seabeachfred

When you say that Ellsbury it makes me wonder how much baseball you played, and no doubt that you never coached the sport and watched players perform. I think that's a given, but here's some insight. There are players who you can tell that relish the thought of going up to the plate when things are in crisis mode; they live for that. There are others who alter their swings, get nervous, and lose concentration because of those things. And they cannot perform because of the pressure. Some improve in that category with experience and increased confidence----and there are those whose problem in that field will only continue and get worse. I'd suggest you go talk to a high school or community college coach and ask him that. It will be you who will learn something.

We'll find out tonight......maybe he will revert to his old ways when he faces his old friends in Red and Lester goes out there and pitches a shutout or comes close.

Our second 1-0 win in a week. Well, I'll take it and while I'm at it, kudos to De La Rosa. I don't care how good or bad the Twins are. They have given some teams trouble this year and we can't be too particular who we get our "W's" from. One point I want to keep harping on. Notice the box score. The top five in the order did NOT hit in sync tonight and they must if we want to put up enough tallies tomorrow to beat Hughes and give Lester another win. Well we have started a new winning streak; let's see if we can expand it tomorrow and go on a good 20 game run. That's the only way we can move up the chart. Drew crappy running but he got two more hits. We will need hitting from him and that's good news.

He contracted cancer of the mouth a few years back. It was most likely from chewing tobacco, and if you saw pictures of him you could see the scars from where he had two serious operations. No matter what took him it is still a miserably sad day for baseball and for the world of good guys. Never heard a negative word about this man who grew up in Long Beach and was a two sports star at San Diego State and who turned out to be the best hitter in the last 50 years. Good team player, great person, and classy gentleman all the way. I know I will miss the guy.

The Twinkies come to town for a three game series with Kevin Correia taking the hill for the Minnesotans and Rubby De La Rosa for us. It was in the Twin Cities that we lost two of three to them a couple of weeks back and wound up going into another tailspin. Personally we need a sweep in this series after our disappointing showing this past weekend against the Guardians. Can we do it? Yes we can because we have shown we can sweep series as we did in Atlanta and at Fenway when we took care of the Rays. Personally the players must not point fingers and all take a good look in the mirror and ask themselves are really this bad a team. They are not!!!! However, two and a half months have gone by and we're still spinning our wheels when a good winning streak can help us jump two places in the standings and make a potential run at the Blue Jays. Tonight De La Rosa must get off to a solid start and not give up early runs since we've had trouble scoring early. For their part the hitters have to start doing their jobs and, let's face it, Pedroia, Ortiz, Napoli and Bogaerts have to start hitting in sync because it all starts with them. Brock Holt has been a pleasant find and I and others wouldn't complaining about Bradley and others if the guys we depend on start hitting like we know they could. Time to start winning again.:D:D:D:

Well we are seven games under 500, in fourth place and nine games back in the standings. I think it is ample reason for a lot of us to complain. As for complaining about being three out in April you would have been better served acknowledging that some of us here saw some very troublesome things two months ago and cautioned that this might mean there was going to be a tough go. 700, iortiz, Sox Sport, yours truly and a few others saw those things back then. We didn't predict a disaster as we're seeing now but we saw things that just didn't look right. Perhaps you might have seen something too.

NB, we have a few of our friends around here who simply have a lot of trouble accepting inconvenient truths....like Bradley's lack of hitting. It is not as if any of us are wishing him harm, but do I believe those people or what I see with my own eyes. Simply, Bradley cannot hit a low curve down in the zone, and he cannot get around on a good fastball. Now how the hell are you going to overcome that when pitchers know that and know that you will fish for the low ones and haven't the bat speed to catch up with the heat. Believe me when I tell you this, I want Jackie to be a complete success for us, but I see what I've been seeing since early last year, and I am reminded of something Ted Williams once said in a moment of pique at some writer or team official....to wit, NEVER SHRINK FROM LOOKING A BALD FACT IN THE FACE NO MATTER HOW UNCOMFORTABLE IT MAY BE. Watching Jackie hit makes me very uncomfortable.

