Jake

It will be nice to get Rodon back soon, even if he is a reduced version of his former self

I didn't remember last year being all that fun

I really enjoy watching Abreu, Anderson, and Sanchez play (among the players in the game today)

If I was going to revamp my throwing motion to salvage my career, the first thing I'd do is stop with the "spin my torso towards CF" part of it

The extreme badness of the 2 of the 5 guys in the opening day rotation has hurt the Sox on-field product in a way that you'd expect. EDIT: to be clear, the 2 of the 5 are Giolito and Gonzalez. Everyone I think assumed Fulmer might be as bad as he's been...that was baked into the expectations.

I think a lot of folks rightfully expected Giolito to not pitch like a AAA pitcher with sub-AAA stuff. We also assumed Miguel Gonzalez was going to be a reliable 4.50-ish ERA innings eater but instead he was worse than all the other guys.

I see the reverence for Palka's bat as completely unearned. In spite of a large HR total in the minors the accompanying numbers haven't been terribly impressive and that was while generally being a bit old for the levels he's played well in. A whopping .860 OPS this season is what got him called up here — that's after mid .700s OPS in AAA in two seasons previous. I see him as a guy with a similar track record to what Delmonico had last year but with considerably higher risk due to his very poor athleticism and history of strikeout problems. I wouldn't write him off, especially since he's bopped some here in MLB, but he's a guy with warts and is a bad week away from having bad season numbers.

My basic point was that he didn't look like a guy who could run the bases or field and while he can hit a ball hard, he has an ugly swing that doesn't inspire confidence that he can time up offspeed pitches. I'm not writing him off but he has to hit a lot in order to have any value. I certainly wouldn't take any of Davidson's at bats away in favor of Palka.

This is what I'm talking about with Palka

Sox have killed two rallies with bad coaching today

That was...bad

Well what I say about Engel is that he swings like someone who has only heard about baseball swings from reading books but hasn't ever actually seen someone do it.

Man do I love Yolmer.

With his swing, I don't like how noisy his hands are and I'm not in love with where his hands start off. Again, there's nothing wrong with the results per se. And then in the field and on the bases, he just doesn't seem like much of an athlete. That's a sin that can be forgiven with production of course.

Palka has been hitting but I've gotta say he sure doesn't pass the eye test to me.

For me, Garcia is really a good guy to have around.

Another note on Nicky: I noticed on Baseball Savant that his batted ball numbers are actually better this year than last. He appears to have been very lucky last season, with a number of his home runs having a worse than 50/50 shot of success. This season he has been slightly unlucky by the same metrics. But the other big change from last season to this season is that teams are shifting against him about half the time, whereas they did that only a very small portion of his ABs last year. His numbers against the shift are very poor.

How long do we tolerate Nicky hitting with zero power?

Ricky asleep at the wheel

No, but having watched him in college it wasn't super surprising that he looks like he does now. He was a guy who was in that "effectively wild" type of mold, often pitching very deep into counts, etc. Add in more patient hitters who are better at punishing mistakes and you can see how he's struggled at the upper levels.

I also think it's misguided to try to develop Fulmer into a reliever anytime soon. His problems aren't ones that are likely to be easily covered up in the pen. The same things that would be necessary for him to succeed in the bullpen are the ones that he needs for success as a starter. If he gets to the point where he has some consistency but the thing holding him back is lack of a third pitch (or just too many solid guys ahead of him), then move him to the pen.

One of the clearest signs that Fulmer is too early on his developmental path is how frequently he doesn't just miss in a location, he misses it 2-4 pitches in a row all in the same place.

That wind must be nasty because that ball looked like it was hit straight to right and it ended up going to Leury

It's an especially good comparison in that it was widely believed that Gordon's chances to be successful were squandered by his early call-up to the majors

Fulmer is a useful example if you've ever wondered what it would look like if you called up a decent prospect who was just figuring out AA/AAA to the majors. You can see a MLB pitcher in there for short bursts of a few innings but he just can't keep it together long enough. Question will be how the Sox choose to deal with their developmental failure here. Fulmer might be able to work through it in MLB but it will take a lot of mental toughness; it's a very risky strategy but all we've done with his career so far is gamble with it. I hadn't been in favor of demoting him, but if I were running the show I'd probably have Fulmer and Kopech swap places at this point.