The Sir

Avi Garcia. That comparison terrifies me.

Looks like it got him in the helmet, mostly. Probably hurts like Hell, but shouldn't have a lasting effect.

For anyone who didn't see it, Tim watched it fly out, turned back towards our dugout, leveled the bat up towards his own face, and shot-put it towards our guys. Remember when people got all uppity about the Jose Bautista bat flip against Texas in the playoffs a few years ago? It was ten times swaggier than that.

I fucking LOVE the cockiness of Tim Anderson when he kills one.

I do know what the five tools are. I don’t do anything with MiLB except follow box scores, but in four years, Curbelo has done nothing statistically to indicate he has a single one of the offensive tools. Arm and fielding, I don’t know, but Cleuluis Rondon had those for sure and it didn’t save his horrid bat.

One metric? He doesn't hit for average, he doesn't have power, he doesn't steal bases, he doesn't walk, he does strike out a ton, he is a zero tool player at low-A. I wish him the best...at selling cars.

Both Adolfo and Basabe has K-rates of 27% at A-AA last year.

I don't have quotes saved for most, but someone just the other day was lamenting that he finally thinks Curbelo is going to be a bust. What took so long??? Four years, 600 PAs, none above Kanny, and he strikes out 25% of the time! I laugh every time I see someone wondering when he was going to come back from one of his omnipresent injuries. Who cares? Time for him to get an honest job!

Ya got me, Jack. I do think Yolmer sucks and always has, and I think this board is far too hyped up on prospects who will never make a significant impact in MLB (Basabe, Adolfo, Lambert, Stiever, Curbelo, Rivera, Nunez, Bush, Pilkington, etc). However, due to solid hit tools, I do have high hopes for Madrigal, LGon, and Blake.

That's not true. Trout's career rate is 21%. But either way, he's doing that in MLB, facing the best pitching on Earth. Robert is doing it in A-ball, facing guys like Nick Raquet and Jackson Tetreault. It's not the same. I don't care what his SLG is; I care how he does it. Killing shit pitchers while still striking out a bunch is...disconcerting.

He still has a K-rate of 20%. That's only going to get worse as he gets to higher levels. He also has a BABIP of .531. I'm glad he's mashing, but we're getting a little carried away thinking he should immediately go to AA and maybe be in MLB later this year or early next. This isn't sustainable, and he has some things to work on.

As a Catholic, that picture of the crucifix still standing inside the cathedral is powerful.

WTF Engel.

I feel like that's been the case for years. It's how the rebuild started, after all.

Hilarious how Stone keeps referring to how well Sanchez has been hitting lately. He's got 5 hits in the last 5 games. It's really not spectacular.

So, will Yoan be able to compensate for the insane shittiness of our other players with "Yo" names? The million dollar question.

He's safe, but Yolmer still sucks.

This team reminds me of the scene in Meet The Parents where Ben Stiller tries to buy an expensive bottle of wine. Don't spend $30 million on one amazing player. Just buy several MLB-versions of Mum's. It's even better!

Yes, it is. Three seasons totaling 600+ PAs where he had a sub-.600 OPS. Then one where he climbed to an abysmal peak of .732, and then he dropped below .700 and looks like he can’t hit at all this year.

He’s got a .654 career OPS. Shitting the bed is what Yolmer does.

I have to wonder how any Sox fan loves this guy. He sucks. He always has.

Engel sucks. DFA him, Yolmer, Santana, Nova, Palka, and let us watch literally anything else.

Why is José Ruiz interesting to anyone? I still don’t know why anyone expects our bullpen to be good. These guys suck.

True about how awful he was, but without looking at stats, it seems like he's just not getting into those counts anymore (not as much, anyhow). Last year, he'd take two quick strikes, and I usually just walked out of the room because the outcome was certain at that point. And it happened every freaking day.

This is a solid post. I was a Moncada hater in that I continually stressed last year that he needed to cut down on the Ks. I insisted that if he failed to do that, he would indeed be a bust. Other people correctly pointed out that he K'ed looking too much and that he'd improve as he got a better grasp of the strike zone. It looks like that is happening, because his approach is changed. I don't really care about him being 9-20, because 5 game samples are pointless, but I do care about his newfound aggressiveness early in the count and his lack of Ks so far. Last year, he had two five game stretches where he racked up 9 hits, but he had a total of 17 Ks in 47 PAs during those ten games. The Ks were always there, hot or not. And I think those have dropped this year because of this new approach. I've shared this before, but I'll plug it in again. It's a comp tool I made with Excel where you can plug in PAs, each type of hit, BB-rate, K-rate, and it computes everything else. In this edition, for player A, I inputted Moncada's stats from last year (it's not completely perfect, I don't bother with HBP or SF/SH). For players B, C, D, the only change I made was K-rate (to 25%, 20%, and his current SSS of 16%) and then adjusted his number of singles so that his BABIP matched last year's .341 (which assumes that he doesn't build on last year's XBH numbers at all, which is probably not going to be the case. Either way, his OPS climbs to .770 at 25% k-rate, .803 at 20%, and .833 at 16%. Check it out and play around with it, if interested. Either way, if the Ks come down, he's a star. Player Comp.xlsx