Timmy U

Cease gave up a couple hits, including a dunker to Ryan LaMarre, but k's 2 more and gets out of it.

Fair enough, but that number is crazy. How do you slap a 20 on a guy with 33 xbh in 330 AB's? That's 40 power minimum.

Update: Engel is still bad.

1, 2, 3 for Cease in the first. One K on a nasty backdoor curve.

Watching the Charlotte game at Gwinnett. They changed the words to the national anthem to "and the home of the Braves," which, not cool.

Huh? Even in the minors, Ozzie Albies never had anything like 20 power. He hit 24 HRs last year and an xbh once every 10 ABs. I will buy 40 power that showed up as 50 with the juiced ball, but Madrigal can’t even see 40 power from where he’s at. Maybe after he completely reworks the swing, but why take a polished college player with limited upside at 1-4 if he’s gotta retool his entire approach and swing?

It begs the question “can a guy get to his 60 hit tool, if he has 20 power?” Kind of interesting really.

My comp from before the draft on Madrigal was former Oregon State great Darwin Barney and, sadly, so far he is living up to that. There is still time for him, but he has to change his swing, imho, to be much more than a second division regular ala Barney or Yolmer Sanchez.

I disliked Farmer as a player and he’s a bully and a blowhard as an announcer. I was at the game where Al Cowens charged the mound and I kinda rooted for Cowens. Farmio’s headhunting ruined the guy’s career. But like another poster said, it’s a microcosm of everything wrong with the Sox. Farmer kisses the chairman’s ass, so he has a job for life no matter how much he hates it.

Hey, I'm just happy someone else is just as miserable about the 2016 Sox as I am. The Shields trade that topped the whole thing off is the perfect epitaph to a not-good and not-enjoyable team.

Wow. Against that lineup? Why bother showing up? Save Jerry the air fare and forfeit. Leury is probably our closer.

Palka 1-2 with 2 more walks today. Hard to tell if this new patience is real unless you bring him up.

Marisnick has been great so far though.

Fixed it.

I think Tilson deserves a shot to play.

Once Jimenez is back up, who here wants Leury Garcia to become the Sox everyday second baseman? Yolmer does not look like a major league starter.

Or, if Machado sees that, he's going to change his mind, break his contract, and the Sox strategy will finally be vindicated!

What I was saying is that people without a plus fastball always have to prove it. With his track record, if Keuchel were throwing 93, he'd have a contract right now. Pilkington, similarly, is going to have to prove it and keep proving it. May not be fair, but that's the way it is.

So did Pilkington.

Well, that's what happens when a guy doesn't have that plus fastball. Gotta prove it all the time. Look at Dallas Keuchel.

Yeah, for a lefty who has got two breaking balls, I wonder what's the minimum velocity he needs to be decent? Maybe he goes full Corbin and throws his fastball only when he absolutely has too?

Pilkington with 5 K’s in 3 innings. Lefty coming out of the SEC who can get breaking stuff over, going to be hard to gauge what we have there until he gets to AA.

I don’t disagree, but I will point out that for Hansen the sample size is 5 innings, so rebuilding him into what he was in 2017 seems to be a very slow work in progress.

If Palka has magically become selective at the plate, it’s a different thing. I am sure that when the A’s released Max Muncy, they didn’t expect this. Look at Luke Voit. One of the areas good teams have over the Sox right now is getting production out of AAAA type players. Polka has some talent. Isn’t finding useful players off the scrap heap part of any successful rebuild? Currently, our outfield is Tilson, Cordell, Leury, Delmonico, Jimenez soon, and Alonso at DH. You’re not blocking Lou Gehrig by giving the guy another shot.

I didn’t vote this way, but if you really believe in Giolito’s start to the year with the changes he’s made, you could argue he’s headed to being a number 2 starter. That’s pretty valuable. Hell, Keith Law might pick option two. Bonus: right now those guys are our entire starting rotation. Giolito and ReyLo and pray for rainouts?