5/15 @ Hipster Haven

[Spudboy]

Farrell is terrible.

 

MY friend Eric Wedge is available.

[SoxHop]

Arrrrggggggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bllllaaahhhhh!!!!!!!

[Bellhorn04]

Two years of lousy offense coinciding with the fastest lead off hitter in Red Sox history leaving the team. As the young people say, just sayin.

 

But if Ellsbury is such an offensive catalyst, why did the Yankees score fewer runs last year than the year before? And why are they in such an offensive drought right now?

 

You can look at our numbers across the board and see why we're scoring so few runs. Just too many guys not producing. And the hitting with RISP has been atrocious.

[Kimmi]

"On the surface"? No, it was a thoroughly stupid move. It was fundamentally flawed in every way.

 

Yes, the offense sucks. A manager actually has few opportunities to influence the outcome of a game. This was one of those opportunities. Farrell certainly gets the assist in the loss in this game.

 

I say on the surface because I didn't have all the facts. Neither did you. Sometimes, something that seems so obviously right or wrong is not as clear cut as you think it is. You are not privy to all the information that the manager and coaches have at their disposal. There might have been a very sound reason why Farrell chose to do what he did.

 

That said, I agreed that it seemed like the wrong move, and Farrell owned his mistake. He shares part of the blame, as does the whole team, being that baseball is a team sport. The idea that Farrell lost the game single handedly is ludicrous. His decision was not even the biggest reason that we lost the game, not by a long shot.

[Spudboy]

Not scoring runs cost that game.

 

Farrell's brain fart is one isolated indecent within the game.

 

The Sox all but non-existant offense was in effect all night. That is why they did not have enough runs at the end of nine to win.

[Kimmi]

Kimmi this is the only time I disagree with you amd agree with a700. This was a game that the manager decision to pitch to a hit hitter cost us the game. Offense needs to score runs but in a tie game managers decission to pitch to someone vs 1st base open. We want a win and every game matters.esp the ones.where.the pitching has actually held up.

 

Saying that his decision was a bad decision is one thing. I would agree with that. Saying that Farrell cost the team the game is another. As I stated before, with Clay pitching as well as he did, the team should have never been in the position where the game was tied going into the 9th. Poor offense aside, even if Farrell had chosen to walk Cruz, there is no guarantee that the Sox win that game.

 

I can agree that Farrell made the wrong call, but I can't agree that he cost the team the game. IMO, the offense cost us that game.

[Kimmi]

Not scoring runs cost that game.

 

Farrell's brain fart is one isolated indecent within the game.

 

The Sox all but non-existant offense was in effect all night. That is why they did not have enough runs at the end of nine to win.

 

Thank you.

[Kimmi]

Two years of lousy offense coinciding with the fastest lead off hitter in Red Sox history leaving the team. As the young people say, just sayin.

 

Coincidence is exactly what it is.

[SoxHop]

I say on the surface because I didn't have all the facts. Neither did you. Sometimes, something that seems so obviously right or wrong is not as clear cut as you think it is. You are not privy to all the information that the manager and coaches have at their disposal. There might have been a very sound reason why Farrell chose to do what he did.

 

That said, I agreed that it seemed like the wrong move, and Farrell owned his mistake. He shares part of the blame, as does the whole team, being that baseball is a team sport. The idea that Farrell lost the game single handedly is ludicrous. His decision was not even the biggest reason that we lost the game, not by a long shot.

 

Back out of your spreadsheet nerd girl.......... and live a little and call it what it was.......... that was a total botch job.

 

Yea, it may not have cost us the game, but damn. What a way to upchuck momentum on your shoes.

 

Seriously....... bad bad call.

 

disclaimer to Kimmi........ I'm at least as nerd as you.............. now I'm going to go play with my star wars figures to get over this mess....

[User Name]

There's only one question that needs to be answered here.....Why the hell can't this team score runs?

[SoxHop]

There's only one question that needs to be answered here.....Why the hell can't this team score runs?

 

Seriously.......... what is that. Why..... I'm perplexed.

