Jake

Holy christ is this ballpark playing small. That was hit 92mph (not hard) and 39 degrees (very high) and would have been out if not for a nice play by Eloy

His ERA had dropped from 6.12 to 6.01 at the time of this post

I know how bad Reynaldo has been this season, but this inning is not (yet) a meltdown of any kind. A couple not well-hit single and a hard liner does not a meltdown make.

I never saw a good angle on it, but was that second hit a bad play by Palka?

These are not well-hit balls against Lopez thus far, so should probably just relax and hope he gets a good bounce here

Probably a reverse jinx, but Rondon is every bit as bad offensively as Yonder Alonso was. How much more rope do we give him?

Just occurred to me who Lopez reminds me of the most: Edwin Jackson.

At Illinois State, faculty pay makes up 33% of the budget (link). In the Cal system, about 25% and about 40% in the Cal State system (link). I'm not sure how that differs at smaller institutions, although not many of them would be D1 in athletics.

Saw some discussion recently about Yoan wanting to make teams stop shifting on him as a lefty. That will help

Feels like we've been asking our good relievers to go multiple innings more than in the past. Of course, the Ricky era hasn't exactly been characterized by "good relievers"

I think the Cordell bunt was the result of trying to weigh the relatively unlikelihood that he gets a hit and relatively higher likelihood of double play

Seems to me that McCann probably helped Cease out big time today. Realized Cease was getting more mileage out of his offspeed and just kept calling it. Had some bold sequences, like tripling up the change to strike out the lefty. I bet he wasn't getting that with Collins and Zavala, especially if he was doing more of his own pitch calling. Sometimes a catcher believes in some of your pitches more than you do and pushes you into using them.

12 changeups by my count

I thought that was just a little popup but it was 101mph off the bat

Cease is from Milton, Georgia

Some really good baserunning there

Really nice late fade on the changeup there. But it's way too slow.

Starter

woops

So is this 85 yellow hammer his slider or is he throwing two speeds of his curveball and has another, distinct pitch he uses as his slider?

Cease can't complain about the umpiring

McCann is cancelled

I liked seeing the recognition that he had a better feel for his hook than his fastball and McCann making that adjustment

Besides the badness of our other options, part of the logic of calling him up may well be to get him with our MLB coaching staff to work through these things.

Wendell Carter Jr. will miss the summer league due to surgery to repair a "core muscle injury." Bulls say he'll be ready for training camp.