Beaneater

Can't complain about the pitching, really. 4 runs (3 ER) in two games. 1.62 ERA. That should be two wins.

A-yup.

I guess I'm pretty jaded, but when the Angels get a lead-off double, I think, "Well, that guy's going to score." And when the Sox get a lead-off double, I think, "Strand-o-rama!" Glad to see that I was wrong about the former. Let's see if I can be wrong about the latter, too!

Still got a no-hitter going!!!

Oh, and one more thing. Why do you think Capps has that delivery? What's his motivation? His current delivery is the natural throwing motion of exactly zero people in the history of the world ever, including Capps himself. He has added that hop to his pitching motion somewhere along the line. And what's the only reason to add that hop? To shorten the distance between the rubber and the plate, i.e. to gain an (unfair) advantage. Unless someone can provide some other reason for the hop...?

I haven't posted in ages. First, Bogaerts rocks. Nice win, gotta love seeing the good side of the bullpen and a QS from Miley. Second, I watched the highlight of Bogaerts' bases-clearing single (!) and the first thing I thought was, "That delivery can't be legal!" I'm gratified to see that you all didn't fail to talk about it; thanks for the discussion and the links. I agree with you jad, and the bolded part is my guess. But you are right -- regardless of what MILB or MLB has told him, it's an illegal pitch by the text of the rulebook. I mean, heck, what's to stop him from making more than one hop? If he can hop forward once, why not twice? Why not hop forward 6 or 8 times on that back foot and then throw a 98 mph heater from 40 feet away? I don't disagree that he's been told it's legal. But it shouldn't be. And it's not sour grapes, because he got tagged with the loss tonight!

Other than the shock of seeing Lester in any other uniform, I'm OK with that trade. We traded 2 absolutely useless months of Jon Lester (by which I mean that even if Lester threw consecutive perfect games for the rest of the season, it would do us no good at all) for, well, anything. That's fine by me. And I don't see the loss of a draft pick attached to Lester being a major factor in re-signing him. How many teams are going to say, "We just plain old don't have 120+ million bucks to sign that guy. Wait -- what's that you say? We don't lose a draft pick for signing him? Oh, well now we have all the money in the universe!" So I still hold out hope of seeing Jonny back in Boston, where he belongs, next season. I don't know enough about the Miller deal to say anything about that. I'm frustrated by the Lackey deal, because unless there's behind the scenes skullduggery, we traded 1+ season of Lackey at a total salary of $11.38 for another Allen Webster and whatever Craig is at this point. I would have thought that Lackey would bring more than that. The difference between Lester and Lackey is that we lost nothing (essentially) by trading Lester, but that's not the case for Lackey. Oh, I guess Gomes was in there too. Never cared that much for him anyway (other than the fact that he seems to be a great clubhouse guy) so that's not losing me any sleep. I guess we'll see in about a year or so whether or not we still suck.

Fact - a team composed of 9 Brock Holts projects to go 159-3 over a full season. The three losses are because even Brock Holt needs to sit every once in a while, thus allowing no-name scrubs like Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz to lose a game here and there.

Mookie "Professional At-Bat" Betts.

This is where I stand too. He signed the contract; there's no point pouting about it now. Either we take the one cheap year, or we offer a contract that basically includes one year's worth of value free of charge. If we do neither of those things, what was the point of having the injury clause in the contract in the first place?

Now THAT'S what I call Koji time! Rough game for Pedey, but we're finally back to .500. BTR mojo shall lead us to the promised land.

Now THAT'S what I call Koji time! Rough game for Pedey, but we're finally back to .500. BTR mojo shall lead us to the promised land.

If the Sox could intentionally hit the ball toward CF, we would have won the last game...

Why not us? ...or has that been used before?

April sucked, but it's over. Yesterday didn't count, because it just didn't. Now May starts and it's time for the near-daily maulings of opposing teams to commence in earnest. We are better than this and Dan Straily is about to have a significant upward adjustment of his ERA. Buchholz builds on the strong back end of his last start and manages to get at least one of the first three batters out. All smack-talk aside, though, we played like dung through a whole month of the season and we're all of 3 games out of first place. There's a lot of baseball left.

Posting-from-West-Africa mojo goes for the trifecta!

Posting-from-West-Africa mojo worked last night, so here it comes again!

Posting-from-West-Africa mojo!

Leave it to Peaver!

Oh, sure, there's some unquantifiable something to be said for identity and team unity, and you can get that from all kinds of stuff. Little things like ridiculous facial hair, or big things like being part of a city's response to a tragedy. What drives me nuts is the conspiracy theorizing -- the idea that MLB pulled strings to give the Sox the title as a sop to Boston in the wake of the bombing.

It's 3-0 and I'm taking all the way.

Good point. That's it! Fans of other teams, take note: if you want a WS parade next year, just organize a little terrorist event in your city. No need to actually kill people, though; just a few maimings would probably be sufficient. Then no matter how crappy your team, Uncle Bud will rig you up a WS victory! If more than one city has a terrorist attack, the World Series victory will be accorded to the team that yields the most number of inspirational photos of players bonding with victims. Gah, conspiracy theorists drive me nuts.

This makes me really happy. So happy I want to find Mike Carp and bounce on the dugout steps with him.

A final check-in for gloating purposes: Got the opponent wrong but the important part right! 6 out of 9 correct winners picked, which is not bad for me. Doesn't look like anyone else did way better or worse.

I just borrowed that set from a friend. I was looking at those three discs wondering when I would ever want to watch them. Still drawing a blank on that question.