Jake

I don't hate the idea of taking Abrams. I suspect the big question on the Sox's minds is what the power potential is. This has to be the hardest thing to project with a beanpole 18 year old. Kid has high upside as a defensive player and not a lot of risk — worst case is he's a 2B, CF, or he fills out and plays 3B which hopefully means he's finding more power. Seems like his hit tool is not terribly risky...very unlikely to end up struggling due to contact issues. Needs development, but he's not super raw, just young.

I don't find that analysis to be very compelling. It's clear you shouldn't be bunting every time you get a guy on, yes. But as another poster said, it also doesn't deal with whether bunting increases your chances of scoring *a* run, which sometimes is the more pertinent question (and I don't know, maybe it doesn't increase them!). You also have to consider several other factors: How good the hitter is Qualities of the upcoming hitters Quality of the opposing pitcher What other things might happen besides a sacrifice bunt when you try to sacrifice: The bunt fails and you get the lead runner out, the batter fails and strikes out, the batter walks, the batter gets a hit, the fielders commit an error, etc. Those things may very well generally combine to advise against bunting. But just looking at the aggregate run expectancy statistics is not convincing to me as an overall indictment on bunting.

I've never heard anyone say Burger's re-injury cost him that much time. More like 2 months, I thought

Would like to hear more explanation on this one

Someone should be fired for letting Rondon go out there

I wonder if the swelling has prevented them from getting good images of the elbow and/or good manual tests of the ligaments and muscles involved

Players often need to play in MLB to be ready for it. Let him take his lumps now rather than at a time where the wins are really important.

It will be interesting to see who we turn to for his spot in the rotation, Cease or otherwise. I suppose Covey is the most likely candidate.

Let the record show that Statcast pegs Abreu's xwOBA at the highest of his career so far this year* and the quality of his contact in particular thus far is easily the best he's ever had. *which excludes his rookie season as it was pre-Statcast

I kinda like Rondon but that's not the type of thing I trust him to do

I'm sticking by it as "not dumb," which isn't meant to be a huge compliment. The deal had upside — maybe you get something like the old Ervin Santana for just $4 million — but not a lot of downside since we had the right to cut him loose right away with no strings attached. Considering Santana refused his assignment and the continued pro-rated payments that would go with it, I wonder if his plan now is to retire. I don't see any way he gets another MLB shot without going through the minors first and nobody is going to pay him as much as we were to pitch in AAA.

You say that, and by all accounts you're right, but then we also have Zack Collins so you never know! Similar number of passed balls compared to Collins last year while controlling the running game better. I'd sure hope he's not also super bad at the receiving and game calling aspects of the job because our young pitchers probably deserve to have us preferring glove-first catchers when we use minor league veterans to fill out the rosters.

Like I said we'll never know what would have happened with a normal timeline but you can look at the numbers in the minors and see a guy who kept getting promoted without having justified the promotion. Maybe he'd have been bad no matter where he pitched but if I have a guy with control problems the last thing I want to do is rush him into better and better competition where every mistake gets punished and he can't work on anything.

Welp now it turns out that signing Santana wasn't very dumb at all. Rolled the dice, he didn't work out, hardly any money wasted especially given the potential upside of the deal when it was signed.

What doesn't seem to be well-recognized is the possibility that there was no way to avoid Moncada striking out a bunch in MLB, that he had to do it in order to eventually not do it.

So weird. Reynaldo's main weakness has been inability to get swings and misses with his heater. Today he goes out there and leans on his heater and they whiffed on half they swung at. They only got 3 balls in play out of 34 they swung at.

Reynaldo!!!!!!

52 fastballs out of 80 pitches for Reynaldo.

He's just attacking them in the zone and they have nothing for it

Jose Rondon starting in LF today. Interesting

Not sure what to make of Booker. Showed a little pop last year, but hadn't done so before or since. Steals a few bags but not enough to be an asset. Haven't seen enough to know what he's got defensively.

What's interesting to me about his defense is all the issues seem to crop up when he's either near a wall or other players. Sort of like you would expect with someone who hasn't played out there before, everything gets screwed up when they have to keep their eye on two different things. On the routine plays he's really smooth, which isn't saying much, but there are a lot of bad outfielders who are bad because they struggle with routine flies. Eloy, so far, is really bad on everything except the routine flies and most of the screwups have looked like he's worried about a wall or another player. That's theoretically fixable but you wonder why it wasn't fixed before.

If Luis Basabe starts out hot in AA I could see him in this category as well.

Going to have to develop the player unfortunately. If he can't run around the outfield without getting hurt then I have my doubts about his long-term health anywhere else.

The difference between him being a bad-but-not-worst defensive outfielder and a DH is pretty big in my eyes.