bmags

So this thread is a good reminder that the year is long and unrelenting. But some funny stuff at this point in time. Joc after his horrid start is now up to a 106 wRC+, and is now 0.0 WAR. He has been dragged down by poor LF defense, which is consistent with previous years where RF was his strongest place. After a great start, Eaton is hobbling and down to 91 wRC+ and 0.7 WAR driven by strong RF defense, which is good since that fell off quite a bit last year. But here's the funny part to me. Production vs. RHP (Left is Joc, right is Eaton) 123 vs. 111 Production vs. LHP (Left is Joc, Right is Eaton) 45 vs - 14 Funny to me just because of the howling about Joc being a platoon player and eaton being unbelievably bad vs lhp this year (.290 ops, 2 hits all year). In July, I'm sure Eaton gets a few hits off LHP and is just appropriately bad. Now Mazara: 63 wRC+ and -0.5 war. So...fun stuff. The season is long...so so long.

I don't think the changing hats thing is that big of a deal, I think the "it's illegal but we mostly don't care but also announce very public investigations about it to tarnish star players" part of it is what I hate. The issue is they take a "speed limit" approach to everything in baseball, where a little bit is okay but a lot is too much, but if everyones doing a lot then it's too hard for them to enforce still so they just snipe at the players and randomly make examples out of people.

is DSL a thing this year?

I feel like pitchers should be allowed something to help with grip, just choose what it is and regulate it. I don't really think football would be better if we banned receivers from wearing gloves. Give each pitcher their allotted container of pine tar each game. Getting tired of this stuff. Feels like the game just hates itself right now. Figure out what the boundaries are to baseball and let the players play within them, tired of the constant shaming of the players and game when it leads to some gameplay or time consideration people don't like.

I'm glad to hear this. Completely forgot about him.

I think it's been nice to just know the numbers have been gradually going down but today's numbers in IL were just 1.3% positives (897 cases out of 67k specimens). The 7-day positivity rate is now below 2%. Add to that IL is now up to 67% with first dose and staying pretty close to 70k/day.

Davis Martin with some gaudy numbers as well. Beard had a triple and Jose Rodriguez a double.

I'm sure every cards fan is thinking the same thing with their bullpen this year.

Also who cares about his season numbers, if he has a hot month with high ks and good scouting reports nobody will care that he had a bad game in low-a.

he's still decent vs righties thou

I'm surprised Eaton's sprint speed is right in his norms, feels like he's slowed down a lot recently.

My opinion is most baseball players years are a vascillation between feast and famine and Yermin is likely to just be in famine right now and not a DFA candidate but that's just me.

Don't know where to put this but Baseball America has been doing some great work lately.

For those who worried about Eloy injuring others in the outfield...meet moncada

imagine how much better he would be if steve stone liked him.

yeah, that is sorta how they used cervelli last year, and you are right, it very well could have been cheap insurance for a DH should it have happened.

https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/barry-jackson/article249320890.html So yeah I guess catcher.

A few weeks back Heyman or someone had a tweet on the Marlins for some reason bragging about how they tried to trade for Mercedes in this past offseason, so perhaps they believe he can survive as a position player...somewhere.

One thing I totally believe but I'm sure will never have any hard proof is that if the sox would have been in this situation in 2018 and thought "well we have Abreu long term at 1b, let's see if he can be an OF" it would have been a way slower turnaround. I think part of it is sox have been better about developing, but there is something about having a winning team that seems to help bring out the best of everyone, helping them focus and succeed on being a baseball player rather than individual goals - and somehow making it easier to hit individual goals. Maybe there is another aspect. TA comes up in 2016 as its falling apart and needs to be a savior. Moncada, Jimenez, both are seen as saviors. Vaughn as a prospect was nearly highly as touted, but he just gets to come up and be a piece in the wheel. Anyway, Considering how poorly the league is hitting and how hard a jump he had to do, him mashing LHP and struggling vs. RHP is a win, but him being a competent outfielder is unreal.

If we are talking playoffs ... I'm platooning Andrew as a bat vs. LHP and putting him in RF. To start the year, Eaton's splits vs lhp have been unbelievably bad. They will certainly improve, but I'll take the chances especially being so happy with Andrew's arm so far.

I was wondering after last night if the quality of mlb defense was specifically awful this year as its offense is. https://www.teamrankings.com/mlb/stat/errors-per-game Turns out no. Errors per game are at .58, which puts it at the lowest of last three years and middle of the pack the last 6. It just happens that the Sox have been horrible with errors while also playing a schedule mostly consisting of teams in the back half of errors per game.

Would rather cubs be good to avoid KB being sent to an AL team in the hunt.

Vaughn is 25th out of 37 outfielders in left field for OAA (which I think is a win) at -2. Tied with him are Justin Upton, David Dahl and Tommy Pham. Worse than him: Joc Pederson, Andrew McCutcheon, Kyle Schwarber, Clint Frazier If prior to this experiment, you'd say after two months he'd be better defensively than the players mentioned above I think we'd all take that as a huge win.

This team is really crushing it at home.

Nice 3 hit game for Ramos, and this was Bilous AA debut right? Nice start for him. Dirty Dedes with another 2 hits, ho hum.