a700hitter

I agree with everything in your post on the prior play by Hanley. I was referring to the one good play Hanley made after that. There were no mistakes on that. Altuve was just too fast and read the play so well.

Our pitching stubbornly clinging to the worst ERA in the league. Hey Ben, it's the pitching, stupid! Get us some pitchers that can give us some consistency and give us a chance to win.

Hanley caught one off the wall before it hit the ground and Altuve was still fast enough to score from first base.

Lackey's ERA in 2013 was .80 better than Porcello.

Hanley plays everything like it is a hand grenade.

Joba DFA'd by the Tigers today.

I was looking forward to seeing Springer.

I assumed that you were talking about Porcello, because that is who we have been discussing. I am not sure that your abstract statement has any practical correlation. Anyway, try to stay on topic, Bells. Focus.

I find it interesting that people argue that Porcello's mechanics have been tinkered with by Red Sox coaches. What is the point of that argument... That he isn't having a rotten season, that his contract is really a good value? Imo, whether he changed his approach and what might have influenced that decision is meaningless. He obviously needs to make adjustments or he will find himself out of the rotation. Blaming others for his failure is just emblematic of how society fails to hold people accountable for their own failures. I guess some people view Porcello and Ben as victims? Absurd...right.

They will need to build a starting rotation, sooner or later or this will continue to be a 4th or last place team going forward into 2016.

This is where stats go off the rails when they get tortured like this. First of all, Porcello's regression/reversion would likely bring him to a 4.25 ERA which is clearly a #4 or 5-- that is what he has been for almost 6 seasons. That is the best gauge of what he is, not some tortured application of a statiscal average. Seriously, Bells you are reaching with this.

if Porcello starts keeping the ball in the park and gets his sinker back, he will revert (regress) to being a 4 ERA starter who will throw 200 innings a year. That is very useful for a #4 or 5, but not worth $82 million over 4 years. It just isn't. Fourth and fifth starters move from team to team pretty regularly from year to year without a big financial commitment. Ben outsmarted himself on this deal.

Seventh inning up by seven runs it is probably time to get Hanley 's glove out of the game.

An ugly win is always better than a loss, but these teams are embarrassing themselves.

This guy Delabar may be cut out to be a Red Sox starter. I' m thinking 3 years $24 million.

Lol!

Catering and event decoration don't count.

7 and counting

Ben, it's the pitching, stupid!

Was this Boyd's MLB debut?

With that attitude, you will never get a job working for Belichick.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2015/07/cardinals-fire-scouting-director-for-role-in-astros-breach.html We should hire the guy. The Cards always produce good pitchers and trade away the ones that don't make it at the top of their value. Our scouting department sucks at selecting and developing pitchers.

It's pure BS the story that the coaching staff tinkered with Porcello. It makes no difference to me one way or another. Some people think this helps exonerate Ben for his impulsive and very poorly conceived idea to extend the guy for big bucks with the expectation that he would be stepping up his game to become a top of the rotation pitcher. Far from exonerrating Ben, if true, it just adds another reason to fire Farrell. If Porcello straightens himself out and lowers his ERA by 2 runs, he is still a 4 ERA bottom of the rotation starter not worth $82.5 million.

I was hoping that you would start the thread. If we crash and burn tonight, one of us grabs the GT tomorrow.

We only know that the Jays got him and we did not. Everything else is speculation, excuses and BS, none of which mean anything to me. I was council to the ERISA Committee responsible for overseeing a large pension plan. We got quarterly reports from the investment managers. The investment managers performing in the top quartile, just told us that. Those in the bottom two quartiles had such hard luck stories -- no one expected this sector to tank or that sector to tank, or the fed raised interest rates, or the bonds were downgraded etc. etc. They were given a three year period to prove themselves and then as fiduciaries the committee had to tell them to stuff all of their hard luck stories and move on. Sorry, but to me all that matters is performance. Process matters, but we wouldn't even bother to review their process if their performance was rock bottom. We reviewed the process of the successful investment managers to see if their good performance would be sustainable as opposed to getting lucky throwing darts at a dart board. That's where I come from-- if your performance stinks, I am not interested in your excuses. If your performance is good, I still may find things wrong with your operation. That is how a fiduciary behaves.