a700hitter

Why are you attacking me. What a dick!!

Small sample size, but he is hitting .080 against lefties this season.

He's going with the righty bats against the southpaw. Supposedly Lillibridge hits lefties pretty well, but his numbers this year against lefties are horrendous.

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. I hand over the wallet.

I am going by what I observed since Spring Training and his own words throughout that time. I didn't say that I observed what he did in AAA although I have seen some highlights of him hitting batters. All I am saying is that you don't shake the mental part of things that easily. If this was purely an arm slot issue, he'd be fixed already. I don't claim to know whether he is broken permanently at this point, but I don't think it is absurd to opine that the kid's head is probably mush right now. Not at all. Is he permanently broken? Only time will tell, but he wouldn't be the first to be beaten by the mental side of the game. You make me laugh, because you posit all sorts of theories about behind the scenes negotiations and player moves and the motivations of management etc. That's something you can't even observe, but you call this crazy armchair psychologist stuff. Get a grip. It's just opinion based on observation. SBF is the first one to happily admit he is wrong about this stuff, so there is no need to denigrate his opinion.

You are like an excuse spinning machine. I love this team. These guys have ruined my spring and the summer is not looking promising. I'm not buying any of the excuses. It's not the umps, bitch hits or bad luck. They are just not very good right now. Can they improve? Yes, but I am skeptical that the will be above average in the second half.

^ This was the opinion of a lot of people as the team came north after Spring Training. It's playing out in real time, but many are making excuses or looking for silver linings or whatever. CC and Ells coming back doesn't matter. They can't pitch. Bailey doesn't matter. He's not a starter. The deficiencies in the rotation were there for all to see. Now, people are reduced to hoping that Franklin Morales will step up and be the answer when people wanted to cut him from the pen about a month ago. Hey, I am hoping for the same thing. I am sharing in the delusion. People are saying things like "crazier things have happened." These are the actions of fans of losing teams. We need to wake up. Unless we acquire some quality starting pitching that is good enough that it will cause me to lose my payroll bet with SFF, the BoSox are going nowhere. BTW, the second wild card might as well be nowhere. We don't have the pitching to compete in the post season. We cannot even win games in our own division.

I'd get banned from Yankee boards within 24 hours.

I bask in their adorationess resulting from my servitude to them.

I had no idea that this would turn into a kamikaze mission.

I apologize for subjectifying anyone to my inconsiderableness.

And if Dice K craps on himself tonight, there will be no more Ted mojo for some time. It is a desperation play.

As reigning self-appointed king, I am within my rights to politify and offensify anything and anyone.

It's time for Dice K to step up and get in the win column.

I tried my best.:dunno:

I haven't done one this season. I think we need a change of pace.

Only the Twins and Royals have worse pitching than the BoSox. It's time to wake up. We are coming up on the All Star Break. Ellsbury and CC coming back and WMB playing everyday is not going to help the pitching. A couple of bullpen guys are not going to help our starters-- who just flat out suck as a staff. No excuses. It's not bad luck. It's not the umps. It's not bitch hits. Except for Buchholz's case of the bloody shits and a few missed starts by Princess and the Pea Beckett, they have not had any bad injuries. They got back the Japanese Treasure. They just stink. Period. Will they end up stinking? I don't know, but it will be hard for their pitching to crawl into the top half, and that is where they will need to be if they want to have a chance at the Post Season.

A liberal Democrat President getting booed at a fundraiser in Boston. Hmmm? I'm not going to make this political, but it reminds me of the time another liberal Democrat President got booed at a synagogue in Queens, NY. His name Jimmy Carter. A friend of mine from Queens, and a big Democrat supporter, told me that is when he first realized how much trouble Carter was in. This is a different situation, because the Pres was breaking balls on local sports fans, but it does remind me of that Carter incident.

YOTN, you are one of my favorite members on TalkSox, but you are overstating things. You don't have to be an expert in psychology to read a player's body language or to figure out that a pitcher can't handle late inning pressure. Other players and coaches can read these cues at every level of ball. SBF is not saying that he has the cure for Bard, but he is saying that in his experience, that Bard looks like his head is messed up. Performing at this level takes a high degree of confidence and focus. Yogi used to say that 90 percent of the game is half mental. Did you ever see Calvin Schiraldi sweating after his first warm up like Patrick Ewing on the Foul Line in a playoff game? He'd have that "deer in the headlights" look and you just knew he had some squirrels running around in his head. By all accounts, Bard is healthy, but he can't throw strikes anymore. Is it a mechanical issue? Yes, that is probably a large component. Is there a mental component to his problems, I would say that is a good bet also. A mechanical flaw doesn't explain the way he would unravel when dealing with base runners. The guy would absolutely have brain cramps in that situation. When I watched him in spring training, I posted that he was having trouble maintaining focus from inning to inning. That was my observation from his performance and body language. I didn't need a degree to see that. Shortly after I made my observation, Bard acknowledged the issue himself. He was letting innings get away from him turning good outings into lousy ones. He acknowledged that the focus of a starter was different than a reliever. In these cases a guy can straighten out by making a mechanical adjustment that boosts his confidence. It is rarely just the mechanical adjustment that turns a guy around. A lot of times a coach suggests minor mechanical adjustments to a player just to break him out of his funk. Sometimes a guy is thinking too much about mechanics and it is hurting his performance. Another Yogi-ism-- you can't hit and think at the same time. Sometimes a coach tries to get the guy to clear his head completely. I agree with Fred. There is definitely a mental component to Bard's problem. If this was just about arm slot, it would be fixed already. I don't know if you remember Don Sutton. He's in the Hall of Fame and he had such severe issues with the mental part of the game that he underwent hypnosis and he was given a post hypnotic suggestion to use to calm himself on the mound. Hopefully, Bard can straighten himself out, but if he doesn't he wouldn't be the first one to be beaten by the mental side of the game. There have been a lot of guys whose career succumbed to the mental side of the game.