chw42

There's no way Moncada can touch Muñoz's fastball.

The pitching has been so good, but the offense just sucks so hard.

Muñoz coming in for the 8th. That won't be fun.

Johnny missing big time on his change ups.

Numbers don't lie. He's got 5 homers against them.

Elvis needs to hit half of his homers against the M's.

That was the pitch...

That was a breaking pitch and Raleigh took a while to get rid of it and he still got him easily.

Oh great now it's gonna take 3 hits to score Grandal.

How slow is Engel? Jeez

Yaz showing bunt? WTF?

Steal with Engel

I guess you just don't swing against Brash.

Cueto puts out the fire in 3 pitches.

When did Suarez learn how to lay off good sliders?

Seattle's got a roof, unfortunately.

Cause once they get guys on third they forget how to hit.

Once he chased the high pitch that AB was pretty much over.

I swear McEwing makes the wrong decision to send the guy on third almost every time.

That's gotta be the 2nd time he's gotten an out at third on a play like that

Engel in for Robert. Time to IL Robert. Stop pretending he's ok.

Yoan is infuriating

Elvis has actually never played 2B in his MLB career. He might actually put up a 3 WAR season this year so you'd think he might get better offers to play SS this off-season. At the very least he'd get a deal like Simmons got this past off-season.

He definitely wasn't his usual self until maybe July-ish? His velocity sucked when he first came back. Constantly in the low 90s. He's been much better velocity-wise in his recent starts to where he's hitting mid 90s. But his recent success is partially due to his revamped curveball. I thought Sox Machine did a good job talking about it in their article today: https://soxmachine.com/analysis/lance-lynn-returns-to-old-form-with-a-new-look-curveball/ Two things that I thought were real interesting: he's using the curve heavily to combat lefties' effectiveness against him this year. They've only hit .170 against him since he's deployed the new-look curve. His release point on the curve is distinguishable from his other pitches. It's definitely a lower release point. I wouldn't say that it's in "he's tipping his pitches" territory, but a team like the Astros would probably be able to pick up on the release point difference after they see him a few times. If teams don't pick up on the release point difference, his new curveball would be extremely helpful against teams like the Astros who cover the fastball extremely well. It also gives Lance more of a speed differential between his main pitches, which I think is what he was sorely missing last year. Lance's fastballs-only approach worked well with no sticky stuff enforcement. He got elite spin rates on his 4 seamer with it and it helped with his pinpoint control on his cutter and sinker. Without the sticky stuff, his control was no longer pinpoint and the fastball spin, while really good, was no longer 99 percentile elite. He's now more prone to mistakes on those pitches and fastballs right down the pipe that got popped up last year are now homers. He really had to re-invent his repertoire a bit to get back to being a respectable starter again and it looks like the new curveball has done just that.

His streak seems too good to be true. He was absolutely awful in the first half. Then he wins a round in the HR derby against Schwarber who seemed to be mailing it in for his round. Then we got the story about how Kirk was signaling pitchers to throw Pujols fastballs right down the middle during the ASG. Pujols is also homering against lots of teams who have no chance of making the postseason. It sure seems like everyone involved wants him to break the record.