Jake

Just goes to show you there's more to it than speed, I think. Clearly stealing bases has a major skill component, but the other metrics of baserunning success that don't consider stolen bases show Hamilton is quite a bit ahead of Engel as well. That being said, those same metrics would tell you Engel is a very good baserunner but Hamilton is just special. That being said, the difference is more dramatic defensively. Hamilton is a very good defender but Engel is really special and has added more value in many fewer innings since Statcast started keeping track.

The goal for Engel is be like a slightly better hitting version of Billy Hamilton (knowing he would never steal bases like Hamilton despite having similar speed). As for Engel's swing mechanics, what I always say is he swings like he has never watched baseball and only read about it in a book.

While I don't doubt that the Sox are truly at or near the worst in the league, I'm not very convinced by their analysis. If Baseball America and/or FanGraphs have biased analyses of players from an organization, then it makes it very hard to interpret the surplus value you're getting. If every guy you trade to the Dodgers see his value increase, is that because he's really getting better or because Dodgers prospects get overrated? It can be hard to tell from what they're doing. The ultimate equalizer would be to only use MLB performance as an indicator but they don't have prospect grades going back far enough in time to track players from minors to a decently long sample in the majors.

Always worse when you know the guy has a history. With all the injuries he's dealt with you know part of his reaction is just the emotional part of confronting what feels like yet another serious injury

That cutter is a seriously nasty pitch. Hope he can spot it up and realize he should be throwing it about 50% of the time

Yoan trying out some new footwork

I would really like to see Fulmer stop missing way up and in like that. I'm a little worried that it's a canary in the coal mine for an injury

I was going to say that Nick's post-injury resurgence was a good sign for Zack but now maybe not

I can't take what they're doing to this pitcher

Subbing Engel for Nicky is pretty rough given how precious Nicky's time is here

Castro's stuff reminds me of Mike McDougal

Feel bad for Castro.

Will be interested to hear about velocity for Burdi

Man that Birmingham lineup is terrible right now. That was supposed to be the fun one!

Wild in the zone better than wild out of the zone

Maybe I'm forgetting but I just don't think Reynaldo has gotten much use out of his changeup at all this year

The Eloy – Carlos Lee comparison seems to still hold pretty well

I think the best evidence against Eloy is that he got fairly close to it and people are assuming other guys would have been there a few steps sooner. Of course that requires us to be correct that he had a bad route and/or slow speed getting there which is hard to know from watching it on TV

I wish they gave catch probability because the expected BA doesn't actually compute to 1 minus catch probability. The actual catch probability could be more or less than what is implied by .230 expected BA. The expected BA doesn't factor in where fielders are positioned or the left/right direction of the batted ball

I'm not saying that I can just see how his brain may be telling him to start hitting the brakes early so he doesn't go down like a ton of bricks like he's probably done so many times before

Doesn't seem to use his body well at all when throwing

After you see how he nearly died on the ground rule double in the corner you can kind of see why it seems like Eloy isn't comfortable going all out for fly balls

DH my ass!

Seems like Yoan isn't seeing Norris's fastball very well