Jake

Let's be real...the Sox are so overmatched that having 3 of these games be so competitive feels like an accomplishment. The team was not built to be competitive period, and especially not with half the lineup on the IL.

Oops! But hey, the luck evening out part worked okay!

Would like to see Murfee's luck even out a bit. When you strike guys out and never walk anyone, usually you do better than a 10.00 ERA.

Laser-show Lenyn with another red-hot lineout. He's pretty good at missing that launch angle sweet spot that gives you homers.

Seems like pitchers are trying to throw inside to Quero pretty consistently and he usually gets jammed (even though he's managed a couple hits when jammed thus far)

Andrew Benintendi: actual MLB-quality player

Good for Cannon to get through 6.

Steve mis-diagnosed the third strike to Vargas. Vargas was looking 4-seam, "correctly" saw the ball was headed above the zone as you'd expect in that count, except it was a high sinker instead and dropped right into the top of the zone. Clever move by Buehler, although high risk if you think the batter was going to be willing to chase since he would likely run right into the sinker.

No idea how the bullpen could cover many innings today without somebody losing their job in the aftermath to get some fresh arms for the rest of the week.

I was a Cannon fan but have been feeling more and more bearish. Hope he can sharpen up. He'll be given a long leash.

Don't want LouBob swinging at 4, but he had nothing to work with beforehand and pairing the slider and sweeper like that probably explains the chase. Buehler does a great job of pinning LouBob's back against the wall and attacking his weakness. That pitch has gotten him a 40% whiff rate this season for what I suspect is a good reason

I know the Sox stink etc etc, but Buehler pitched masterfully after the two walks. Didn't give Sox anything to hit with the possible exception of the pitch Sosa made the out on.

To be honest, I think there's plenty to criticize about Cannon as of late, which would include some command lapses. And lack of a putaway pitch is something that Cannon himself is open about

I think the Venable crew has fallen prey to a classic trap: trying to get Luis Robert to work counts

I thought the pitch missed watching live, but it barely scraped the zone.

FWIW, Elko has the biggest wOBA vs xwOBA differential in all of AAA. That is, he hasn't struck the ball nearly as well as his stats would suggest. Dalbec on the other hand has good underlying metrics. Might just be that simple.

Montgomery strikes out in 2 of 5 ABs, so I refuse to give him any credit until he can combine some hitting with sustainable K rate even on a single-game basis.

Honestly, I never thought Frank was very good at the job — in the sense that I didn't think he gave great baseball analysis — but I still liked to see him nonetheless. Not sure if the Ozzie drunken comedy routine can sustain for 162 games, but we shall see.

Weird game in that it ended up as a comfortable win but I spent most of it feeling like crap and the part where we went ahead wasn't enough to undo the prior bad feelings

Is it too much to ask to want to never see Jake Amaya in the lineup ever again? Granted, the alternatives on the active roster are all quite bad as well.

I figured part of emulating the good organizations is shredding the elbow of every pitcher who comes through your system and just overcoming it through sheer numbers

I personally probably wouldn't make it so structured since AFAIK Shuster isn't really stretched out to get to more than a couple innings, so you can just go by feel with however Vasil is doing. Wilson can be in that mix too/instead, depending on who you trust and whether the team is in the game when Vasil comes out. Plus the matchups I suppose, although at this point the bullpen is trending towards "oops all lefties"

I don't think Shuster is stretched out. Wilson's MLB performance so far this year makes me not particularly interesting in giving him a shot in the rotation right now. Vasil, assuming he's stretched out, seems like the most logical choice and I think he should be in a position to have a little more than full rest for Perez's next start. FWIW, I had noticed Shuster's improved K rate in AAA. Not totally sure what's responsible, including just sample size fluctuation. But he has changed up his pitch mix a bit, reducing 4-seamer usage in favor more use of a sinker, which he barely used in MLB last season. Even in reduced use, his 4-seamer is getting hit hard in AAA as it did in MLB. But his changeup...wow. He's always been described as a guy with a good changeup but not much else, but his changeup is not getting hit at all in AAA. Per Statcast, it's generating an 81% whiff rate (!!!). I've never seen anything like that. Again per Statcast, it is dropping ~10 more inches than last year's changeup while keeping the same basic horizontal shape, velocity, and spin rate. Kind of interesting.

50% strikeout rate in that game. More important metric to me. Especially since that homer was a real softie, per Statcast.

My crazy idea is to just not play Jake Amaya.