Final SD game

A few quick notes on the game:

Paxton looked excellent!  While his control was a little off, he did keep his fastball upstairs and he had very good life on his fastball and released his change and curveball with a very similar arm speed and slot.  This is what makes him tough to hit as everything is disguised well along with good stuff as well.  He threw 66 pitches with 40 of them for strikes, although the strikes include balls that were swung at.  Here is the very positive stat; he had 17 swing and misses on only 66 pitches (40 strikes).  He also didn't allow a hit in 4 scoreless innings; That says a lot!

The game got off to a great start against Paddock and his 1.93 ERA entering the game.  Paddock was ahead of DJ 0-2 and he threw a changeup that was up and DJ crushed it for a leadoff HR.  The next pitch was a fastball to Luke that was right down the middle of the plate and Luke crushed it; 2-0!  Paddock has very good stuff as well, but he left many pitches in hittable spots.  Some were missed, but Urshela got a hanging change as well over the fence.

We added a run on a sac fly by Gardner and then Maybin created a run by stealing 2nd and 3rd base and scored when the throw to 3rd base went into LF.  Torres finished off the scoring with a 2 run HR in the 7th inning.

Coaching:

I have written about a bunch of head-scratching moves this year by Boone and I do think he has made mistakes, but I have not written enough about the good things he has done.  Obviously, part of the reason the team is doing well has been the way he has rotated players and kept them fresh and also motivated (in some way).  He has matched the players up well and there are a ton of subtle things that are done where Boone has put players in the best position for success.  The obvious ones are the lineups and the matchups that are set up by going through the mounds of data.  This combined with the rest needs and the somewhat frequent starting needs players need to stay sharp but also rested.  Yesterday showed one example of the subtle correct moves that were made (BTW, they may be correct and they might not work out).  Ottavino started the 6th inning, with the score 4-0.  Usually, he is later in the game, but with the top of the lineup coming up for SD and 3 righties, he went with Ottavino as it was an important stopping inning and could have been set up well for SD.  Boone followed with weaker pitchers but correctly knew that this was an important inning to shut them down. 

Will the players coming back throw off our mojo?

I have been asked this many times and my answer is NO.  Just like we saw some of the younger guys like Tauchman and Ford come up but show that they are not major leaguers, replacing them with Frazier and even Maybin are upgrades.  Having Judge in the lineup and in RF will be a large upgrade.  Having another lefty in Didi will also help both offensively and defensively.  Cone mentioned the metrics showing Torres has been good defensively; I haven't looked at them, but I don't agree that he has been good, I do think he has been acceptable, but he has not played as well as Didi normally does.  He has 7 errors which is mediocre.  This is not a knock on Torres, who is 22 years old and been asked to start at 2nd base and now all of a sudden is starting at SS, but it is what I see.  BTW, Torres has an OPS of .881, which is great for a SS.  Didi had an OPS of .829 last year for comparison.  Adding Stanton as a DH and LF'r will only help as it would be a large upgrade over Morales.  Adding Severino will also be a huge benefit for us.

We will have some tough decisions when we get everyone back, for example, what do we do with Tulo?  I don't see him getting much playing time and Estrada has played great.  I would expect trades to be explored, but keep in mind that we could still have more injuries.

Onto the Red Sox Series!