jacksonianmarch

Vlady dady. He looks so old

He leaves a lot of pitches up

Napoli belted that one

Penny settled down that inning. But he wasnt exactly facing the creme of the crop

it lasted an entire yr, whose to say it couldnt last longer. No rhyme or reason to it. He is wild in and out of the zone all game

Saunders, the magician

hmm, seems like we were on similar wavelengths

Saunders looks awful too. This might be a battle of the pens

Penny is missing up with everything. He got the outs, but he wont be able to last like that

why is Ellsbury trying to steal 3rd when he has Papi and Youks coming up? I understand the idea of getting to 3rd with less than 2 outs, but you have your 2 best RBI guys.

fyi, why is Baldelli hitting 5th and Bay 6th?

Also, Abreu is not the best offensive player of the bunch. He wasnt the best offensive OFer on his own team. Nady was. And Swisher's history prior to 2008 would suggest he could replace Abreu offensively as well.

Eh, missed that. I am trying to prove an equality argument. I didnt see that you advocated for such

Meh. Your points are all well and good. But what you refuse to consider, albeit with your rosy red glasses on, is that the significant dropoff in offensive performance was mainly due to the lack of quality replacements from a yr ago. Molina played 100 games last yr and put up a .576OPS. Even if Posada isnt up to his usual .850 or so OPS, he will automatically be better offensively. Now add in a full yr of Matsui, Nady, and Swisher while subtracting Abreu is an upgrade. Dont try to mask it. Take those glasses off ORS. Tex>Giambi. Upgrade. Cano of 09 should be better than the Cano of 08. ARod is on pace for late April. Even if he is only at a .900OPS range, he'll still be extremely useful. Lets take a look at something here. 1. Jeter vs Ellsbury--->Jeter all the way 2. Damon vs Pedroia--->Pedroia, albeit not as much as one would expect (.869 vs .836) 3. ARod vs Papi----> ARod 4. Tex vs Youkilis---> based on 08, push, based on career, Tex 5. Matsui vs Drew---> Drew, when he plays 6. Posada vs Bay--->Bay 7. Nady/Swisher vs Lowell---> I'd take our offensive duo vs the sox 3B 8. Cano vs Varitek---> Cano 9. Gardner vs Lowrie---> Push, both are technically in their first full yrs in the bigs Looks pretty even to me.

Not in every slot. The only significant time loss that you should expect to get back was 40 games by Papi and 40 games by Lowell. Drew played only 110 games last yr, but he might again repeat that due to his fragility and the fact that his back is still bothering him. And nobody can say for sure that either will return to pre-injury levels. Where, for NY, we lost a yr of Posada and 60 games from Matsui. And the replacements for both were a main cause of our drop in production. Even if we get a less powerful Matsui or Posada, both will be massively improved over our replacements. We also had probably the biggest non-injury poor performance in Cano, who is off to a big start. ARod is the only concern right now, and we'll see how strong he comes back. I'd say, we are due for a massive improvement from our 2008 levels. The sox have 2 older players coming back from injury in Papi and Lowell. But they also got career performances from Pedroia and Youkilis. You saw Ellsbury get exposed also, which from the leadoff spot wont help. They also got rid of Manny, who was a force and got Bay, who has been solid, but isnt in Manny's league. I'd still say the sox are right around 900 runs, but I think they are a bit lower than their levels from a yr ago. We also get a full yr from Nady, we added Swisher and Tex yet subtract Abreu and GIambi. I wouldnt say that that is a dropoff. Regardless, both teams have their questions. Both teams have older guys in big spots. Both teams have older players coming off injury seasons. And I would be surprised if there is more than 30 runs separating our teams offenses.

ORS, I think you could make the case for both a progression or a regression from every lineup slot in the sox lineup. So assuming that the sox would at least repeat 927 runs may be a bit premature

The sox are gonna have trouble tomorrow with Saunders, who is a quality lefty. But Beckett vs Moseley and then a run vs Oakland should get the sox back on track

Lets see which CC shows up. Going off his history, I should expect CC to be poor.

Kilo, you need some of these http://www.rehab-international.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/valium.jpg

I sense 0.1IP, 2 baserunners and another reliever getting out of the jam to keep Javy's ERA low

I have a thought about Ortiz, anyone concur? In 04-07, Ortiz would sit fastball but be able to adjust seamlessly to the breaking ball. Now, post wrist injury, it almost looks like he needs to cheat for the fastball (maybe due to a loss of batspeed) so much so that he cannot adjust to the breaking pitch.

when you just put it on a tee, I am obliged to take a hack at it. BTW, hey Angels, wanna put a real pitcher in the game?

I dont need your respect. I get results. Thats all I need