Jake

I'm not as sour on the Butler deal as a lot of folks around here, but the fact we didn't keep our own pick was really bad IMO. Hard for me to believe the Wolves would have walked away had we insisted on keeping our 1st rounder out of the deal, but it seems we blinked first.

I see what people are saying with the "robotic" comments. I've always thought to myself that he seems stiff when he swings, like there's no way he could change how much bend he has at the waist. Of course, some players get themselves in trouble because they can't keep their posture so steady. But there are some guys who can reach out and get a pitch that's either out of the zone or they were initially fooled on because they can maneuver their bodies without losing their ability to make contact. You can see below where (as a LHH) he makes contact along what roughly corresponds to the angle of his bat through the zone and drops of precipitously outside that area. It's a little different as a RHH — he covers the top of the zone better — but it's a similar pattern.

It's not always best to take everything a team says at face value because they have reasons for not fully disclosing risks, outlooks, etc.

Well, it could be just as much about recognizing fastball vs. offspeed, etc. He's swung and missed enough times to get in his own head, that's for sure.

Yeah that comparison is a good one because he was a premium athlete. Of course one thing that hit home as I was thinking about comps is that you just aren't going to find many good SS that strike out 25% of the time. That said, it can be hard to compare even to 10-15 years ago when the league-wide strikeout rate has gone up so much.

I'm not sure what Anderson will be. I see some Didi Gregorius and Jean Segura in him — guys who never had enough bat to that they could afford to have a down year without really being a drag. But Anderson, like them, has some real pop in his bat but is rough around the edges and doesn't draw many walks. He does hit for more power than either them of did at the same age and also strikes out more. Anderson has shown a lot of power without getting beefy like Segura. Brandon Crawford is another SS with pop, some strikeout tendency, and took a while to develop patience and put balls into play; he's a steadier hand on defense though. Anderson is a superior athlete to all these guys though. What I'm not sure about with Tim is how much better he can get. I think there's potential there for fewer strikeouts and an attendant increase in batting average, but that probably means he's never really an All-Star caliber player. I'm not sure what the best version of him looks like in part because it's hard for me to envision him maintaining a decent average, high walk rate, and power all at the same time...he's basically never done those things as a pro. Tim's defense is inconsistent and error-prone but improving — and the errors are atoned for in part by his very good range and throwing arm. Nonetheless, I think he should represent a feather in the cap of the Sox player development people. He was taken as a really raw player who had premium athleticism but a questionable hit tool, game power, and defense that few thought would fly at SS in MLB. He's really found that game power, his hit tool is still a weakness but not enough from keeping him from being a .700 OPS guy, and his defense is basically fine. The Sox got him to the majors and made him a MLB regular at a premium position, which is something we have really struggled to do even with relatively low risk players. Add Yolmer Sanchez as another player that came up through our system to become a good all-around player. Combined they pretty definitively break the streak of the Sox failing to develop solid position players through the draft/international amateurs after ~Crede.

Sounds like what they were focusing on a problem that is has often looked like he's had: He's not fully committed to his swing, like he's second guessing himself on his pitch recognition in the process of swinging.

They probably should, although only where he realistically can. The spot in the first inning he can hit, but he struggles to make contact with strikes in places like high and outside corner so in those cases there's no use sealing your fate by whiffing on it.

Another Moncada K on a pitch outside the strike zone. He might benefit more than anyone from robo-umps.

I think it is baseless speculation to assume the strikeouts have some major negative effect. At any rate, there's growing evidence that the growth in Ks league-wide has much more to do with the strike zone expanding (because it is now being called by the rulebook) and pitchers getting really, really good. I do think the tanking issue is much more likely the explanation for the attendance drop. It's a tricky issue, but I suspect the best way to deter tanking is to reduce the value of young talent by doing something like reducing the service time required to reach free agency.

One risk of the revised system is that it may ultimately offer some perverse incentive to have more teams tank since it moves the threshold for decent odds further away from worst record. Either way, it probably helps the Bulls who are likely to be a little too good to have the league's worst record.

Don't love those solo shots but 11 K and 1 BB is really, really encouraging.

