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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 21, 2024 9:43:49 GMT -5
Pete Abraham @peteabe Casas to the IL with left rib strain. Tyler Heineman recalled. 11:23 AM · Apr 21, 2024 ·
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 21, 2024 11:58:20 GMT -5
Pete Abraham @peteabe Casas going back to Boston to get examined. Cora said he’s concerned it will be a lengthy absence.
Said the Sox need to meet tomorrow to discuss options. 12:53 PM · Apr 21, 2024 ·
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 21, 2024 12:03:15 GMT -5
Pete Abraham @peteabe Casas was downcast when we spoke to him. Said he's in a lot of pain and felt it on the swing. Getting an MRI tomorrow.
Sounds like it's more of a fractured rib than a broken one. Either way, not good. Rib injuries are typically lengthy rehabs,
Some 40-man changes are coming. Sox may have to drop some players to add others so the MLB can field a team.
1:52 PM · Apr 21, 2024
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 21, 2024 19:45:34 GMT -5
Credit to the Red Sox’ players and coaches for punching above their weight so far By Peter Abraham Globe Staff,Updated April 21, 2024, 1 hour ago
PITTSBURGH — The Red Sox boarded buses after Sunday’s 6-1 victory against the Pirates and made the two-hour trip to Cleveland. Paper bags with subs were available for the journey.
First baseman Triston Casas had already left, heading back to Boston for further testing on what is feared to be a fractured rib.
The group didn’t include Trevor Story, who is away from the team as he recovers from season-ending shoulder surgery. Or Lucas Giolito, also out for the season after elbow surgery.
In all, the Sox have 12 players on the injured list, at least eight who would surely be on the active roster if healthy.
Yet the Sox are 13-10, which is better than 17 other teams, including the Dodgers, Rangers, and Diamondbacks.
You can be — and should be — upset with ownership for cutting the payroll and seemingly turning its attention to other matters.
But at the same time you can be impressed with the job the Sox players and coaches have done persevering through a series of injuries.
Manager Alex Cora looked wrecked before the game while discussing the loss of Casas to a rib cage injury. Every indication is that he will miss significant time.
But Cora was smiling afterward while assessing a three-game series sweep.
“It’s good for everybody,” he said. “It was a total team effort. We know where we’re at rosterwise right now.”
The Sox’ lineup was quite something.
Tyler Heineman, who arrived from Triple A Worcester about an hour before first pitch, batted eighth as the designated hitter. He’s a 32-year-old journeyman backup catcher who was called up Sunday because he was the only healthy position player on the 40-man roster not already in the majors.
Connor Wong, who is usually at the bottom of the lineup, batted fifth. Bobby Dalbec, who was 1 for 26 with 15 strikeouts, batted sixth.
You don’t see a lot of .038 hitters batting sixth 23 games into the season.
Josh Winckowski came out of the bullpen to start. He was followed by former carpenter Cam Booser, Greg Weissert, Rule 5 pick Justin Slaten, and Chase Anderson, a 36-year-old playing for his seventh team in the last six years.
“That was a fun game,” said Slaten, who picked up his first major league win.
Congrats to all of you who have wished the Red Sox could collect spare parts like the Rays and put together effective lineups. Now they do.
“They don’t know any better, some of them. They just show up every day willing to work,” Cora said. “The coaching staff has done an amazing job. You see the work we put in. It’s a little different than in the past. More specific. More, actually.
“It’s a different group than in the past … it’s a good bunch.”
Tyler O’Neill is set to come off the concussion injured list in Cleveland on Tuesday. Rafael Devers, who has missed the last four days with a sore left knee, also should return.
Devers told Cora he was ready to play Sunday. But with a day off Monday, the manager decided to wait. Watching his teammates win three games — and score 18 runs — without him could get Devers going at the plate.
Cora cited Rob Refsnyder as bringing some needed leadership on the position-player side. He reached twice Sunday and scored a run.
“A lot of young guys, a lot of injuries,” Refsnyder said. “But we knew going into the year, the core of the team would be some young guys and rookies. “They’re learning on the go and I think they’re doing a really, really good job adjusting and making those necessary adjustments.”
