jacksonianmarch

Mr. Hyde is back

Burnett is starting to look good again. Molina navigated him through his mental spitup

Damon and Tex have been crappy so far through 1.5 games in the postseason. We need something big here

then a great defensive play to save his ass. Molina needs to reel AJ in.

we are taking some pitches. To be at 46 pitches through 3 while only allowing 1 baserunner is patience. We'll score this time through and will likely be into the pen by the 6th

Slidepiece looks nice tonight. Should have used it vs Cuddyer.

Of course anything can happen. But if you lose this one, you get Kazmir and Saunders in Boston vs Buchholz and DiceK. I think Anaheim should take one of them IMO.

Burnett looks good thus far. He wanted no part of Mauer

you didnt read the post, did you. Of course not.

Montero is back at Instructs and sounds like he hasnt missed a beat. 2 games, 2 homers. In a recent chat, one of the writers from BA (I believe it was Callis) noted that Montero was on track for MILB POY until he got hurt.

I was reading this and got a chuckle at work. Then I looked up Molina's battery mates. Pettitte 7 Burnett 12 Sabathia 10 Chamberlain 5 Hughes 2 Mitre 5 Gaudin 2 Just look at that for a second before you continue your idiocy. You figure the #1-5 starters would get one turn every 5 days. That means, that you should expect 20% of all your starts to be with each pitcher. Well, there is a disproportionate amount of good pitchers in his overall catching numbers. 22 of his 43 games were started by our top 2, that's over half. Then you need to consider that those numbers would be skewed in the other direction for Posada, meaning that he has less than 20% with Sabathia and less than 20% with Burnett. So, if you catch better pitchers at a greater frequency, your CERA will be lower. Also, you also dont see CMW on this list anywhere, a guy who absolutely blew up the ERA radar with his 3 starts in April. AND, Molina only caught one game from Joba after he started getting tinkered with. That being said, there is a large enough sample size from Molina to make a conclusion on both Burnett and Sabathia. The CERA from Burnett would show that he does better with Molina than Posada. And after watching Burnett essentially throw Posada under the bus in Boston, I think that is warranted. While the CERA with Sabathia is actually less with Posada than it is with Molina, it is significantly more with Burnett. So, overall, your point is flawed when trying to compare catchers on the whole as per usual. But isolated to Burnett, your point is correct

Morneau being out hurts their offense, but even if Morneau were there, it wouldnt matter IMO. The story of this series will always be the twins pitching vs the yankee hitters. Barring just absolute s*** luck, you cannot reasonably think that a pitching staff of mediocre contact pitchers will reliably shut down this team 3 games out of 5. And on our side, we have 2 power pitchers anchoring the series and the third guy has actually been striking people out at a career high rate of late. So, we have the entire table stacked in our favor. The only way we lose this series is s*** luck.

This is an absolutely pivotal game for the sox. If the sox win this, then I think they have a chance. If the sox lose this, I have a very hard time believing they can win the series with the pitching matchups over the next two games, then a potential rematch in SoCal with Lackey.

There are two things to consider with Beckett. The absolute #1 is his health. If he has been hurting this past month or so, then it throws all past performance out the window because he isnt 100%. The second is how he limped into the post-season. If it wasnt due to injury, then why was Beckett so damn miserable since August 18th? Look at the numbers. 55.1IP 66H 37ER 13BB 54K. The power was there, the lack of walks was there, but the ERA of 6.02, the WHIP of 1.43, and the H/9 of 10.7 are all alarming. Now, a lot of people harp on him "stepping it up" in the playoffs. We'll see. He obviously has the potential to be an ace and has shown lock down stuff in 2 prior post seasons. But we will have to see which Beckett comes out tonight. I would say that blanket faith in him without looking at his most recent record coming into the playoffs and the possibility of an injury is foolish. Then again, he could just stick it up their asses tonight and toss a 2 hit shutout. All that can be said right now is that a potentially hobbled and recently slumping Josh Beckett is getting the ball in the most important game for the red sox in 2009 to date. We'll see how he responds

Duensing- 90,91,90,92,91,89,91,92,93 - Avg FB 91mph Liriano- 92.5mph AVG. Its a difference and I would assume that Gardenhire thought Duensing was tiring. Which, if you go by velocity from innings prior, he was

mlb.com

91,93,93,92,93,92 were the 6 FBs he threw in the 6th. So, you are wrong again

there must be something in the SR on Cabrera not hitting fastballs, cause he hasnt thrown the curve once

CC wasnt the best he could be, but boy was he good. Time for Hughes and Mo to show what they have. CLOSE IT OUT YANKEES!!

Liriano's FB has been right around 93 this game. Duensing has been right around 90 Edit: He was around 92 for most of the game, but in the 5th, he was right around 90. he was clearly tiring

CC is having trouble with the changeup right now. Might be time for a change here Joe.

Crabtree is gonna be ridiculous

He brought in Liriano IMO because of the hard fastball from the left. It didnt work out. I bet he would have gone to Liriano anyway if he walked ARod. He felt that Liriano vs Matsui at that juncture was better than Duensing vs Matsui. He was wrong as far as we could tell.

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