TBH I'd send Tilson down before Engel. Engel is the better defender, has more upside with the bat, and Tilson might actually benefit from a demotion at this point considering his time away from baseball

I'm all for patience but I haven't seen a ton of flashes from Giolito beyond flashes of competence, which isn't a high bar. I think it's pretty reasonable to be down on Giolito.

I'll just reiterate that the choice is really simple: Unless he has a run of major, major duds like his last outing, you call him up as soon as he strings together 2 or 3 decent outings.

I used to find Farmer and DJ to be kind of funny/charming, but listening to them this year has been a slog. I haven't been getting that same funniness from them. There's a bug with the MLB.TV app on some Rokus where the stream is smoother if you use the radio audio feed instead of the NBCSN one so I've been getting them along with the video. They're terrible at describing what's happening in the game, but I almost forgive them since I usually have video. What kills me is how often they are wrong about what's going on. You wouldn't know if you're listening to the radio, of course. The clearest example is that if they complain about a ball/strike call, I'd give at elast 3:1 odds on the umpire being right per Statcast, etc. It's like they judge it with the naked eye instead of using the monitor in front of them.

FWIW, Moncada has the second most called third strikes on pitches that were outside the zone in MLB with 9 such blown calls. Matt Davidson is first with 11. For the sake of context, he's also struck out looking 22 times on pitches *inside* the zone, which ranks highly. Still, you're looking at nearly a third of his strikeouts looking ending on a blown call by the umpire. For more context, he's had 5 pitches in the zone called balls with 2 strikes (56th highest in MLB), so this isn't merely an artifact of him taking a lot of pitches. League-wide players on average get many more 2-strike pitches in the zone called balls than the opposite kind of mistake because the strike zone as it is typically called by umpires is smaller than the rulebook strike zone. And as one last fun fact about Moncada's struggles with the umpires, he's had 5 occasions in which a 3-ball pitch outside the zone was called a strike, 3rd highest number in the league. He's only had the inverse happen 2 times, making him one of the unluckiest full time players by that measure as well. Side note: Davidson has only struck out 14 times looking on pitches inside the zone, meaning it's about a coin flip when he's called out looking whether strike 3 was in the zone or not.

It's not monumental, but obviously the promotion of Zavala over Collins isn't based on play but some other consideration. That is unless there is some large, unreported disparity in their defensive development

I would also say that since his velocity had an upward trajectory as the game went on, I can only assume that he's trying to tone things down. The Clippers that day basically never got a good swing on his fastball and seemed almost fooled by it half the time. They also looked terrible against his offspeed once he started using it, but of course he was putting guys on so much it didn't really matter — they only needed a single well-timed hit to score runs against him. I suspect his issues are more mental than mechanical, which I do suppose is an argument for getting Coop's hands on him. Kopech has a pretty simple motion and in person it didn't seem very high effort. I'm guessing whatever problems he has with repeating his motion are probably fixable moreso by getting his mind right than having him try to do something different physically.

Have you ever looked at the talent disparity between these two players? Albies is a nice player, there's a chance he's better in the long run, but there are very good reasons to prefer Moncada.

He's in a funk right now but we've already seen him pitch really well for a pretty long stretch in AAA, so there's no doubt he can do it. There's no doubt he can win in MLB. Once he works through this, call him up. If he continues walking a lot of people, don't call him up.

I was present for Kopech's dud in Columbus a few weeks ago. He didn't look like he was struggling because he was trying to overthrow. He was 94-95 in his first inning, where he had walks/HBP/WP, 95-96 in the rest of the game where the command problems continued. Touched 98 a few times. Threw at least 25 fastballs before his first offspeed pitch. He did get knocked out of the game by a changeup that Adam Rosales roped into left for a single, though.

There are two kinds of pitchers who put up a great ERA for a while: 1. Guys who are totally lucky. Some combination of too few K/too many BB/too much hard contact to sustain their numbers for very long. Mat Latos is a recent example of this phenomenon. 2. Guys who pitch really, really well for a while and don't have good numbers because of luck. Luckily, Covey is of type 2. He's not lucky. That doesn't mean he'll always be good, but it's nice when a guy has good numbers because he's been good and not because of random variation.

I think Lopez was just as if not more important to the Eaton trade at the time and I suspect he was the one that the Nats were sorriest to see go. I think both teams understood something was wrong with Gio.