Jake

FWIW, Statcast gives the Soler double an expected batting average of .230. Just placed it perfectly and didn't hit it super hard

Fry made one mistake and got punished for it but looked pretty nasty otherwise.

I don't see any reason to be down on Jace Fry this year vs the usual "you never know about relievers" kind of thing. He has good stuff and was nails last year.

Bullpen likely to be better than the rotation in that rotation is probably going to be very close to the worst while bullpen will be merely bottom half of the league, bottom third-ish

I'm not sure if Jones is going to be on the team by next week

Was just about to say you could do a lot worse things than walk Merrifield

I have zero faith in Jones

Burr looked a hell of a lot like Nate Jones there

Hamilton having a day

Alright folks, we're 1 swing away from optimism mode

Abreu at bats are still appointment TV

Since about game 3 of spring training, Yoan has looked like an absolute star.

We know Lopez has had a lot of velocity fluctuation before and I'll also add that the average pitcher gains about 1mph over the course of the season with the lowest velo at the beginning of the year and a peak around July. Speaking from memory of my project in a graduate statistics course

I'm reminded of the weird velocity fluctuations Lopez had at the beginning of the season last year:

Looking at Lopez's arm action the last few pitches I'll be interested to hear about the status of his elbow postgame

Statcast thinks it was a slider

I suspect the teams may know what to do with the information, which is something besides casting aside any player with non-elite spin rate on his fastball

Spin rate is a classic case of letting the measurements lead the theory

Needed one of those.

Main question for me about Lopez today is where his changeup is hiding. Everyone's different but my experience is that's the offspeed pitch that's easiest to throw on these chilly days where your fingers don't feel right.

Palka also let Hamilton tag on him. But it's also true that Eloy/Anderson made the back-breaking error in this particular inning. Only difference is there's upside to playing Eloy in the outfield

If they really cared about what's good for Lopez's pitch count they wouldn't play Palka in RF

It's not like it's a banner day but he's "deserved" a 0-run and roughly 55-pitch 3 innings thus far.

They've had one well-hit ball in this game. Lopez isn't the issue here

Feel bad for Lopez's line