You forgot hitting with RISP------you conveniently left that out. The future???? Maybe it would be wise if the Red Sox brass wouldn't over-hype their prospects anymore and simply go the way of cautious optimism, OR HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN DELCARMEN, LARS ANDERSON, JOSH REDDICK, STOLY PIMENTAL, RYAN KALISH, JOSH BARD?????? Do those names ring any bells? We do have some good prospects but I think it is best for the front office not to overhype them. I think Garin Cecchini, Blake Swihart, Henry Owens, Anthony Renaudo, Mookie Betts, Christian Vasquez are all potential stalwarts for us, and I still believe Bogaerts will emerge into one of the best players in the league. I also take issue with the one you say might be accurate. I'm one of the few here who still thinks Will Middlebrooks has the goods to be a solid player for us if he can stay healthy for a change and get his timing down. We are nearly denuded of power in our system and we need a few fence busters. It is why the team drafted hitters in the recent FA draft. As for Bradley I see enough holes in his swing and approach at the plate to believe that unless he has a major improvement he is going to have a rough time hitting in the Majors. No matter how much we love his defense, if he can't hit 270 and steal about 30 bases he is not going to be that much help UNLESS we have a good half-dozen players smoking the ball to take some pressure off of him. Right now with the team hitting s*****, he is more a liability in the lineup than an asset. 206 just isn't going to cut it. Hear that WRS, Spud and mvp? I would like to know why you disagree with what I just said besides just trying to be disagreeable. How much of what I said isn't the truth?

They're struggling because of the fact that many of the players counted on have gone in reverse. It is not all Bradley's fault, but if you read my post carefully you would have noticed that I was talking about the future----andto me the future did NOT include Bradley. Read that post again!!!!!!! My point was that since he cannot hit a breaking pitch and can't get around on a ML fastball his future with us is mirky indeed. He was overhyped and in my opinion isn't a legitimate prospect for stardom. As for the other people you mentioned who deserved blame and accused me of not mentioning, did you see the term "some of the detritus on this team h as been hosed away"????? Who the hell do you think I was talking about? I don't mind being criticized and disagreed with but from now on read the f***ing posts carefully before running off at the mouth. It was all said in my original post. WTF!!!!!!!!!

Believe it---some players thrive in tough situations, others seem to slink away and fail repeatedly. Sometimes good players just have bad years in that regard when in other seasons they do well under the same circumstances. You said it all, though. Some players thrive in the spotlight----hate to say it but Reggie Jackson stands out in that regard. Some simply do not like the spotlight and their play shows it. You can develop, get experience and grow out of it but if you look at baseball history the last five or six decades you see some players made a career of being tough when things were criticial and others who simply melted from the tension.

SSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHH Ted---you're liable to make someone on this board feel very bad. She doesn't like to hear uncomfortable truths.

If Farrell did that then kudos to him. About time he laid it on the line to the big baby. Of course, how can you be ready Station to return to the Red Sox when you get torched for two home runs in a rehab assignment. Let little Clay stay down there until he shows he can get batters out.

That's your opinion lady, but putting Breslow in that situation was dumb in my opinion. We had better candidates to hold a one run lead with three innings to do. For your edification, which is badly in need of an education, Breslow hasn't pitched worth s*** since he threw the ball into the stands last October in the second game of the WS. So IMO Farrell made a managerial blunder with his choice of pitchers is such a situation as they faced yesterday. And what happened yesterday was NOT moot. If you had gotten your head out of your dress you would know what happened yesterday and today has been symptomatic of the team all season. We lose close games on the road, we lose close games at home.....look it up. As for Drew, tell me what is our record when he is in the starting lineup??? Is it 1-4 or maybe 0-5? He is the Manchurian Candidate for the simple reason that he was inserted into the lineup where we didn't need him. We needed a CF who could hit and a corner outfielder with some power. All Drew's signing did was move Bogaerts out of a spot where he will most likely have to be put back at either late this year or next. Drews signing did nothing but jumble our whole team just after we had won seven games in a row. Remember? Please, do yourself a favor and be up to date with what's going on before coming out and getting your sorry ass in a tizzy. Again, do yourself a favor and put me on ignore. You're tired or hearing me? Well, guess what...I'm tired of hearing your meely mouthed and sorry ass comments.

