Jake

Before his initial demotion, Baldwin seemed to be pretty clearly spiraling and was becoming unplayable on both sides of the ball. He barely got a look on his latest trip but made sure to look hopeless at the plate and make an error at his supposed natural position in his very brief call-up. Even if he is somehow tailor-made to beat AAA pitching but not MLB pitching, I think it makes some sense to have him in AAA whether you are high or low on Brooks. Get him everyday ABs and reps in whatever defensive position he might be able to bring the most value to. There will be opportunities for more regular playing time in MLB soon enough.

Internally, seems like all the high-ceiling guys are in the low minors. That's not all that surprising if you look at it cynically...in the low minors you haven't had your terrible flaws exposed yet 🫣. But more optimistically, Braden Montgomery has some star talent, maybe a couple of those really young guys like Bonemer, Mogollon, Wolkow, but they've got a long road ahead before you can even say whether they'll ever get a look in the majors. Colson Montgomery was once a high-ceiling guy but I think even the most optimistic case for him is looking increasingly mid-tier. I guess you could at least say the good version of him would involve some homers which the Sox aren't getting too much of at the moment.

I didn't think Teel had done enough at Charlotte to earn the call-up but we'll see whether he can work through his contact problems in the majors. I don't know whether either one will hit "like a DH" but I think it's an acceptable plan to use the DH spot to get them at bats for the time being. I like the group of young guys on the team to be honest, there just aren't enough of them yet. I would also agree that there's nobody who seems to have major star potential at or near the majors. You're going to want some of them one way or another (free agency, draft, trade, international FA) in the near future.

Not to be a homer, but if you believe in the positive vision of what a Pope should be, there's no way in hell a Pope from Chicago should be a fan of the Cubs. So it makes sense that he's a Sox fan IMO.

I don't mind bringing in Booser as he's been one of our best relievers. But I have no idea why Venable left him in to pitch to Pozo. He was clearly not sharp, had no more good platoon matchups ahead of him, and he'd thrown a lot of pitches by then. And apparently Wilson was already loose. I think Venable was too worried about saving arms for game 2 and the rest of the week. Gotta win the game you're playing first.

Should have called the Red Sox and flipped him for Devers.

Wolkow is one of my guys who I grade based solely on strikeouts. And holy s%*#, he's barely striking out right now! George hitting homers in bunches doesn't impress me much — that's table stakes for Mr. Bunyon Wolkow. Going on a stretch of a couple weeks with a very low K rate is a really positive development and not something I thought he was capable of even in a pretty small sample.

I appreciated Bannister's tweet although I think you could read it as an indication of an underlying problem that Noah maybe hasn't yet fixed. Walk rate is still through the roof after all, so I would have thought the metric for success here would be to keep him laying off the cutter until he can fill the zone with the other options. That said, I'm not going to freak out about the promotion. Maybe they want Noah to get roughed up a little bit to get him to learn a little bit more about the consequences of not being on top of your game.

Are we delivering drinks every pitch now or what?

Always makes me laugh how obviously good-natured Schriffen is with the sole exception of his complete intolerance of bad ball/strike calls

When I checked Baseball Savant, only two pitches had been called incorrectly at the time he was tossed, both to the same batter earlier in the inning

I understand why Civale was slow there, but 2B has no chance to make the play on such a slow hit ball

Well I know that he must have been grumbling about the calls, but the ejection happened a bit later. I'm thinking Venable felt he hadn't burned through his quota of bitching yet.

It's nice of Hawk to have reached out to John, especially since we know Hawk has some mixed feelings at best towards the Sox with regard to their handling of the broadcasts.

I've yet to see when the actual ejection happened, but my suspicion is this is a case of him being especially mad about getting tossed without good enough reason (in his opinion, of course)

We're not very close to this point yet, but I wonder how long of a leash the Sox will give Teel if he struggles. He doesn't look very good at the plate to me, he seems to still have issues with velocity like he did in the minors which is contributing to a generally high rate of whiffs. Or maybe it will all start to click. Quero wasn't hitting velocity well and was whiffing on it a lot in AAA, but he's actually done quite well against it in MLB.

I'm grading Colson strictly on strikeout rate so today is an F

talent

Seems like Getz and/or Venable really wants to have a bench player who has a strong glove at SS. There's not really an internal option there to take Capra's spot.

That said, I'd be happy to rethink the roster spots devoted to Capra, Palacios, Elko, and Rojas. Of course we don't really have four dudes to plug into those holes so I'd probably start with Capra and Palacios.

Having left-handed Kyle Teel pinch hit for Slater would have been an all-time insane managerial decision. Slater has had a decent season but had a bad game against some of the league's best pitchers. Best not to overthink it

Hopefully just him dialing it back a bit after a very high-energy debut

Taylor's heater has so little armside movement that the shape is almost like a bad cutter. I have a feeling it isn't always like that. When Dylan Cease first came up to the big leagues, his fastball was doing that and it made his fastball not play very well until he figured it out. On the bright side, the shape of Taylor's slider is incredible. He might want to consider a slider-heavy attack if he's able to get it over for a strike.

First time Taylor generates a swing and a miss as a big leaguer. Needed it too.