Jake

Seems oddly frequent that guys come through our minor leagues relying on their curveballs and then drop it almost completely upon reaching the majors. That's been true of both Giolito and Lopez.

Probably not much

There's no doubt that even at full health, Yoan is really just not a very good basestealer. We'll always need to pick our spots with him carefully.

Nice step forward for Reynaldo today. I'm glad to see the return of his true curve. Even if it is just a tertiary pitch, it seems to be something he can buy strikes with which is something he needs. Just has to use it enough that batters can have some doubt about what pitch he's going to use in various counts.

The first I heard of it was a tweet from JR Fegan mentioning that he had an ice pack on his knee while interviewing with him. Fegan said there or somewhere else that this was part of the reason he got a day off recently.

It has been reported in the past week or so that Yoan has been nursing a knee issue. The other day he looked like he was in pain scoring on a double.

Twitter randos have a spotty track record on these things, but this is all we've got

I do think there's a train of thought that he's a .700-ish OPS guy and he's going to put up similar numbers at every level so there's no use spinning the wheels waiting for him to perform better than you think he will. The idea being that his numbers won't vary level to level all that much, so once he's locked in at this level of production, just promote him and wait till he gets locked in at the same productivity at the next league, and so on.

For the record, while I'm firmly on the "promote them when they're ready and don't sweat the service time" bandwagon, I find Luis Robert to be a tricky case. No past track record of success, has shown some history of contact/patience issues, doesn't have a lot of experience in general. He might be ready now or he might be in for a very rude awakening if he's moved up now. I don't know.

I suspect we'll see Vaughn move at the pace Kris Bryant did. Split time between A- and A+ in draft year, start year 2 in AA with a promotion to AAA mid-year if all goes well.

I can see how if the Sox had evaluated Madrigal to be basically ready for AA to start the year, him having a nice little run like he did is probably as good of a pretense as any to move him up. Although his season numbers aren't way different from last year, he has hit for more power (not to be confused with actually hitting for power) and has importantly greatly reduced the rate of ground balls.

Madrigal's final 17 games in Winston-Salem: .313 average, .385 OBP, .448 SLG 3 2B, 2 HR, 9 SB 1 CS 7 BB (1 IBB), 2 HBP, 1 K

I do think it might be more of a benefit for Robert to play against the non-juiced balls in the bigger ballparks for a while. I worry about how the juiced balls in AAA might cover up some flaws in a player's game.

Most 1st rounders don't get a single WAR. If he's a MLB regular it's a good pick

Move him up as soon as he can face MLB pitching without it hurting his development. There's more than service time at play here. We need him to be good as soon as he can be good.

So when is the Super 2 deadline?

I think at this point he had a run of terrible luck and either because of it or some other reason he's become totally lost up there. The truth is likely that he saw his bad numbers early and got inside his own head instead of sticking with the plan that had him making quality contact. Now he's making his own luck and it's not good.

It's like he had to leave Reynaldo in for 3 extra batters to prove that he hadn't forgotten to get somebody warmed up

Easily the worst managing decision(s) of Ricky's time here. Reynaldo had backed his way into an acceptable 5 inning start but there were already signs that he was losing it at the end of 5. Nobody getting loose to start the next inning and we let Reynaldo throw more pitches than he has in his career (I presume) to give up 4 more runs for god knows what reason

Surprisingly little discussion of Madrigal's bomb here. I was ready to be disappointed when I saw it on video but I was actually surprised he could hit a low liner out of the park like that.

I mean I get it but to anyone paying attention, Ross Detwiler is going to be a hell of a message too

Robert is basically a big game away from having great-looking numbers in AA. I'm not sweating anything at all with him right now.

Honestly for our current situation I don't know how Hahn can say they can't find anything outside the organization when James Shields is sitting at home. What's the difference between him and Ervin Santana, besides the fact Shields would be way better (not a high bar)?

Some of the beat writers were suggesting on Twitter that Ricky basically told Yoan that if he had a big day he'd get the next day off

I don't hate the idea of taking Abrams. I suspect the big question on the Sox's minds is what the power potential is. This has to be the hardest thing to project with a beanpole 18 year old. Kid has high upside as a defensive player and not a lot of risk — worst case is he's a 2B, CF, or he fills out and plays 3B which hopefully means he's finding more power. Seems like his hit tool is not terribly risky...very unlikely to end up struggling due to contact issues. Needs development, but he's not super raw, just young.