5GoldGlovesOF,75

The best sign that Campbell is figuring it out wasn't his home run to the joke porch in Yankee Stadium. It was his last 10-pitch at bat in the Bronx: three sharp oppo fouls, three pulled fouls, and finally a line drive single to right. Campbell kept his hands above the ball on every swing.

I think ESPN should interview a few more hundred Yankee players about Dobbins vocal hate for pinstripes... ... but make sure in every interview they plug in shots from the Judge Cam -- Judge is sitting on the bench, Judge is smiling, Judge is changing his baby's diapers, Judge is walking his dogs, he - he's putting on his batting gloves... Judge is on deck!

Rookie shortstop for the A's, Jacob Wilson, is second in the AL in hits and batting average, and has only struck out 16 times in 268 plate appearances. He's 5th in OPS (between Bregman and Devers). Unless pitchers can write a book on him soon, Wilson seems an early lock for Rookie of the Year -- and another good reason for Boston to stop waiting to bring up Anthony (and not have to worry about paying him what he's worth in the 2030s).

It's true the Red Sox need to start diversifying more. Over 20 years ago, Theo Epstein could see they couldn't possibly win with too many Dominicans -- like Martinez, Ortiz and Ramirez -- so he looked to the Far East and brought in Dave Roberts, who is half Japanese, and Kevin Millar, who was actually going to Japan, but turned his plane around. Then in '07 Theo signed Matsusaka and Okajima, who are both literally Japanese, and the Sox won another ring. Breslow and Bailey were both relievers on Boston's '13 champs, but they had mound time diminished by the presence of Japanese set-up man Tazawa and closer Uehara... so maybe the current braintrust views too much diversity as bittersweet. It's not like the Red Sox have a history of racism tainting their place in the standings. Sure, they were the last MLB team to allow an African American player to wear their red socks, but it only took them 20 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier to finally recruit a multi-cultural roster good enough to win the pennant. That was in 1967, when the front office looked at the roster and saw way too many players with last names ending in vowels -- Yastrzemski, Petrocelli, Conigliaro, Stange, Santiago, Lyle -- and balanced it out by putting as many as six black players on the field in Scott, Foy, Smith, Tartabull, Howard and Wyatt. Those guys took them to Game Seven of the World Series.

They always call that. Meanwhile, when Duran led off the game, on one pitch his bat never moved but he just took a stride and they immediately checked the check. Ya, check your hat at the door.

Torrorro Show!

That HR by the Carnivore is a home run in every Yankee Stadium in the majors!

Mayer and Campbell hit their first home runs in the Bronx this series. Now we just need Anthony to... oh, wait.

Until ESPN announcer says: "A Yankee Stadium home run by Campbell" (you mean like a thousand hit by Judge, Stanton and DJ vs. Boston)

Bad defense directly affects pitching and leads to bad pitching. Bad plays can result in men on base, which forces the moundsman to pitch from the stretch instead of the wind-up, and always extends innings requiring more pitches to retire the side. More mistakes on the field = more pitches per inning = more chances to make mistake pitches... which most big league hitter clobber. Last word on fielding percentage: no error is issued for a fielder who doesn't charge a grounder or doesn't get a good enough jump to outrun a fly ball. No E is charged when a first baseman ranges too far to his right for a chopper and nobody covers the bag in time. And no double play can be assumed after a fielder's choice gets the lead runner at 2B -- so a wild or late return throw to 1B is not an error... that's because often it's caused by an imperfect feed throw to the pivot, who maybe double-clutched or rushed the transfer (or in the olden days was trucked into LF by Hal McRae or Don Baylor). None of those miscues decrease a team's fielding percentage -- but players, managers, coaches, and scouts are very aware of the difference between a sharp, tidy D and a loose, shoddy D. Fans, too...

That made me laugh saridinically (sardines are good for something). So when Gio was a zero, he was worth more than when he actually pitched and had less value than a guy Ramon Vazquez picked up off the street with the team bus when driving Raffy's glove -- which he took by mistake -- back to the team hotel.

But 12-year olds with good arms always want to show them off. Or young men acting like 12-year olds. Why do we assume guys who play a kid's game for a living would ever be mature? (the reason I played for half a century was to try to stay young as long as possible...)

I'm not convinced Varitek is the coach to blame for game-planning starters to veer away from their pitching strengths. When he caught World Champs and no-hitters, Tek's pitchers were stars because of fastball command, change-ups and splitters. The term "sweeper" didn't even exist.

