chw42

That's the best Yoan's looked for a long time. He hit the ball hard 3 times today.

He's inching along. First one was 5 innings, this one 6. Next one will be 7.

Guess they want to keep his pitches down? I mean that's the only real explanation for pulling him. Also if DK isn't starting Saturday and Gonzalez isn't starting Saturday, does that mean Rodon will start that game?

Cleveland just lost to KC. Thanks Royals!

Does Gio throwing mean Reylo is starting against the Tigers?

He had just curbed his strikeouts for the past couple of weeks too. Weird to see him regress against the Pirates of all teams.

We might actually get 7 innings out of a starter today.

He actually has really good exit velo numbers. I think he's at 90.5 average exit velo. He's just got a launch angle under 6 degrees right now.

James saw Grandal getting too close to his offensive numbers and decided to put an end to that discussion

The McCann vs. Grandal debate will continue

I wonder what his pitch limit is at right now. He hasn't gone past 80 yet in his starts

I'm not sure why he's swinging at junk when this guy just walked Eloy on 4 pitches. Somebody has to get in his ear about that.

Somebody needs to tell him he's getting 50% fastballs now.

Good thing it didn't matter.

That ball was an inch or 2 completely off the plate. Didn't get any part of it.

Gimme robo umps

He still has a 120 wRC+ this year despite not knowing what pitches are coming. Along with some terrible BABIP luck. He's still a solid player. I just don't know if we can afford a reasonable deal for him given the financial situation.

Yeah it's risky due to COVID. But if his market is really 3 years and $40 million with someone else, maybe it's worth offering to get a draft pick out of it.

What's funny is that when I listened to this, Trump didn't seem like an idiot like he usually does. Cause he was actually telling the truth.

Grandal actually leads in DRS pitch framing this year at +4 and is top 5 in FanGraphs catcher framing. His offensive numbers have pretty much caught up to McCann's. Yeah he sucks on defense sometimes, but you've committed to him and he brings a lot of value in areas this team lacks in quite a bit (patience for one). Does anyone know if McCann can qualify for a QO this off-season?

Yeah but how are the splits vs. RHP vs. LHP on sliders? I actually can't find those numbers anywhere. It seems like we absolutely kill lefties with sliders like Boyd, but have issues laying off them vs. RHP. Edit: I finally got around to finding some numbers on this. Baseball Savant has Statcast search, which is pretty awesome and lets you get splits on pretty much everything. Anyways, vs. lefties against the slider, the Sox are hitting .250 with a .484 SLG and a .330 wOBA. This is actually the 5th best in baseball. Against RHP vs. the slider, they're hitting .228 with a .439 SLG and a .288 wOBA. This is 11th in baseball. Not as bad as I thought, but also not great. Weirdly enough our best slider hitters are Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez, two guys who do nothing but chase them (both have a 40+% whiff rate on it). EE is absolute trash vs. the slider (no surprise there). Meanwhile, Robert also seems to struggle mightily against the fastball regardless of handedness. Pretty surprising considering the early scouting report on him. It could be that he's refined his approach to hitting off-speed and is no longer sitting fastball.

Brudabaker throws a ton of sliders, which isn't ideal for this lineup.

How someone who actually plays first can do something like he did is beyond me.

Tomorrow is almost a must-win. You can't get swept by the Pirates. The Tigers series is also a trap series. If we don't show up they can take 2 out of 3 from us with the way they've been playing. Not the kind of results you need heading into a 4 game series against the Twins.

Also dropped a foul ball in the 8th. McCann needs to catch tomorrow.