Jake

Guys you can't judge anything after a guy throws a 40 pitch inning. He's totally gassed from here onward today. He looked fine until his defense gave up 2 outs. Was always going to be a tough matchup with so many good lefties anyway so not going to be a lot of margin for error. He's taking it for the team right now.

I'm thinking he must have thought the ball was going through for a single and he decided to get lined up for a cutoff

Feels like replay officials made the same mistake Plesac did and only looked at the players' feet

It's crazy because you can see the ball isn't touching the glove at all and Vargas's foot is on the base. How do you overturn that

I think Rice bobbles the catch a bit and that should make him safe IMO. Not sure how the rulebook handles that though.

Already need to bring a starter to MLB, he's on the 40-man, and I bet Davis is soon coming due for another bit of extra rest. Hagen dead, Tanner dead, Shane dead, Noah maybe dead, Davitt + Schweitzer demoted to bullpen duty. Sandlin is first man up, but we might need two men

This probably seals the deal that we're going to be seeing Jonathan Cannon in the MLB soon

This inning should have been over a long time ago. This number of pitches in an inning is putting Davis's health at risk though so it needs to get over with ASAP

Don't know why someone would want to write Shane Smith off. If the shoulder injury isn't serious, wouldn't surprise me at all if he comes back in 2025 form. The time away might even have helped him get out of whatever bad habits he was in. Of course, I won't say that I'll be totally shocked if he melts down upon return either. That's baseball for you.

Was likely to happen before too long. Timing is interesting though. He hasn't exactly been lighting the world on fire for the past several weeks. Since May 21, his wRC+ is almost exactly the league average and the BB/K numbers are not much different than usual. There was a stretch in there when he went 0-fer for 6 games. The past week was good, although not remarkable by his own high standards. Hope to see him get off to a hot start in AA...I'll be watching the K rate with interest.

IDK, it's not that clear one way or another but when I read it, I just assumed it was something they were doing targeted towards guys who were earlier in their development timeline. Not so much that they invited all the cool kids, but not him. I am speculating though.

He's just not ready. Maybe someday he will be ready, but he's not there. Certainly feels like the type of player who might just get things to line up one day and start dominating. But this is not the day and it may never come.

Yeah it's almost a gift that they're letting him play rather than Peters. Shows they are still prioritizing development (which is fine by me)

Derek seemed like a really good guy and it's probably a heartbreaker to get sent away from this team, but better to get sent to another contender than to the wolves on the waiver wire. He's a really solid 5th outfielder. Sox ran out of roster spots with Everson on the way so I'm glad they managed to get something out of him. Given the player return I can't help but wonder if the international bonus space is somewhat substantial.

Looks like the yips for Oppor. Sheesh

Man I think Braden is just such a great kid, and obviously the talent is off the charts too. What a debut.

Nice job by Davis completing the DP

Add another lucky hit to the Braves ledger

My main concern with Romo batting was that he was a threat to GIDP and kill the rally right before our best average hitter. So in that sense, I didn't mind the bunt as a way to avoid that outcome since it gave you a chance to get the run in. That said, it seems like the baserunner wasn't prepared for it at all and the bunt wasn't quite good enough (although good defense beats the safety squeeze much of the time). We even got the hit from Antonacci that I was hoping for but...no dice.

I don't really understand how the catcher blocking rule allows the catcher to stand completely blocking the baseline right up until he receives the ball at which time he barely moves his legs out of the way (because the throw never required him to be in the baseline anyway). By the time the catcher gets out of the way, Derek already had to commit to a sliding lane. I feel like they only didn't call blocking because they felt like it was bailing the Sox out, which of course would be true.

Lot of soft hits for the Braves today

Ryno is one of the few Cubs I could never muster the energy to hate

This is probably going to be an epic jinx but this has been a rather fine outing for Fedde. Would have been great if he had caught the hind end of that double play opportunity earlier.

As far as the subjects on the broadcast are concerned, you might think a reliever winning Cy Young is probably due to some ignorant sportswriters failing to read their Bill James. But Willie Hernandez's 1984 was a true unicorn season. 140 innings out of the pen with a 1.92 ERA. Almost a starter's workload, except as a reliever his manager got to pick when to use him so that his innings would never be wasted in a blowout, etc. His 8.58 win probability added that year is the most for a reliever...by a ton. Second most in a season by any pitcher period (Doc Gooden's sophomore season is the only one higher). BTW, two Sox among the top 5 WPA seasons ever: Gossage in '74 and Foulke in '00.

By the way, am I the only one who saw that it looked like Braden was crying during both of his first two plate appearances? To some extent, hardly surprising someone would be emotional about their debut. But also I can't remember seeing that before.