Jake

Feel like nobody is getting a great look at him

Home run notwithstanding, the stuff looked very good in the first inning. Don't throw low 4 seamers to Byron Buxton

I think the "sinker" is a kick change

I'm noticing that there's a lot of variance in the fastball shape. I don't know if he's trying to throw more than one kind or what. But he's thrown some four seamers with as much as 13" horizontal break and as few as 2". The actual numbers are less important than the difference. How are you supposed to locate if your fastball's movement is that unpredictable? I notice that the armside run is reducing as the game goes on, which I don't have much interpretation of. Just another one of those things that makes me feel like this is a very unfinished product.

Subsequent innings definitely looking better...jumbo shrimp are chasing a lot. He's only thrown 33% of his pitches in the zone which is crazy low. Tells you something about the quality of the stuff but I hope he can zone it up if they make him do it

I certainly don't deny the importance of pitching, just saying that ROI for pitchers in free agency looks pretty suspect. Of course like all gambling, you can't win unless you play. From a team building standpoint, I would certainly want to delay my investments in pitching until it looks like my team is on the precipice. By contrast I'd be more comfortable investing in a position player even if I think the pieces might not all be 100% into place for a couple years.

I will preface my statement by saying I strongly support the players. That being said, I think the union is very weak right now. They have been getting rolled for the last several CBA negotiations and I am not optimistic that they have gained any resolve. If they actually end up backing Meyer, that will be a positive sign. But I feel like there's a lot of guys who will be willing to give up a lot in the name of some concessions to minor leaguers and fringey players. And frankly they need so much from the owners I don't know how they'll get it. Besides staving off the salary cap, they badly need a shorter timeline to free agency. In the last negotiations, owners wouldn't even talk to them about that subject. Of course, they also need to work on another subject that the owners have declared taboo, which is revenue sharing. I do think you're right that the owners are not going to be quite as united of a front on all the particulars of the salary cap and other agenda items. The opening salvo will be a salary cap that is very low with a floor that is really, really low. Something assures every rich owner that he can have cost control for life and every tightass owner that he doesn't have to spend any additional money while he still gets to have cost control for life. If they got into a more serious discussion about a salary cap system that would use numbers more like the other major sports leagues, you'd see some owners who would absolutely balk at the kind of payrolls that would require. That is, unless they got revenue sharing like the other leagues do...in which case another set of owners would be putting up massive resistance. That's why I say you can't stick it to the players with a salary cap, let the owners work out their own problems if they don't like the revenue disparities. All that said, my gut feeling is the end of this will look bad for the players and I don't think they will withstand much pressure from ownership in the form of missed paychecks and such. I know the PA has a war chest to keep the bills paid for their guys, but the rank and file will know that only lasts so long and they will want to get back on the field. Hope I'm wrong both about how much pressure the owners apply and how the union would respond.

I think the "don't spend money on pitching" philosophy has come all the way back around to being the smart money again

Hagen stinker in progress

There's a quote earlier in this thread from Venable saying he kept the bunt on for 2 strikes. It was a bad decision when you have a guy whose whole offense is swinging bunts and he would get to have unlimited foul balls to get one in play

But I agree that the WBC injury would feel different if it was done for a country he actually had a serious allegiance to

Team doesn't have the right to stop him

Once he's down to two strikes I think you have to let him swing away

On the side view it clearly short-hopped. But Antonacci had a terrible vantage point for it with the 1B in front of him screening his view. Just a flukey play and bad break. Mune didn't actually hit it very hard so it would have been easy to overestimate the flight distance considering who was batting.

Throwing the splitter made sense to me you just can't throw it in the strike zone. You're trying to end the at bat with a strikeout and he's fouling off your best strikeout pitch. You see if he'll chase the splitter in the dirt and if he doesn't, you hope you've opened up the high heater for a whiff on the next pitch. He just left it over the plate. I expected him to throw a backfoot slider instead. I just hope he missed it due to honest to goodness bad release rather than not trusting his catcher to block it.

To be fair, we ended up in a very similar situation thanks to the infield single from Antonacci. But obviously that same contact from Antonacci would have ended the game if the runner was already on third. Can't necessarily assume everything would have been the same if the bunt was successful of course

Pitcher has one of the sweepiest sweepers in MLB so it likely looked a lot like a strike if you didn't pick up the spin

You are surprised that a callup from AAA is not as good as most of the major leaguers? Isn't that exactly what you would expect from players? And now we're mad that she made what appeared to be a correct call at first base because New York reviewed it and called it wrong?

I'm fine with bunting Rikuu. I did not like bunting with two strikes because this is allegedly your god-tier contact bat and the success rate of bunts even with a good bunter is not high enough to risk it there.

Coin flip game, we lost this one. Good news is the 2026 Sox don't seem to let the bad games roll together

Her ball/strike calls rank near the bottom of the league, but that's why she has not been promoted to full-time status because that too is merit-based. The other guys in AAA will have to get better to get those call-up opportunities.

Bell can just tag Sam and then the base and it's over

She is not a female ump, she's a minor league ump callup. Those callups are 100% merit based and determined by metrics

At this point, 1B has not been touched. Only chance to save the game is for Sam to get off the base and hope that Bell tries to tag him without getting the out at first. But Bell already has him pinned down and once Sam tries to leave the base Bell wisely touches the base with his foot (just barely) and Sam has nowhere to go but out of the baseline. And Acuna still needs like 15-20 feet to score

Only way Sam could have prevented the loss is if Bell made a huge mistake