jung

I used to love belt high FB's even if they were not over the heart. Give me a belt high anything over anything else and I could be happy as a clam.

Sale has thrown two of the best changes I have seen him throw this year tonight while also throwing one of the worst I have seen him throw this season. Sorta' a microcosm of his whole season.

That one you can blame on the Yankmee catcher. Why throw Beni that??? I have no idea.

My God, the Yankmee infield sucks ass.

Replayed xfinity TV and the first HR was a changeup that Sale did not pronate.....meaning a crap changeup.

Two walks....HR on a Change....HR on a Slider. Yikes. That turned quickly.

Two walks in 3 and 1/3rd is not good though.

Sale really pitching about as good as he can pitch to this point. One mistake clobbered and one walk ahead of it.

I looked up from the keyboard just in time to see where it landed at home plate and then were it landed in the stands. Yankmees dropping like flies. CC now injured. What did he do....strain his fork thumb last night at dinner?

I don't what it was other than in the middle of the plate.

97 in the middle of the plate fools nobody.

While I would not say this Yankmee pitcher can exhibit it for long, the out pitch to X is the definition of command, a pitch that fools the hitter that the ump would have to have called a strike if the hitter passed on it.

Tito certainly saw it!

Agreed

The spin is that none of the playoff contenders could come up with the goods in prospects/players to interest the Jays on Stroman and so they went with the Mets.

Not sure if anybody was watching parts of MLB Tonight's daylong show. Lots and lots of frustrated pitchers. Frustrated because they can't keep the ball in the park. Frustrated because they really can't command their pitches (thats on them). Trevor Bauer threw the ball over the center field fence as Tito came out to get him. Tito not happy. Rays pulled their game out. Guardians didn't. Mets just grabbed Stroman from the Jays for prospects. Shocked!!!

1. Aaron Hicks (S) CF 2. Aaron Judge ® RF 3. Edwin Encarnacion ® DH 4. Luke Voit ® 1B 5. Didi Gregorius (L) SS 6. Gleyber Torres ® 2B 7. Gio Urshela ® 3B 8. Cameron Maybin ® LF 9. Austin Romine ® C 1. Mookie Betts ® RF 2. Rafael Devers (L) 3B 3. Xander Bogaerts ® SS 4. J.D. Martinez ® DH 5. Andrew Benintendi (L) LF 6. Brock Holt (L) 2B 7. Mitch Moreland (L) 1B 8. Jackie Bradley Jr. (L) CF 9. Sandy Leon (S) C

Tanaka should have been the linchpin for the Yankmees, not Paxton and not CC. Paxton like most of these jet fuel merchants is too often in the middle of the plate and CC is effective but can't get past 60 pitches if his life depended on it. Tanaka was so far the real let down for the Yankmee Rotation in this series. The pitching is so awful in MLB that I am beginning to wonder if pinching the Corner OFer's is simply an acknowledgement that the pitchers are constantly smack in the middle of the plate for the most part, exhibiting no command whatsoever and allowing any 150 lb soaking wet 2nd baseman to pound balls into the power alleys. While the rocket ship allows hitters to barely touch balls with the barrel of the bat and hit it out, you still have to hit it pretty solid to hit line drives into the power alleys. More pitches wild in the strike zone would produce just that result. FB's from the belt to the thigh smack down main st are in abundant supply these days. So are Sliders for that matter now that I think about it. Clearly it does not matter how hard you throw it if you leave it there. Paxton could not throw it past anybody in his start. Ssle could not throw 97 in that location past anybody in his last start. Eovaldi could not throw 99 past anybody in his relief stint. Weak hitters foul 98 off in that location and good hitters smack the s*** out of 98 in that location.

That is correct. Simply not enough there to keep those two guys from being overworked. Nate will help but I still don't hold out much hope for him as a closer and DH is probably still too young to be relied upon as a solid, high leverage pen arm. We probably still need one more pen arm even with Nate in the pen.

Work is not one of these jet fuel merchants. Nate IS! Kimbrel IS.

That was the best choice a month ago and I don't think that situation has changed.

I hate to say it mainly for the number of times we were frustrated by Kimbrel's inability to throw strikes and exhibit command when he needed to exhibit command but even last year's kimbrel had better command than most of these jet fuel merchants whether they are wearing our laundry or anybody else's laundry. Throwing 98 smack in the middle of the strike zone impresses nobody, especially the hitter.

Even Nate can't get belt high heat past even weak hitters. Nobody can. One of these days MLB is going to avail itself of its fascination with velo.

They are doing it all over the place. It is hardly just Fenway. Plus cheating toward RCF for the LH hitter is fine if the hitter does not tend to pull as is cheating toward LCF for the RH hitter but I'm sorry, pinching both regardless of the handedness of the hitter is patently ridiculous. What kind of pitch do you think your pitcher is throwing to guys that dictates pinching both corner OFers at the same time? Plus if you want to talk about Fenway specifically, triples are hard to come by in this park while doubles are a dime a dozen. So I have no idea what teams think they are accomplishing.

I don't get this trend toward the pinched outfield. This looks like overthinking the game to an extreme to me. Rotating the OF one way or the other, I can see. Pinching both corner outfielders towards the middle says what, that the hitter is going to hit into either power alley no matter what? How do you even come to that conclusion? And the trade off is what? Balls hit into the power alleys are at least well struck baseballs. You have given up a double. But pinching the corner OFers creates opportunities to turn singles into doubles because the OFer has so far to go to get to a ball that is simply a single all day long. Honestly, for my money they have handed the keys to the asylum to the inmates.