Jake

FWIW, Statcast seems to indicate that Hendriks is releasing the ball closer to home plate this year than last year (by about 0.2 feet). Maybe the cause of a back issue? Of course you can release closer to home for reasons besides the follow-through.

Worth keeping in mind that the option increases in value every 50 plate appearances starting at 400. Pollock's track record tells us it's a dicey proposition for him to get much over 400, but if he does manage to play nearly every day it's a $15M option.

Yeah I was mainly trying to figure out if we were going to try to do some weird thing where we DH Eloy a bunch just to keep Pollock out of RF.

Does Pollock have the arm to play RF?

Been a while since I strolled down the page on Soxtalk. Looks like The Buster was put out to pasture, eh?

I suppose the other way of looking at this is if you think he can get MLB hitters out right away, you just want to get as much value out of him before the inevitable injury that may leave him unable to regain his pre-injury performance.

I've been on Soxtalk for longer than the time in my life before I joined Soxtalk.

He's pitching somewhere? I can't find any stats on him, was wondering what happened to him.

Seby can't hit, I don't care how well he catches. Yes, 3 homer game notwithstanding. Unless Frank Menecchino just taught him something that he didn't know when he struck out 40% of his PA in Charlotte, Seby's gotta go and shouldn't be playing this much as it is.

Seems like most of the outsiders in particular fail to appreciate the context of Jose getting hit all the time. I'm no fan of the "old ways" where you protect your guys by beaning people — but I also understand that it's frustrating when your guy gets drilled all the time and none of the people doing the drilling perceive much of a cost. So at some point, maybe rather than resort to throwing baseballs at each other it might be useful to at least show the opposition that you might get somebody telling you to F off if you can't safely execute your gameplan.

Still haven't gotten the all-clear from the Sox beat writers.

He's a rock solid MLB starter, hard to complain about this.

I'm still trying to figure out if Kopech and/or Eloy will be in the top 10 or left off entirely. EDIT: On reflection, I don't think they'll be on there at all. Eloy didn't make it last season and there's no way he's raised his stock enough to go into the top 10. Same goes for Kopech.

The Athletic did a similar article a little while back and it was much better.

FWIW, to me Moncada is the clear answer.

It's very hard to predict the future in baseball but I'd rather be the Sox than most of the other teams.

Would you rather have Moncada on his current deal or Madrigal with his current contract situation?

Well I've seen at least one comment from Tony that he's very happy with Burger's play so far but the last thing he wants to see is a young guy like that on the bench. I don't really know where he's supposed to play, I'm not super optimistic that he's going to defend at 2B. Could DH some but that's probably not the ideal role for him either.

Seems impossible to evaluate from the outside whether Yoan "doesn't care" and while he's certainly no Charlie Hustle, it's not like it's very easy to tell whether some of his issues are due to something fixable or if he's just not the kind of person who is going to be super consistent at anything he does.

This is the only number that matters. Even promoting him to AAA would be borderline criminal at this point. He has to make more contact.

I think it's right to point out that Rodon has never been a bad pitcher for any extended stretch. We've all felt disappointment with him not meeting high expectations, but if he pitches anything like he used to he's a good value. Will he? Well we don't know, that's why he didn't get a $10M+ deal. But I also think you can't rule out the possibility that Carlos finds some of that ceiling we've all been hoping for, either, so there's some real upside in the deal. I do think the main part of the deal that is questionable is that his health status makes it uncertain that he could cover the innings we might need. But I don't hate it and it's just not that much money.

My interpretation of the signing was that Sox decided they weren't willing to force it defensively in RF with Brantley or Ozuna (who was even more of a reach on D) and must have preferred Eaton to Joc at least for the respective price points. If they signed Brantley now and saw him as RF only if/when Eaton is hurt, I could see that. FWIW, FG's crowdsourcing has Brantley getting 3/$45M. I can see an argument against that although I'd consider paying it if I was in charge of Jerry's money.

Can someone explain what happened on the radio today?

My position is that managers are generally not very important, so I take some comfort in that. And I honestly don't know TLR that well. The biggest risk here is if he can't get along with his players, which does feel like an unnecessary risk given that the upside of a good manager is minimal.

Remember that one reaction to the shift besides individual players changing their approach to pull less is that different players succeed because the ones who spread the defense out have a marginal advantage over players who don't.