Great call by Cora to bring Strahm in for Eovaldi with 2 outs in the 5th.
To date Eovaldi ranks 3d in MLB in pitches thrown with 272. He is 5th in pitches/inning with 18.55. And he is 5th in K's per 9 innings with 11.66.
Thanks for that. I agree the Sox screwed him up, but, as you say, Bard badly wanted to start.
He has the most astounding stat sheet I can remember seeing: 5 seasons (2009-13) with the Sox; 6 seasons (2014-2019) away from MLB; 3 seasons (2020-22) with the Rockies. Boston paid him a total of $2.9M and the Rockies have paid him, including $4.4 M this year, $7.3M.
His UNC classmate Andrew Miller pitched for 16 years and was paid a total of $81M. In Miller's final 3 years (2019-21) at St Louis he was paid $34M while accumulating a 3 year WAR of -.5.
Having already hammered Cora, herewith a contrarian defense of him.
This game was over when our venerable starter gave up 4 runs in the first 3 innings, so it didn't really make much difference what moves Cora made after that because the Twins pitching was too good: 12 K's and 2 BB's.
As bad as Shaw was, I don't think Dalbec would have done much better. Arroyo's single was about par for what Story might have done.
Devers and Bogaerts have been discussed endlessly on other threads. Plus I don't think either one is worth $350M, which is probably what they asked for.
While I agree spring training is definitely a time for evaluating--enough to decide who goes to Boston and who doesn't--I think the real evaluation has to be in games that count. And most of that applies to the pitching staff.
He's got a slow fastball, 88-89, but mixes in a lot of other pitches along with pretty good command. A week ago he pitched 5 shutout innings vs. Seattle.