Jake

Soxtalk, usually

Romo back to his wicked ways of being unable to hit it beyond the infielders

Jobe really pitched well after the two hit batsmen. Only hittable pitches he threw were to Braden, who handled the last one thrown to him. Might be a slog tonight at this rate.

Nice job Braden!

Fantastic pitches to Benny too.

Perfect 3-2 pitch. Glad he didn't roll over it although I'm amazed he managed to pop it to the pull side.

That's two! That's two! Fight!

Correction: he's already largely converted to 3B. There's very much something of a luxury Jake Burger profile in there.

TBH, it's a fairly bog-standard yips situation. Nick Nastrini went through something similar after the Sox cut him. Sox farmhand Jarold Rosado seems to be playing footsie with the yips but isn't quite so clear-cut. The persistence of sending Oppor out there is kind of noteworthy though as it seems like teams often send those poor guys into hiding. I can share that when chatting with a few minor leaguer parents at spring training this year, I heard that Christian had some reputation as being kind of arrogant and perhaps uncoachable. The message I was getting was they felt like he was good-hearted but definitely felt like he was the big dog and wanted everyone to know it. Makes me wonder whether the Sox marching him out there is some kind of humiliation ritual or something, lol

It's baseball, baby. Anything can happen! That unfortunately includes really bad things, but it also includes really good things!

Makes sense to me. Obviously, I suspect this will impact the value of a subscription there, but they aren't really in a position to hire just some technically-qualified reporter. At least that's my suspicion. It was a risk and it's an unusual operation, so you need someone who isn't just competent but also really cares about the Sox and will basically be a passionate co-fan with those two. Not to mention that James's tendencies to dive deep and go for less news-of-the-day kind of stuff really suits Sox Machine well but isn't necessarily the standard fare of a beat reporter. A place like Sox Machine can contribute by doing the standard "Hey Will, take me through today's big win" kind of reporting, but it's really not their lane so if you're going to invest you need someone who will bring some extra/different points of view like James did.

I still think I'd rather have Quero around than Romo, but I have a feeling Quero will be booking a ticket to Charlotte shortly.

IIRC, it was more "surprisingly fast" moreso than "elite speed."

Not to be so arrogant as to think anyone knows or cares what I've said before about Bonemer, but after diving a little deeper I'm coming around on him a bit. I still really don't like how he looks but I know better than to place too much weight on that. Some of the AA data is sketchy but my read on things is he's got more hit tool than the highish K rate would let on. And better discipline than you might think. He has a good contact rate with 2 strikes and isn't one of those fake-patience guys who just takes everything until two strikes in hopes of getting a walk from a pitcher who stinks. He does have some issues with swing decisions but not at a profound level. As I would have expected from how stiff he looks at the plate, he does not do a good job of making contact on pitches outside the zone at all. That's why he strikes out a lot, paired with his average-for-level chase rate. In-zone contact is not so bad and with two strikes, he rarely gets beaten in the zone which is pretty interesting. As long as better pitching doesn't expose a greater tendency to chase, he doesn't look like a sure thing to have his K rate explode at higher levels. I'm still pretty skeptical about his defensive home but it's just hard to know about that stuff from afar so I don't weight it too heavily.

I would expect Thorpe, who will also be rested, would be ahead of Shane in the pecking order given how brutal Shane has been besides his last AAA outing. But of course, there's no guarantee that Thorpe will be good enough so we could end up seeing Shane anyway. Other than a shaky most recent appearance, Cannon has been pitching well in AAA for a little while. I'd probably prefer to see Noah and Sandlin over either Cannon and Shane, though.

Well I have gone to the not-Sox-fan parts of the internet and they literally think Davis should be in jail for hitting Sal Stewart. I'm obviously partisan on this issue but I think it's crazy to believe that not only did Davis want to Sal for the crime of hitting a homer (which lots of people have been doing lately!), he would miss badly the first attempt and then lie to Sal by saying the ball slipped out, and then hit him in the head specifically on purpose. Seems unlikely to me. With the Sox in the lead and Davis up 0-1 in the count and his whole season on the ropes. If that set of assumptions was even half-true, I'd want Davis getting some mental health attention. And that's without considering what sort of person I know Davis to be, which is totally mild-mannered and never appearing to give a damn about what opponents are doing.

It's a good move I'm sure, but a little risky. Have to think if the Sox get boring, S-T will drop the Sox beat like a bad habit (again). Of course Sox Machine might take him back if that came to pass. I have my doubts that Sox Machine will hire another beat writer.

Tito says "you can't throw two balls head high" Correction: the first one was very far away from his head, at least as far from his head as the strike zone is from his head

Can you imagine how evil you must think Davis is for him to say "I'm not trying to hit you" one pitch, then believe he was lying when it happens the pitch afterwards

I see Davis saying he has a blister. I'd say that thing might need 15 days to recover!

I haven't looked into what Reds fans think of their team's deadline but I assume they weren't happy. They had quite a few pending FA who many felt would find a buyer and they traded just one of them (Lowe). So my view is that their management is probably operating with a different logic than the rest of the league. I assume to some extent, both sides wanted to make a point about what exactly the value of an okay player for 2 months should be.

IIRC, it seemed like Cease was the guy if they were going to use a regular starter but they were justifiably not trusting him. Then they go with Dunning, which was also justifiable, but they pulled him right away and seemingly were just playing matchups. And then there was Rodon who I don't think had pitched much in the regular season but some felt might be ready to go...and then he came in and got hit around. I have a memory of Cease warming up but never coming in.

Shane Smith pitched (well) today. So there's one viable option to cover tomorrow's game not available. Of course, I'm not sure that the Sox would have felt comfortable bringing him up even for a quasi-emergency start with how his last couple times out looked. Noah and Sandlin can't be called up without a major league injury. Thorpe pitched yesterday. Urquidy will have 4 days rest tomorrow off of a 2 inning start (don't think he was pulled for performance reasons). Cannon has been pitching surprisingly well but he pitched on Tuesday, so not an option for immediate help. Not sure if there might be someone else I'm not thinking of or if they might try to cobble together another bullpen game. Urquidy seems like the guy if they are going to bring up a starter. And you'd probably send Tanner down.

Welp, this is ultimately a game decided by the umps in my view. Maybe wouldn't have made a difference, but who knows! But it's a nice finish and pretty clear to me the Sox are in fact better than this not-very-good Reds team. Gonna have to win some of the ones you weren't supposed to. That's baseball baby

Edgar singles on the 4-seamer. BTW, batters are (somehow) only hitting .091 against Garcia's heater this season.