This is not a sustainable model for even modest success. But the rotation has a 1.73 earned run average, the defense is much better with Ceddanne Rafaela at shortstop, and Wilyer Abreu has been getting on base like a Venezuelan Wade Boggs the last few weeks.
Modest as they were, the Sox have exceeded expectations.
“We’re having fun,” Refsnyder said. “Hopefully it continues.”
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Post by scrappyunderdog on Apr 21, 2024 20:41:27 GMT -5
Triston Casas Undergoing Testing Following Early Exit
By Nick Deeds | April 20, 2024 at 8:29pm CDT Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas exited today’s game against the Pirates in the first inning due to what the club has termed left rib discomfort. As noted by Chris Cotillo of MassLive, manager Alex Cora indicated to reporters after the game that he was “concerned” about Casas’s injury and that the first baseman had left the ballpark to undergo further testing. While it’s not entirely clear how serious Casas’s injury is, it appears the club is at least preparing for the possibility that an IL stint will be required as Cotillo also reports that journeyman catcher Tyler Heineman is set to join the club in Pittsburgh tomorrow as the only healthy position player on the club’s 40-man roster who isn’t already on the active roster. Yikes. No knock on Heineman, but that's the best we can do? A journeyman back up catcher? Kavadas, but he only has 38 AAA ABs and has a pretty fair amount of Ks. Plus he'd have to be added to the 40.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2024 14:18:17 GMT -5
Tyler Milliken ⚾️ @tylermilliken_ It’s now been 17 years since the Red Sox hit 4 consecutive homers off Chase Wright and the Yankees.
Manny Ramirez, J.D. Drew, Mike Lowell, and Jason Varitek. Back-to-back-to-back-to-back.
Fenway Park went absolutely BONKERS.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2024 14:25:42 GMT -5
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2024 14:29:29 GMT -5
Tanner Houck could be delivering on the promise that Red Sox scouts saw in him By Alex Speier Globe Staff,Updated April 22, 2024, 2 hours ago
Through four starts, Tanner Houck has been nothing short of dominant for the Red Sox. His complete-game shutout in fewer than 100 pitches last week looked like a watershed moment of potential coalescing into performance.
As he enters Tuesday’s start in Cleveland, Houck has a 3-1 record with a 1.35 ERA while averaging 6⅔ innings per start. He has an astounding 28-to-2 strikeout-to-walk rate.
It’s possible that this April performance marks a mid-career transformation. If that proves to be the case, it will be a breakthrough foretold.
In 2017, after scouting Houck at the University of Missouri and during his time with Team USA, Red Sox area scout Todd Gold stepped back and distilled his years of familiarity with the loose-limbed righthander into just a few words.
“The last line of my report was, ‘Quick to the major leagues, slow to reach his ceiling,’ ” Gold recalled.
Gold had concluded that Houck could be an “impact major league starter” based on how he’d held his own as a Friday night starter against top college talent in the Southeastern Conference. But he and the other Red Sox evaluators who’d locked in on Houck that year also recognized the need for growth.
In college, Houck worked almost exclusively with his sinker/slider combination — elite pitches that were good enough to navigate seven innings but seen by some evaluators as too limited a repertoire to give Houck a real chance at starting in the big leagues. The Sox agreed, to a point, but believed that Houck’s work ethic, makeup, and athleticism would allow him to develop a third pitch to help neutralize lefties.
And then, of course, there was the delivery: Limbs moving everywhere, seemingly pulling apart like Inspector Gadget, with a pronounced cocking of the neck toward the shoulder that not only was painful to look at but made it look as if Houck’s arm might rip away from his body.
On the one hand, all of those moving parts created a Rubik’s Cube that hitters struggled to solve. But his delivery did raise questions about whether he could remain healthy, and whether he could repeat it well enough to throw strikes.
“It was a double-edged sword,” said Gold.
A few years earlier, that delivery likely would have taken Houck out of any real consideration to be selected by the Sox in the first round. For years, they emphasized clean, conventional deliveries when selecting pitchers, using top picks on players such as Casey Kelly (2008), Anthony Ranaudo (2010), and Matt Barnes (2011).
