Jayhawk Bill

Yeah...with Hansen already spent and down by two, we'll be needing some awesome. Owww...hate speech:thumbdown

AAAAAAaaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!!!!!!!!

If a "gapper" is a fist into the gap between the umpire's two front teeth, well, yes, I am ready.

Remdawg has proclaimed, "Red Sox are gonna score."

Ellsbury 2-4, not 3-4. Official scorer is retarded, ignorant or a homer. Stolen base Ellsbury!!!

Ellsbury 3-4.

I hope to live long enough to present Ellsbury a printout of this post at his HOF induction around 2033 or so.

Cheez, Manny, your job is to drive in RISP with two outs in one-run games.

Awwww, c'mon... the only month both Tek and Papi were clicking was May. Boston scored 154 runs--certainly a very good total--but the team scored 136 runs in March/April and 138 runs in June, too. This lineup isn't pretty bad, it's very good. Runs don't come every inning, and the Rays' best pitchers are facing us...patience.

Ellsbury on third. Clear!!! (jolt)

Why does Cora always seem to play when Wakefield pitches?

ksushi, I disagree, and I see this as a short-term issue driven by bad BABIP in late June. Still, Joe Sheehan of BP wrote a major article today suggesting that the decline is a result of MLB pitchers' decision to throw strikes to Ellsbury instead of treating him as a hitter capable of putting a ball over the fence, and, while Sheehan is both a dickhead and a Yankees fan, he is BP's best writer. Your ideas are supported by guys who write about this stuff for a living: you may be right or wrong, but if one takes into account the context from which you write, one should never consider you a jackass for having written these words.

The first pitch today has not yet been thrown, and, while it's nice that Wakefield is pitching, the Boston Red Sox are one of the greatest teams in the history of baseball and they're having another great year. I say that there's a really good chance that we'll win.

Well, yeah, sure--Don Zimmer did. So did Jeff Nelson, though. So did Karim Garcia. Yankees players get angry at staff members of OTHER TEAMS and beat them up badly enough TO HAVE TO GO TO COURT FOR ASSAULT AND BATTERY and the Yankees don't care. They kept both players on the roster for the World Series after they beat up Paul Williams, a Special-Ed teacher and part-time groundskeeper, in the bullpen during the 2003 ALCS because he was cheering for the Red Sox. If you will notice, no charges are pending against Manny. This puts him in a different class than Nelson and Garcia, who had to cut a plea deal and perform community service to avoid potential prison time for their assault on Williams--but the Yankees still chose to keep Nelson and Garcia on their roster. Your point is disproven. Were you being ignorant or disingenuous? And quit dissing my fellow Red Sox fans on a Red Sox forum.

Four days later, Tito is at -4.6 D3. One day later, Tito is at -5.1 D3. Boston's pitchers and hitters did as well as the Rays' last night, but Boston took a full loss, not a half loss. Boston as a team is doing over five wins less well than one would expect given its players' actual performances--and that doesn't count the missing contributions of Big Papi and Schill, among others. Here are the current worst teams in MLB by D3: [table]Team | W | L | D3 Blue Jays | 41 | 44 | -6.9 Rockies | 33 | 51 | -5.8 Red Sox | 50 | 36 | -5.1 Braves | 40 | 44 | -4.9 Mariners | 32 | 51 | -3.7[/table] The Blue Jays already fired their manager, as did the Mariners, and the new Jays manager, Cito Gaston, is only responsible for a small part of the MLB-leading D3. Jim Riggleman is posting an above-average D3 in his few games thus far. Bobby Cox of the Braves, once a great manager, is now 67 years old, and he may be fading. The other two lagging teams are managed by Clint Hurdle and Terry Francona, mentioned earlier in this thread as two of the worst managers in the history of MLB per Jaffe's work. Hurdle, Francona, and Cox stand out as the three worst 2008 MLB managers by the D3 metric. The current best teams by D3: [table]Team | W | L | D3 Angels | 50 | 34 | 8.0 Twins | 46 | 38 | 6.8 Pirates | 39 | 44 | 6.4 Cardinals | 48 | 37 | 5.1 Marlins | 43 | 40 | 4.9[/table]

I can't find any rumor of the Pirates' wanting to trade Doumit. Big surprise. Seriously, a few concerns: 1) Doumit isn't a good catcher. BP estimates that he costs his team 8 runs per 100 games with his defense, twice that over the past year and a half. That's as bad as it gets. 2) Doumit is hitting .346/.391/.622 this year, but he's only batted .270/.342/.464 over his career. 3) These are NL Central stats...caveat emptor, folks.

If Bill Lee had only done that, we coulda won in 1978.

I like it! I particularly like the use of two first basemen--Youkilis can range up the baseline while Carter guards the line. BTW, FWIW, I was surprised to see that Carter is actually doing OK in LF in AAA. It could easily be a small-sample issue, but I take hope nonetheless...move Carter to LF and Manny to DH. And put Tek back at catcher...

Here's the split forecast, based on MiLB splits, from his PECOTA Card: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/pecota/images/MASTERSON19850322A_008.png Masterson's forecast split, +.023/+.043/+.059, is big. His split coming into tonight, +.071/+.114/+.239, is absurdly huge. It's got to be a small-sample aberration. Let's see Masterson over a larger sample size...and with a better umpire. Holbrook denied Masterson the inside third of the plate against left-handed batters: http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfx/index.php?inning1=y&inning2=y&inning3=y&inning4=y&inning5=y&inning6=y&inning7=y&inning8=y&inning9=y&s_type=3&sp_type=2&month=06&day=30&game=gid_2008_06_30_bosmlb_tbamlb_1%2F&pitchSel=475416.xml&prevGame=gid_2008_06_30_bosmlb_tbamlb_1%2F I count a dozen strikes turned into balls by Holbrook's calls against LHH alone. More instruction? Perhaps training in the wisdom to know what he can not change. :dunno:

You know, Boston actually did pretty darn well in the 9th. The only batter not to make solid contact was Manny, leading off--everybody else, including Tek and Lugo, made good contact.

Well, of course...you're the admin. You know everything. There might, however, have been one or two souls without your profound wisdom - Yankees fans occasionally post here - and I had thought that the tidbit might be of value. :dunno:

Wakefield has a career 2.52 ERA in Tampa.

Gotta admit that I'm on your side here...I'll be among the first to criticize Tito, and I might've brought in Lopez earlier, but these were the right two guys for the night. Lugo, not Casey...Lugo looking sucky at the plate...1-2 count as I post...

Solid contact by Tek...Sean Casey at the bat.