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Last season, batters facing Houck for the third time in a game had a .937 OPS. Hitters facing him the second time had a .764 OPS, and those hitters had a .644 OPS on the first time through. Most if not all pitchers have their OPS climb with each appearance, and for multiple reasons. Learning his pitches. Pitcher fatigue. Weaker hitters occasionally get pinched hit for. But .937 is still pretty high…

One of Casas' most similar batters through age 23 is Mark Teixeira, per B-R.com. Fifteen years ago, Tex did get an 8 yr / $180mill ($22.5mill AAV) deal from the Yankees. By the time he got that deal, 29yo Teixeira was more established than Casas is, and had won multiple Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers. More recently, Freddie Freeman, a clear future Hall of Famer, was only getting 6 year / $162mill contract ($27.7mill AAV). Freeman was 32 years old, but had a Gold Glove, multiple Silver Sluggers and an MVP under his belt. These are among the largest contracts ever awards to first basemen. So yes, they really don't break the bank anymore. Casas has age on his side, but also has less hardware than Evan White (4 yr $24mill contract with Seattle, now considered a bust). I don't see Casas breaking the bank. A six year deal like the one above would buy out all his arb years plus first two of free agency and take him to age his age 30 season. He certainly could wait it out and make more money, but an early deal like this buys him plenty of security, but might be better if it was a year shorter and allowed him to reach free agency before his age 30 season. A 29yo free agent just has more earning power. I would agree an extension like this, but maybe 5 years before the option probably makes more sense for both sides...

This Oakland team might be the worst team I have ever seen. Defensively they tied a record last night by committing 13 errors in the first 5 games of the season, something not done since 1906. My first thought was - were teams even using webbed gloves in 1906? Error numbers from that timeframe are much, much bigger than they are today. Are the A's as bad defensively as teams that didn't even used webbed gloves?

And the running game was a big factor early last season, when runners took advantage of the pitch clock and realized if it got down to 3 seconds and the pitcher still had the ball, they could just take off. That slowed down when a lot of pitchers realized they could take this away by pitching quicker...

No, this is the website where Houck has established himself as a starting pitcher by shutting down a AAA lineup for six innings and therefore people need to ignore that he has never pitched more than 106 IP in MLB in a season in his career. I still think Houck, like most pitchers, is better suited for the bullpen. But he is probably a better option for the rotation over any of the other pitchers the Sox have left...

Yes. Those Seattle Sox. I can’t get my facepalm emoji to work…

Sox SP through 4 games: 25K 1BB

Or maybe he could have acquired a pitcher or two since the Sox were only 2 games out of the postseason…

Back tightness…

The backend of this bullpen is full of question marks (although technically Joely is an exclamation point after an expletive). Pitchers like Rodriguez and Weissert are depth option buried at the bottom of the 40 whose position on their Topps Card should read “In Case of Emergency”, not players on the roster on opening day…

I imagine Joely was kept over Bernardino because the latter had options. (Joely was on a minor league deal, but with an upward mobility clause.) The big problem was the Sox pushed two relievers into the pen and only signed one reliever to replace them, and that was Joely. They ignored plenty of better options on the market. This is basically the exact same thing Bloom did last year…

I think you misspelled “O”….

Well, a lot of these guys go to college essentially to major in baseball. There’s no Master’s degree in baseball…

That made zero sense to me. I thought Dombrowski handled it poorly, but assumed he would do the smart thing. He never did (although Bloom might have made it tougher)…

I have an injunction…

I wonder if the overall low expectations for the Sox this year has kept some of the rabble of the game threads…

That’s being ridiculous. And why I largely ignore game threads…

I have been, but it’s contingent on SP health and durability…

Disagree. If you put him in, you get the credit. If a reliever comes in with the bases loaded and no one out, and he induces sac fly, K, K, he did a tremendous job limiting damage, but he should be charged with an earned run?

Unless she was deep under cover…

Maybe she did…

The ultimate cover would be repeatedly bullying your own alter ego. Think about what it would be like if Spider-Man and Peter Parker each constantly explained to every character on the same page/scene how he was going to bring the other down. Ok it might have been weird that superhero Spider-Man had this weird fixation that his arch-nemesis was a nerdy high school kid. But I think it would have made these stories even better.

More expensive than a car…

Unless you want Dijon, which is $27.50…

But at least he stopped doing broadcasts in his underwear…