Jake

Load up with tiny guys to take advantage of robo-umps

Lenyn getting positive reinforcement for bad behavior today LOL

I"m not as down on Luisangel as others. I can see why you'd hold out for more if you're Getz, but if it's Luisangel or nothing, I happily take Luisangel. Floor is probably relatively high given the speed and glove — worst case is you have a pinch runner and glove guy. He's only 23 years old so I think there could be room to grow at the plate. He has flashed pretty good bat speed in the majors which suggests there could be a little more power potential to tap into than you would think for such a little guy without much past evidence of power hitting. I also scratch my head at the developmental trajectory. When he first got to AA at age 20, he struggled over a month-ish of playing time. He came back the next season into a relatively high end prospect status before getting traded and having a slow finish to the year. Mets promoted him to AAA to start 2024 and he hit poorly...so they have largely had him on the MLB team since. I like to be realistic so when a guy looks like crap for a full AAA season, the most likely reason is that he's hit his limit. That being said, it's no surprise that it's been more of the same at the MLB level. Sox could afford to be more patient and perhaps get him to try lifting the ball a bit — there's some Lenyn Sosa to his profile as a hitter if he can quit pounding it into the ground like Lenyn learned to do.

If I was a Yankees fan I wouldn't think twice about this trade. As a White Sox fan, it's possible that I only think about it perhaps one more time (when the pitcher we acquired is released from the organization). Of course, hopefully we see something more out of it, but this has all the makings of a nothingburger for both sides. Still makes sense for both sides.

Well that would be a few years down the road if he's going along the Loaiza path

A lot of people are pretty locked into hating him regardless of the content of his broadcast at this point (not that he gives a flawless broadcast)

Tough luck out for Vargas, 101mph

Venable manager of the year?

I'm sick of following George Wolkow's career now lol. Never seen a player so prone to completely transforming himself from day to day

Well I clicked on every game that Ichiro took an AB against Buehrle and don't see any steals off of MB by Ichiro. Edgar Martinez (???) somehow stole 2nd off of MB and Ben Davis in one of those games, though. Also, Chone Figgins stole home on MB once. Sox should have traded for him!

When not picked off, runners were successful 59 out of 140 attempts against Buehrle. I think that's remarkable, both in the low volume of attempts and when considering that MB never really threw to strong throwing catchers. Plus, usually success rates go up when volume goes down; only the guys who know they will succeed bother trying. Next on the pickoff list is Steve Carlton, who picked off just one fewer* runner. But those who weren't picked off were 229 for 393 against him, a much higher volume and success rate (not exactly a good success rate though). Then there's MB's contemporary Andy Pettitte with two fewer pickoffs. Runners were 189 for 271 against him. Randy Johnson is #11 in pickoffs with 58, but runners really ran wild on him — 456 steals in 680 tries. Big Unit just caught them guessing now and then. MB surely got a large portion of his pickoffs on guys who didn't even plan to steal, which is pretty funny since it had to be all over the scouting report. * Numerous sources say if Steve Carlton played his entire career in the era in which pickoffs were an official stat, he'd be #1 on the pickoffs leaderboard.

