Jake

Hawk brought up an interesting comparison for Lopez today: Bartolo Colon. He definitely pitched like Bartolo today, throwing 75 fastballs out of 107 pitches. I think Reynaldo can become a more well-round pitcher than Bartolo (no fat joke intended), but I wonder if he can use this fastball heavy approach to his advantage while he polishes the secondary stuff.

It's funny because I don't even see Cease as a "main guy" for the rebuild. That's not meant as a knock on him at all but more of a statement about how deep our system. Plausibly could be the case that by the time Cease should be ready, we won't need him (but I suspect we'll be very glad to have him).

Love him big dogging it off the mound there.

This is really impressive to me — look where the swinging strikes are. He has been able to pound the zone and still get guys to whiff. This is what good stuff can get you.

Superb outing for Reynaldo. I hope we can get him some cushion to let him push deeper into the game if he lets a guy or two on.

Can't believe a team with a guy like Rougned Odor would have a bad attitude

Umpire has been giving Minor that high and outside pitch. Very tough to hit.

Well that strike 3 was something.

One thing I like about this team is that it is fast.

Hit and run is a smart call with how Tim has been hitting.

Two old men talking about the re-runs they've been watching on TV

DeShields has not had a good look at Lopez today.

"How do you solve problems? With solutions!" sounds like the beginning of a bad sales pitch

Interesting to me that virtually all of Leury's bad defensive plays have come in LF

6 swings and misses in 29 pitches for Lopez. That might be more swings and misses than he generated in his entire previous start.

Might be breaking out of that weird pattern

I think there's an analogy to pitchers who can throw strikes and not hit spots. Tim is getting better at identifying strikes from non-strikes, I think, but he's not doing a good job identifying good pitches to hit from non-good pitches to hit. Hopefully he's just in a bit of a funk where his decision-making is a little out of whack.

Minor really moving the ball around effectively. Nobody has been able to get a very clean swing on him.

We'll have a good idea of what Palka is by then, that's for sure.

I know exactly which pitch you're talking about and I thought the same thing.

Hard-throwing Reynaldo today.

I'll take this opportunity to re-post this: 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 There certainly isn't much *under*achievement in there. Combined, the Sox are 3rd in MLB in fWAR (7th in RA9-WAR) since Coop took over. While maybe the bit about free agent acquisitions doesn't tell the whole story, I don't think the Sox have had anything like the 3rd most talent over that time.

Right. He has a starter's repertoire and it's not very clear that he has acceptable command of any of it. I might feel differently if he could basically locate his fastball but just couldn't get any offspeed over. His current profile is as someone who would struggle just as much out of the pen. And he also profiles as someone who would be pretty good if he could flip the switch on his command because his stuff is plenty good. Totally agree. The demotion may or may not motivate Fulmer beyond where he already is, but I see no reason to believe that he would benefit much from having a message sent in this way. The benefit is pitching against a lower talent level, with less pressure, and perhaps on a more regular schedule. By all accounts he takes things very seriously, works very hard, and maybe is sufficiently intense and detail-oriented that it is detrimental to his ability to pitch in MLB. My general opinion is that there's a lot of value in a player having a track record of success. The flip side of that is there is a lot of uncertainty in projecting future performance that is better than the player's past performance. With that in mind, I think it's fair to be pessimistic about Fulmer. That being said, he has had a very unusual developmental path that makes me take his numbers with a grain of salt. We moved him through the minor leagues like he was Carlos Rodon or Chris Sale, but he just wasn't. A normal first round college pitcher would just now be reaching the majors. The problem for Fulmer is it will be hard to fill in those lost innings in the lower minors that he can never get back. Some of his issues could have potentially been ironed out against competition that wouldn't punish him for every lapse. When you face competition that kills you when you lapse, it becomes difficult to implement significant changes because you're just trying to survive. Hopefully he'll be able to take on some possibly ambitious changes to right himself in AAA.

Looks like he's trying to hit a flop or something in golf

Remember when Moncada was a bust?