Jake

The pitching situation in AAA looks like a serious s%*# show. I acknowledge that many of the guys showing command problems down there are guys who have always struggled with walks...but some guys have gotten worse and I don't think a single significant one has improved. For instance, I would have assumed that somebody out of Nastrini, Iriarte, White, Wikelman, and maybe Dunn would have pitched well enough to get consideration to get some MLB starts in the case of injury (e.g. Martin Perez) or ineffectiveness (e.g. Bryse Wilson). But none of them look remotely ready even for emergency duty. I'm not sure if Nastrini is even being considered as a starter anymore and it looks like Wikelman has been demoted to bullpen duty as well.

Deliver me my Benny and Tauchman ASAP

Baseball

Good news: tying run to the plate Bad news: it's Michael A. Taylor vs Munoz

Galaxy brain idea for the Mariners would be to IBB Palacios to ensure Vaughn gets up in a double play situation 😅

Fun fact on Luis Castillo's slider: it has for most of his career been a very high-quality pitch for him despite the fact that, on average, it has 0 glove side movement. But between the low arm angle and massive run on his sinker, batters basically perceive it as a big breaker. It's a non-mythical gyroball. He's a very interesting pitcher to me.

Regarding the Yoendrys sweeper, the one he's throwing tonight is a completely different pitch than the one I mentioned having good metrics earlier. 3 mph faster, literally 7 inches less sideways movement. Statcast has him throwing changeups as well, which he normally does not do and the ones he threw tonight are much faster and a lot more movement. I guess Katz has him just rebuilding the whole arsenal on the fly. Still appears to stink, though

Nice of John to say Yoendrys has good stuff when I think that is very much a matter of debate

Tonight specifically, Palacios and Vaughn have probably had the best looking trips to the plate. LouBob and Vargas each crushed one as well. My comment on Elko was more in general though, not that I care too much but I just don't generally feel like he looks like a guy who is going to do something positive when he's up there. Hope he gets rolling though and I appreciate the couple homers

Here are the results on Cam Booser's three pitch types. Guess which one JRod flicked over the left field wall? (it's not a trick question)

Elko not very hitterish

Following up on this, I guess it's the sweeper, Statcast says it has a lot more sideways movement than the average sweeper and it appears to be a new pitch this year (threw one last year with very different movement). Wonder if the Sox will try to get him to do the Steven Wilson approach and just throw it basically all the time. Despite all that movement on the sweeper, batters have done okay hitting it and they love hitting the rest of the stuff he throws

I've tried to do the dive on Yoendrys and I just can't see what made the Yankees, Dodgers, and Sox want to give this guy a paycheck (inning-ending strikeout notwithstanding)

An offense that sucks will make you really hate your relievers

Sox getting back to anti-luck ways of 2024

Leasure and Eisert are probably your best relievers right now

Woops

Glad to see Venable giving Davis this inning. It's not like you've got great options in the bullpen, so let's see if Davis can keep going with the low pitch count.

Even New York is screwing Vaughn at this point

I'm mostly following the box scores, but hard to avoid the conclusion that Schultz has regressed for whatever reason. Hope he's healthy and that he can figure something out.

My unpopular take is I'll be okay with Elko going back down once everybody is ready to come off the IL

Didn't realize that LouBob entered the day leading the Sox in xwOBA (tied with Quero). Seems like he'll probably end the day on top too since he's barreled two balls today. Will probably be our lone player with an xwOBA (barely) above league average.

All we see on the tape is Jirschele jogged to his position during the warmup and suddenly the umpire came at him pointing fingers and shouting. Not sure what motivated the ump to do that, maybe something Jirschele said

Wonder what the hell is going on with Jirschele

One of those days