SoxFanForsyth

Tonight will be an interesting spot for Doubront. It will be good to see how he performs against a fairly regular Yankee lineup. He'll be facing the likes of ARod, Gardner, Tex, Ibanez, Martin, Andruw Jones, Nunez, and then a non-regular of Bill Hall. This will likely be his biggest test of the spring thus far. I think he will do well myself, but I may be overconfident with him.

Gotta say - Fenway is an absolute beauty of a park. The history of the park, the charm that the park has, etc, makes it a place that a ton of people have on their bucket list. Like Emmz said, if the seats aren't comfy enough for you, either watch the game at home or buy SRO tickets, they're really cheap and you don't have to put up with the seats. I've been to about 8-10 stadiums, and Fenway is by far and away my favorite to watch a game.

I am 110% all in with Iglesias, no question about it. I'm 110% all out with Lin in CF. If (big if) we were going to move him to the bigs, I would put him in RF, where his defense is probably even more needed considering the angles, and his arm can be utilized. Having him in CF and moving Ells, who has gotten used to the nooks and crannys out in CF, to RF seems silly. Either way, I like the line up as-is, with Iglesias as the 9 hole hitter. And the only reason I'm good w Iggy at SS is because I don't think Aviles is going to play well. Aviles hit .229/.263/.338/.601 vs RHP last year. The reason his numbers were even close to decent was because when he got to Boston, he was played almost exclusively against LHP (.924 OPS vs LHP last year). Players who can't hit RHP any better than that do not play everyday because of the prominence of RHP. We've got Aviles, who has never played more than 110 games in a season, and we have Youkilis, who has averaged 111 games over the past 2 seasons as our starters. The best plan of attack would be to have Iglesias as your starting SS and Aviles as your utility guy who covers for guys like Youkilis. Between Iglesias, Youk, Pedroia's 3-5 days off, and occasional outfield work, Aviles will get around 60-70 games in, probably mainly against LHP, which is where he needs to be and where he can contribute the most to this team.

Wonder what's going on w this? Dead arm? Seems weird to struggle to get to 91, regardless of how early it is. Especially when he was 93-96 this time last year.

Iglesias has been pulled, he was the final guy I wanted to see. Next game being aired is (I believe) on Friday. Until then, in case you guys hadn't heard, MLB 12 The Show comes out at midnight, or for us working folk, tomorrow at 5.

Papi just went yacka at Fenway,

Youk maybe throw the ball with at least a little pepper on it next time. That was really close.

For Francona, that's about 5 IP, for Valentine, that's about 6 IP. I think Bobby V is going to let the SP go deeper into games and lift the pitch counts into the 120's. Save the bullpen a little and get some innings out of our SP.

Just saw your post on Iggy harnessing his speed. IMO, I say put him at SS everyday, let him develop at the MLB level and save our pitchers some runs. Not like this offense is going to be in short supply this year, especially with Crawford likely bouncing back and Gonzo gaining power. Anything to help the SP this year is the direction we need to go, I think. Besides, Ozzie Smith OPS'd .593 in his first 4 seasons and posted a WAR of 9.1, so elite defense up the middle can be extremely valuable - valuable enough to turn a .593 OPS into a solid WAR. Iggy won't be Ozzie, but he can still be a 1.5-2.0 WAR player. Scutaro had a WAR of 0.6 last season, if that puts into perspective how helpful Iggys defense can be. Damn. I got all the way done with this and realize this should be in the other thread. Oh well, sorry yeszir.

You were right, Jackso. Good call on it. My bad for calling you out. Not sure why they didn't get an MRI on it today if he's still 5-7 days out. Any ideas on that?

Yeah you really can't throw that out of the stretch.

Thanks yeszir. Good call. Buch looked shakey. Padilla's eephus pitch looks like Rookie of the Year.

And swipes a bag!!

Iggy, a nice little bunt single

Here comes Padilla. Oh boy.

Shaky at first. Left a lot of balls up and out of the zone. Got a key DP ball to bail him in the 1st, although there was only a man on 1st w 1 out, he still wasn't looking good. Settled down in the 2nd, K'ing the last 2 after putting men on 1st and 2nd with 1 out.

Twins look like the bad news bears.

I have a question for you. Do you think that Bard's BB/9 will bump from 3.0 to 9.4? Or that his WHIP will go from 0.959 to 2.053?? He struggled so much as a SP because his walks were 3x what they are now, and his WHIP was over 2x what it is not. To project him to be a failure as a SP based on numbers he put up as a 22 year old in A ball is silly. We've all see how good his stuff plays at the MLB level in the most elite division in all of baseball. Projecting him to just flat lose it makes no sense to me. :dunno:

The good thing about Bard making the transition this year is that he's got a pitching coach who did the same thing. Plus, Joba made the transition on June 3rd, so he didn't have an entire offseason to ready himself like Bard has had.

Yesterday, at least, he was pumping 97 on the black. Did surprisingly well. Apparently Valentine is very interested in him. Apparently McClure is just telling him to pitch comfortably rather than focusing on every step of his mechanics. Basically, just go pitch like you did in college. It may be beneficial for the Sox to put him in the rotation out of ST just to make sure that what he's doing doesn't fix him before they release him because he doesn't have options and won't make it through waivers.

Punto and Iggy just turned a nice little DP. Bad news on Crawford. Worse news that Jackso was right.

Those are real questions, FWIW. I wasn't being a smartass (this time).