Jake

Rule states the batter must be "alert" and in the box at 8. It appears they define alert based on where the batter is looking. The pitcher can't even come set until then so the requirement is not that he's in his final stance or something. It's just forcing the batter to be in a state of mind that they could dodge a wayward pitch.

My experience in most sports with timers of this kind, when you're at that last second the officials tend to give a very long last second. For instance, the play clock in football. If the ump had said something to Colson beforehand I might look at it differently.

I'm not well-versed in this rule but it looks like the ump blew it to me.

The ol' .050 xBA homer. This is one of those that is only out of this park and possibly Fenway, not sure if it was really high enough for the monster.

I may be forgetting something, but I feel like Yordan hasn't really hurt the Sox this year.

Tristan can't complain because he's had some pretty lucky ones.

Big dog

Buckle up folks because he's back

Colson is on the upswing.

Burke getting a sort of Castillo-esque swaggy follow-through

Mune has caught one square each of these two games, just caught underneath it. I think that's a positive sign.

Sox have not been able to make use of the LF here. Several balls that would be hits anywhere else, but are caught in Houston because the LF can play so shallow. But unlike Houston in game 1, Sox haven't hit balls off or over the wall.

Even Sam looking ginormous standing next to Altuve lol

It's a pretty good pitch on 3-2. But he's gotta do something with some pitch.

Yeah they can only "fix" the count if the recorded count conflicts with the umpire's calls. So if the ump called 2 balls and 2 strikes but says the count is 3-1, you can fix that. But if the umpire called a foul ball a ball, there's no fix. Even if everyone thought he called it foul.

I don't have the quotes on hand but Venable discussed it for a minute in the post-game interview. Gave his perspective of it, basically that he heard the ump give the count and that was inconsistent with the dugout's count. He goes to ask about it, it becomes clear that the foul ball was called a ball, they tell him there's nothing that can be done about it. He referred to it as a "blown call" several times

To me, he's almost in the category of being too advanced to be worth sending there. But the position switch is a good justification to send him down there.

I don't have a confident guess about how they'll use Pham. I tend to think they took him mainly as depth, but you don't really know what you've got if you don't play him. There are certainly times when Venable would probably like to use another pinch hitter when he's already run out, so that's an option. It could very well be the case that we never see Doyle pinch hit again which, given recent results, isn't the worst thing.

He's your starting LF until something happens that makes that not make sense. Eventually the team is going to move on from Benny (no later than the end of next season!) and unless they go out and buy a big DH, that's going to be something of a pressure release for some of these questions we're asking.

He's got a great arm and it wouldn't surprise me if he has some more productive years in the future. I expect the Sox will DFA him in the offseason when the 60-day IL guys have to be re-added to the 40. I doubt anyone will want to stash him on their 40 for an entire season, so there's a reasonable chance he takes a minor league deal after clearing waivers...in which case we would probably see him back in the bigs eventually. Got to see him a bit in spring training and he seemed like a real sweetheart. Little boy in a big man's body type of guy. Hoping for the best for him.

I see today's moves as Sox being uncomfortable with how the OF would look if there were any injuries and perhaps considering leaving either Luisangel or Doyle off of the postseason roster.

I'd be surprised if Urquidy is DFA'd.

Colson has mostly swung at the right pitches today, just hasn't (so far) gotten anything good out of the contact.

So Urquidy has basically always pitched well in the majors, barring the season in which he got the injury that knocked him out for a couple years. And then he pitched well in the minors. And now he's in the majors, pitching well. I don't think it's all that surprising really. I'm using a particular definition of "well" here, obviously: usable starter.

As regards Mune, this is by any metric his worst month but also his first negative-luck month so (IMO) not as big of a dropoff in play as it may appear. Of course he had a spell in August when he got real hot and now he's in a deep trough so it's not like the month of August has been a single thing for him. His K rate is up this month but his whiff rate is the same as it has been all along. Most of the components I'd look at are basically the same for him — bat speed, swing length, angle of the bat both up/down and sideways, etc. So for now I'm just looking at it as probably normal variation in his level of play. FWIW, wOBA vs. xwOBA by month for him below (top is the Mar/April, then May, then June, then July at bottom).