It's Cora's fault! He doesn't have them properly prepared for starts! Cora should be putting on the mask and squatting behind the plate in pregame warm-ups, and giving them targets on the black perimeter of the four quadrants! And all catchers and catcher coaches should be made to crowd around to watch him demonstrate! And then Cora should fly a helicopter over the mound to blow fastballs past the batters, and tilt the rotator blades to make breaking balls spin at inhuman revolutions. Only he can make the pitching staff good again... like it once was when they had a complete rotation of five major league pitchers... When was that, anyway -- last decade?

We will see these moves, plus a fulltime opening in the outfield for Anthony, when the front office and management finally acknowledge publicly that it's a Bridge Year -- a creaky bamboo wooden bridge swinging over the gorge. Impatients may cringe at times watching youngsters adjust to the big leagues, but they know they no longer want to watch washed up veterans on the Dying Dutchman in the Dead Sea.

No matter who the Sox trade in the next month, it has to be for pitching, pitching, pitching. Duran should return an actual starting pitcher with potential -- not an All-Star like Duran was (and still might be), but someone young and just breaking into a five-man rotation. Abreu, even though he leads the team in homers, might not net anything more than a decent reliever or a minor league reliever with a big arm. Kyle Manzardo was a power-hitting prospect when Tampa traded him to Cleveland for Aaron Civale, at the time a viable member of the starting rotation. Manzardo's worth can be debated, but he also leads the Guards in HRs this season. As mentioned above, attaching Yoshida to any trade will require expanding the deal to include Red Sox prospects. Since Boston is still rebuilding -- and is content to just store Yoshida and his bat in practice camps -- that scenario doesn't seem likely until maybe the offseason.

I don't have stats for hitters batting in the top 3 spots in the batting order compared to the bottom 3 spots. But I know coaches and the rest of the batting order favor guys at the top that take a few pitches, especially at the beginning of the game. It gives the whole dugout a view of a pitcher's arsenal and release points, his approach in certain counts on the batter, and most importantly, it raises his total pitch count -- which often leads to more mistakes vs. subsequent hitters, and can lead to the ultimate goal, which is forcing opponents to go to the bullpen early. In those regards, it's hard to justify batting Rafaela at the top of the order right now. We all know Ceddanne sometimes swings at every pitch... so hacking at three straight splitters in the dirt (which we've seen him do) does nothing in regard to accomplishing the objectives described above.

You got me. I recently posted WAR definitions from bb-ref and fangraphs, where both stress that WAR numbers are estimates, and therefore unreliable (my word today, no lie) to compare players to the decimal places. And don't ever order a slice of pie at any bakery named Pie R Squared.

re- lie able means able to lie over and over again... (dang, sorry -- no politics allowed).

Seven Stories? Isn't one enough already? Do we really need six more?

Rafaela may not match Crow-Armstrong pulling the ball in the air, but what's Ceddanne's swing percentage of pulling his head on the first pitch? TV Viewers Watching CR try to pull the first pitch of every at bat (including fans out mowing the lawn or weeding the garden who missed one of his ABs): Kajillion Percent.

Cora has had a pattern of dissing red-haired players like Campbell since he replaced Craig Kimbrel as closer with dirty blonde Chris Sale in the last game of the '18 World Series. That's a clear case of hair-colorism -- though an exception can be made for AC's #3 batter and Series MVP, Steve Pearce, who was bald. Sale and Pearce are both from Lakeland, Florida, which is over 4 hours away from Cora's alma mater, U of Miami, so we can't say Alex was playing them because of alumnusism. More like Sunshine Stateism. However, we can't forget how much AC also leaned on Mookie Betts and Mitch Moreland that year. Both Red Sox heroes are from Mississippi. They have different hair color, but obviously Cora was favoring Double Consonantism.

I always favor bWAR over fWAR because in school, all Bs meant honor roll, but one F made me academically-ineligible to play (nice coach got me at bats in non-league game).

Because he angles his entire body into his swings, I always thought that high and inside pitch would be the first chapter of the book on him. But this chart shows all corners are lethal... he's even a negative on middle-middle? If one of us just stood there with an Old Hickory and held it parallel to the plate middle-middle, some pitches are bound to ricochet over an infielder, right? 1 out of 100? 1000? (probably wouldn't survive for that many, since at least 10 out of 100 would deflect into our eye sockets, off ankle bones and through rib cages).

MLB pitchers? More likely, advance scouts and analytics departments... While the Sox front office has been recovering from 89 Tommy John operations from high-fiving each other, other teams took the Campbell mantra -- "hit the ball in the air" -- and plotted. Nobody is working KC at the bottom of the strike zone with pitches he can elevate. He's fed high heat, and junk that starts at the knees, then crosses his ankles (or bounces off the ground). Results are pop-outs if he's late, grounders if he's early, and strikeouts if he's fooled.