I think there's a fair argument for Buehrle to get in. I think there's an easier-to-make argument for why he shouldn't. I like to look at Jay Jaffe's stuff on the Hall. He makes it easy to quantify what holds Mark back. He has a little bit less career WAR than the average SP hall of famer. It's kind of unfair, given that SP have been held to the highest standard of any position and it's the position that has changed the most in its usage in recent decades. That said, the more serious issue for Buehrle by the numbers is that he didn't have a great peak. We spent years arguing over whether MB was an "ace." It's not good for your Hall credentials if there wasn't unanimity on a point like that when a guy was at his best. He pitched through some offense-heavy times but it's just hard to point at the point in time where he was definitely best or almost the best in the league. To put it a different way, Johan Santana was indisputably an ace and perhaps the best pitcher in the game for a period of years. In that period, nobody thought Buehrle was better. So Buehrle is a longevity guy but he retired at age 36. He needed to *really* get longevity to get a lot of momentum via that route. He had a remarkable run of health and consistency that most guys would have needed more years to achieve. But I think Mark needed to do it for longer to make up for the lack of true dominance. One thing that irks me is that Andy Pettitte gets a lot more support from Hall voters. First of all, Pettitte is a doper. That makes you lose all benefit of the doubt. And otherwise, the playing career is quite similar to Buehrle's. To be fair, Pettitte threw a whopping 276 playoff innings. Included in that were some great moments. Overall, he was basically the same pitcher in the postseason that he was in the regular season. That nudges me towards not giving too much extra credit to him since his ability to be in the playoffs was not all that much about him but more about his great teammates. Pettitte otherwise has some of the same demerits as Buehrle in terms of lacking dominance, having longevity but not really that much, etc. I still think Buehrle has some special things that should push you into the "benefit of the doubt" column. I think stats should have an important role in the selection process but it's not everything. So what does Buehrle have that's off the stat sheet? Played most of career for one team, so special relationship with a fanbase World Series champion Rare combo of win plus save in the World Series Threw a 27-batter no-hitter Threw a perfect game separate from the no-no Set the then-record for consecutive batters retired, remains the record for a starting pitcher Iconic defensive play 4x Gold Glove winner, highly regarded for defense throughout career All-time leader in pickoffs (didn't know this until I looked it up just now) Only 58 stolen bases allowed in entire career Very unique pitching style, throwing softly, rarely striking batters out Excellent reputation for on and off-field character, integrity, etc. ??? probably forgetting some things I think the ideal Hall of Famer is the kind of player who generates stories, e.g. "did you hear about the guy that ____ ?" Buehrle has that in spades. If someone loves or wants to love the game of baseball, they really need to know the Buehrle lore. He pairs that with a great playing career. I'd love to see him get in, but sadly I'm not optimistic about it.

A couple things stopping me from pushing the panic button on Schultz just yet: 1. In AAA, his Statcast metrics are vastly superior to his observed outcomes. He's allowed a .490 wOBA but his xwOBA is .311. Allowing a .311 xwOBA in AAA isn't good, but it's league average in AAA. Yes, xwOBA considers walks and such in the calculation. For example, batters are hitting about .400 against him on batted balls hit under 85mph. That won't last, it will go down by about half. 2. Entering the season, the narrative I had on Schultz's risk is that he couldn't miss bats. But he's generating a lot of whiffs in AAA. Only 7 out of 351 AAA starters who have thrown as many pitches as Noah have managed to generate a higher whiff rate (one of them is Spencer Strider). The slider, curveball, and changeup are all running about 50% whiff rates which is fantastic. The sinker is at 27% which is more ho-hum although rather good for a sinker. Four seamer has gotten more whiffs at 36% but he hasn't really thrown enough of those to say much about that pitch. Maybe there's something about the way he's throwing that is artificially racking up the whiffs, I don't know. Maybe bad command means they whiff when they swing but they don't swing often enough, something like that. But in general I think between watching a couple starts and looking at the data, it's not all arrows pointing down for him. Looking at pitch movement: This can be tricky because you have very different pitches called the same thing. The most similar sinker in MLB is Garrett Crochet's, about the same velo and about the same movement. The release point would be very different though as well as the way they are used in their respective arsenals. But the movement by the numbers is very good (albeit not quite elite) for Schultz. Chris Sale, for instance, has more sink while maintaining about the same run...and that's not even a featured pitch for him anymore. In terms of shape, the slider is almost a dead ringer for Justin Steele's. Worth noting that Steele is throwing his slider the same velo as Schultz but Steele's fastball is much slower, so the way the pitches fit into the arsenal is quite different. Still, it should be said: there is no left-handed major leaguer with as much horizontal movement on their slider as Schultz. It is fairly similar to Chris Sale's, but Sale's is a little slower, has a touch more vertical movement, and has almost 5 inches less side to side. That brings us to what Statcast is calling Schultz's "curveball," a pitch with a very similar shape and velo to the "slider." As Statcast sees it, the "curveball" is very slightly faster, a little less side to side, a little more drop, identical spin rate. They may be the same pitch. Hitters are equally unsuccessful against both. Either way, it's easy to see why the scouting reports rave about the slider because there's none quite like it in MLB. Can't help but wonder whether he has to somehow tone it down to throw it where he wants to. I'll note that he actually throws it in the zone just as much as his fastsballs (about 50% of pitches, equal to league average), although he doesn't get the same incredible whiff rate in the strike zone unsurprisingly. That said, they chase his slider/curve out of the zone at a very high rate, almost always whiff, and have not yet gotten it into play when managing to make contact. 4-seamer seems unexceptional by the shape metrics. Not much rise, although it's a lot different shape than his sinker which is really the role it's currently playing for him. This is likely why it's getting some whiffs and is chased out of the zone a lot. But there aren't many lefties throwing a fastball with a similar shape and velo. But a lot of them have more rise and it's pretty ordinary in terms of run. His arm slot makes comparisons of this kind more difficult of course. Chris Sale's four-seamer, which is thrown much more often, has a lot more run Noah's. In fact, Sale's sinker and four seamer have about equal amounts of run and differ only in the rise. Noah's four seamer only has about half the run that his sinker does, veering almost into cutter territory but not enough to get the benefits of a cutter. The shape of the changeup seems decent but not standout. I generally feel like changeups are a pitch that is kind of hard to learn about solely from the movement metrics. This is a pitch Noah doesn't use a lot (about 15% of pitches). Hitters whiff a lot of the times they swing at it, but Noah doesn't throw it in the zone very much and hitters aren't as apt to chase it as they are his slider. Quality of contact against all of his pitches *when thrown in the strike zone* is actually not very good so far (for the hitters). I find that interesting and speaks to the level of raw stuff. When watching Noah, my feeling is that hitters fairly quickly start to approach him like a two-pitch pitcher and he doesn't always have a counter-attack at the ready. When he starts mixing in that four-seamer it sometimes does the job for him of making hitters more uneasy. Trickier is that hitters seem like they acclimate to his slider as the game goes along. I know that Bannister claimed that throwing a cutter was having negative effects on Schultz's mechanics or some such and maybe he's right. But that's really the kind of pitch that would probably help him a lot. Gives him a nice middle velocity between the the 95ish heater and 81ish slider and something that could put a seed of doubt into the batter's mind when he reads "breaking ball." I suspect this would be a better weapon against righties than the slider in some cases. That said, it is true that sidewinders often don't throw cutters effectively so maybe it was never going to work. Chris Sale makes it work with a very slider-heavy approach, almost 50% nowadays. Chris probably has a more deceptive delivery though and his fastball is better, so that may not be an approach that solves all of Noah's issues.

