mvp 78

He only had 4 whiffs?

Yophery Rodriguez 22 PA: 1139 OPS

85th percentile whiff rate for Ceddanne. The only problem is that he's not pulling the ball with any authority (3.2% pull air %). His quality of contact is down (0 XBH, worst GB/FB ratio on the Sox, and only 16% LD rate). He has the second highest swing % on the Sox and leads in swinging at the first pitch. The big difference with last year is that his OOZ contact rate has gone from 54% to 77%. He's now just getting to pitches that he'd whiff on last year. After 11 games, I think we need to give it a little time for these numbers to settle down a little. I don't see how he could keep up a near 80% OOZ contact rate.

Fine to get rid of them, but a lot of it has to do with roster construction as well. When you look at professional numbers prior to these two coaches (either in other orgs or MiLB) the following guys were just going have at or above average k rates no matter what: Casas Romy Hamilton Wong Story Abreu Duran Narvaez Rafaela Refsnyder Campbell doesn't have much of a track record. Bregman should be below average. Devers has been all over the place, but has been above average ever since his shoulder injury last season.

I agree. I also believe "framing" should just be catching the ball where it is and holding it for the ump to see rather than pulling it back to the middle of the zone every pitch. It's annoying to watch a pitch 6"s outside get brought back into the zone. Blocking a ball? Cool! Throwing a runner out? Cool! Pop times? Cool! Pulling every ball back into the middle of the zone after you catch it? Lame!

At least Houck looked good.

What the heck is "the norm?"

Yeah, I didn't grow up caring about pitch framing so if it goes away my life will be the same.

The issue that Drohan had back in '23 after being promoted to AAA was that he couldn't figure out the k zone. his BB rate boomed to 6.37 per 9 (up from 2.38 in AA). Eventually, hitters will stop chasing at a high rate. The two pitches that I'd note from this start are his cutter and his "slider". The cutter usage is interesting because it was something he added in the '23 offseason and was fringe at best per SoxProspects. He generated 4 of his whiffs of that and was his most used pitch. It'll be interesting to see if that pitch has transformed into something else. The other pitch that may be even more important to note is the "slider" that is showing up on Statcast. They don't always list pitches correctly, but Drohan wasn't throwing a slider previously. He generated his most whiffs (6) on this pitch with a 50% whiff rate. It runs a similar velo band to the cutter and that's the pitch that Hunter notes as a "change up" above and maybe is just a second version of his change up (or just when he's actually throwing the pitch well that it gets classified wrong)? Some of the velo numbers for that pitch are pretty high for a change up, 87? IDK.

Is Shane Drohan back? Drohan will need to continue working on his command. Just 26 of his 56 pitches were in the strike zone. So "no" then?

I saw a triple header at PAW once as they had a DH scheduled and had to finish a prior game that ended due to rain.

Maybe Houck will have a better game tonight? Aside from Santander, the better Jays hitters are RH. Vlad RH Bo RH Kirk RH Springer RH Houck's results haven't been too hot so far.

I'm less concerned about splitting time between SS and 2B than being jerked between IF and OF when he has very little professional experience in either area. He's just destined to fail somewhere. He's only getting by because he's freakishly athletic. If he just stayed at one position, he'd be average at least.

Just freakin' win already.

Not trying to pick on Hitch here, but we were all riding high after the 5 game winning streak. These past two games really brought the offense back to earth. Brutal.

Romy has 41 total professional games at 1B. The majority of those games are while playing for Boston. It shouldn't be THAT hard to find a backup 1B/DH type. They have certainly struggled to do it though.

If they want consistent defense out of Campbell, moving him all over the field isn't going to work. We saw how it took a great defender (Rafaela) and turned him into a below average one over the short term.

Wong was trying to get as close to the plate as possible to frame a pitch. If they just added the robo umps already, these catching interferences would go away. I feel like we're starting to see more and more of these than ever before.

Winckowski recalled.

That just keeps Romy and Refsnyder in the lineup against LHP. I think they'd at least try to switch to a RHP midway and then switch back after Romy and Refsnyder are back on the bench.

Maybe? Weissert's been decent. The pen overall has been good. The only guy struggling was Criswell.

Crochet plus this lineup must be an almost guaranteed win.