Jake

I kinda like Rondon but that's not the type of thing I trust him to do

I'm sticking by it as "not dumb," which isn't meant to be a huge compliment. The deal had upside — maybe you get something like the old Ervin Santana for just $4 million — but not a lot of downside since we had the right to cut him loose right away with no strings attached. Considering Santana refused his assignment and the continued pro-rated payments that would go with it, I wonder if his plan now is to retire. I don't see any way he gets another MLB shot without going through the minors first and nobody is going to pay him as much as we were to pitch in AAA.

You say that, and by all accounts you're right, but then we also have Zack Collins so you never know! Similar number of passed balls compared to Collins last year while controlling the running game better. I'd sure hope he's not also super bad at the receiving and game calling aspects of the job because our young pitchers probably deserve to have us preferring glove-first catchers when we use minor league veterans to fill out the rosters.

Like I said we'll never know what would have happened with a normal timeline but you can look at the numbers in the minors and see a guy who kept getting promoted without having justified the promotion. Maybe he'd have been bad no matter where he pitched but if I have a guy with control problems the last thing I want to do is rush him into better and better competition where every mistake gets punished and he can't work on anything.

Welp now it turns out that signing Santana wasn't very dumb at all. Rolled the dice, he didn't work out, hardly any money wasted especially given the potential upside of the deal when it was signed.

What doesn't seem to be well-recognized is the possibility that there was no way to avoid Moncada striking out a bunch in MLB, that he had to do it in order to eventually not do it.

So weird. Reynaldo's main weakness has been inability to get swings and misses with his heater. Today he goes out there and leans on his heater and they whiffed on half they swung at. They only got 3 balls in play out of 34 they swung at.

Reynaldo!!!!!!

52 fastballs out of 80 pitches for Reynaldo.

He's just attacking them in the zone and they have nothing for it

Jose Rondon starting in LF today. Interesting

Not sure what to make of Booker. Showed a little pop last year, but hadn't done so before or since. Steals a few bags but not enough to be an asset. Haven't seen enough to know what he's got defensively.

What's interesting to me about his defense is all the issues seem to crop up when he's either near a wall or other players. Sort of like you would expect with someone who hasn't played out there before, everything gets screwed up when they have to keep their eye on two different things. On the routine plays he's really smooth, which isn't saying much, but there are a lot of bad outfielders who are bad because they struggle with routine flies. Eloy, so far, is really bad on everything except the routine flies and most of the screwups have looked like he's worried about a wall or another player. That's theoretically fixable but you wonder why it wasn't fixed before.

If Luis Basabe starts out hot in AA I could see him in this category as well.

Going to have to develop the player unfortunately. If he can't run around the outfield without getting hurt then I have my doubts about his long-term health anywhere else.

The difference between him being a bad-but-not-worst defensive outfielder and a DH is pretty big in my eyes.

My take is that if he can't play outfield then we've wasted a lot of money on him. You have to keep running him out there.

The key thing is that the guy be able to be competitive. About August 1st last year, you could have called Eloy up and he'd be over a lot of the stuff he's dealing with right now. On the flip side, we moved Carson Fulmer up way too fast and he had to just struggle to survive at higher levels. It is to be determined whether Carson will ever recover (and we'll never know what he would have done with a slower pace through the minors). Gordon Beckham is another example of a guy who got up here too quick and was at too high of a level to deal with the big picture problems he had. Dylan Cease I presume would be okay getting up here and pitching because he's done so well at the higher levels he's pitched at. He maybe hasn't gotten every last ounce of development out of AAA just yet but nowadays if a pitcher can hang in MLB there's no use letting him use up whatever's left of his ligaments in the minors.

bobblebat

If Tim walked it off I'd need him to be twirling that thing like a drum major

Let's win this thing

I know it's hard to believe but these games could actually be less watchable

Scott Merkin et al

Sprained ankle, no broken bones, will get MRI tomorrow as part of standard procedure

The question is why any of it matters when the ball has gone over the fence. I'm sure Abreu had no idea it mattered as long as they crossed home in the right order