In 2015, when Mike Rikard was promoted to director of amateur scouting, the organization reassessed how it was scouting pitchers. It had been a decade since the Sox drafted an impact starter. Meanwhile, pitchers who featured lower arm slots and whippy deliveries — Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, Corey Kluber, among others — had emerged as elite.
“I think we had become overly fixated or focused on certain attributes for pitchers that we were kind of finding didn’t end up being as meaningful as we thought — certain types of delivery, certain types of arm actions, certain types of bodies,” said Rikard, now a vice president of scouting.
“Outside of those buckets that we were focused on, pitchers were getting to the big leagues and being really good. Leading into early 2016 and 2017 is just to being much more considerate and open-minded to all different types of pitchers.”
And so the Sox — led by Gold as well as pitching cross-checker Chris Mears and national cross-checker John Booher — did not view Houck’s delivery as an impediment but rather a potential strength, albeit one in need of some refinement.
Yes, he’d need to make his delivery look a bit less like a Cubist rendering of a pitcher. But he created movement and deception, had shown feel for pitching, and — while posting a 17-18 record, 3.26 ERA, and 23 percent strikeout rate in college — had proven unflappable on the mound even when aluminum bats and poor defense turned bad contact into hits.
The Sox saw a pitcher with a chance to develop into an impact starter, and took him in the first round (No. 24 overall) of the 2017 draft. Thanks to Houck’s willingness to work and openness to coaching feedback, he steadily improved as he moved through the minors, reaching the big leagues by 2020.
Even before this year, Houck’s selection by the Sox was a noteworthy success in what has proven to be a weak draft class. While his role has shape-shifted, he has been a steady big league contributor since arriving at the end of 2020, something that few others who entered pro ball from the 2017 draft can claim.
Houck has created 6.7 Wins Above Replacement (as calculated by Baseball-Reference.com) in his career, nearly doubling the next-best mark of a player drafted and signed in the first round that year. (Marlins lefty Trevor Rogers ranks second with 3.4.) Houck ranks third in career WAR among all players taken in 2017, behind only outfielders Daulton Varsho (second round) and Chas McCormick (21st round), and first among pitchers.
But this year, at least through four starts, he has flourished. He has ditched his four-seam fastball while increasing his emphasis on his sinker and slider, complementing those pitches with the best splitter of his career — one that has added 3 inches of drop.
That overhaul has come in tandem with a relentless attack on the strike zone. Houck entered the year having thrown strikes on 63 percent of his pitches. This year, he has elevated that to 69 percent, ninth-best in the big leagues. He has thrown first-pitch strikes to 66 percent of hitters — up from a career rate of 59 percent.
His pitch mix has been electric, and he’s put hitters on the defensive by pounding the strike zone. The result, at least to this point, has been a pitcher who may be having the very sort of mid-career breakthrough that Gold foresaw back in 2017.
“It’s really cool to see it all come to fruition,” said Gold. “It’s hard to say that I expected it to happen, but this is what I envisioned when I was watching him in college.”
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Post by Kimmi on Apr 22, 2024 17:04:05 GMT -5
Yikes. No knock on Heineman, but that's the best we can do? A journeyman back up catcher? Full ThrottleDepth has always been a concern of mine, more from the pitching side than the position players, but with position players as well. Of course, I didn't imagine having our top 4 hitters all out with injuries as the same time.
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Post by Kimmi on Apr 22, 2024 17:07:31 GMT -5
Yikes. No knock on Heineman, but that's the best we can do? A journeyman back up catcher? Kavadas, but he only has 38 AAA ABs and has a pretty fair amount of Ks. Plus he'd have to be added to the 40. As mentioned, the Sox are going to have to do some shuffling of the man roster. It's been done, but IMO, Reyes is not tall enough to play 1B. Our team, as a whole, has a pretty fair amount of Ks. It's so frustrating when they batter cannot move a runner up 90 feet when the situation calls for it.
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Post by Kimmi on Apr 22, 2024 17:08:14 GMT -5
Tyler Milliken ⚾️ @tylermilliken_ It’s now been 17 years since the Red Sox hit 4 consecutive homers off Chase Wright and the Yankees.
Manny Ramirez, J.D. Drew, Mike Lowell, and Jason Varitek. Back-to-back-to-back-to-back.