If you are willing to believe that Vargas became a new man when his swing change happened, this is what he's done since then: 1.6 fWAR, .246/.325/.458 line, 117 wRC+, 12 homers in 77 games. You could even naively extrapolate that to a full season by multiplying everything by 2. That will play just fine at 1B even if it doesn't mean he's a star. And it's clear he can play 3B competently. The way I look at it, he's not really playing 1B because there's something seriously wrong with his 3B defense but because the Sox have the personnel to push him there. I'm not going to act like any of us can precisely forecast what anyone is going to be, but I feel reasonably confident that Vargas is an MLB-quality player. His floor is still a bench player I suppose but I'm feeling like he's most likely a solid everyday player much as he's looked like for the bulk of this season. As for the rest of the core, my current gut feeling is that Teel is the next safest bet. Of course, playing catcher is always such a big plus that it raises your floor. It's obvious that he's at least solid defensively. And to me, his bat is looking just like we would have hoped. I don't think there's a ton of risk there besides the usual cautions you give with small sample sizes. For those who don't compulsively check these things, Statcast points towards Teel actually deserving significantly better results than he's gotten so far. Those watching the games can probably remember a handful of near-misses on homers and such. Teel is (IMO) a really likable player thanks to his very obvious intensity and desire to win, but it wouldn't shock me if at some point that same trait might drive him into a slump. Still, there's a lot to like there. His ceiling isn't exactly Johnny Bench, but the talent is there to be one of if not the greatest Sox catchers (sorry late career Pudge). We'll happily "settle" for an AJ Pierzynski type of career too of course. As a hitter, I feel pretty good about Quero as well. His defense has looked more rough than Teel's in some respects but I think it's best not to put too much stock in partial-season framing metrics, especially with ABS challenges coming soon (probably). Quero makes excellent swing decisions at the plate and is very much the kind of hitter that Getz seems to love. He's doing some things at the plate that help him manage the excellent contact rate and low chase rates while also limiting his upside. He's an extreme outlier in terms of how deep he lets the ball get before making contact paired with a very opposite field oriented swing path (thanks to Statcast for giving data on this). Quero is basically propping up his plate discipline and contact by watching the pitch so long that he often can't make power-oriented contact. That is paired with a short, slow swing which has the same costs and benefits. He may need to adjust that to become a truly good hitter. I'll note that Statcast indicates that Quero has been gradually making contact more out in front of his body, with a bit less push-oriented bat angle, and higher-velocity swings. That matches the eye test for me too. That said, he's shown that he can basically go up there in survival mode and be a MLB-quality hitter even if an unremarkable one. Did I mention he's just freshly 22 years old? That's really exciting to me, too. I have less to say about Meidroth despite really liking him. I still see some risk that he ends up a bench player. So far, his defense seems good enough that it's not going to kill your team if he never really hits. I'm not sure whether that will be true in the long run but it will be great if it is. He only needs to find a little bit more power to be a fixture in the lineup going forward. I'm happy to give him every chance going forward. It's great seeing Colson not flounder at the MLB level and his defensive acumen at 3B and SS is a very nice surprise. He's also running better than I expected. He's showing the top flight bat speed (and therefore power potential) that we had been promised. He's also showing some really problematic swing and miss tendencies in his short sample so far. I look at in-zone whiff rate as the simplest measure of pure contact ability. His would be the second worst in MLB if he had enough ABs to qualify — those around that part of the leaderboard include, to be fair, some great hitters who offset the whiffs with other stuff like power hitting and walks. So far I'm not seeing great patience from Colson although it's not a serious issue in and of itself. He's being beaten badly by non-fastball pitches thus far, whiffing at around half of them which is truly astronomical. Looking at his zone breakdowns (beware: very small sample sizes), he's only making >60% contact on pitches that are down the middle, middle in, or up and in. The inside pitches he's hitting extremely softly. Middle-middle is the only place he's making hard contact. A change from his first 100ish games in AAA is that he's handling velocity pretty well, which is one of those signs that he's not necessarily the guy we saw in 2024 or early 2025. But he's just oozing with risk and I'm not going to pencil him into the core yet despite a nice-looking slash line. I like Lenyn Sosa. I'm not totally sure what he is or will be. I think the average Soxtalker underrates his defense because of how conspicuous his defensive mistakes are. It's not often