Sox have to step it up

[mrguit]

I'm worried if they make the playoffs this year it will be one and done. They don't win the close ones and when they do win its 10-3 or 12-6, etc.

I see Joe Kelly as a potentially great closer if used correctly. Whenever Kimbrell comes in I hold my breath. He definitely has blown most of the tied games he's been in and if the Sox are behind by a run he usually makes it worse. He's a shaky closer. I'm also worried that Farrell doesn't have the 6th sense to make the right moves to win the close ones this year. They better wake up!!

[moonslav59]

6 of their last 9 losses have been by 1 run. It's time to start winning these games.

 

We're 16-19 overall in one run games.

[mrguit]

Some of that needs to fall on Kimbrall and some of it on the lack of clutch hitting by Papi,

Jackie, and Hanley. Although Papi's number are very good this year, not so much in the clutch.

[Thunder]

I'm worried for the playoffs too, but more so because of the fact that when this team is trailing late in a game, they don't comeback. I can't get an exact record when trailing after 7, but it's gotta be pretty bad. The two walk offs and the comeback against Texas are the only wins I can think of.

[mrguit]

Agreed.

[S5Dewey]

6 of their last 9 losses have been by 1 run. It's time to start winning these games.

 

We're 16-19 overall in one run games.

 

Bill James wrote in one of his earlier Baseball Abstracts that most one run games are won/lost by luck. A few inches here or there, a slip, a misstep is often the difference between winning and losing a one-run game. He also said that it only follows logic that over a long stretch of time a team's record in one-run games will be about 50-50. A good example of that would be the O's of a couple of years ago when they won an unusually high number of one-run games and then in the next year couldn't win one of their lives depended on it.

 

We're 16-19 now. We need to get a few breaks and get back to 'even' again. That'll solve a lot of the stretch problems. But let's hope things don't wait until next year to even out.

 

Of course if someone wanted to raise the point that this team has lost FOUR one-run games due to "walk-off errors" all you'd hear from me would be crickets.

[Youk Of The Nation]

I'm not going to delete this thread immediately. Given the fact that you have only 5 posts despite joining last year, I would assume that you have not read the new announcements from the last several months.

 

Every "point" you raised in your initial post could easily have been (and is) being discussed in other threads on this forum, all of which are very active. There was really no need to create a new thread at the top of the page to complain about Kimbrel and Farrell. There is a Farrell thread directly underneath this one, and you didn't exactly lead off with a specific topic beyond "Farrell doesn't know what he's doing". I'm going to close this thread and I encourage you to repeat and expand upon your opinions in those other threads. I don't want you to feel as if your contributions are not welcome. Thanks!