Fenway Park went absolutely BONKERS. I remember that well. It was a lot of fun to watch.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2024 19:07:35 GMT -5
Injured Red Sox pitcher felt ‘guilty’ after elbow surgery
Published: Apr. 22, 2024, 5:01 p.m.
By
Lauren Campbell | LCampbell@masslive.com
Lucas Giolito’s 2024 season ended before it started, and he couldn’t help but feel guilty about getting injured before even throwing a pitch for the Boston Red Sox.
The Red Sox signed the right-handed pitcher to help bolster their rotation. He had a goal of throwing 200 innings — a feat he hadn’t reached before — but underwent season-ending elbow surgery before 2024 even began. While Giolito avoided Tommy John surgery and had a less-invasive procedure, it’s still something that weighed on him in the beginning.
“In the team aspect it’s like, this team signed me to throw a lot of innings for them. They need that, and now I’m out for the whole (expletive) year,” Giolito said during his appearance on “The Chris Rose Rotation” podcast. “That sucks. So, it was initially very brutal, it was a lot of different emotions. I felt almost guilty. I came here to do this, I’ve always been healthy for most of my big league career. I’ve never had a significant injury. Then boom. So, that really sucked.”
Giolito’s contract includes a $19 million player option for 2025 that he likely will opt into given the fact he won’t be able to pitch this season.
It’s been an interesting start to 2024 for Boston. Through 23 games the Red Sox are 13-10 and have a league-best 2.52 ERA. While the starting pitching has been strong for the Red Sox, having Giolito in the rotation would have been welcome — especially with Nick Pivetta on the 15-day injured list with an elbow flexor strain.
As for Giolito’s recovery, he said he feels great and would be back on the mound for the Red Sox this season if it were up to him. For now, though, he’ll continue to recover and be 100% for he 2025 campaign.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 22, 2024 19:09:07 GMT -5
Red Sox pitcher ‘trying to push’ limits in elbow rehab
Published: Apr. 22, 2024, 5:33 p.m.
By
Lauren Campbell | LCampbell@masslive.com
Lucas Giolito is progressing well after undergoing a right elbow ulnar collateral ligament repair with internal brace in March. The procedure ended the pitcher’s season before it began, and he shoulders some guilt after the Boston Red Sox signed him in the offseason.
But now Giolito is in Boston continuing with his physical therapy. Most days he’ll stick around Fenway Park and watch his team play.
Appearing on “The Chris Rose Rotation” podcast, Giolito — without a brace on his elbow — told Rose he got his motion back quickly, and has “been crushing the shoulder program.” With how good he’s been feeling, Giolito revealed what the biggest challenge will be as he continues to rehab.
“I feel like I can do a lot more than what I’m allowed to do. So, I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge in this process is the fact that I feel so good,” he told Rose. “I feel like I legitimately could go out and play catch in a week, but that’s just not gonna happen. I’m following the protocol. But at the same time trying to push the envelope as much as I can because I’d love to come back sooner than what’s projected. But it’s a lot of peoples’ decisions, not just mine.”
Having undergoing Tommy John surgery when he was 18 years old, Giolito says nothing scares him in terms in terms of his rehab. And if it were up to him, he wouldn’t wait until 2025 to throw his first pitch for the Red Sox.
“I’ve been through all that before. ... Theres nothing that’s gonna scare me,” he said. “... I’m strong, we’re making a lot of progress. I feel like I’m making a ton of progress. I have all my motion and everything. If it were up to me, I’d love to come back and pitch this year. I don’t know if thats going to be allowed, but its good to have that goal in my mind. That will keep me motivated.”
The Red Sox rotation has a Major League Baseball-best 2.52 ERA, which likely has Giolito itching even more to be part of its success.
But with the 29-year-old figuring to be fully healthy for 2025, there’s no need for him to rush back and risk further injury.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 23, 2024 5:21:17 GMT -5
Red Sox being rewarded for faith in young starting pitchers
By Mac Cerullo | mcerullo@bostonherald.com April 23, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.
It seems like almost everything that could have gone wrong for the Red Sox this season, has.
