Jake

Send this ballpark straight to hell

Every now and then I wonder if Ruiz is going to turn into something

I was only rooting against it because I didn't want Collins to get forced into the game under those weird circumstances for his first ever appearance.

Ricky gets tossed often enough that I kind of doubt he's being a coward. I suspect he just doesn't realize how bad it's been because the calls mostly have not been bad because of height

The data are probably out there to figure out if he has a consistent bias with lefties vs. righties

Good to see the uneven strike zones are still being applied to each team's relievers

Tilson has a .397 OPS against LHP this year. Alonso has a .946 OPS against LHP (not typical of his career to say the least)

Would be nice to have a real RH pinch hit option on the bench here but we're stuck with two left-handed DHs and one RH guy that can cover you in the field

Worth noting that at least 2 of those caught stealing were on batter's interference

It wasn't a good jump though. He had a good jump on the play Lester tried to pick him off. When you have a good jump stealing third, you always steal the base.

The point about the umpire isn't that Lucas is secrely pitching great, it's that the umpire likely put two runs on the board by squeezing Lucas and perhaps kept runs off the board for Lester by giving him a giant strike zone

Too much speed differential on Giolito's changeup right now.

I'm not convinced we'd be losing with fair umpiring.

Since the LA/NO trade isn't official, are they going to make the #4 pick put on a Lakers hat, etc.?

It turns out he wasn't almost ready and the Sox seemed determined to ignore this information as they kept promoting him despite him struggling. For me, it throws off any obvious timeline for when he might reach his potential because he got to the MLB before he showed he was ready to move on from AA. This year, his numbers are much different in that he's getting a lot more strikeouts and swings and misses than ever before, but his command is worse as well. I don't have high hopes for his time in the MLB right now but I don't dismiss the possibility that he eventually figures it out and becomes quite useful.

I don't think Carson was called up because of an assessment by the FO that he's definitely ready...in fact I suspect they'd prefer to keep him down there until his walk numbers get down. But Vieira can't be called back up at this point and they aren't going to open a spot on the 40 man for someone else to get the call.

Adding a piece to a team at the exact time the piece is needed is very valuable. You could argue that whatever production you get from Eloy this year is "wasted" in the sense you miss the playoffs (although this is overly simplistic). The gap between Q and the guys he was replacing on their staff was large and at a time they really needed it. Certainly more justifiable than the Aroldis Chapman deal.

If you could have Taj or RoLo at the same price (probably not realistic), who are you going with?

lol somehow putting "6 HR" twice feels appropriate

Why can't someone sign while they're still in high school? Is his season still going too?

He's a natural RH batter

Makes some sense to be non-committal about the timing. If he really flops, you send him down once Welington is healthy and act like you always knew he probably needed more time in AAA.

I think this is from the foot soldiers.

Hope folks will summarize Hahn's comments

I guess my problem with THT is that the measurables are not great. Fantastic length for his height, but his height is very short. His measurables for athleticism were not good and while his bench press (the only way they're measuring strength) was above average, it wasn't great. Maybe it undersells his actual strength, but now we're talking about something that isn't measurable. Hard for me to conclude THT is a premium athlete or even average for the NBA. It wouldn't shock me if THT ends up outside shooting better than he did in NCAA last year, but he was not efficient inside the arc and he shot free throws badly. This stuff did not improve in the conference season. But overall, I don't think it's crazy to say his play in college is not exactly an asset for him. I didn't get to see him *that* much, but I'll buy that he was a really strong defender. But I worry that his size becomes much more problematic in the NBA. Who does he guard on the Bulls? LaVine? Might get burned but maybe he could use his strength. Probably wouldn't capitalize on the strength mismatch on the other end given his poor inside scoring. Anyway, I also felt that Ayo is not yet a good NBA prospect and thought he'd regret it if he declared. He has a height, but perhaps not length, advantage over THT but is of course smaller. I'm not sure how Ayo would look on the athleticism drills, which is part of the reason I thought it was a bad risk to go the combine (which he didn't do). He was mostly a below the rim player, at least offensively, although he did show some flashes of really athletic defensive plays that would surprise me. Whether Ayo is a strong passer or not isn't clear. He gets some assists, makes some impressive passes. He's the first Illini PG to sometimes hit the roll man on the pick and roll in quite a while, but that's a low bar. I definitely don't think I'd count passing among his negatives, that's for sure. Sharing the court with 2 other PGs complicates things. What Ayo would be able to sell, though, is his overall production, at least offensively. Especially since he started disappearing at times late in the season, he'll still benefit from another year in college. Of course, it'll be somewhat hard to evaluate because the Illini had an extremely difficult schedule last season and chances are it won't be quite so bad this year. In terms of college production, when you look at the box plus-minus oriented statistics, THT and Ayo are kind of mirror images of each other. THT not much on offense, but added a lot on D. Ayo not much on D, but added a lot offensively. I worry that THT's D won't translate due to his athleticism. Others would rightly be worried that Ayo's offense wouldn't translate (besides outside shooting) due to his athleticism/size. I wouldn't want the Bulls drafting either one of them, although in a 2nd round situation maybe you just don't care since those guys are so often fatally flawed.