Beaneater

I wouldn't mind Manny in this spot...

Another Ellsbury-related question: how the heck is he drawing so many walks? His OBP is about 200 points higher than his BA. Getting walked every 5th at-bat? What the heck? I like the kid and all, but why are pitchers treating him like 2004 Barry Bonds?

Is it just me or have there been lots of throwing errors when Ellsbury's running the bases? Seems like every other time he's on (slight exaggeration) there's some sort of foul-up that gives him extra bases. Is he just making the opposing team nervous when he's on base? Does he have Jedi mind powers?

"D Ortiz reached on infield single to second, D Pedroia scored [from second]." Can someone who's watching the game explain a) how Ortiz gets an infield hit of any description and how Pedroia scores from second on it? And, by the way, Manny is good.

Maybe you really like catcher's interference?

We've hit for the cycle this inning... almost in order (2B, 1B, 3B, HR). That's clever. Edit: And got a BB and a HBP. All we need now is to take first on a dropped third strike.

He's thinking of the recent brouhaha with a fundamentalist Mormon compound elsewhere in TX*. I don't think they'll be at the ballgame, though, so probably we'll have very little opportunity to "rustle them up." * in other words, not in Arlington.

I've been thinking of one since lurking in last night's thread... Manny with dreads looks quite rasta His energy from whole-wheat pasta [Really? -Ed.] He changed the momentum On what Moose just sent 'im I've not seen a ball leave town fasta

Here's my brief summary of many of the comments on this thread: Various Talksoxers: We should shoot for A-Rod or Bonds or both. TW101: Yuck. Various Talksoxers: Well, TW101, would we or would we not be better with those guys? Let me throw in my $.02 on TW101's side. Call me naive or whatever you want, but I'm not solely interested in rooting for a winning team. In other words, "Would we or would we not be better with A-Rod/Bonds?" is not the only question I ask as a Red Sox fan, and maybe not even the most important question. I mean, one of the reasons I don't like the Yankees (aside from the fact that I'm legally obligated to dislike them as a Red Sox fan) is that they're a bunch of personality-challenged corporate suits. Look at what happened to Damon when he went there. No hair, no beard, and most importantly no fun. A (big) part of the joy of rooting for the Red Sox over the last few years has been the personalities on the team. I hardly need to give you guys any examples. My current favorite is Pedroia, a guy who is very easy to root for thanks to his permanent underdog status and tell-it-like-it-is approach to the media (the outstanding play on the field doesn't hurt either). Now I'm not saying that adding A-Rod and Bonds automatically turns the Red Sox into a bunch of jerks. None of us knows what would happen. But I am saying that as a fan I'm not solely interested in winning. I understand that for the front office, it's a business and so they have to construct teams that will win. Fine. But if as fans all we want is a winning team, we'd have all been buying Yankees hats in the lates 90's. Don't get me wrong: I like winning. But it's not the only factor. To conclude with a ridiculous hypothetical situation: let's say the Sox get Bonds, Milton Bradley, A.J. Pierzsinksisnkinkski, and every other known jerk in MLB. Then they win the 2008 World Series. I'm not going to be celebrating; I'll be saying, "Look, a bunch of tools wearing Red Sox uniforms just won the World Series."

I wanted to use my first post in about 23 years to point something out: only the Sox are keeping whoever made these odds from looking like total blithering idiots. Yanks ranked higher than Guardians... Guardians win. Cubs ranked higher than D-Backs... D-backs win. Phillies ranked higher than Rockies... Rockies win. D-Backs ranked higher than Rockies... Rockies win. You could do better flipping a coin.

Just finishing what he started in Game 1, where anything a Yankees pitcher threw got called a strike. Sigh.

Anyone else see Wasdin's line last night in the Rangers-Angels game? 8.0 IP, 5 H, 1 ER. Yes, I know that it's just a single data point, but I remember when he was giving up taters out of the pen for us, someone looked at his stats and made the cogent remark that he's a starting pitcher, not a reliever. Looks like he had a pretty good start last night. Any chance we could trade for him?

And we end up with the worst of both worlds. Not only did we not win, but our other relievers (minus Myers and [sort of] Timlin) stunk it up so bad that this will be chalked up as a 'bullpen loss', not an 'Embree loss'. Man, our bullpen... when they're on, they're on, but when they're not, oh my it is a dreadful thing to see.

The beautiful thing about Millar's HR (other than the HR itself) is that it assures that Ortiz will bat in the 9th. The Angels are probably still having flashbacks from last year...

Yeah, now we're forced to have yet another come from behind victory. Those are getting soooo boring .

Teams should absolutely not pitch to Ortiz with the game on the line. If he comes up with a chance to win it, just walk him or hit him. Good gracious that guy is ridiculous. EDIT: And Foulke gets the win...