that there's a guy who seems completely competent at 2B or 3B but is somehow confounded by the basics of 1B defense like standing on the base and catching throws. He's just kind of a space cadet, it is what it is. At the plate, there are some nice trends in his profile. Every year, the production has improved (granted it started at a very bad level). Every year, his bat speed has gotten faster. His exit velocities have gotten higher (predictable from the bat speed). His ground ball rates have gone down (a ton) and his line drive rates have gone up. He's doubled the rate at which he pulls the ball in the air. On the other hand, he barely ever walks and he chases a ton (second only to PCA in MLB). Those limit the upside because I think those are traits that are very difficult to teach. He doesn't make good swing decisions in general, not only chasing but taking too many strikes. Yet he shows very good natural contact ability and the arrow is still going up on the raw power. The two hardest balls he's ever hit were both in the past week as were 5 of the hardest 8 balls he's ever hit. I want to see where that's heading. Likewise, his chase rate has been on a steady downward trend since the beginning of May. He'll never be a plate discipline guy but it's possible he won't be an auto-out against a slider in the other batter's box. He's also showing reverse splits which I find interesting — I tend to think if a righty is hitting righties, that's hard to teach. But you can teach him to hit lefties. I see Lenyn as a guy who may be a bench/utility guy in the long run but has a little bit of upside, especially because of the power he's flashing. He's not going to win a gold glove, he's never going to run a high OBP, so those will hold him back somewhat. Still 25 years old and 4 more years until free agency. I'm no longer putting Brooks Baldwin into the core conversation. I'm starting to see him increasingly as someone with bench/utility upside instead of downside. Not writing him off yet and I'm open to him getting everyday reps if/when the Sox move LouBob and Tauchman. I don't know whether he has a defensive position. I'm supportive of the Sox's plan to give him a chance in the outfield but as we saw last night it has not yet borne fruit. It's not totally fair to Brooks who entered the year with little experience there, but then again he looked like dog water playing the infield this year. He has a Sosa-like propensity for boneheaded mistakes on defense and they were happening at a high frequency when he was in the infield. He runs well enough that he's made some plays that some of our other outfielders just can't make. In fact, I think the ball he dropped last night is one that e.g. Benintendi doesn't even attempt to catch. On the other side of the ball, I don't think he gives us much to dream on as a hitter. He has big problems with velocity, whiffing at double the league average rate on 95+ heaters. You don't have to watch closely to see he chases those pitches helplessly. His contact ability besides that is fine but not superlative. His propensity to chase is not overall very high but in two-strike counts it is astronomical with predictable results. His stats looked good in AAA after his demotion but Statcast points to it being substantially luck-based. I'll credit him for showing a little pop as a lefty hitter, having athleticism in general, and still being quite inexperienced so there's a chance he makes some of the very difficult adjustments that he needs to. Overall, I feel decently okay about the offensive core. There is a lack of star power. Maybe Braden Montgomery ends up providing it. Or, much later, Billy Carlson. Or someone else pushes beyond what we thought their abilities were. More problematic for me is it's really not very clear who the next wave is. All the guys who are "close" are in Chicago right now. The cohort that might have included the likes of Jacob Gonzalez, Bryan Ramos, Wilfred Veras maybe...just isn't materializing. The group of kids in A/A+ look interesting but they are obviously further off — debuting mid-2026 in the absolute most optimistic cases and more likely 2027+. It makes me feel like this deadline is sneaky important because even if you aren't getting that star power (IDK how you would), you want to get more Chase Meidroths, Lenyn Sosas, Brooks Baldwins. It's either that or you start finding some hidden gems in major league free agent market or the trade scrap heaps. Eugenio Suarez was free to a good home a couple years ago. Ryan O'Hearn has been on and off waivers a number of times. Brent Rooker was a waiver claim. You want to hit on a couple guys like that if you don't want to win the next Harper-esque bidding war — in fact, hitting on a Rooker type is often a pre-condition for swimming in those deep waters. On the pitching side, IDK. I like Grant Taylor but I'm not putting a reliever in my core. I think that out of Cannon, Davis, Burke, Thorpe, Shane Smith, Vasil, Noah Schultz, Hagen Smith, Christian Oppor, Tanner McDougal, ..., others...you probably can find a usable rotation in there that doesn't require too terribly much outside investment. I have no idea how many of those guys will still be hanging around a couple years from now and pitching well nor do I know which it will be. Pitchers have a bad habit of suffering 18 month injuries. And a bad habit of being bad.

