Jake

Yoan is good people

Merrifield singlehandely shaving an inning off Lopez's night

Playing him in RF also an option

Fun fact that I don't know where to share: Tim Anderson has 10 hits with an exit velocity lower than Yoan's lowest exit velocity hit

Too bad we wouldn't dare overpay for a veteran

This team would be way better with Avi Garcia in RF

Palka has badly hurt out pitching staff this year and if memory serves me correctly, Reynaldo in particular. Reynaldo I think has been the primary victim of the short fly ball gaffes as well

No doubt about it. I'd happily trade Palka for any of the guys you named right. I like Tilson, every now and then a guy like him turns into something nice

Well I think Adam Engel has much more upside as a hitter although I'm not sure which one is currently better. But yes as you say, the upside with the glove isn't really there for Tilson.

Tilson has fairly low upside because he's never shown any power. Best case scenario is a glove-first outfielder who just barely touches league average hitting. Realistic positive outcome is that he's a 4th outfielder who doesn't kill you if someone gets hurt for a few weeks

Well I think Reynaldo may have figured something out.

You get to the point where you wonder if the Sox just want Palka to get 1 hit before they send him down

Useful to keep in mind as Jorge Lopez mows us down: 1st time through the order this year, batters have a .280 OPS. Second time through, 1.000 OPS. Third time, 1.100 OPS

Yeah I think the Statcast stuff makes several things clear: He's had tremendous luck so far — nobody really "earns" a .450 batting average, so no shame in being lucky His "deserved" hitting overall is better than previous years by quite a bit, it's just more like .800-.850 OPS type production that we'd all be happy for him to have He's always been a better fastball hitter than he is against other stuff, but this year he's really killing fastballs. Very small sample size but he's done well against "offspeed," AKA changeups He's had success against breaking pitches but that's where he's had a lot of luck. Statcast's xwOBA suggests he hasn't yet improved against breaking pitches compared to last year. Worth mentioning that he improved last year compared to his first two seasons against breaking pitches, although they are clearly his weakness. I think the question becomes what will happen when Tim gets the Eloy treatment, getting slider after slider. The question becomes patience against breaking pitches, then. So far, he is swinging at about half the breaking balls outside the zone (see here for the BaseballSavant search), which would be the worst he's done. But if we look at the rate of swings at breaking pitches in the "chase" zone — that is, not just technically outside the zone but outside the gray area where umps often miss calls — his chase rate in a very small sample would be the lowest of his career. See here for the BaseballSavant search. So there's some sign that he is laying off breaking balls better. His xwOBA against the balls outside the zone is better than in previous years as well, although still bad (as you would expect for breaking balls outside the zone), so that's another sign that his discipline is improving.

I don't think that's right

I know Tim has embraced this to some extent, but does anyone else feel little weirded out about the constant "what a day for our one black player to play well since it's Jackie Robinson day"

Wonder why he touched his penis as he touched home plate

BEEF

Hell of a play by Anderson especially after kind of mishandling the catch on the last steal

That blown call effectively ended the AB so long as he could locate in that general vicinity another time

His career best WAR season, last year, ranked him 18th among SS. I don't mean "low-end" as "bad" I mean it as among the lower portion of the guys who are definitely starting SS (of which there are probably 15-20 at any given time).

Yeah he'll need to be bad for a longer time before they do that. Unless you think he has the yips or something (or even if you think that) a demotion is probably a death certificate for his career

I still haven't really raised my expectations for Anderson but it would really be a big boost if he could step forward from low-end starting SS to high-end starting SS.

2 strike changeup on the black and he ropes it for a single. Really, really encouraging.