mvp 78

Demotion to the bullpen? No.

Why pitch to Cabrera in the 9th when he's 5 for 8 against Ziegler?

At worst, he's thrown into LF or 1B. We'll have to see if he's serviceable at 3B next year.

http://deadspin.com/dont-play-rock-paper-scissors-with-the-tigers-1784406294 And they are still going to sweep the Sox...

JFC, just looked at Groome's birthdate. Now I feel like a senior citizen.

Betts and Ortiz have similar WAR and Ortiz doesn't have the benefit of getting defensive WAR. Papi's current SLG is the highest of his career. He's arguably having the second best year of his career (07 probably better). His leadership and visibility off the field is just as important as Betts' defense in RF.

And they'll lose their best player in the meantime.

Groome is already ranked higher at the Soxprospects Ledger.

The manager should take the credit for the wins and for the losses. It's one thing to split a series with a bottom rung team like the Twins. It's another to be swept at home by a mediocre team like the Tigers. If the season slips away, Farrell is the easiest scapegoat.

I'm surprised Kopech is untouchable.

Devers has a chance to be better than Moncada (can't hit righthanded) and Benintendi (small, not overly athletic).

The Palmiero award was about perception, not about watch people actually saw. That's not personal observation. Same with Jeter. These people weren't observing Jeter playing defense the way you or I observe the Sox play defense. I watch enough games to know that this team is better defensively than many Sox teams I grew up watching.

Jeter won the awards due to name recognition, NOT due to personal observation. Those are two completely different things.

Now, that being said, there is still a potentially large gap between what you might see on the field if you were to watch every play of every game and what UZR “says” happened on the field. And that is one of several reasons why one year or even 10 years of UZR (or any other sample metric) does not give us a perfect estimate of a player’s true talent or even an accurate picture of what actually happened on the field. The reason for that is that the data is imperfect. For example, UZR might put a certain batted ball in a certain bucket and determine that that batted ball was extremely difficult for the CF’er to catch, based on the recorded (by the BIS “stringers”) qualities of the ball and other data. We don’t, of course, know for sure whether it was indeed a difficult to field batted ball. We don’t know exactly where each fielder was stationed, we certainly don’t know the exact location of the batted ball to the nearest square inch on the field, and we definitely don’t know how long the ball was in the air or on the ground. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-fangraphs-uzr-primer/

http://www.fangraphs.com/statsd.aspx?playerid=8185&position=P His starts since the beginning of summer have been troubling to say the least.

It'd be one thing if Wright had a secondary pitch to lean on to gut through a few hitters when his knuckler disappears, but Wright doesn't have one. The second he loses the touch on his knuckler, it becomes batting practice. The problem is that it just goes so suddenly. If he could wing it through a few batters to let the bullpen warmup, it wouldn't be as much of an issue. I was worried that Wright's ERA would trend back to 4+ with the summer heat and natural regression. My only hope is that he provides enough to stick in the rotation for the rest of the year. If he craters out, the season is over for the Sox.

Most fielding stats are garbage. UZR is especially putrid.

No, hit Pedroia first and Ortiz second so that you get the DP out of the way.

He left Ross in to face Salty because he didn't want Salty hitting LH against Kelly. I think he left Wright and Ross in a batter too long, but I don't think it was an egregious error on his part. I think the ump was far more detrimental to the Sox than Farrell was. With Wright, it's going to be really hard to manage as he just loses it so quickly. His lack of secondary pitches leave me dubious about his long term success.

Holy s*** this ump

Defensive master Salty launches a throw to the warning track.

s***** ump is s*****

Trade Pedroia!

Sandy is a rabbit

Wright loses the feel quicker than anything.