6/25 vs Those Goddamn Canadians

[SemperFi Sox]

Great...Dice-K. What's the over/under on whether we'll be losing before we bat?

[kapsis21]

I haven't done one this season. I think we need a change of pace.

 

aight!!

[kapsis21]

Only the Twins and Royals have worse pitching than the BoSox. It's time to wake up. We are coming up on the All Star Break. Ellsbury and CC coming back and WMB playing everyday is not going to help the pitching. A couple of bullpen guys are not going to help our starters-- who just flat out suck as a staff. No excuses. It's not bad luck. It's not the umps. It's not bitch hits. Except for Buchholz's case of the bloody shits and a few missed starts by Princess and the Pea Beckett' date=' they have not had any bad injuries. They got back the Japanese Treasure. They just stink. Period. Will they end up stinking? I don't know, but it will be hard for their pitching to crawl into the top half, and that is where they will need to be if they want to have a chance at the Post Season.[/quote']

 

yep we need to beat teams that are not Marlins or Cubs or Twins or Whitesox or Braves. but at the same time every win counts.

i know we beat Verlander but Detroit is somehow in the same funk we are. they cant get enough consistent starts from their pitchers.

 

i hope, i really hope DiceK is going to turn things around. he is my dark horse for the remainder of the season and he needs to turn it around and pick up the slack, which Lester has been missing all season.

seems like Doubbie's arm is getting tired, he was throwing lollipops to everybody yesterday.

[jung]

This team does not have enough starting pitching now, did not have enough at the start of the season and won't have enough at the end of the season and while I am wondering if they are looking for another arm for the rotation, as I have posted before I don't think one more arm is enough.

 

These guys look like a team that is going to limp along and stay close, if only because of that second WC and slowly settle with the setting sun on the 2012 season and that will be that. They will clear the books of as much of this crap as they can in the off season but in reality they have made so many piss poor deals that they will likely still end up with guys that will ultimately be disappointments if they are not already.

 

They will have generated enough revenue from all this Fenway promotional crap and the highest ticket prices in baseball to have had another "successful" season and clean house enough to make us feel good about next year.

 

Whatever....hardly matters....if Uncle Bud sees one of his cash cows really going tits up he will just invent another WC to bail them out. While I understand it, the whole thing is kinda' sickening. At least with one WC you can make the case that the best single non-division winner deserved a place in the post season but playing 162 games to earn the rights to a one game play in is just hokey......it is an invention....a fabrication in fact.

[SemperFi Sox]

Unless Lester and Beckett start pitching like bonafide aces the rest of the season we don't have a chance.

[SoxFanForsyth]

Unless Lester and Beckett start pitching like bonafide aces the rest of the season we don't have a chance.

 

Bonafide aces? No.

 

Better than they have? Sure.

 

But they don't have to both be sub-3.00 ERA guys who throw 220+ IP.

 

Lester has been throwing very well, he's just been terrorized with s*** luck. 34 K's, 5 BB's, 1 HR in his past 5 games and he's got a 4.05 ERA. He should have about a 1.30 ERA in those starts.

 

His FIP over his past 5 starts is actually -1.11. Yes. He's got a negative FIP. I didn't even think that was possible. Feel free to correct me, but here's how I came up with it.

 

1 HR, 34 K, 5 BB, 1 HBP, 0 IBB

 

Formula: (HR*13+(BB+HBP-IBB)*3-K*2)/IP

 

= (13 + (5 + 1 - 0) * 3 - 34 * 2)/33.33

= (13 + 6 * 3 - 34 * 2)/33.33

=(13 + 18 - 68)/33.33

= (31-68)/33.33

=-37/33.33

= -1.11

 

Baseball will even itself out, and it's about time that Lester's numbers start to reflect how he's throwing, rather than posting a 4.05 ERA over those 5 starts with a -1.11 FIP.

 

And even if my math is somehow wrong, those numbers are still elite and do not even get close to reflecting a 4.05 ERA accurately.

[Station 13]

FIP doesn't measure efficiency. Lester isn't doing that. He has too many high pitch count.

[SoxFanForsyth]

FIP doesn't measure efficiency. Lester isn't doing that. He has too many high pitch count.

 

First off, he's averaging 6.2 IP per start. That's pretty freaking good. Only leaving 7 outs to the bullpen is excellent.

 

Second, his BABIP over those starts has been .392. So the balls that get put in play are going for hits at an extraordinarily large clip, which results in more pitches having to be thrown.

 

So his efficiency has actually been fine. He's just getting absolutely screwed. I'm not making excuses for him, I'm pointing out stats that prove he's throwing very well.

