game on one game off pattern probably is random. The variation is really weird though. His average velo varies by 2 mph game by game

Just had a "is that Adam LaRoche???" moment

Wonder what's going on. At least the bad stuff version of Lopez still has good stuff. His version of taking lumps still looks like a guy who could figure it out.

Lopez game by game velocity this year. Clear "tick tock" pattern and we're unfortunately on a "tock" day

Our defensive alignments have not served us well thus far in this inning

He looks really, really bad out there

Okay, my half-baked rankings for the Sox: 1. Mize 2. Madrigal 3. Liberatore 4. Bart You'll get one of the four, so no sense ranking beyond that.

I know all the caveats about drafting for need, but I just don't know what we'd do with another OF in our low minors. Lucky there aren't many that we would seriously consider at our spot.