Hitch

May as well wait it out. If he pitches well he gets hit with the QO which will depress his market somewhat and he'd likely be open to it anyway. Extending him to 4 at 80 would be very risky at this point in time. No rush.

The Orioles had a shocker of an off season. To have all that youthful talent and fail to supplement it with good pitching is bordering on criminal. Crazy.

It's a fair concern. I hold out hope not least because of the potential if they do unlock him.

Beautiful swing from Rafaela.

I think that's harsh. He seemed to want to switch it up (or Narváez/coaching staff did) to throw off the offence 3rd time through.

Yeah he's crazy against lefties. This has been a fun 2 games. The offence is waking up.

Yes! He's an absolute spark plug for this offence.

We absolutely could.

I think you could be massively underpaying what a change this is. Of course, it might have no bearing on anything at all. But it certainly wouldn't surprise me to learn it does.

The Devers thing for me is not that he's possibly pouting about being put as DH but that it takes a completely different mindset. To go from constantly engaged for 3 hous to watching most of the time is some adjustment. Even Ortiz got to play 1B in NL parks a fair bit. Just sitting around ruminating over a bad at bat must be tough!

Yeah, I went to same site looking for clarification and came across the same quotes. That would normally be enough for me, but the person behind Stats on twitter is usually very much across this stuff, so the insistence on 60 games is odd. They're clearly quite sure they're right, which is throwing me. If I still had my account I'd ask them the question. I do think if there's anywhere near truth in this, out lot will forsake this year for another year of the lads primes further down the road, rightly or wrongly.

I've found the quote I saw - With those circumstances in mind, NESN's Keagan Stiefel made a prediction on Friday: Anthony won't be up in the majors until late May at the earliest. "The club would lose a year on his arbitration if the 20-year-old won 2025 American League Rookie of the Year," Stiefel wrote. "It’s not exactly crazy to think Anthony would be in contention if promoted, so the smartest thing to do in their current state is to wait things out — for that reason, and a few more. "It’s extremely unlikely that he debuts anytime soon, so just keep those thoughts on standby until Anthony falls out of contention for individual awards and back into contention for the call. It’s looking like late May or early June, folks." And this was the corresponding tweet from Stats. Like you I can't find anything that suggests there is a hard deadline to fall out of contention for the award, and so maybe Stiefel is making the assumption that being called up that late just automatically leaves you with too much to do. But then, I'm not sure why Stats is quite sure on the 60 game point either. I believe Anthony still has time to stay down to make sure we don't burn a year, but not 60 (well 50 odd now) games... Weird. It's the kind of rule you'd think would be laid out in very black and white terms to avoid confusion.

Yup exactly this. Nothing to do with arbs - All about that extra year of control. A tactic teams have been using for years.

I read earlier (but can now not find while on my phone), that you lose eligibility for rookie of the year if you're called up after a certain date (end of May). Red Sox Stats hinted at it on twitter, also. Unless there's assumptions that the catch up to win would be too great. Anthony and Mayer will still be rookie eligible next year under the wild development that they aren't called up until 45 days from the end. Not even the Sox are that insane.

Agreed on all counts. If we're bringing up Anthony to play left field, we have Duran who has proven to be a very good CFer. Leave Campbell where he is. Let Rafaela be utility for this year if need be.

Yeah Mayer is most in limbo for the reasons you mentioned. That said, if there's no danger of losing that year of control, Mayer will soon make himself a much better option than Hamilton you'd imagine. Then he can get fairly regular at bats giving a day off each to Story, Campbell and Bregman. Whether that's better for his development than playing every day in AAA is up for debate.

Yeah he very clearly did try to trade Casas and Masa. The problem was, he tried to packaging them together in almost every deal by most reports.

Either player loses a year of control if either Anthony (definitely could happen) or Mayer (less so) wins Rookie of the Year. I believe that they fall out of consideration for these awards at the end of May. In regards to "What are we waiting for?" I'd say Mayer to hit more regularly, and Anthony to show he's over his shoulder issue and doesn't need to DH. So I can see the end of May making sense (from a Breslow point of view).

I think Yoshida coming up is the least likely scenario to be honest. I wouldn't be shocked if we've seen Yoshida take his last swing in the majors for the Red Sox. I think we'll make do with what we have (barring injury) until we can call up Mayer to replace Hamilton if he's still struggling and Mayer has kicked on at AAA. Can't see that happening until after another year of control kicks in. Grissom could be brought up earlier instead, but his defence just isn't good enough to cover the positions that Hamilton does, so I don't see it. My feeling is Grissom builds value in AAA and is moved. If Mayer is blocked (and he currently is bar an unpalatable utility role), this kid got no chance. Anthony could be called up much earlier, but the longer it takes, the more it make sense to hold onto his further year of control, also.

I thought I heard them say on commentary today that it was last season? I may have misheard that, though. I'm not sure if it's new or not, he hasn't been a worry before last year's ASB, but man, it's a worry seeing how late he is on them right now.

His OPS is somewhat skewed by that really weird breakout series against the Cardinals mind. He has been far less impressive either side. I'd be interested in knowing how they pitched him in that series, whether it was a steady diet of fastballs or they gave him off speed to hit. I can't remember off the top of my head.

That was a frustrating game to watch. We were never really further back than 2, but it never felt likely we were coming back.

I'm not interested in what either of you are saying to get rises out of each other, I'm just saying the ASB is a natural point to start from if you're worried about Devers right now. And a lot of people are rightly worried about Devers right now.

I get where you're coming from, but the ASB is a natural starting point. I'm with you in that I don't think he's suddenly bad, but something is up. Even today - they're just throwing him fastball after fastball and he just cannot catch up. Pitchers aren't even trying anything else against him.

I think you're being a little belligerent here, Moon. He clearly didn't play as well after the ASB. And he's been struggling this year so far too. He obviously shouldn't be written off, but it's fair to question if there's a problem here. Whether it be, fitness, form or the DH thing.