Jake

They have to figure something out with W-S, I don't like the situation as it is and adding Robert just makes things more cramped. Maybe Basabe goes up to AA.

While I don't disagree that the decision to call up Anderson was affected by our MLB situation and our hopes for competing, Anderson's call-up was definitely the most defensible of those moves. He really was close to ready for MLB, at least as close as we were likely to get him without exposing him to big league competition. He was and is a work in progress, but I'm not sure that a couple more months or even the rest of that season would have made him better off at this point. Fulmer, on the other hand, has been jerked around so badly it's remarkable that he's been competitive in MLB this season.

I think this is where I disagree in that a home run is always a big moment with the probable exception of when you're being blown out. I think we'd be wise to think of what we tolerate as all well and good in football celebrations. A homer is like getting a sack, so I'm okay with them doing a sack dance.

My favorite double standard is the one applied to pitchers. If you're a pitcher and you get a big strikeout to get out of a jam, nobody begrudges you doing a big Tiger Woods fist pump and scream. But a guy hits a home run and he's supposed to run real fast, stay quiet, and not watch it go. Otherwise he would be disrespectful to that poor pitcher.

Collins now with a .190/.392/.362 line (that's a .754 OPS for those who don't like math) and has a 24% BB% paired with a 30% K%. It's really something that with the way he started his numbers are basically right back into the realm of respectability this quickly.

I was having flashbacks to the infamous Gordon Beckham dropped popup play right there

I just don't get why we brought Minaya up, why Covey was added to the roster, or why Minaya was used here.

It's just one of those things. If one of their guys did what Tim did, I'd probably hate him and be sympathetic if one of our players lost his temper at him. But he's our guy and I like it because it's really not a big deal. If I learned one thing from the World Baseball Classic, it's that it's way more fun when guys act like they're living and dying on each play

Yeah this was a case where the D cost him runs but it's obvious that he's in big trouble with the way his pitches look and how hard they're hitting them

Yeah I think the main factor here is a bunch of really frustrated KC guys. Minor transgressions can really get you hot when things are going so badly

I just can't believe anyone thought it was a good idea to have Covey start this game

Love this game from Carson, he's even pitching over a decent amount of missed calls in KC's favor at this point. You can see some of that "bulldog" stuff was more than cheap talk.

Fascinating to see Carson almost completely abandon his curveball. I'm not sure if this is a White Sox thing or what, but it seems extremely common for us to have guys whose best offspeed pitch in the lower levels/college was a curveball and by the time they get to MLB it's either ditched entirely, converted to a slider, or demoted to 3rd or 4th status.

To me the fact that Fulmer has been serviceable in the majors thus far is shaping up to be a real impressive achievement on the part of the MLB staff. Guys who struggle that badly in AAA aren't supposed to come up and survive. Of course, maybe he won't survive — it's not exactly a done deal yet.

A good way to think about it is there are quite a few good left-handed hitters who struggle to maintain a .600 OPS against lefties. He doesn't have to be the same guy on both sides of the plate and you have to recognize there's risk that he could be worse as a lefty against lefties.

For the time being, there's no reason to move him off SS unless you're absolutely convinced he is incapable of being adequate there. As far as I'm concerned, it's very clear that he has the athletic tools to be really good there. He has great arm talent and can cover a lot of ground. While I'd say his hands are below average, by far his biggest impediments are his footwork and decisionmaking (which are related, I think). I would like to call up whoever was coaching him in the minors because these just weren't issues when he first came up — his footwork wasn't polished, but he was trying to do the right things. Now he too often makes errors because he isn't trying or isn't aware of how he should set himself up for a play. We don't have a SS pushing him for time right now and there's no 3B that might push us to move guys around to accommodate someone there either.

Seems like Collins is starting to settle in.

Anderson needlessly made that play difficult by looking at the runner on 3B and throwing off balance, but Abreu should have caught the ball. On his end it was shades of his pre-2017 self.

At 91.9mph, yesterday's game was Giolito's best average fastball velocity so far this year (was 91.2 in the opening weekend start, his best up to yesterday). That being said, it would have been tied for his slowest velo start among his 2016 and 2017 appearances.

These same stats have pretty consistently ranked Semien below average and worse throughout his career at SS, so I would treat what he has so far this season as a blip in the same way that bad hitters occasionally have good hitting statistics for a while.

Welp, looks like Collins is good again Since this thread was created, he is 4 for 8 with 2 2B, 1 HR, 2 BB, 0 K

This isn't quite that, but here's Jeff Sullivan on Giolito in the spring: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/lets-watch-lucas-giolito-look-very-good/

I never saw much substantiation to the allegation that Giolito had better velocity in the spring. I think he *felt* good and perhaps hit 94-95 sometimes and the "Giolito has his fastball back" story spun out of control from there.

I wonder if the time-sharing situation with Zavala has gotten into his head at all. He did have to manage it last year for a while, but this year moreso than last they are something close to equals in terms of priority for getting reps at C.

The velocity drop has been part of a multi-year pattern which is what makes it most concerning. In Spring Training this year, Lucas was saying that last year part of his problem was trying to throw as hard as he could to regain lost velocity. At some point we might want to ask where it went.