Jake

Best guess is they have done something to reduce the workload of the pitchers that has had the ironic effect of increasing their risk by leaving their arms untrained. Was an article in The Athletic about the Rangers having attempted a program for draftees in which they really scaled back their in-game workloads at first and they had an alarmingly high TJS rate with them. The Rangers were using some Driveline training programs as well FWIW but separating cause and effect is difficult with these things (and there are some claims that players may not have been doing the Driveline program correctly)

The one way in which it would make sense is if you plan to have Leury and/or Rondon covers all the innings at SS and just need a bench guy. In that case, no reason to call up a semi-prospect in Mendick just to have him sit on a bench for 2 or 3 weeks.

That would mean that Palka never plays except for the rare day that Collins catches and you don't want McCann in the lineup as DH

I feel like people have somehow forgotten how horrendous defensively Palka has been. His performance last year is one of, and perhaps *the* worst of any outfielder in the Statcast era. Playing him in the outfield every day is like playing late career Adam Dunn out there. If the Sox play him out there again, it will really worry me about their ability to evaluate their own talent.

Palka cannot be allowed to play the outfield again. That was an embarrassment to the franchise and cost our pitchers dearly

Doesn't make any sense to call Palka up because that just steals ABs from Collins. If Palka was right-handed, maybe there'd be a role, but he's not.

FWIW, I saw a snapshot of a dugout celebration today where you can see Robert in the background. Appears to just be a routine day off.

Hard to guess what the long-term trajectory is for Tim at SS. His career has been characterized by long streaks of clean play defensively followed by sloppy runs of play like the beginning of this season. Perhaps he'll finish this season like he finished last year, with a long stretch of play with relatively few errors and several very good plays. Most guys aren't "streaky" fielders so it's hard to know what the real Tim is.

I feel like it's pretty well established that Moncada almost always overreacts to acute injuries (or pains you might say). Not dissimilar to his countryman, Alexei

criminally underused!

Kevan Smith does have an .850 OPS this year...

Fulmer has gotten whiffs on 7 of the 20 swings against him today.

Collins struck out in nearly half his plate appearances against lefties in AAA this year. For his development, it might be best to go ahead and let him try against them...but looks like contact will be a serious problem. Worth noting he did not have such an acute problem against lefties in AA last season although he was still clearly worse against them

Yoan entered the night with a .725 OPS from the right side. That'll do.

All things considered, a solid inning for Fulmer

Fielded a ball in the hole and threw it on the run, missing wide of first base by 10+ feet

Eloy had a nice run of defense going before that head-scratcher. Continues to struggle around the wall

This is all true and it would be interesting to see an attempt at accounting these things. That being said, I really do not believe the effects on academic budgets are very substantial and are on the order of fringe benefits. Of course, most of the university budget goes to purposes other than student instruction, so there's that... Also, must be nice to have At my institution, those revenues go to the private corporation that runs the parking ?

At my B1G uni, the money made by the sports programs stays within the athletic department. Now it saves the school from having to fund the athletics programs, and it may be the case that having the sports teams keeps alumni engaged to make donations, etc., but the revenue doesn't directly go to anything academic. Of course, the vast majority of D1 schools do not get enough athletic revenue to cover costs so tuition money ultimately funds the programs. This was the rationale behind UAB shutting down its football program, where the school paid $20 million to the athletic department to cover its budget deficit every year (although football is/was proportionally closer to covering its costs, the raw dollars are bigger than every other sport).

This is weird: Baseball Reference lists him at 5'7": https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=cesped001yoe This article in the NY Post calls him 6'1": https://nypost.com/2017/01/30/yoenis-cespedes-brother-is-an-intriguing-mystery-about-to-be-revealed/ This article in the NY Times calls him a "little shorter" than his brother, who they say is 5'10": https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/09/sports/baseball/yoelkis-cespedes-cuba-world-baseball-classic.html The Cuban sites I've looked at don't list height and weight. At any rate, the statistics sure don't make you feel great about his power although he's Babe Ruth compared to Yolbert Sanchez

This would make Sanchez close to the highest paid player in the class, I would think. I just don't see it...where's the upside? Does it not mean anything that he played terribly in the Cuban league?

Not often discussed, but if you buy into Statcast's xwOBA, Tatis Jr. has been ludicrously lucky so far this year.

5'7"

It's the yips

Usually you don't manage to give up that many hits when you have the yips