a700hitter

Breaking balls from right handers might be the reason he is a career minor leaguer

It'll take 3 hits to score VMart.

Maybe because he thought a tired Buccholz was better than a 7th inning option of Ramirez, Schoenweiss or MDC

Vmart may be the slowest guy on the team.

He pitched well, but the wheels fell off in the 7th.

Can we blame him for the error?

Hmm.... 2 hits in 6 innings? Maybe Ortiz wasn't everything wrong with our offense.

I was at a game when CJ was the closer when Ortiz hit a 3-run walk-off HR in the 9th inning.

I think Buccholz is out of options, so they can't send him to the minors. They'll have to cut a bullpen guy. Hopefully, they'll cut Schoenweiss.

The Brewers beat Pittsburgh today 20-0. Even George Kottaras went deep.

.and many times when I sat on the pitch and the location I over swung and just missed it and made an out. Sure, all hitter do it, but many of the greatest of all time talk about reacting to the pitch out of the pitchers hand. That's a different kind of cat. Most guys can't do that. When Ortiz is locked in, it is clear that he is not guessing because he'll be on the breaking stuff every bit as much as the fastball. He'll do that through long ABs and throughout several games. No one can guess right that many times. Yes, there will be times when he will look for a certain pitch in a certain count, everyone does that, but he's guessing from the first pitch right now and he's jumping out all the time. I also think that his stance is too straight up and down right now. When he was hitting, my recollection is that his back leg was bent much more keeping him back on pitches. Also. he generated a lot of power from his weight s***. Maybe his knees are shot. That could be the problem. Dipre, what do you think about his stance?

BAseball and softball. Just stopped playing last year at age 50.

Based on that his bat speed is still there. His bat comes through the zone faster than anyone on the team except for Youkilis and Petey. You don't see it on TV. It's one of those things that you see when you are up close in person. After seeing him last year in May, I went on these boards and said the same thing. I also predicted that he would come close to 30 HRs and 100 RBI, and he did. His bat speed is fine. His timing is all out of sync. His head is messed up. He's jumping at breaking pitches and waiting too long on fast balls. When he clears his head and starts reacting to the ball again instead of guessing, he will still drive the ball. He will not have the power that he used to, because he has lost some distance since the wrist injury.

Big Papi is not done. He will be the biggest force in the lineup before the season is done, unless the FO releases him while in panic mode.

But it helps them tread water until they turn things around.

... and good teams usually win more of those gift/fluke games than they give away.

Schilling no-hit them for 8 2/3 innings with his shoulder hanging by a thread and barely hitting 90 on the gun.

ANd we gave away Friday night's game in several ways and saturday's game was gift wrapped for Tampa as well.

Gee, That's too bad... not!

Go McDonald!!!