caulfield12

Trust me...from watching Wilson for years in SD, he's NOT THE CLOSER WE ARE LOOKING FOR, lol. He's strictly the back end of the bullpen, but his low ERA must have tricked our manager or analytics team.

That was just a REALLY DUMB idea, Venable. Predictable....but still dumb.

Steven Wilson as closer, lol....this should be quite interesting.

Probably incentivized by JR...when not hawking concession items or taking foul balls away from kids in the stands.

Player of Game is Quero/Cannon...has to be split 50/50 for this one.

Benetti's definitely having a lot more fun, more comfortable, not on pins and needles in the DET booth. Not having his eating culinary scrutinized as much, either. Having the best team in the AL (for the moment) to broadcast doesn't hurt, either.

This is what their HoF manager came out of retirement for, lol? Reds are on the verge of going 2-8 and falling further behind the Cubs/Cards/Brewers.

Looks like Booser against de la Cruz, Hays...for some reason they don't have Lux hitting in the middle but the catcher instead, or possibly a PH Looks like Trevino and Wynns, two more catchers, as their best offensive weapons off the bench...so one of them might hit for Stephenson.

Which isn't a great thing, when Venable treats him as option 1B out of the bullpen late/close/high leverage and Booser's apparently now the quasi-closer. So let's just turn Grant Taylor into the closer, simply because we don't want to spend ANY money on quality relievers in FA. Quero and Thaiss have been doing some work defensively in the last week or so.

Here it comes...attack of the former NL West/AL Central guys.

Not a Baldwin fan, lol?

Well, you can't fault the Sox/Venable for this strategy. Cannon pitching the 6th/7th and possibly the 8th eliminates the worst elements of the Sox bullpen. The problem is still going to be those last two innings of the game, though. Also gives the team a much better likelihood of holding down the opposition, preventing them from running out to an early lead. BORING, sure.

Well, the Venable strategy worked for at least one inning. Eisert at 4.67 ERA somehow is a lot better than what I felt about him 2-3 weeks ago...would have been the first reliever off the roster at that point. Now it's probably Shuster. Freeman already got sent packing for Y.Gomez. As a matter of fact, Gomez/Shuster the only ERA's now in the Sox pen with over 5 ERA's. And yet somehow they're still probably the worst bullpen (in terms of overall talent) in all of baseball (still).

Who had Gavin Lux >>> Elly de la Cruz at the start of the year? McLain's (better/older) brother has been terribly disappointing as well...last year, injuries, this year, no bueno.

Same with Kwan with the White Sox...he would immediate turn into Charlie Tilson or something. (Definitely not Lance Johnson/1-Dog Reborn.)

Does anyone except their mothers really want to watch the Marlins these days???

No comparisons to left-handed Jon Rauch por favor...

Seems like we saw this same story with...I don't know, Chris Sale, Crochet, except those guys were "needed" immediately for playoff action. Even back in the day, drafting Royce Ring and Aaron Poreda and eventually Burdi. 2016 looks REALLY ugly right now. Formatting is a disaster but the names are all there...somehow THIS draft was going to provide one of the "core" pieces of the rebuild.

Eisert for some mysterious reason is starting...saw this same strategy with SAC/OAK. Guess they're going with the 'ol opener against the lefties strategy in an attempt to limit early offense. Gilbert might be up next tmrw or the next game.

Losing 1-0 so far...to Nats.

Sounds like a classic Western gunslinger. Maybe the name change helps.

And Tauchman...and Drury if everything else fails. Although Mike usually hits first or second...or bottom of the lineup depending on pitcher.

Don't we have Meidroth Vargas and Robert for walks? Actually driving them in is the bigger point.

Would guess roughly 830-900 EST start based on all the local weather forecasts. https://www.redszone.com/forums/showthread.php?127337-5-13-25-Reds-vs-White-Sox-6-40-PM/page2 Reds' fans saying one hour. Salty about Rose reinstatement and beating perennial doormat teams but not Cards Brewers or Cubs lol. Also mad at McLain and Ch.Encarnacion-Strand for sucking.

Seems like they're just experimenting with him now at this point. Scholtens and McKendry into CHLT starting mix along with Clevinger.