Palodios

Cycle for Ortiz tonight?

Its the third inning and Nava has already gotten on base three times.

They should ban him from the game for life, and strip him of his Cy Young. The lengths he's gone to cheat the game over the last several years are ridiculous.

This is a variation of the rule. Normally a pitcher is taken out immediately after 7 runs are given up, but they left Grimm in for one more batter afterwards.

I'd love to see Peavy here. He's a former CY Young winner, 4x All-Star, Gold glove winner, and he looks like he's put his health concerns behind him. One of the top tier pitching prospects + Doubront would probably get it done.

The article mentions Robinson Cano. I don't think there is anyone I'd rather see miss the 2013 season.

JACKIE BRADLEY'S FIRST HOME RUN!!!!!

RBI doubles are cool too.

What? Don and Eck work very well together. I think they balance eachother too-- when Remy and Don are together they tend to be too dull and goofy sometimes.

Come on Ortiz! All I ask for is a deep fly ball out.

I love Nava as a leadoff man against right-handed hitters. When a guy has that kind of a OBP split, you have to take that matchup. Hopefully he sees more starts at #2 when Ellsbury returns.

Here is what you asked: Lackey: declined for years -- Check. His Numbers stabilized--Check. No suspicion-- check. Wells: declined for years -- check. Numbers stabilized -- check. No suspicion -- arguable, but nothing tangible, check. Beltre: declined for years -- check. Numbers stabilized -- check. No suspicion-- I forgot about his 45 HR season, no check. Crawford: declined for years -- check. Numbers stabilized -- check. No suspicion -- check. Players don't decline linearly like Texeira has. There are usually plenty of ups and downs, and numbers don't completely start to plummet until the end of their career. You're saying that at the age of 28, Texeira started a downward spiral, which I do not agree with, and we should probably agree to disagree on.

You and User Name really had to jinx it, didn't you? Texeira hit a grand slam tonight:thumbdown

It wasn't always this way, but I've definitely worked to try to keep it to baseball over the last year or two. But then again, the first two months of the Sox season have made it pretty easy

I like to think of it as looking for a baseball discussion for the sake of looking for a baseball discussion. I do that sometimes -- ask a700 -- and I don't mean to offend you by it. Feel free to skip over my posts if you'd prefer. I'm very familiar with the downward trend. I'm also familiar with the fact that he had BABIPs of .268, .239, and .250 the last three years. While that may be attributed to lower line drive rates, and slower baserunning, it still seems a bit unlucky to me. If he has a perfectly reasonable .290 BABIP in 2013, and pulls his OPS up to .880, would you be at all surprised? One is a 37 years old, and the other was a rookie riding SSS, that pitchers apparently have figured out. Texeira was on pace to do something he had done the previous 8 years in a row. How about Adrian Beltre? Carl Crawford? John Lackey? Vernon Wells in 2010. I understand the reasons why they all suddenly started producing again, but I'm sure I could think of better example if I gave it a while. why isn't increase in BABIP a possibility? I think it is far more rare to find a non-overweight player who starts declining linearly at age 28.

Drew was suffering from a lack of Spring training earlier in the year. Since May, His OPS has been hovering around .800 and he's played very good defense. I wish the Red Sox had given Stephen Drew more time at AAA. He came back from the DL after a concussion, wasn't ready, and sure enough, he had a .500 OPS in April. Now his stats will look ugly for the rest of the year even though he's playing like a top 10 shortstop.

I mentioned similar arguments in another thread, but another thing to note is that he's faced a pile of very tough lefties. In 70ish AB, he's faced Sabathia 2x, Cliff Lee, Pettite, Holland, Price, Chen, Moore. The guy is 32 years old, healthy, and he's played in pitcher's parks most of his career. At some point his hits will land, and he'll be back to crushing lefties.

Pace means nothing in SSS, but over his career, he's hit 30+ home runs in every year since 2003. He's also been incredibly healthy and consistent over the course of his career, averaging 150 games a year his entire career. I feel like its silly to say that 30 HRs isn't a lot... if your own team doesn't have a player capable of reaching that feat. I certainly hope you're right. I just think that the sheer consistency that Texeira has shown through his career on both sides of the ball makes me believe the decline will slow, and he'll stabilize at some point.

Well, that was a 30 HR pace on a short season. Considering the most any Red Sox hit last year was 25, I'd say that is a good amount. As I said, not a star, still solid.

He does still play very good defense, and hit a ton of bombs. I'd agree that he's not a star anymore, but he was still a solid player last year.

I asked because Breslow was announced as the next pitcher, and supposedly "threw 4 pitches" according to one of the ESPN announcers, although that was probably in the BP. Rain delay shorted games are always offering statistical craziness. A complete game shutout that wasn't a QS, for example:lol:

Does that count as a complete game shutout for Buchholz?

Whenever I see a player with an injury who is underperforming, my first reaction is to blame the injury. Middlebrooks is hitting .201 and has a broken rib, and now lower back issues. He's valuable to the team healthy, but I wonder if he's been suffering so far this year.

If Iggy keeps hitting... the Sox need to play him over Middlebrooks.

I've always argued that some part of it depends on a hitter's profile. Take Ortiz for example-- in his career, he's hit more to right field than left, so teams deploy a shift to take hits away from him. But if the infield needs to hold runners on bases, it limits what the team can do defensively. Maybe its just a coincidence, but over his career.... .914 OPS bases empty .940 OPS runners on 1.108 OPS bases loaded.