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He's not an elite fielder either. His speed is decent... you think he's about as fast as Pedroia, maybe?

Thank you Adrian.

Certainly when he has a .200 OBP it would be. If he's hitting like he did from 2005-2010 against the Red Sox then he should be hitting often.

Time to bust out of this s*** adrian

They need to move that foul line indicator down the RF line.

How about a lineup moving forward of Lowrie, Pedroia, Gonzalez, Youkilis, Ortiz, Drew, Salty (Tek), Crawford, Ellsbury. I'd move Crawford and Ellsbury to the bottom and just see what they can do.

Does anyone else see a difference here? Beckett's pitches are near the plate. He regularly throws either strikes or things that look like strikes. Both Matsuzaka and Buchholz can take a lesson from that. I think Dice could use that approach to become a decent pitcher and Buchholz could be excellent. Having watched Buchholz for years now, I think there's just too much motion in his motion. It is pretty, but it needs to be simpler--more about just throwing the ball toward the plate.

Lowrie SS Pedroia 2B Gonzalez 1B Youkilis 3B Ortiz DH Cameron RF Varitek C McDonald LF Ellsbury CF Crawford will need to be hitting at a regular level before he should be hitting against lefties (or anyone for that matter). It is worth noting, however, that in a short interview/podcast I heard after last night's game, he sounded like a true professional. He didn't sound as down in the dumps as the rest of us because he knows he's an elite athlete and a damn good baseball player. I'm giving the guy some slack because he's goign to be here for awhile and he's got mad skills. Go Sox!

Okay folks, I don't start game threads (this might be my 2nd in 6 years), but times are desperate. This is the low-water mark. It is all going to be better from here... Some history mojo from the Optimism Thread: 2-10 seems to be the threshold. No team that I can find fell to 2-11 and made the playoffs. Let's home 2-10 is some metaphysical suck point that good teams ultimately respond to. I would put pitchers, lineups etc., here but it really doesn't matter. I think Beckett is pitching. It just doesn't matter. The bats need to break out. Beckett needs to carry the team on his well-paid shoulders. Go Sox... we still believe in you.

I totally agree. I don't think they could have done much with the pitching this year, with Beckett, Lackey, Matsuzaka, Buchholz and Lester all solidified moving forward. Lee wasn't coming here, so NOT signing Lackey last year and waiting for him wasn't going to work. What I hate is that everything just seems so f***ing hard for the Sox right now. They truly making hitting look like the "hardest single thing to do in sports", when most other teams are at least in a competitive battle with the pitcher. Meanwhile, the pitchers are not just unable to pitch effectively, they are consistently missing by feet. They are wasting pitches in the dirt, letting the opposition not even have to think about swinging. f*** I'm sick of it. The worst thing of all is that there isn't a single move on the horizon or any viable excuse to make. This team was selected by the experts to win the World Series or at least the division because they are the best team... on paper. I don't even want to watch this team anymore, but it is the baseball season and during the baseball season I watch the Red Sox... I don't know what I would do with myself otherwise. I bet others share that really agonizing feeling with me.

I liked signing VMart too, but it didn't happen. This team seemed to have a formula to predict how many wins their team would have, with a +/- of maybe 3-4 wins on either side. Year after year they were able to make reasonable guesses about where their team stood, what an addition of Player A or Player B would mean, and they could play that out over a few years. Sadly, they weren't concerned about whether VMart could produce, they were concerned about whether he could stay at catcher for the length of his contract and felt that they had numerous other reliable options that could do better. Right now, that type of calculation seems really petty and high-minded. At the time, it seemed like the type of ultra-fine refining that this FO was capable to do because they had team-construction down to a science. Currently, it is like there is an infection on this team. Or, it is like other teams have this team's "playbook" and have figured out how to pitch to Ellsbury, Crawford, Ortiz, Drew, and Youkilis like a football defense that knows what offensive play is coming. When this type of thing happens in the middle of the season we don't worry. Usually we have seen a few wins and believe that the team is better than they look on their worst day. Inexplicably, in this case, we haven't seen this team even win consecutive days, let alone have any decent winning-streak. They COULD be as bad as they look, because we don't know better. Statistics say they will ascend to the mean, but they might also just suck and throw every metric and previous way of thinking about teams into disarray. It totally sucks, but if it turns out that this team does NOT get better, then it will have been because of as-of-yet unknown reasons, not because the team didn't use the best available information to construct their team.

Few disagreed with the moves at the time. Whether you were on the scouting or sabermetric side, this team appeared primed to push 100 wins this year. If anything, some people were against Crawford because it seemed like an extravagance. If he had left a stone unturned then I think you would be right, but it just isn't going to happen. Plus, Francona would be the first person to go because, for better or worse, they're stuck with the players they have for a LONG time and Francona clearly isn't getting the best out of them.

I've seen Jacko on this board for a long, long time. His gloating has been worse, and right now he would be justified in 100% more gloating than he's doing. That's all I'm saying. Also, part of me feels like I need to be beaten up and dragged through the mud because the Sox are just so bad. Beat me! Spank me! Kick my ass!

I feel like Jacko has every right to say whatever he wants. This is worse than a team losing in the playoffs or getting spanked in a big late-season series. This team might seriously be eliminated from any reasonable chance at contention before the end of APRIL. Also, I see no actual remedy. It could be the greatest failure in the history of sports.

No it won't. Nobody could predict Crawford with a sub-.200 OBP at this stage. One coul dpredict that he wouldn't be worth the amount they paid him, but not his horrid start or the horrid start of the rest of the team.

It's as if someone cancelled summer.

They constantly put themselves in bad positions. Putting guys on, falling behind in counts, etc., and leaving themselves no margin for error.

If the front office thought the drop in ratings/interest was bad in 2010, they haven't seen anything yet. This team is going to fall off the face of the Earth if they are 10 games under five hundred in May. I've never seen anything like it.

He doesn't appear to be fearsome at all on offense. He doesn't hit the ball hard with any consistency at all. He also watches too many strike 3s. This offense is frustrating.

Really? That ball off the wall wasn't behind him, it was over him.

Nothing could be better for this club than two days off in a row. They needed a reset in the worst way and a two day break in baseball is like a two week vacation for the rest of us. Let's hope this lets them clear their heads and get back to playing the game that made so many of them all stars in the first place.