[a700hitter]

I say on the surface because I didn't have all the facts. Neither did you. Sometimes, something that seems so obviously right or wrong is not as clear cut as you think it is. You are not privy to all the information that the manager and coaches have at their disposal. There might have been a very sound reason why Farrell chose to do what he did.

 

That said, I agreed that it seemed like the wrong move, and Farrell owned his mistake. He shares part of the blame, as does the whole team, being that baseball is a team sport. The idea that Farrell lost the game single handedly is ludicrous. His decision was not even the biggest reason that we lost the game, not by a long shot.

Farrell said tonight that what irks him is that he discussed the scenario with his coach before the game and said that their lineup was set up perfect for Layne because he could walk Cruz and go after the lefty Seager. During the game he didn't follow his own strategy.

 

As far as not having all the facts, no one, including the managers has "all the facts" at any given time, but we all had enough of facts annd statistics at our disposal on thespot to know that it was a terrible move in real time.

 

I like that Farrell owned his mistake, but I am still pissed at the stupidity.

[Kimmi]

Seriously.......... what is that. Why..... I'm perplexed.

 

Because if the Sox were scoring runs like they should be, then we would be winning more games. If the Sox scored 5 runs every game, which they were projected to be able to do, or at least get close to, their record would be 24-13. I realize that we aren't going to be able to score 5 runs every game, but even if we split the difference, their record would be 21-16. In either case, the Sox could be leading the division if their offense were scoring runs as projected, even as bad as the starting rotation has been.

[Kimmi]

Farrell said tonight that what irks him is that he discussed the scenario with his coach before the game and said that their lineup was set up perfect for Layne because he could walk Cruz and go after the lefty Seager. During the game he didn't follow his own strategy.

 

As far as not having all the facts, no one, including the managers has "all the facts" at any given time, but we all had enough of facts annd statistics at our disposal on thespot to know that it was a terrible move in real time.

 

I like that Farrell owned his mistake, but I am still pissed at the stupidity.

 

The managers may not have all the facts, but they certainly have more than you do regarding their players and the specific circumstances. Even though Farrell admitted his call was a mistake, he had some good rationale for why he chose to pitch to Cruz.

 

"I think that everybody who understands the game knows that that decision should have been otherwise, particularly how it turned out," Farrell said. "I will say this: I look at it with a couple factors. The way Cruz swung the bat during the game last night, the matchup with Tazawa (1 for , the success Tazawa has had against him, the fact that he (Cruz) had chased some offspeed pitches below the zone. And I thought it was a chance for our pitching staff to (say), 'OK, we're going to go after the heart of their order.' Now in hindsight, we know the answer to that. But if it was a chance for us to take another step forward in our own growth and confidence as a group — that was a small, small part of that."

 

Left-handed batter Kyle Seager, a .248 hitter, was on deck.

 

"I thought Seager swung the bat good in his three previous at-bats," Farrell said. "It didn't work out. So waking up this morning, my thoughts haven't changed. That one's on me."

 

The instructions to Tazawa?

 

"The instructions at the time were that everything was a two-strike location," Farrell said. "Everything was a put-away type pitch. Having said that, if we were going to take that approach, then I should've just walked him with (the left-handed reliever Tommy) Layne on the mound. But we got into the count and at 3-2 you're thinking, 'OK, bounce another split.' Unfortunately, the split didn't bounce."

 

Not saying that the call was right, but two points about what Farrell said:

 

1. For those of us who are believers in the human element side of things, I like that Farrell wanted to go after Cruz, and give his pitching staff the vote of confidence that they were good enough to challenge anyone.

 

2. No matter how right or wrong a call is, it's still on the players to execute.

[a700hitter]

Because if the Sox were scoring runs like they should be, then we would be winning more games. If the Sox scored 5 runs every game, which they were projected to be able to do, or at least get close to, their record would be 24-13. I realize that we aren't going to be able to score 5 runs every game, but even if we split the difference, their record would be 21-16. In either case, the Sox could be leading the division if their offense were scoring runs as projected, even as bad as the starting rotation has been.

