4/11 Gameday Thread: Morning, noon, & night baseball

Very much looking forward this start from Crawford.

Separately, I think the Red Sox 2017 draft is highly underrated for the great names selected. I mentioned this just after the draft in a general 2017 draft thread, I think. I mean, Kutter Crawford? Really? How does a guy with that name not end up as a professional baseball pitcher. There are plenty of other great names in that draft too... Durin O'Linger, Xavier LeGrant, Beau Hanna and more.

Dombrowski gets an A+ on that draft for name strength alone. Hopefully some of these guys are actually good at baseball.

Kutter Crawford's best pitch is probably his cutter as well.

Joking aside, I think the story of last year's draft will be that its high-end guys will underwhelm, while its sleepers will overachieve. Tyler Dearden and Andre Colon were two of the guys I came away from camp most impressed with, and I got good reports on Crawford, Hunter Haworth, and Zach Schellenger. On the other end, though, I have to say that Cole Brannen was very underwhelming. And to settle something on him, we put a 65 on his speed - he's not the 80 runner that some people were trying to say he was based on that one 60 time at PG.

Ian and I will get a podcast in at some point soon recapping what we saw.

Well, Kutter Crawford with 5K, through 2 innings today.

ADD: 2 more K's in the 3rd

Final line for Kutter Crawford: 5IP, 3H, 1ER, 0BB, 8K

I'm trying to make sense of Greenville's 5-run 6th inning. It looks like Dillon Drabble came on in relief and faced 5 batters: He hit 3 of them and walked another. Yikes.

My guess on both Rusconi and Gigliotti (who also came out after that play) would be dives gone bad.

Kind of ironic too that the injuries led to the best hitting prospects on each team (Brannen and KC outfielder Seuly Matias) entering the game. Minor league weekday day games, everyone.

I am thankful our major league team is littered with likable, young talent because this system is easily the worst it has been since I've been following (2003).

Chavis pinged, Groome getting hurt for the second consecutive year, no other high impact talent to speak of (maybe Mata?). Sorry to be depressing but there is a reason activity in these game threads is waning so much. Our system sucks (but Soxprospects is still incredible).

Hint: like any insecure sports fan, I'm looking for reasons for optimism here...

I had seen Brannen 4-5 times last summer...very limited of course...but had commented on SP that he did not jump out at me. I didn't see any pop to the bat, especially strong arm or lightning speed. Overall he didn't hit for average either. On the thread identifying breakouts, I had him for a disappointment....Again I had limited observation and am no scout.

wow - Workman got blitzed - had high hopes for him this year after his work late last year...bad day for Shephard, and Teddy S and Yank at Portland too.

At least Raudes and Crawford had good starts.

That's a very interesting take. I'm curious, what was your take when he threw 2.2 scoreless three days ago?

Fine, and you've certainly made that point, but "now he can't get AAA hitters out" after a single poor appearance isn't really the most reasoned take.