stand up!!!!

That's my third baseman!

Wilson has been secretly not all that good and I think anyone thinking of trading for him would know that regardless of his ERA. He only throws two pitches and one of those two pitches is known for not being effective against lefties and the other is a 91mph four seamer

The kids can play

Earlier this year I thought Gowens might be on a fast-ish track to the majors. Then he started to fall off. Maybe he's getting straightened out. A few weeks ago, I thought Jacob Gonzalez would imminently be promoted to AAA but he's really fallen off again. If he does go to Charlotte, he's got the profile of a guy I'll have to watch the Statcast metrics on closely because he might hit a bunch of those Charlotte-only cheap homers.

I love how it can simultaneously be that while sometimes being "Chris Sale throws 100 sidearm and I have no clue how to hit it" or (IIRC) guys like Albert Belle who didn't want instruction on their swings, etc. and pretty much just liked to pound a few cups of coffee and mash. I'm sympathetic to the "keep it simple" hitters. Once I was finished with high school ball, I became a pitcher-only as I tried to play small-time college ball. I was just okay as a high school hitter but tended to overthink. In the travel circuit and college summer league circuit, I had a handful of situations where I had to be an emergency pinch hitter due to injuries — I would have gone at least weeks without batting practice or in-game at bats in these cases. I batted literally 1.000 in those situations and there's no doubt in my mind that besides a little luck, it was all because my mind wasn't cluttered with swing thoughts, attempted adjustments from previous at bats, all that junk. You might say that half the chess match is against yourself.

I think that... 1. Fans often attribute injuries to poor offseason/off-field effort by the player 2. Fans often perceive players/teams who don't hit as not caring 3. Fans often assume that mental mistakes are due to the player not caring (not a big leap, to be fair) 4. Fans look for obvious displays of effort/emotion as a clue to whether player is trying hard and cares about the results LouBob has been injured, has had some nasty slumps, has made mental mistakes on the field, and is certainly not someone who makes a big show of hustling or talking a big game about his desire to win. So it doesn't surprise me that some fans see him as a guy who has problems with his effort. And maybe he does or used to, I don't know. My hunch has been that he's a player that tends to play worse when he tries to increase his mental effort, but it's just speculation on my part.

