Jake

They're a worse offense than us but we clearly hold the crown for the worst offensive player

I mean it's not like he'd have a 3.5 ERA but there's no use leaving him out there to give up 1-4 extra runs in his final inning all the time. Take, for example, this game against the Royals about a month ago. Lopez gets through 5 innings with a pitch count in the upper 90s and his fifth inning featured some hard outs. He goes out for the 6th and gives up a double, then a homer, then a walk, then a ground ball double play, then a single, then a triple, then another single before finally getting taken out with 118 pitches, the highest total of his career having given up 4 runs in the final inning when he probably shouldn't have been given more than one or possibly two batters before getting pulled. As I remember, even after the home run we didn't have a pitcher warming up yet.

This isn't about Lopez, it's about our manager. It's Lopez's fault that at about pitch 95, he was dead meat. It's Ricky's fault he didn't even have someone warming up by then and then left him in at least one batter past the point he was clearly cooked.

Lopez has his own problems but Ricky has repeatedly pushed him well past the point where it became clear his effectiveness has been used up. Saw the same thing with Giolito last year

I guess the story post-game will be that the bullpen phone made Ricky screw this up

We haven't done Lopez any favors with our handling of the bullpen in his final innings this year

Is there nobody warming up??

All hits on offspeed this inning, so might as well try the heater

We'll cut Lopez at some point and he'll go to the Astros and win a Cy Young

I did think Stewart hit it better than that, though

I hope we have someone up in the pen because Lopez's fastball has lost a bunch of juice this inning and it's not like it was really blowing them away before

Reynaldo really gives away his curve with his motion, as evidenced by Stewart hitting that thing an inch off the ground

.030 expected batting average and needed a robbery to keep it from going out

Holy christ is this ballpark playing small. That was hit 92mph (not hard) and 39 degrees (very high) and would have been out if not for a nice play by Eloy

His ERA had dropped from 6.12 to 6.01 at the time of this post

I know how bad Reynaldo has been this season, but this inning is not (yet) a meltdown of any kind. A couple not well-hit single and a hard liner does not a meltdown make.

I never saw a good angle on it, but was that second hit a bad play by Palka?

These are not well-hit balls against Lopez thus far, so should probably just relax and hope he gets a good bounce here

Probably a reverse jinx, but Rondon is every bit as bad offensively as Yonder Alonso was. How much more rope do we give him?

Just occurred to me who Lopez reminds me of the most: Edwin Jackson.

At Illinois State, faculty pay makes up 33% of the budget (link). In the Cal system, about 25% and about 40% in the Cal State system (link). I'm not sure how that differs at smaller institutions, although not many of them would be D1 in athletics.

Saw some discussion recently about Yoan wanting to make teams stop shifting on him as a lefty. That will help

Feels like we've been asking our good relievers to go multiple innings more than in the past. Of course, the Ricky era hasn't exactly been characterized by "good relievers"

I think the Cordell bunt was the result of trying to weigh the relatively unlikelihood that he gets a hit and relatively higher likelihood of double play

Seems to me that McCann probably helped Cease out big time today. Realized Cease was getting more mileage out of his offspeed and just kept calling it. Had some bold sequences, like tripling up the change to strike out the lefty. I bet he wasn't getting that with Collins and Zavala, especially if he was doing more of his own pitch calling. Sometimes a catcher believes in some of your pitches more than you do and pushes you into using them.