Jake

He can be called up as a 27th man or as an injury replacement, but otherwise needs to wait 15 days from the time of his demotion.

Continuation will probably cost someone their job (likely someone with options — Eisert?). If they do doubleheader tomorrow to complete the game, maybe the Sox can get an extra man? Not sure the rules there.

There's no world in which this Sox team is going to be much better than .500 and if they pull that off it's amazing. Don't be shocked if you find many stretches of play in which they are slightly under or over .500. And don't be surprised if they continue to play games that look something like a coin flip against this Guardians team that is about .500 or so at a true talent level.

This Sox team has never really showed much carryover from one game to another, especially when playing poorly. Probably the best evidence of Will Venable's value IMO. They're not going to be favored in any of the remaining 3 games but this game doesn't affect my expectations about the rest of the series much besides the availability of some of the relievers.

When looking at non-closers, I prefer the win probability based "shutdowns" and "meltdowns" stats. It's basically save vs. non-save but is based on change in win probability rather than the very narrow circumstances that qualify for a save. Most saves qualify as "shutdowns" but not all. Many blown saves qualify as "meltdowns" but not all. And then you have all the other outings that affect your likelihood of victory but don't earn a conventional stat. Sox bullpen by shutdowns and meltdowns, entering tonight: Seranthony: 11 SD, 7 MD Grant: 11 SD, 3 MD Newcomb: 10 SD, 2 MD Hudson: 10 SD, 6 MD Hicks: 5 SD, 4 MD Leasure: 4 SD, 5 MD Tyler Davis: 4 SD, 5 MD Richards: 2 SD, 1 MD Chris Murphy: 2 SD, 4 MD Lucas Sims: 1 SD, 4 MD Eisert: 1 SD, 2 MD

I see a guy who pitches well in relief and I was convinced by comments made by Brian Bannister about the poor health results of starting pitchers with deliveries like his. No need to mess with what mostly works IMO. If they want to use him beyond a narrowly confined 1 inning role, that's cool with me but you have to treat him like any reliever who may or may not need a quick hook on any given night.

To be frank, I don't look at these multi-inning relief appearances as having a ton of bearing on Grant's ability to be a starter. That said, I don't see a reason to mess with what works and try to stretch him out to become a starter. The Sox had their reasons to make him a reliever and I think they made sense. I don't like the multi-inning save here because he looked iffy in his first inning. Of course, your starter came out so early that you had no choice but to take some gambles with the bullpen usage. I understand why two innings of Grant was one of the gambles. Multi-inning Newcomb was another one and it didn't work out at all and he gave up a run. That led to needing to use Eisert and that also cost a run.

This isn't the part of the order you'd want a lefty to face even though I think Hudson is probably going to be about neutral on balance as far as platoon splits. He looked bad yesterday though so probably was getting a mandatory day off.

He really just missed it but the thing with Cleveland is they will get every break, that's how they win every year despite being not very good.

Cleveland gonna Cleveland

2 inning Taylor appearance is more of a bandaid than a solution IMO. And it may not be much of a bandaid, we shall see. He wasn't sharp last inning and it's looking worse this one.

Welp, here goes nothing

Tough break for Randal there.

I think he might have been out but MLB has got to work with the broadcasters on actually showing the play to the fans in a way that makes it clear what the basis of the decision is.

On the replay, doesn't look so good for Cleveland to me. But the Sox have had a tough time winning these kinds of plays so who knows.

I thought he stayed on the base

Wow I'm very surprised by just how out he was

It's like he was throwing a ball that weighed twice as much as normal

MLB Central on MLB Network leads off the show talking about the Sox constantly. They've gotten to the point of almost apologizing for it.

Not an ideal time for a stinker from Newcomb. Let's get a nice medium speed grounder here.

Do not speak on Chase Meidroth

Metrics aren't in love with Sam's defense yet but I think he's basically turned the corner to where he's giving you something approximating league average defense.

My favorite job to give the pen is "hold a 1 run lead for 4 innings"

I think there's a little bit of Jake Burger to it where he's faster than you think but also he juices the Statcast metric by going balls to the wall every play.

Can you even imagine Romo or Quero smashing a low liner like that to the pull side?