ashbury

We had only one. Back in the day, the Braves had Larvell Blanks.

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Psst, Falvey or Levine, get on the horn with Philly ASAP, we've got a hot trade rumor for you to follow up on!

But that's the point. To point to two prospects whose stock have fallen is cherry picking. You have to look at the overall concept of trading prospects for veterans, and accept the bigger picture of what you miss out on as a consequence. Nobody, inside front offices or outside, is good enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, and only trade the chaff. Some fans wanted to trade Polanco. Some were willing to listen on Berrios. Without Berrios and Polanco, perhaps we aren't a "potential championship team", on which to build by making an astute trade. I'm not against overpaying in prospects. That's built into the drafting strategy we have. The window is open now. Address weaknesses using the farm as bait. I'm against perfect 20-20 hindsight that lets us believe we could have traded failing prospects at their peak. Because that pattern would also divest us of our core, assuring the endless cycle of mediocrity that we want to break out of with the trades that get discussed.

Probably something similar to what we could have gotten two years prior to that for Jose Berrios and Jorge Polanco.

To A Good Home

FWIW, here is what the Official Scorer at the game has to say: "High throw but should have been caught. I thought he would have put Gordon out so it was a missed out error and no RBI."

There was only 10 guys. That one lady's a player, for sure.

That argument is black-and-white - die versus not die. But it's the quality of life that should matter more. Having a heart attack at 48 and living a diminished life until finally succumbing just past a 60th birthday is nobody's idea of a good "way out". You can't guarantee a good or bad outcome, and I know better than to be smug, but man, there are strong correlations.

Yep. A double and a walk, followed by a sac-bunt ... and then "oh, if only the throw were better or the catch made, we'd have wriggled out of this." It can't be a clean inning every time, but lately we've been wriggling out of too many jams.

"Our mop-up reliever is red hot! Your mop-up reliever ain't doodly squat!"

Also the moon has been quite a bit fuller this year.

It's been a wet spring. Royce Lewis will hit better once conditions dry out a bit.

How about OPS-against, though?

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It's the same as when Ted Williams was playing. Opponents would mutter, "it's like he was sent down, from a higher league." I thought maybe they would do like with kids (niño, niña) and change the a to an o. But I just checked Google Translate for a different species, and ended up with "empty cow" as my translation back to English.

Louisville Slugger did make him a braille baseball bat. That could make the difference. Stevie would probably tell you himself that he could also do some damage as an umpire.

I usually like advanced stats and can find a use for most, but IMO FIP (the X variety or otherwise) does not achieve its aim. There is nothing in FIP that, for example, depends on whether Buxton or Cave is in CF. Simply put, it doesn't eliminate defense, it eliminates from consideration the part of the game that makes it baseball and substitutes average performance in its place. Much simpler for me is to look at OPS-against. League-wide, you can draw a rough comparison of OPS to the ERA that you could usually expect. Pineda for instance has an OPS-against of .809, and over the years that has worked out to an ERA somewhere a little north of 5.00. Not good, which we already know. Gibson's OPS is .750, and ordinarily that should result in an ERA like 4.35. Perez, .700, for an ERA equivalent around 3.75. Berrios, .666, which I'd expect an ERA around 3.20 or so. Odorizzi? Batters have a BA against him of .181 coming into this game, built on an unusually low BABIP of .243. The OPS is a minuscule .511, so low that I'm not even confident what ERA it translates to on a league-wide basis, but let's safely say it would be under 2.00. Which is where he is. Really, all our starters are giving up runs about in line with the underlying hitting stats against them. xFIP says that a certain percentage of flyballs go out, and Odorizzi hasn't given up his fair share so xFIP reflects skepticism. BABIP usually doesn't stay as low as .243, so there is another reason to expect more hits to fall in. But he's leading the league in ERA right now. Simple "regression to mean" logic would point toward not keeping up the pace for the rest of the season. xFIP doesn't win any points from me for merely predicting that. Meanwhile Jake has logged another very good 6 innings today. We keep expecting regression, but so far, he just keeps chugging along.

