Beaneater

Dang, Buck! So the debate begins. Bring him out at ~100 pitches to go for the CG?

I want our starting outfielders soooooo bad.

We're doing puns and his name has Pun in it. The jokes write themselves. EDIT: Oh, you were talking to YOTN. Duh -- sorry.

I hope the Twins will be saying "You kil us!" soon. Meh. Too obvious.

Hmmm... what could we do with Nick PUNto... any ideas?

That is awesome.

I had that one too. Pretty obvious, I guess.

Buck holz the the Twins scoreless in the 7th! EDIT: Would be better spelled "Buch holz", I guess.

Yeah Bill Hall! EDIT: Or should I say, "Hall yeah!" (groans)

I didn't think the laws of physics allowed that.

Buchholz' butt probably didn't even touch the bench.

Gah! 2 outs on five pitches! Youk sees five pitches before getting out of bed in the morning! EDIT: Holy crap that was a fast inning.

McD is gone before I could make a snide comment.

Ha ha! Buchholz still facing the minimum through 3.

I'm not sure what it was. "Watching" the game on Gamecast, it looked like an execution-style slaying. Red dot. Gray dot. Red dot. That AB lasted about 12 seconds. But if you insist, I will say it, as I have done before. (Tired sigh.) It's not the heat... it's our left fielder. In other news, Buck (or is it Buch?) is getting behind batters but then putting them away. I guess he's going to be effectively wild like last time. That'd be OK with me. Walking the #9 batter? Not so OK.

That, uh, wasn't the heat, it was the.. oh, never mind.

Way to battle back from 3-0, Buck!

Well, yeah. If I meant the Rays sweeping the Sox, you'd be justified in stringing me up by my own small intestine.

If Baker's gonna nibble all game long against our lineup, he's screwed. The bottom third of our lineup... ugh. The sooner we get the Halls and McD's of the world out of our regular lineup, the better. Plz get better soon Ellsie!

Is it wrong of me to be rooting for a Rays sweep? I just don't see us catching both the Yankees and the Rays this year. I'm resigned to chasing the WC (but would be happy, of course, if we caught fire and made some noise in the division). As it is, I see a not-that-great-looking Yankees squad as eminently catchable. So I say, go Rays. In game-related news, nice Buchholz!

This thread is as good a place as any to deliver my rant; it does have something to do with run prevention (or the lack thereof). About a month ago, there were a number of posters here announcing the death of the 2010 Red Sox. Cooler heads said that it was too early to make any rash statements. The pessimists said, "Well, at what point of the season can we begin drawing real conclusions about whether this team sucks or not?" The answers clustered around a date of May 15. Well, we're there. And even though I'm a glass-half-full guy, it doesn't look pretty. The whole problem is run prevention, and it's got a lot more to do with pitching than defense, as Dipre has said. We're scoring runs -- not sure what our exact rank is, but I know we're among the MLB leaders in runs scored. We're getting guys across the plate. It's just that the other team is getting even more guys across the plate. It's really hard to believe that a staff of Lester/Beckett/Lackey/Buchholz/Matsuzaka/Wakefield can be this bad, but it is. (Well, the bullpen gets a lot of the blame, too, with 9 losses.) We were constructed to win lots of 3-1 and 2-0 games, but instead were losing 11-9 and 7-6 games. I don't have many ideas, and certainly none that haven't been heard before. But I need a little rant. So here are my non-stunning points: 1) I'm all for scrapping Farrell. I don't know that he's the problem; I just know that if you gave our pitching staff to the Cardinals, they'd never lose a game again. There's no way this many good pitchers should be doing this poorly. 2) If I hear anyone else saying, "We really need a big bopper in the middle of the lineup," I'm going to stuff my head into a paper shredder. 9 runs should be enough to win. 2nd in the AL in runs scored is more than acceptable. 3) I'm not without hope. All of our starters have shown flashes of brilliance. It's not impossible that they get all their crap together for a few trips around the rotation, giving us a nice 13-2 stretch. That would narrow the gap between us and the leaders quite nicely. 4) I'm not sold on catcher's ERA as a stat. But does anyone have any clue whether a switch to Martinez as our full-time catcher is part of the problem? Are we pitching any better with Tek behind the dish?

Really good Lester outing just turned meh in a hurry.

Here's an interesting tidbit. Our lineup is almost exactly the reverse of the Detroit lineup, position by position. Sox: SS 2B C 1B DH 3B RF LF CF Tigers: CF LF RF 1B DH 3B C 2B SS Now that's trivial.

Is Detroit even going to have a bullpen left for tomorrow's game?