Jake

It's nice of Hawk to have reached out to John, especially since we know Hawk has some mixed feelings at best towards the Sox with regard to their handling of the broadcasts.

I've yet to see when the actual ejection happened, but my suspicion is this is a case of him being especially mad about getting tossed without good enough reason (in his opinion, of course)

We're not very close to this point yet, but I wonder how long of a leash the Sox will give Teel if he struggles. He doesn't look very good at the plate to me, he seems to still have issues with velocity like he did in the minors which is contributing to a generally high rate of whiffs. Or maybe it will all start to click. Quero wasn't hitting velocity well and was whiffing on it a lot in AAA, but he's actually done quite well against it in MLB.

I'm grading Colson strictly on strikeout rate so today is an F

talent

Seems like Getz and/or Venable really wants to have a bench player who has a strong glove at SS. There's not really an internal option there to take Capra's spot.

That said, I'd be happy to rethink the roster spots devoted to Capra, Palacios, Elko, and Rojas. Of course we don't really have four dudes to plug into those holes so I'd probably start with Capra and Palacios.

Having left-handed Kyle Teel pinch hit for Slater would have been an all-time insane managerial decision. Slater has had a decent season but had a bad game against some of the league's best pitchers. Best not to overthink it

Hopefully just him dialing it back a bit after a very high-energy debut

Taylor's heater has so little armside movement that the shape is almost like a bad cutter. I have a feeling it isn't always like that. When Dylan Cease first came up to the big leagues, his fastball was doing that and it made his fastball not play very well until he figured it out. On the bright side, the shape of Taylor's slider is incredible. He might want to consider a slider-heavy attack if he's able to get it over for a strike.

First time Taylor generates a swing and a miss as a big leaguer. Needed it too.

Very surprised by Taylor's inability to get any swings and misses

I feel like Sox were outplayed tonight BUT not by so much that they couldn't sneak out a win. Last year they just never got those games where the other team was hitting into loud outs and lost because of it.

Any subscribers to the CHSN streaming service in here? My dad has constant issues with the stream quality and I don't know whether it's something with his home internet setup or just a janky service from Jerry and the boys. CHSN customer service doesn't want to talk to him (and only do so via email).

This is a hellish jinx on my part but I think Eisert is probably the best pitcher on the team right now

Tough luck outs continue for the Astros. And a horrific strike call goes the Sox way to start the next AB

What

Rojas has been a pretty useful player throughout his career on the strength of good defense and not-bad offense. For whatever reason both of those have stepped back so far. If he's playing hurt then I think he should stop doing that.

Nice job LouBob, helped avoid losing the lead on bad batted ball luck. Instead we will likely win because of good batted ball luck in the Shane Smith portion of the game

I'll wait for Steven Wilson to give up contact harder than 94mph today before I get too fired up about his performance. He hasn't been nearly as good as his ERA suggests but he's low on my Sox enemies list.

I'm curious about why Connor McKnight's mic so frequently has connection/reception issues when I don't remember that ever happening to Brooke. Does he have giant hands smothering the equipment or something?

Smith is getting absolutely pounded. Very fortunate the Sox are ahead. I hope Venable sees what's happening and knows to have a quick hook if he gets much traffic next inning.

Colson fixed whatever it was that regressed between 2024 and 2025. It's not clear that he fixed whatever caused the regression from 2023 to 2024. Pretty simple.

Answering my own question: good folks at Sox Machine report that indeed he demanded his release because in Houser-like fashion, he thought he'd done enough to get a MLB deal. Turns out he was right.

Is Altavilla a guy who had opt-out rights? Did we cut him because he said he was going to opt out?