Jake

Live by the lift and pull, die by the lift and pull

Normally, if a guy is on a really bad streak, even if he's really playing badly there's still some bad luck involved. Same goes for a guy on a heater but in the other direction. But Romo...no, this is exactly the production he's earned.

I'd like to see Braden start finding the power stroke again. I don't want him to be seduced by the security of singles that became the undoing of Quero.

This outing didn't concern me that much for Davis. It was fine. Got beat for a single by the MVP, made a mistake hitting a guy, gave up a solid single, then induced bad contact that snuck through. Then his reliever gave it all up (on a flukey double). Problem with potentially losing this game is it would interfere with my master plan of trading for Yordan.

To me, this made sense as a spot for Seranthony. You're already losing, there's two outs, there's a bunch of righties coming up. He's on the team, you have to use him sometimes. If you're hoping to win, you still have to cover 3 more innings after that and it's a very right-handed lineup. It's going to be hard to find many other spots to use him. Whether he remains on the team of course is another question entirely.

For righties in the bullpen, you've just got Taylor, Hicks, Seranthony, and Richards, right? Am I forgetting someone?

Now the batted ball luck starts kicking in

I'm not yet ready for Hicks to enter a bases loaded, nobody out situation

Really the inning turns on that poorly hit ball by Wade getting through. Other than that, a lot of squared up contact and the free baserunner.

Not so sure that the ball was fair.

I am watching this play in which Teel gets hurt and I'm reading that the problem is Teel got on his knees to block the ball. But I am watching the play and neither knee touches the ground until after his toe has already caught in the dirt. Kratz clearly says the problem is Teel got on his knees to receive the ball. Maybe Kratz meant something different, but Teel did not get on his knees to catch the ball. He was very much on his toes like Kratz prescribes. I think Teel's plan was to basically dive to apply the tag after he went up the line to make his own hop on the throw. Because his foot stuck, there's still something of a dive, but the left knee has to hit the ground right away because that's how the physics work. So anyway, I can't take what Kratz said seriously. Maybe he meant the opposite of what he said. That happens to me sometimes. My gut feeling is he's doing a bunch of these hits every day, didn't really watch the play or forgot what he saw, and he said something incorrect due to being mistaken about what happened. Whose fault is the injury? IDK. I think it's mostly a comedy of errors starting with a random event. Teel pulls a hamstring. This is a thing that happens to people. Some more than others, for sure, and there are some things you can do to reduce (but not eliminate) risk. Given the timing of Teel's hamstring injury, it probably meant that he never got the exact physical preparation for the season that he or the Sox planned for. He reinjures the leg in a different location during the rehab. Again, somewhat flukey but his body was compromised already so it's plausible that there's a bit of a domino effect at play. Research shows that high-level athletes reinjure their lower body at an over 50% rate in the season that they pull a hamstring, not always severely of course. On the most recent play, Teel hurts the other leg in a pretty weird play. I can't draw the line directly from the hammy to this ankle problem, but it wouldn't shock me if the overall condition of his body is just not ideal because of this cycle of rest + recovery, ramp up, peak effort, reinjury, rest, etc. Is Teel injury-prone? IMO, you need at least a couple seasons that involve major injuries before you get there. But the best predictor of future injury is past injury, so I'll certainly be a little worried until I see Teel go for a while without new problems. I think it's funny how much commentary has talked about him bulking up too much when I would have anticipated that the commentary would instead be that it's a cautionary tale about investing in small-bodied catchers. Maybe we don't know much about this stuff.

I think Kratz is just being a blowhard TBH

If the Sox were going to go big on a trade, I say screw all this nibbling around the edges getting a big-time reliever or mid-tier starter. Go BIG! Spend your capital on Yordan Alvarez. Don't talk to me about pitching, don't talk to me about Andrew Benintendi. Talk to me about premium talent on your baseball team.

I don't think it was a super antagonistic exchange TBH. Probably somewhere between "are you sure it was in there?" and "how bad of a take was it?"

Given the way people have been killing Meidroth lately, hope there's some acknowledgment that his situational hitting tonight has basically won us the game to this point

Ahlstrom has good stuff but hasn't had much success this season, despite how Wagner-esque he looked this inning.

I would assume Grant was warming to get Hicks out of trouble if it came to that. I would guess looking forward now, they're going to pick whatever part of the lineup they want him to pitch to. Currently lined up to have the bottom of Texas's order for the 9th.

I don't mind the challenge there, it was super close and it's getting late enough you're liable to go home with them if you don't fire with something close. You'll notice around the 6th inning every Sox catcher challenges the first close pitch if they still have 2 challenges. That's the team's philosophy on how to use them, coming from McKinven

Mune needs to take over there.

Mune missed that one by just a little bit.

For swings specifically, have to give an honorable mention to Randal Grichuk

I see what you mean although Tristan Peters really takes that prize for me as far as unnatural-looking movements go.

Part of the deal with yesterday's game is the Sox didn't really hit that well. Just had everything go right and lucked out by bunching their hits together. Of their 10-run games, of which there have been several, it was probably their worst one

Always looks kind of like he's shotputting it. Sometimes I'm surprised by the easy velocity he gets but you never seen him give himself a running start and blow it out. Not that big of a deal given how great he's been at actually catching the ball which is the far more valuable part of his D that was really undersold by the scouting reports.

This is a minor thing because his defense has been so fantastic overall, but I'm still waiting for the "wow" throw from Braden. He has some weird metrics in that he averages over 90mph on his outfield throws but has also never thrown one faster than 93. Most guys who average that much have a peak in the high 90s or low 100s. We know he could run it up there in the high 90s off the mound and I believe he hit 100 in a showcase setting as an amateur. I have a suspicion that his arm hurts (maybe that's part of the reason he shut down the pitching dream in college).