Speak for yourself lady. As I told you before, put me on ignore and save yourself what ever suffering you're going through. Either that or you're a glutten for punishment by reading stuff that upsets you. Nothing I said was false.....again, you have a miserable lack of ability to come to grips with uncomfortable truths but you are going to have to come out of your dream world and simply accept truths you refuse to acknowledge. Have you read the game threads the last two days? You would have noticed that there are a lot of us coming out with terse and frustrating comments. Again, let me suggest that if you don't like my truthful retorts just put me on ignore or just shut up.

How can I answer that Ted without flying off the handle Ted? I can't because this team is made up of a bunch of choke bastards----one rookie who couldn't hit with runners on base to save his sorry ass, the other who couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat. We have our sparkplug who has had more check swing outs and ground outs to the SS than Carter has pills, our Big Papi will hit a homer or a double but the consistency is not there, and our cleanup hitter now seems to be worrying more about his OBA than his RBI's----and all of you out there know how I love RBI's. That tells me a batter can hit with runners in scoring position. No quantifying that.....you either do it or you don't---and most of our aggregation don't. The sign of a good team is to win the close games at home; a great one wins the close ones on the road as well. An average team tends to lose most one run games on the road, and a totally uninspired, lazy and gutless team loses those kinds of games at home. You can guess where I put our team in this pantheon of ball clubs.

Love your upbeat outlook Beek, but it is NOT coming together any time soon. That means wait until 2017 or 2018 when some of the detritus on this team has been hosed away and some of the better young players not named Bradley are in there and getting us deep into the post-season. Not this year though.....no way this year.

Farrelfrancona didn"t want to lose him so he gave him a chance to throw a game away. Mission accomplished. Come to think of it, Terry has pretty much outmanaged Johnny boy in the games they've gone head to head with.

What you say about Clay is very true, no argument there. What you fail to say though is that most of the players on this year's team have also not be accountable for their miserable failures. They keep flying left and right with the excuses and now we see rookies Bogaerts, one of the worst hitters in baseball this year with RISP, and Bradley, still mired at around 205, telling all who will listen that success for them is just around the corner.....as soon as the weather heats up or when they learn the pitchers. This started in ST and now the chickens have come home to roost. Yesterday and today were two of the worst choke jobs by this miserable 2014 version of this team.

That is good news and it will be nice to see these guys along with Cecchini performing for us in the near future. Some of the current choke bastards that we have are making me sick to my stomach.

Earlier in the season I called Bogaerts a choker and some people got their panties all twisted and raised hell. I repeat it. Bogaerts is on s***** hitter in the clutch. He left four more runners on base today. Still, we have no choice but to keep him hitting second. At least he might get some hits with no runners on or draw a walk. Put him back to sixth and he would be a disaster. He has to grow out of those choking moments with the runners on base.

Last night's win was good, tonight's win was better-----now can Peavy finally start earning his damn money and go out there and pitch us a winning game tomorrow. Face it, he hasn't been very sharp the last half-dozen times out and I don't want to run the risk of splitting this series. Get that third win tomorrow against the Guardians as they did to us in Cleveland over a week ago. It does look like the offense might be coming out of its deep freeze and wouldn't that be nice.

Now if we can just start winning more than one game in a row there would be a lot of happy smiles around this board. Tonight was nice; tomorrow would be better. And Nava may be back.

You mean CRapuano, don't you?

I don't know how many of you were watching the game on ESPN but if you were and were paying attention you could have picked up a world of solid pitching info from Rick Sutcliffe. As in the first game of the Atlanta series when he pretty much stripped Buchholz down and said pretty much what was wrong with the guy that apparently our coaching staff missed or ignored, tonight he was pretty much hinting that De La Rosa was not mixing his pitches well, was giving his pitches away, and was getting behind the batters and could be easily read. In short he was hinting something people in LA saw in 2010. He might simply not be too swift in the grey matter. The guy does have stuff, that is obvious but he has to learn to harness it better. Of course, where the hell has our offense gone? We've look pretty ragged with the bats in our hands of late. WTF gives?

Now you're seeing what I saw on TV out here in LA when De La Rosa pitched for the Bums in 2010......Walking batters bad enough but getting absolutely scalded with booming extra base hits. Could be that game against the Rays was a mirage but between this inning and his lousy performance against the Tigers it looks like the same human pin ball machine has returned. Very bad news. And we haven't scored too many runs of late and we have Bradley in the lineup. Well we can always call up Andres Torres and he can save our bacon.