In fairness to the umpire I wouldn't have thought twice about ball 4 in the second AB if it weren't for how bad the call on ball 4 was on Smith's first time up
You know his sprint speed so far on Statcast is right at league average. I think he just is really non-aggressive on defense so he's never running hard for a ball. Might be more upside there than it looks like
What metrics would those be? Some metrics made it look for much of the year like his ERA may have overstated his success, but they wouldn't have led to the conclusion that he was pitching badly
You can criticize Coop if you want to, but it'd be weird to claim that he's old school because he's pushing pitchers from curveballs to sliders when that's exactly what the new thinking in baseball is
I mean you can't wave away what was on balance a pretty solid season last year. And for better or worse his repertoire has changed quite a bit since laving Washington
Lopez definitely off to a weird start this year. Hard to know what's going on since at times he and the Sox have suggested he has some unspecified focus problems