7/14 Gameday Thread: El Matador; Trey Ball; Salem supremacy

Devers promoted to Pawtucket per Evan Drellich.

I know James Dunne is happy man now 😆
Waiting for your observations from those games in Syracuse pal.

I'll be there tonight, weather permitting. Forecast looks not so good.

Let's hope Trey keeps the Ball rolling.

Wouldn't that be something if he all of a sudden became a prospect again.

Rodriguez is on a rehab assignment, so he's not the countermove for Devers, if that's what you were insinuating.

The team has already said that Fister is moving to the bullpen when Rodriguez comes back up. Most obvious move would be to option Scott to retain maximum depth, but again, there's not very much room in the Pawtucket bullpen either.

Brannen goes 2-3 with 2BB and now has 10BB to 4K through 10 games.

Suarez's hit streak comes to an end (though he did walk). But Esplin, Chatham, Castellanos, and Brannen all did well today. I'm impressed with Brannen's apparent plate discipline, but it needs to continue at a higher level before I get too excited about it. Castellanks is a fun guy to keep track of. Excelled in DSL last year and is doing the same in Florida this year.

PawSox also place Bogusevic on the DL to activate Beeks. Buttrey down to Portland as well.

Tough draw for Buttrey, but he didn't have nearly as much success in Pawtucket as he'd had in Portland. With the numbers crunch there, this does make sense.

I'll be interested to see if Olmos stays in the rotation or goes back to the bullpen. PawSox list Kendrick/Beeks/Walden as their next three starters. Johnson went last night and presumably Velazquez is still starting. They went with 6 starters for a while before the break - will they continue to do so?

Castellanos is really raw when you see him in person. He's not swinging and missing much but he looks like he's swinging at everything with that walk rate too. I'd be surprised if he skipped Lowell, honestly.

I'd be swinging too if I were a .334 career hitter thus far in the minors. I trust the scouting reports that there are some mechanical improvements that could be made, but any mechanical issues that exist aren't leading to many Ks yet in his brief career.

Wow, tons of great stuff here. Some interesting nuggets:

- The plan for Raudes this year seems to be conservative, which makes sense given his age advancement, as he really continues to work on fastball command. That said, if his pitch mix is heavy on FB, it would make sense that he might get hit around a bit more this year. As he progresses through the system, I'm still holding out hope that as he works on his secondaries a bit more he could still realize his backend starter potential assuming his can locate that 90mph fastball pretty well.

- Beeks' breakthrough has obviously been a huge boost to our system. Sounds like improvement to his changeup and the addition of his cutter have a lot to do with that. His spike in K-rate this year has been really dramatic.

- The Shawaryn developments seem really promising and it was interesting to hear that he may have been pitching to contact in his junior season at Maryland. Nevertheless, working on elevating his fastball, adding a power slider, and improving his changeup have obviously been kind to his K-rate as well.

- I'm really excited about Callahan's relief potential. It sounds like ditching his traditional curveball for a power slider/splitter (near 90mph) has done wonders for his control and command. Couple that with mid to upper 90s velocity on the FB and he seems like the most likely to end up in a 8th/9th inning role among the current RP in our farm.

- I liked this quote "We're challenging them with new things," Bannister said. "You see the ones ... responding to challenge and really going out there and pitching well. So I like making guys uncomfortable because that's where the growth happens. You know, throwing pitches in new counts, throwing new types of pitches, throwing pitches harder."

Ball giveth and Ball taketh away