And not to belabor the point, but I've seen comments that it's premature to assume the division and look toward the post-season. I'm not assuming anything - we could still finish out of the money. But the parameters for planning on June 9 have changed for our FO from some equivalent point six months ago. Then, we were coming off a mediocre season and didn't know what to expect in terms of higher performance we've all been awaiting for almost a decade. Now, we're contending. Let's prepare for success, as opposed to another lame "just glad to be here" appearance in a divisional series.

It can't be anything due to the performance last night, so I trust he has taken the AAA start as a positive, and will redouble his efforts to keep moving up.

I'm fine if our FO determined that Kimbrel isn't the guy. But they need to get a guy for the bullpen. They need to get two, and I wouldn't be opposed to getting three. If their off-season plan was "let's play April and May to see what we've got among our large backlog of young arms," they have their answer by now and it's mainly in the negative. It's good to stay the course, but there comes a point where you can't. Last year the Dodgers got to the World Series because they had a deep bullpen. That allowed them to survive a 4.1 inning start by Ryu and a 4.2 inning start by Buehler and a 5 inning start by Rich Hill and still win those games against the Brewers - losing any of them would have been curtains. The Dodgers led their league in runs per game, but in the post season you can't count on that. In two of those games they used 8 relievers! In the regular season whoever uses the most relievers usually is the losing team. But the post season is a different game. (And yes, one of those games was 13 innings. But do you want to lose in 11 because your last guys just can't cut it?) If we got three new reliable arms, we still wouldn't have what the Dodgers found necessary in order to stagger into the World Series. But it would be a huge improvement to our chances on the big stage. Our bullpen is woefully unready for what we hope is to come.

The last few seasons tell me that it's really difficult to do .400 OBP for an AL season without 25-HR power. Maybe Arraez will develop into that, but for now I don't see it.

Not only was it a walk Astudillo drew, it was on the first four pitches they offered him! Apparently Pawtucket came into the game with an obvious plan for him, and he laid off. After that, it was vintage Tortuga, with him reaching a bit on some of his swings, but obviously things were going his way last night. Dobnak was perfect through three innings. It's often said that every no-hitter has one stellar play that keeps it intact, and I was wondering if that might prove to be the case after second-baseman Jordany Valdespin made a spectacular horizontal leaping grab of a liner by Sox batter Cole Sturgeon for the first out of the third inning. The no-no was broken up in the fourth, of course, with a no-doubt hit to left field and a wild pitch and a double to center which scored a run. Then Dobnak settled back down and pitched a clean fifth, and got the first two men in the sixth as well before giving up a couple of base runners and then finishing his night's work with a swinging strikeout. Early in the game his fastball seemed to be sitting at 92 MPH, but nearer the end I saw a couple of pitches at 94. He seemed to rely more on the offspeed stuff (curve or change, I couldn't tell you) to put batters away, though. Preston Guilmet needs some recognition for pitching two clean innings of his own in the seventh and eighth. I didn't have high expectations when Hildenberger took the mound, and I saw nothing to give me hope. He was workmanlike, and a few pitches fooled batters but mostly it looks like it's going to be a struggle for him to make it back to the majors. Arraez played shortstop and Rooker was in left, but neither of these players whom I was hoping to get a read on defensively was particularly tested last night. Astudillo continues to be the slowest player to go out to his position, reaching RF later than Cave managed to saunter out to CF. (Only Rooker trotted, FWIW.) Speaking of Cave, I thought he got a terrible read on that ninth-inning HR to left-center, not that there turned out to be a chance to catch it, a few feet beyond the fence. We've gotten pretty spoiled by our current starting outfield for the big club. Earlier in the day I got to see a couple of Red Sox players from the past. Catcher Rich Gedman (now hitting coach for Pawtucket) hosted a Q&A session - here's a poor photo but it's the best I thought to take: And here's '75 World Series hero Bernie Carbo, again a poor candid shot, of him listening to a presentation (he wasn't nearly as grumpy as this moment of concentration would imply): At the game, here's Wilin Rosario taking a cut at a pitch from Brian Ellington: I like their ballpark; sadly in 2021 it will no longer be used for AAA, as the team is moving to Worcester. Anyway it was a beautiful night for a ballgame in Rhode Island!