8/26 ML Gameday Thread: Possible GCL Division Clincher

Anthony Ranaudo named the IL most valuable pitcher.

Speier: 29 IP, 22 H, 5 ER, 1 BB, 26 K

Red Sox GCL wins 4-2. Congrats.

I'd be happy with a couple starts in Lowell. He'll likely stay with GCL Sox for the playoffs. Either way, he should be ticketed for Greenville next year, which is a reasonable place to be for someone his age having already lost a year to TJ.

Maybe he starts down at Lowell in 2015 as a natural way to keep his innings under control, coming out of TJ? If he dominates Lowell as he dominated GCL, move him to Greenville later in the season, since Lowell starts later but all leagues end about the same time. He gets Greenville exposure but his innings are curtailed.

Speier is still on the young side as he is 19 in his second GCL campaign though the 1st was cut short by TJS. I think he starts in Lowell especially it being his first full season off TJS. That's not say he could have a very good off season conditioning and position himself for Greenville but I would bank on Lowell to begin the season.

Ha! My guess is that he wants to know when to trade Castillo to leave room for Manny Margot

Red Sox Stats ?@redsoxstats 13m
Garin Cecchini is 2/3 2B tonight... and he is ON FIRE. His last 16 games he is at .404/.477/.684

8 BB, 11 1B, 10 2B, 2 HR

Quite encouraging. I fully believe that Cecchini would be a better starting third baseman for the big club in 2015 than WMB.

Kevin Thomas ?@clearthebases 1m

The Eduardo Rodriguez pitch count continues to crawl. A 7-pitch fifth. Now at 56/41, with 6 K's. Score: 0-0

SSS, but poor JBJ. So far in 44 AAA PA's, he's basically posting the same K% and ISO as with Boston, only to see his BABIP and BB% plummet. Dude's a mess, but let us not forget that just a year ago, he was a very good hitter with Pawtucket. Without much trade value due to the offensive shortcomings, do we stash him in AAA as a regular in 2015 until he regains his productivity, and then use him as a part-time outfielder with the big club, and potential trade chip? At the moment, I think we all have enough concern with Castillo's offensive potential to make playing him outside of CF a bit unfeasible, and that very same concern goes for JBJ as well.

And as I'm about to post this, he hits a double for his second AAA XBH this year.

Nice to see Henry recover after a rough start against Buffalo. This might be one of those games where you learn about a guy as much from how he deals with struggles as how he looks when he's going well. Despite the 8 hits and 4 walks he got through 6 1/3 innings. This after the 3 runs scored within the first 5 batters.

They may want to limit his innings at some point, but when he does pitch they are subjecting him to a full major league workload in terms of pitch count. 105 pitches tonight.

Also worth noting that with this start Henry goes over 150 innings for the year -- as a 22-year-old. He pitched 135 last year. Maybe a little fatigue starting to set in?