Well I think the prevailing wisdom is that tunneling matters with the curveball insofar as it doesn't tunnel, therefore the hitter immediately recognizes it is a curveball and can turn their attention to figuring out the timing and movement (which might still be difficult if it's a good curveball). I have heard a few mentions of guys who feel like the high fastball and curveball can be a tunneled pairing — if the batter isn't reading the curveball right out of the hand, then he will initially see it as a high heater. You can increase that confusion by actually throwing high heaters to make the hitter respect that possibility. In youth baseball you'll see hitters running out of the batters box on curveballs that end up in the strike zone because the batter thought it was a fastball coming at his earhole. Same principle here, it's just that the hitters are a lot more discerning. FWIW, I've seen it claimed that knuckle curves are not so easily read out of the hand, but I'm not sure whether it's true or why exactly that would be the case. Giolito's high change approach was a good use of tunneling; his fastball didn't play well at the bottom of the zone so he never threw it there. So if he's throwing a changeup, which is meant to look like his fastball out of the hand, a batter may eventually realize if there's a fastball-looking pitch headed to the bottom of the zone it must be a changeup. Or in other words, he tunneled the changeup and fastball by throwing the changeup higher to keep it in the tunnel with the heater. By keeping them on the same path towards home, it takes the hitter a long time to decide whether the incoming pitch is a fastball or changeup and increases the likelihood that the hitter mis-times his swing or swings at the wrong spot since eventually the changeup probably goes a bit lower than a fastball would. Another tidbit for tunneling with high four seamers...I read a while back about teams trying to counter the increased use and optimization of the "rising" four seamer thrown at the top of the zone. Teams were starting to use those fancy pitching machines like the Sox have (can't remember the brand name) to get batting practice against high-rise four seamers thrown at the top of the zone. Hitters seemed to say the mental cue they used after some practice was to try to swing above the pitch and that would result in them squaring it up. Once the pitchers started experiencing the hitters squaring up the four seamer, they started mixing in the occasional high *sinker*. The batter sees it and thinks it's a four seamer and prepares to either 1. take the pitch because he assumes it will miss high or 2. swing high because he knows the pitch will ride up relative to how it looks. But when it's a sinker, you either get 1. taken for a strike because it dropped into the zone or 2. Guy swings way above it. I remember an at bat earlier this year between Miguel Vargas and Walker Buehler where Buehler sneaks in a sinker to end it. Strike 1: Four seamer at the top of the zone, Vargas takes because at this point before his swing change he's very weak to that pitch (even from a relative soft-tosser like Buehler). Strike 2: Another four seamer in the upper portion, he decides to swing but he's underneath it. Strike 3: Vargas is probably expecting Buehler to elevate a four seamer out of the zone, knowing that Vargas can't touch it. Buehler may be thinking instead that even though Vargas can't hit a fastball, he's got a great batting eye and probably won't chase up out of the zone here. So let's throw him a sinker which will look like a four seamer up and out of the zone right up until it drops back in for strike 3. The fun of the chess match here is that the high sinker is only going to work if the hitter is totally locked in on a four seamer. If he's a little more cognizant of the sinker or other pitch types, the sinker is a pitch he will find easy to hit by just naturally reacting to it. So Buehler wins this one but the moment a hitter is looking for that pitch he will likely pay a big price. Similar principle applies to Luis Castillo of the Mariners. He's got one of the nastiest sinkers in baseball, high-velocity and runs a ton towards the inside part of the plate to right-handers. He has a very effective slider...even though that slider has literally zero sideways movement on average. But it's coming out of the same tunnel as that sinker, making batters perceive it almost as if it's breaking a ton towards the glove side. And thanks to Castillo's sinker, there is indeed 20 inches of difference in the horizontal movement of those two pitches even though they will spend much of their trip to home plate looking almost identical. Castillo also has a 4-seamer that doesn't have a ton of ride, but compared to his sinker has an extra 9 inches of carry. Those two playing off of each other will make batters really off balance even though only one of the pitches in his arsenal has truly great movement.

The ball Meidroth hit was way in off the plate. Impressive that he could square up a pitch thrown there (and keep it fair)

From watching Plesac for years on MLB Network, the one thing that is most obvious is that he really does not take himself seriously at all. And I mean that in the positive sense. He takes his job seriously but he's not too good for anybody.

Interestingly, per Statcast, Steinbrenner Field is not playing all that offense-friendly so far this season. Huge boost to homers but not to other types of offense. The "environmental factors" (temperature, humidity, prevailing wind, etc.) suppress fly balls by 4 feet relative to average.