Jake

I'm excited for Roch but honestly I don't expect to be thinking about him much. He's "safe" but there's no such thing as safe. Hopefully he'll be knocking on the door by 2028 and then we'll see how everything looks.

Meidroth on the season not much different with RISP than non-RISP. Little more batted ball luck without RISP. Strikes out significantly less with RISP. Sees righties a lot more with RISP but hits them better with RISP so it cancels out. Very small sample sizes involved.

Bieber has been horrific up to today but he looks great in this game.

He definitely had a lot of fairly routine misplays piling up in the final couple weeks leading up to the break. I don't know the explanation but getting ground down a bit would make sense.

I don't think you'd avoid diving to protect your back...bending over like he did is going to feel worse. Of course, if you're kind of tight you might just not feel limber enough to get into position for dives. It's also just not something a shortstop needs to do very often since it's rare to be able to make a play after diving. I do think Sox fans might be a little too locked in on his back as an explanation for everything that ever happens.

Think Colson was overconfident that he could get to it and that caused him to focus on making the out at first rather than keeping the run from scoring. Wasn't an easy play by any means but if he was planning to knock it down from the get-go, he could have. Then you'd have men on the corners and one out with a possibility of stopping the run from scoring.

They had a neutral run differential, so all you really had to do is add a proven arm like Seranthony Dominguez to close out the close games and you're a .500 team!

I find it very unlikely that we end up seeing both Pereira and Hays on the active roster unless somebody gets hurt. You're probably going to see Hays get a very long rehab stint that culminates with him being released if that's what it comes down to.

I would think if the new CBA would have much effect on decision to go to school or not, it would push you towards school because you are otherwise worried about losing your age 19 year of development (and paychecks, etc.) to a lockout.

I still think the Colson can't hit in the clutch thing is mostly sample size theater. His "clutch" when measured as whether his performance differs based on leverage is literally zero for his career, meaning there is no correlation between the leverage index and his results (fun fact: Ozzie Guillen is one of the most clutch ever by this metric...not that he was a great hitter in high leverage, but he hit notably better in high leverage than he did any other time)

I have just learned to live with Colson looking like absolute booty when he's not clobbering a bunch of home runs in a short time span.

Sox as a team are constantly fooled by front-door sinkers for some reason. It's a "good" pitch but one that is supposed to be very risky for the pitcher.

And no, I have no idea why it's possible for the ABS call to be wrong in a way where you can literally see with your eyes that it's wrong. It would be one thing if it somehow had wrong/different data, but for some reason it can show you a ball in the zone and say it's a ball.

It was wrong, lol. I just looked it up. Ball hit the zone, per Statcast. I've only seen that once in a different game where it was way more obvious.

I guess they are assuming Roch needs more money (I personally doubt it) and this frees it up without compromising the team's ability to grab overslot guys later. Either that or there's some assumption that the Sox want to counterbalance a college 1.1 with young talent later. I personally don't think this has much of any bearing on the #1 pick.

I don't think "Getz doesn't like him" is a petty explanation. It's clear Getz likes plenty of guys who were here before he took over. But it's also true that Getz isn't going to care (nor should he) that a few years ago the Sox took Gonzo in the first round. And it's part of his job to figure out which players are worth hanging onto and which ones aren't. Seems that he isn't all in on Gonzo. Gonzo isn't exactly Lenyn Sosa in this regard, but he's also not a plus swing decisions guy and to me that is something that Getz cares about a ton. I also have a gut feeling the Sox org doesn't think he plays very good defense anywhere on the diamond. Puts a lot of pressure on a bat that couldn't crack a .700 OPS anywhere in the minors until this season.

I also appreciate that the Sox did this trade with a future focus rather than eating all the risk by taking on an expiring contract or some such.

This seems about normal value for a comp pick. There's always some risk when you trade a pre-arb guy. I don't think the league is all that high on Jacob, though. This may very well be a nice sell-high move. Like a lot of things, this stuff always works out if you're able to call your shots. I think Jacob looked a lot like a major leaguer but the ceiling is not super high and we all know his track record up to this season was absolutely horrible, he wasn't even viewed as a starting caliber infielder on Charlotte's squad to start the year.

I liked the way Braden looked today. Had a couple tough luck outs, especially the hard hit one early in the game.

Well this is the first game we outplayed them, but not by much and in baseball it's gotta be by a lot if you want any certainty. Seems pretty clear to me that the Red Sox are just better, though, and that's why there was no chance in the first two games.

So I don't think it changed much but when you call foul ball, everybody stops. I don't know how you can just change it in the middle of the play.

Tough night for the home plate ump

I think if you got two Thorpe-level guys it would have been looked at differently. I saw the reception as more about the other two guys and less about Thorpe. Remember when Zavala was red-hot for the first month of the season this year? ☹️

And he got hurt, it's not like he got bombed out of the league or something. Guy getting hurt is part of the deal when you trade for a starting pitcher. I'm curious to see how he does when he comes back, assuming he does reasonably soon.

Also a lesson in the pointlessness of ERA for relievers. FIP, xERA, SIERA, etc. all good for Slaten.