Jake

I'll also add that since Cooper took over the Sox had the 3rd best combined pitching WAR and 6th best RA9-WAR over that span of time.

Sox pitching staff MLB rank by WAR and RA9-WAR: 2002: 16 / 15 2003: 5 / 5 2004: 18 / 15 2005: 1 / 1 2006: 4 / 8 2007: 9 / 18 2008: 1 / 6 2009: 4 / 7 2010: 1 / 10 2011: 2 / 8 2012: 12 / 6 2013: 16 / 18 2014: 25 / 25 2015: 9 / 16 2016: 13 / 11 2017: 29 / 23 Had to take the time to call out this lunacy that Don Cooper has never presided over a top staff and this is without addressing the questionable assertion that he's been constantly handed some amazingly talented crew to work with.

Listen, the bar here is not very high at this point and quite a few people in the industry thought it was questionable — if not for the service time issue — that we didn't have him up here to start the year. Unlike Giolito, we'll know that Kopech has stuff that can play.

Is the magic date for Kopech known?

Might be worth having someone take a real close look at his shoulder considering the big drop in velocity and overall erratic performance.

I'm not convinced he has to go to AAA and given his mental state there's a chance it would be disastrous for him. Only the Sox will be able to read him and decide what he needs. Of course if he's going to give up 4 runs per inning every time out there won't be any choice

Giolito has a lot of signs of being a headcase. On one hand, that means he could be the flip of a switch away from getting it going. But it also means he'll never be out of the woods.

Ump missed a call up and in and low and away in the same AB

I like watching Anderson, Yoan, Nicky, Davidson. Abreu is on another level and I love watching great players so I'm happy for him to be around.

You can use up Volstad and Infante as much as you want and just send to AAA for fresh arms if needed.

If you took somebody who didn't know any background on our pitchers and had them watch this season, they'd be much higher on Fulmer than Giolito.

From the tone of some of the people who are more likely to know how Danny is doing than we are, this seems very, very grave. It is not all that uncommon to hear about healthy young people dying from brain hemorrhages — nobody is coming out and saying that may be the outcome here, but it looks like it may be that serious.

Wouldn't read too much into Carson's appearance here seeing as Hahn was quoted just this morning about how the Sox feel what is best for him is to get the ball every 5 days in the big leagues. I think we're just letting him throw some extra pitches since he was pulled so early last time out.

Can't wait for the complaints to roll in.

There's been a lot of attention paid to the funky motion with Fulmer's arms but to me it's his lower half that's costing him. When his left foot lands, his leg is completely stiff and you can see how it totally redirects his forward momentum. Instead of a smooth trajectory towards home it kind of swings his weight over the front leg. It gives him basically no margin for error with his release point because if his timing is slightly off he'll either release it much too high or much too low.

Leury always deserved the starting CF job. The only way to justify Engel having won the job was if the coaches were certain that he'd made a big developmental leap with the bat, which is obviously not what occurred. The best thing for him would be to get some success in AAA to hopefully get his bat to a point that we can make use of his superb defense. I don't know that I'd get too enthused about Trayce Thompson, but I definitely wouldn't cast him off as a 100% has-been who doesn't have any upside. His bad play in AAA last season is a concern though and I'm not familiar enough with his injury history to know whether that explains away that performance or if it is going to continue to plague him.

QUOTE (fathom @ Apr 17, 2018 -> 12:32 AM) You're making it too complex. He's late on fastballs and isn't adjusting his swing to the plane of offspeed pitches. KLaw has warned that his swing could lead him vulnerable to this very thing. These aren't mutually exclusive. At any rate, there's a very simple problem that has appeared moreso this year than last that his decisions on which pitches to swing at and which to take have been very bad. And it seems to me that his lateness on heaters is probably because he can't make a decision.

As a side note, if we end up dumping Narvaez in favor of Smith it will be one the all time low-key stupid decisions we have ever made

The issue with Yoan is that while he has excellent feel for the strike zone, I'm starting to think he has no gameplan whatsoever at the plate. I'm not sure that he really knows what pitches he likes to hit and doesn't like to hit, what pitches he's likely to get in a given situation, things like that. The fault there is of course on our coaching and development, but it's a somewhat fixable problem. It may also be the case that our attempts to get him thinking that way are kind of paralyzing him where he's constantly caught in between.

Engel hit something!

How about that defense!

Love Lopez. I've felt he was the gem in the Eaton trade from the get-go. Going to drive us crazy sometimes with the command but he's got a ton of talent and there's a real pitcher in there.

It became clear last night that Yoan's head was in the wrong place. We've seen him play satisfactorily for long stretches before and he'll get back there.

Everybody off the bandwagon