Jake

What

Rojas has been a pretty useful player throughout his career on the strength of good defense and not-bad offense. For whatever reason both of those have stepped back so far. If he's playing hurt then I think he should stop doing that.

Nice job LouBob, helped avoid losing the lead on bad batted ball luck. Instead we will likely win because of good batted ball luck in the Shane Smith portion of the game

I'll wait for Steven Wilson to give up contact harder than 94mph today before I get too fired up about his performance. He hasn't been nearly as good as his ERA suggests but he's low on my Sox enemies list.

I'm curious about why Connor McKnight's mic so frequently has connection/reception issues when I don't remember that ever happening to Brooke. Does he have giant hands smothering the equipment or something?

Smith is getting absolutely pounded. Very fortunate the Sox are ahead. I hope Venable sees what's happening and knows to have a quick hook if he gets much traffic next inning.

Colson fixed whatever it was that regressed between 2024 and 2025. It's not clear that he fixed whatever caused the regression from 2023 to 2024. Pretty simple.

Answering my own question: good folks at Sox Machine report that indeed he demanded his release because in Houser-like fashion, he thought he'd done enough to get a MLB deal. Turns out he was right.

Is Altavilla a guy who had opt-out rights? Did we cut him because he said he was going to opt out?

Jerry surely wants some certainty about the stadium situation, but it's been such a low point for the Sox that biding his time for a while before sticking his hand out might not be the worst idea.

Not totally sure what to think, but for the time being my interpretation is mostly that the Sox didn't want Lee to languish in AAA just so 30 year old Matt Thaiss *might* make the MLB team marginally better in the near term. And as we know, there's more young catching coming behind Lee too so the logjam was not about to get any better. Don't see a lot to love in Baker, but maybe the Sox have some kind of idea about how to get him back to an .850 OPS guy.

I don't remember his remarks well enough to be sure he literally said "I have no regrets" but I'm confident that the substance of his post-game comments was effectively that he had no regrets. I'll mention that as I remember it, the tone and wording of the questions he got about the play arguably kind of led him in that direction. Vibe of some of the questions was sorta "what was your thought process on that totally not stupid play in which you showed your hustling mentality"

I don't know exactly how he'll be as a color guy, but I'm a big fan of Plesac's on MLB Network's studio shows. FWIW, contrary to some of the other comments, I've been thinking that Schriffen and Stone have had a pretty good rapport as of late. I don't necessarily mean that about the objective quality of their broadcast, but just in the "these guys like each other and are having a good time" way. It was especially apparent after Steve had that time off and came back. Steve's energy level has been dropping a bit since then so maybe this break is well-timed. He's getting old and the team isn't all that exciting, so he might need to be taking time off to be able to bring it. All the more reason to be trying out some legitimate options for his successor. Plesac is a Sox fan, has lots of MLB and TV experience, and is a high energy guy who probably can take the grind in stride if he ended up taking the role. Frankly, as good as Stone's reputation is, I've never enjoyed him all that much so I do have some bias. Jason brought out a good side of him and John doesn't do a bad job either. With Hawk was a toxic mix because they are both so very arrogant. Jason is more deferential and clearly has a similar sense of humor so it worked reasonably well. John is figuring Steve out but John is (IMO) overly deferential so there's nobody willing to contradict Steve on the broadcasts even when he is not infrequently wrong about something. While I wouldn't necessarily make the choice of Steve's successor based on what suits Schriffen best (which would imply Schriffen is some kind of franchise player to build around), a fellow high-energy guy like Plesac might work pretty well.

Taylor post-game seemed to confirm what I thought, that he believed the guy would just look once and pitch no matter what. His wording made it not clear to me whether the coaching staff told him to do it ("I had the green light"). He has no regrets but I do. I'll admit that it's a great play by the Rangers regardless, you just don't want to let them beat you like that

I don't blame Venable for that I guess, since Rojas has had a f***-up at 3B almost every game he's played there and has looked horrible at the plate (Sosa's spot was due up in the 9th against a lefty closer). Managing a bad team is hard I guess.

