The Orioles announced that Thomas Eshelman has cleared waivers and accepted an assignment to Triple-A. The righty was designated for assignment on Sunday. In 21 1/3 innings this year, he’s struggled mightily, with an ERA of 8.02, along with strikeout and walk rates of 6.9% and 9.8%.
Elsewhere in the AL East…
- Matt Barnes was placed on the COVID-IL earlier today because he was experiencing some symptoms but had not tested positive. After the game, Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com reported that Barnes subsequently tested negative and could be reactivated tomorrow. This is surely a relief on multiple fronts. But in pure baseball terms, Barnes is tremendously important to the Red Sox. The 31-year-old is having his best season to date, with an ERA of 2.30 being more than a full run better than his previous low of 3.65 in 2018. He’s also pushed his strikeout rate to 41.5%, beyond his previous best of 38.6. And his walk rate has trended downwards, coming in at 6.9%, better than every previous season except for his small-sample debut in 2014.
- Cotillo also provided updates on a handful of other Red Sox, including an unfortunate detail about Darwinzon Hernandez. “It went from something that we felt like was going to be back soon, now he’s in pain and he’s a little more sore, so we’ve got to do other testing to see where we’re at with it,” Cora is quoted as saying in the piece. Hernandez was placed on the injured list July 31st with a right oblique strain. The hope at the time was that it would be a minimum stay on the 10-day. But there’s a chance that hope may be dashed now. The lefty has been a solid contributor out of the Boston bullpen this year, chalking up 34 innings with an ERA of 3.44, racking up strikeouts at a healthy clip of 29.9% but also a lot of walks at 16.9%.
- “As of now, I’m very surprised, to be honest with you — pleasantly surprised — that he’s doing so well and things are trending in the right direction,” is what Cora had to say about Ryan Brasier. The 33-year-old was rehabbing a calf injury in June when he was struck in the head by a comebacker. He suffered a concussion and ear laceration at the time but now seems on the verge of throwing a bullpen and starting another rehab. The righty has been a valuable member of the Red Sox bullpen over the past three seasons but has yet to pitch at the big league level this year because of the calf injury and then the scary incident in June. But it’s very encouraging that he appears to be healthy now.
Stop overusing Whitlock. This will come to bite us. We are blowing our postseason chances with horrible pitching as of late.
And the absolute lack of hitting from the big boys.
JD has been mediocre since the end of April, with a .792 OPS, and Bogaerts is hurt. Unfortunately, we have no depth. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a RS team with more pitching depth than hitting depth. Over the past 28 days, Duran, Chavis & Dalbec combined for a 52/4 K/W with 3 HRs in 121 ABs.
If/when Arroyo & Schwarber return, at least we can trot out a professional lineup everyday. At least on the pitching side, we can look forward to Sale, and hopefully stretching out Houck a little more.
Red Sox look lost their last few games. Verdugo is terribly frustrated…ever since they threw that baseball at him in Yankee Stadium. They don’t look happy at all.
Neither does you
But the Red Soxs are happy
The pen has been studly, but as others said have been taxed picking up the slack of the starters. Speaking of which, the SP was always going to be mediocre at best with a stable of no. 4 and 5 starters.
Sale looking healthy and effective gives them a punchers chance in the playoffs, but again, theres a reason the Red Sox lead the league in comeback wins- their SP has been awful.
The Red Sox are done. They are dropping like a stone in a pond. We have three softball LOB Pitchers in Pivetta, Perez, Richards, and EROD ain’t looking that great lately. These starters are lucky they can make it into the 5 inning. They tax the living day lights out of the bullpen. Bloom needed to pick up a starting pitcher that could give them some decent innings. He did not. He picked up a hitter who is injured and is still two weeks away. The only thing he should have given up for Schwarber was a player to be named later. I do not understand how the Yankees picked up Rizzo for very little and we could not get him? I’m perplexed and baffled at this.
Let me help you out with your bafflement. I wanted either Rizzo or Santana. Rizzo was shorter and cheaper, maybe Santana’s OBP was a better fit, and maybe a second year would not be bad, since we might not have a 1B next year.
But Rizzo was not picked up for ‘very little’. Alcantara was the NYY #7 prospect according to FG, with a 50 FV. Vizcaino was #11 with a 45 FV. Vizcaino doesn’t look like much to me, but Alcantara is legit.
Just for comparison purposes, our only 50 FV’s were Downs and Casas.
Hopefully when Brasier is done nursing his injuries, he can rack up some victories or support a couple leads.
We really need to call up Houck & Seabold to replace Richards & Perez.. or at the very least call up Houck.. Then we get Sale back in a week so someone’s getting the axe anyways it might as well be the to weakest links…
Seabold has virtually no minor league experience (14.1 IPs and a 4.40 ERA in AAA). He gets a lot of publicity, but in AAA, he’s had two bad games and one good game.
Beef