Trevor Story is out for the year, and with him the promise of a meaningfully improved infield defense. Lucas Giolito, one of baseball’s most durable pitchers, is also out for the year, and fellow starters Nick Pivetta and Garrett Whitlock are on the shelf too. Almost all of Boston’s best position players have missed time as well, including Rafael Devers, Tyler O’Neill and now Triston Casas. Things have gotten so bad that the Red Sox fielded a veritable Triple-A lineup for much of the past week.
And yet, entering Monday, they’d won three straight and owned a better record than the high-powered Los Angeles Dodgers.
That the Red Sox are currently 13-10, third in the AL East and only 2.5 games behind the division-leading Yankees defies logic and the players and coaches deserve a lot of credit for keeping the ship afloat. Whether this stronger-than-expected start proves sustainable remains to be seen, but amid all of the setbacks there’s been one obvious bright spot that should give fans plenty of reason for optimism.
The club’s young starting pitchers are making the leap.
Red Sox ownership and the front office have rightfully drawn criticism for their handling of this past offseason, but so far their faith in the club’s young starters has been validated. Brayan Bello, Kutter Crawford, Tanner Houck and Whitlock have all been excellent, and if their gains prove lasting then it could have a transformative impact on the club even if this year’s team ultimately falls out of contention.
Entering the week Crawford, Houck and Whitlock all have sub-2.00 ERAs, and after Sunday’s excellent start Bello is now down to 3.04. Crawford and Houck in particular have been outstanding, ranking among the two best starters in baseball through the season’s first month.
Crawford leads all MLB starters with a 0.66 ERA over 27.1 innings through five starts. His 1.7 wins above replacement ranks second in baseball among all players behind only Mookie Betts, and he ranks top 10 in baseball in hits per nine innings (5.268, 7th) and strikeouts (30, 10th). He also has yet to allow a home run.
Most encouragingly, Crawford is going deeper into games and has already pitched into the sixth inning three times. Last season he frequently fell off after 80 pitches and only surpassed five innings 10 times in 31 appearances.
Houck is enjoying a similar breakthrough. Through four starts he has a 1.35 ERA over 26.2 innings, and three of his starts have been flat out spectacular. He threw six shutout innings in each of his first two outings, and last Wednesday he delivered one of the best performances by a Red Sox pitcher in recent franchise history, carving up the Cleveland Guardians for a dominant complete game shutout.
He and Crawford are both pitching like aces, something that would have seemed unrealistically optimistic heading into the season.
Bello, the club’s Opening Day starter, was comparatively underwhelming through his first few starts before getting back on track in his last two. In two of his first three starts he struck out three or fewer batters, and those were sandwiched around a dud in Oakland where he allowed four runs over five innings. But in each of his last two starts he’s pitched into the sixth, allowed two or fewer runs and struck out seven or more. That’ll get the job done, and his 3.04 ERA over 26.2 innings is more reflective of the type of pitcher Boston expected him to be this season.
As for Whitlock, his oblique injury was a setback but not one the team considers serious. The expectation is he’ll only miss a couple of starts, and before going on the injured list he was on a similar track as Crawford and Houck.
Through four starts Whitlock has posted a 1.96 ERA over 18.1 innings, and though he has yet to pitch into the sixth like his rotation-mates, he almost certainly would have in his last outing if he hadn’t been pulled after four innings and 54 pitches. Whitlock has also demonstrated a notably improved pitch mix, which should enable him to better navigate opposing lineups a second or third time through the order, something he struggled with last season.
It’s obviously early and the four still have to prove they can hold up over the long grind of a season, but it’s hard to imagine this group getting off to a better start. More importantly, Bello, Crawford, Houck and Whitlock are all under team control for at least the next three years, so if this month is a sign of things to come then the long-term ramifications could be massive.
For now the more immediate concern is surviving the club’s recent run of injuries, but all things considered the Red Sox have weathered the storm remarkably well. Coming into the season the sense was the Red Sox would go as far as their starting rotation could carry it, and in the face of incredible adversity the club’s starters have shouldered the load.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Apr 23, 2024 12:34:36 GMT -5
Andrew Parker @byandrewparker Source: Red Sox lefty Joe Jacques has been claimed by the Arizona Diamondbacks. 2:26 PM · Apr 23, 2024 · 3,311 Views
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