He has focus lapses there like he did at 1B, but he's a very talented fielder so he can still come out ahead when playing in the middle infield. A good hands guy who hits like a 2B is basically wasted at 1B since 1B so rarely get difficult fielding plays but they can really screw things up if they make mental mistakes. The way I see it, if winning today was most important you would just have Vargas at 1B and Lenyn at 3B (well, you'd also not have Capra in but that's another story). But we want Vargas to develop at 3B so we get a little worse at each position for the long-term gain...which I can support but it has some possible downsides as we have seen.

I didn't care enough to rewind and see whether this was true, but my guess on what Taylor was doing is: pitcher hadn't paid any attention to the baserunners, perhaps something consistent enough to be on his scouting report, so he thought he was getting a free base. But it seems like somebody on the Rangers staff realized this at the exact same time and caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. For Taylor, you just absolutely cannot be wrong there. Obvious upside of being able to tie the game on contact from this weak hitter at the plate, but the downside is huge that if you get out the whole game relies on that weak hitter doing something and then getting production from other guys after that.

My read on it was that compared to Amaya (admittedly an extremely low bar), he seemed like a more useful bench player by virtue of being a fast baserunner and IIRC having outfield experience (not that there is any need for extra outfielders by now). But no reason to believe he's a better offensive player which really limits what he can do for you.

I've been trying to figure out whether we somehow managed our way out of having a way to pinch hit for him or if not, why Venable didn't choose to PH for him

The Sosa play at 1B is on one hand a very Sosa play but also one that I'm not super mad at him specifically about. He doesn't have experience at 1B. He saw Vargas field the ball with plenty of time to get the runner at home, then look like he was throwing home, and then decide not to because he didn't have a good enough grip on the ball or whatever it was that made him change his mind. An experienced 1B or someone with better game sense would just get to first and figure out the rest later but it doesn't surprise me that Sosa basically got faked off of first base. That's the occupational hazard of playing somebody out of position is the way I looked at that play. The "benefit" is hopefully he learns something from that fairly unusual play and he has gotten a little better at this new position in the process.

AFAIK there were no weapons used in that incident but certainly didn't cover themselves in glory either way

I'd say I can't imagine what it would be like to be a Ranger fan watching this but I actually know exactly what it's like

Colson has the third-lowest whiff rate on Charlotte's squad since coming back from AZ (only Fletcher and Julks whiffing less; the whole team has a very high whiff rate, FWIW). Downside is his xwOBA in that period is just .304. Just not getting any of the slug. EV looks alright and launch angle is pretty high, but not combining them quite the right way I guess. I'm inclined to be patient with him since he's clearly addressing the swing and miss issue. He hasn't seen a lot of >= 95mph pitches since the return, but Colson's whiff rate is very low against them which matches BamaDoc's observation. Has made some hard in-play contact on those heaters. FWIW, Kyle Teel has had virtually no production against high velocity besides working some walks. Very high swing and miss rate, virtually no good contact. This is something that has not improved during this recent period of improved hitting for him. Elko and Quero didn't do very well on those pitches either (makes it unsurprising that MLB pitchers have tried beating Quero with heat in the majors).

I think most likely outcome is Rojas getting reps vs RHP at 3B, with Vargas sliding to 1B on those days. You could put Lenyn at 1B instead, but he's your best 2B defender which makes it kind of weird. A couple bad plays last week notwithstanding, Rojas has a strong record of defense around the infield. Benny is your full-time DH. I assume Tauchman and Palacios man the corners in the OF against RHP. Not sure if they will platoon both of them. I don't think Taylor has played well enough to deserve regular starts.

I feel bad for Lee getting blocked here but he has a lot to prove with his bat. He really has never hit very impressively at any level, which will be a consideration for how eagerly you start moving him around to other positions. He's a decent athlete so he could plausibly play a corner OF spot, but he could just as easily be a major butcher out there. Thaiss has some infield experience but he was a real butcher, which combined with his bat is the reason why he converted back to catcher.