[a700hitter]

This team does not have enough starting pitching now, did not have enough at the start of the season and won't have enough at the end of the season and while I am wondering if they are looking for another arm for the rotation, as I have posted before I don't think one more arm is enough.

 

These guys look like a team that is going to limp along and stay close, if only because of that second WC and slowly settle with the setting sun on the 2012 season and that will be that. They will clear the books of as much of this crap as they can in the off season but in reality they have made so many piss poor deals that they will likely still end up with guys that will ultimately be disappointments if they are not already.

 

They will have generated enough revenue from all this Fenway promotional crap and the highest ticket prices in baseball to have had another "successful" season and clean house enough to make us feel good about next year.

 

Whatever....hardly matters....if Uncle Bud sees one of his cash cows really going tits up he will just invent another WC to bail them out. While I understand it, the whole thing is kinda' sickening. At least with one WC you can make the case that the best single non-division winner deserved a place in the post season but playing 162 games to earn the rights to a one game play in is just hokey......it is an invention....a fabrication in fact.

^ This was the opinion of a lot of people as the team came north after Spring Training. It's playing out in real time, but many are making excuses or looking for silver linings or whatever. CC and Ells coming back doesn't matter. They can't pitch. Bailey doesn't matter. He's not a starter. The deficiencies in the rotation were there for all to see. Now, people are reduced to hoping that Franklin Morales will step up and be the answer when people wanted to cut him from the pen about a month ago. Hey, I am hoping for the same thing. I am sharing in the delusion. People are saying things like "crazier things have happened." These are the actions of fans of losing teams. We need to wake up. Unless we acquire some quality starting pitching that is good enough that it will cause me to lose my payroll bet with SFF, the BoSox are going nowhere.

 

BTW, the second wild card might as well be nowhere. We don't have the pitching to compete in the post season. We cannot even win games in our own division.

[Station 13]

No he is not throwing well. He gives up leads when the team gives it to him. He doesn't have an out pitch, or an offspeed to get hitter out in front to roll the ball over.

 

He is allowing more line drive this year, nearly 25%. Nearly 10% over his average from 2008-2011. This explains the 'luck' as you deemed it, ball hit on a line is a hit 70% of the time. So it explains why is he allowing more hits this season. His K/9 also drop this season.

[a700hitter]

First off, he's averaging 6.2 IP per start. That's pretty freaking good. Only leaving 7 outs to the bullpen is excellent.

 

Second, his BABIP over those starts has been .392. So the balls that get put in play are going for hits at an extraordinarily large clip, which results in more pitches having to be thrown.

 

So his efficiency has actually been fine. He's just getting absolutely screwed. I'm not making excuses for him, I'm pointing out stats that prove he's throwing very well.

You are like an excuse spinning machine. I love this team. These guys have ruined my spring and the summer is not looking promising. I'm not buying any of the excuses. It's not the umps, bitch hits or bad luck. They are just not very good right now. Can they improve? Yes, but I am skeptical that the will be above average in the second half.

[jung]

Lester is not throwing anything like a 1 on a contending team. He stops nobody....shuts down nobody..... and pitches like a 3 most of the time. Oh yea, I know our 1 is now Beckett, bequeathed the position by an underperforming Lester the second year in a row and where is Mr. Beckett? Missing more starts...what else is new.

 

Hopefully Buch recovers because he will likely turn out to be the best pitcher on this staff. There is certainly more than a possibility that Morales might turn out to be our second best pitcher which says more about the others than it says about Morales.

 

As for the whole concept of bitch hits and luck blah blah blah, you need to look at the actual pitch as it runs up to the plate, not the result. More often than not you will find that the so called bitch hit is the result of a very poor pitch that is simply not well hit, not a great pitch that the hitter luckily gets a bat onto.

 

I made that exact point in a recent game thread where our SP was serving up the usual assortment of s*** pitches to a weak hitting team with the so called "Bitch hit" the usual result. I posted at the time that instead of rueing our fate, we should be counting our lucky stars that the damn things had not been deposited into the monster seats. Good hitters take mistake pitches and deposit them into the monster seats, poor hitters get bitch hits with the same mistake pitches.

[SCM33]

Unless Lester and Beckett start pitching like bonafide aces the rest of the season we don't have a chance.

 

Well, then we are screwed. Beckett has been a bonafide ace arguably 2, maybe 3 times in his entire career.

 

An ace is an ace, year after year. Beckett is an ace once every 4 years.....hes a number 3 starter.