Jake

Vargas has been okay. Some very good plays, some bad ones. Plus side is the misplays look potentially correctable as they are likely rooted in footwork and timing.

Harris looks like one of the kids from Rocket Power

Not a bad day to let Hicks try to work through some stuff

Means there's not enough sample size. He's hit 95mph on a throw this season so the raw arm strength is adequate. Statcast rates him as an out above average at preventing runners from advancing in his small sample size thus far

Not sure I follow the reasoning of "I have spotted an uncalled balk so I will run into an out"

I don't think Bobby handles velocity all that well so I don't like starting him off with a sweeper

Yeah I think if it is executed smoothly, you get him at second. But it's an unusual play to make and not sure that the juice would be worth the squeeze.

Colson is back baby

Lenyn "I don't need no freaking strikes" Sosa

Bad luck is really bad when you walk people

Frankly just no good explanation for the way this went. Seems like the best story for the Sox is that Cannon was essentially concealing an injury that only became apparent to everyone else once he got in.

So what's going to be the story here? Blister?

Maybe we can put this opener stuff to bed for good.

Looks yippy, this is kind of crazy

Yeah this is part of why I opposed sending down Shane Smith

I remember hearing that there would be Statcast data for all levels this season. Anyone know what's going on there?

Too bad. I've always been fascinated by the yips, but there's no telling how it will go. Maybe he snaps out of it, but who knows on what timeline if it ever does happen. Pitchers are lucky enough as it is to have the health to be successful for very long, so it's already an uphill battle. Look to Daniel Bard for a best-case scenario, probably. Look to ex-Sox farmhand Alec Hansen for the more likely outcome.

I'm not big on predictions but as far as W-L my main goal for the Sox this year is don't lose 100 games. Beyond that, given that I don't think there was any world in which they'd be a stone's throw from the last wild card spot, it's ultimately all about identifying the players and positions you're going to have covered going forward. 75 wins on the backs of a Fedde-Benny renaissance would be worse than 65 wins with strong seasons by 3-5 <27-year-old guys. I'm really looking forward to getting Teel back and seeing whether he can 1. maintain last year's performance and 2. take a step forward from there. After that, the most likely to be interesting breakout guys are Braden Montgomery and Sam Antonacci. What Colson is going to do is an important question that I don't know the answer to. I think Chase and Vargas are pretty likely to be solid everyday players with neither super likely to take a star turn. I think Lenyn deserves to play just about every day but I see him as harder to predict...flashing power potential has increased his upside but he's become increasingly one-dimensional and his approach makes his profile risky. Luisangel is a wildcard who I'd like to see play every day but am not really counting on for anything. I feel similarly about Pereira but would be less afraid to cut bait with him if he has a bad few weeks of play. Performance of Braden Montgomery is pretty important to me because there's a serious void of impact talent between AA and AAA besides him. I think there's going to be enough solid guys I think but not a ton of upside guys around from AA upwards... I'd say you're looking at just the two Montgomerys and Teel (and Teel is somewhat living on positional adjustments for that eval). I'm not counting Mune here because of his contract status. Bonemer is a nice prospect of course but he's far enough from MLB that I'm not going to key in on his performance this year too much. On the pitching side, to me the Earth revolves around the two lefties in AAA. There are plenty of other developments that can matter but they're the most interesting pieces and the ones that still seem to have a very wide variety of potential outcomes in front of them. I'll admit to moving my own evaluation of Schultz towards a lower ceiling and higher floor but still that ceiling includes some potentially very high value. I hold out some hope for getting value from Thorpe as well so it will be interesting to see how he looks when he returns. There's a critical mass of potential innings-eaters types so sorting out the Burke-Smith-Cannon-Sandlin-Davitt-Bush-etc. is important business but kind of boring.

Do I remember correctly that Everson Pereira is expected back before long?

This series comes down to Gunnar Henderson, Austin Hays's hamstring, and Reese McGuire's glove hand

This guy throws a Drew Thorpe changeup. Doesn't drop at all relative to his fastball, which itself has great rise. Very confusing to hitters used to seeing those pitches falling off the table. Hitters have whiffed on over 80% of their cuts against it this season

This series hasn't moved me very much. Pitching pleasantly competitive. A lot of ABs going to guys who are not really part of the plan right now.

Welp

I've been a bit of a Burke hater, but he's pretty much earned my confidence as a guy who is going to give you serviceable performance and is able to keep things from getting out of control.

Felt like Peters took a while to get that throw in