 

And this ^ is where you stat geeks go off the rails. The games are not played on paper.

[a700hitter]

The managers may not have all the facts, but they certainly have more than you do regarding their players and the specific circumstances. Even though Farrell admitted his call was a mistake, he had some good rationale for why he chose to pitch to Cruz.

 

 

 

Not saying that the call was right, but two points about what Farrell said:

 

1. For those of us who are believers in the human element side of things, I like that Farrell wanted to go after Cruz, and give his pitching staff the vote of confidence that they were good enough to challenge anyone.

 

2. No matter how right or wrong a call is, it's still on the players to execute.

We all had enough facts to know that it was a bad decision. Cruz was the one guy that the manager was not supposed to let beat him in that situation.

 

That was the manager's call all the way. It had nothing to do with a vote of confidence, because Taz wasn't even in the game at that point. Taz is a pressure inning guy. He is getting plenty of votes of confidence in every one of his outings.

[jad]

It's not that they're not coming through in RISP, it's that so many are hitting badly period: Ortiz, Nava, Swihart, Bradley, [Craig], Napoli, Victorino--all well below what was expected.

[Kimmi]

We all had enough facts to know that it was a bad decision. Cruz was the one guy that the manager was not supposed to let beat him in that situation.

 

That was the manager's call all the way. It had nothing to do with a vote of confidence, because Taz wasn't even in the game at that point. Taz is a pressure inning guy. He is getting plenty of votes of confidence in every one of his outings.

 

To add to my previous post:

 

On Friday night, with first base open and the potential winning run on second base, Tazawa was supposed to bounce a splitter to Cruz, the hottest hitter in the American League. Instead, he hung one, and Cruz lashed it to left for a walkoff single.

 

 

Now here it was, one night later, and manager John Farrell emerged from the dugout to summon Tazawa to face Cruz. The situation was completely different: This was the eighth inning, not the ninth, there was no one on base, and the Sox had a two-run lead.

 

The outcome was different, too. Tazawa shattered Cruz's bat with a 95 mile-an-hour fastball, resulting in a weak popup to shortstop Xander Bogaerts. Koji Uehara took care of the ninth, and the Sox had a 4-2 win in Safeco Field.

 

"The biggest thing," Tazawa said after the game through translator C.J. Matsumoto, "is that I felt the trust of the manager because he used me against the hitter that I gave up the run. That was the biggest thing, that the trust was there."

 

 

Again, I'm not saying it was the right call. I'm just saying that there are reasons why managers make decisions that you have no idea about. Decisions are not always cut and dry.

[SoxHop]

And this ^ is where you stat geeks go off the rails. The games are not played on paper.

 

What are you even talking about? She provided what was projected from previous results. How can you even argue with that.

[SoxHop]

Because if the Sox were scoring runs like they should be, then we would be winning more games. If the Sox scored 5 runs every game, which they were projected to be able to do, or at least get close to, their record would be 24-13. I realize that we aren't going to be able to score 5 runs every game, but even if we split the difference, their record would be 21-16. In either case, the Sox could be leading the division if their offense were scoring runs as projected, even as bad as the starting rotation has been.

 

I get it. I mean we were projected at the beginning of the year with this lineup to be heavy metal. I thought we would be mashing.

 

The question still remains, why aren't they scoring runs.

 

I guess our big sluggers not slugging is probably the big reason.

 

Then there is the situational hitting. And this one really perplexes me. How does one team do this two years in a row? Is it their approach to the situation, is it a coaching thing. I guess having three players hitting around 200 doesn't help get a rally going.

 

The other thing is if you took a way a few home runs, we would have lost many more games. It seems like we have one most games recently of off one persons heroics by homerun, than driving in the runs.

 

I'm still perplexed

[mvp 78]

There's only one question that needs to be answered here.....Why the hell can't this team score runs?

 

Pedroia is a punch and judy hitter. Ortiz and Nap are still hibernating. Panda couldn't hit a little league LHP.