jung

lol...my point exactly. One I made before the season even started. I absolutely applaud MLB for ending this shift nonsense. However fielding is going to be tough until they can get these Hippos, Rinos and Elephants out of the agility fielding positions and then focus more coaching on the issue so we don't see so much of a guy like Casas standing there with his thumb up his ass. and no......younger folk, we have had many players with the agility to not embarrass themselves in the field that could still hit the snot out of the ball.

Atta' boy Casas. There were always more errors than were called errors. This year its just over the top. Casas caught chewing on his glove.

Annnnnnd the official scorer calls that a base hit. Ah-hah

Sox will have to provide bios for most of these guys: "you want to trade us who???? Never heard of him."

Wakefield: Lineup in the Red Sox favor, THATS FOR SURE You have got to be kidding Wake

Oh my god. That error only cost one base. Can we give an error to both of those boneheads. No error...infield hit. Scorer should be shot.

Showing his age I think. Started his swing early so he would not be beat by the heater and ended up swinging at a pitch over his head....AND WAS STILL LATE!

JD named NL All star DH. Wakefield comment: really???? They need to get Wakefield out of the booth. This has all been embarrassing enough as it is.

Great bunt Wong. I know...tough for a power hitter like you to lay down a bunt.

But we have had the obligatory error in the field.

So Duval protects Rafi in the batting order? Now I know I have lived too long.

All I have to say is "WHO ARE THESE GUYS"

Welcome to Mike Trout's world Rafi

Boring, disgusting team. Worst possible situation.....an actual 500 team. Not bad enough to fish for high draft prospects. Not good enough to actually do anything. Cora looks like he would rather be in a pool full of piranha than be in that dugout.

In part the NBA itself is responsible for the ramshackle, NY Summer League state of the game in some sense. At the height of the Pistons run, the defensive mayhem allowed in the paint was effectively assault and battery. Lots of hard fouls. Lots of guys beaten to the floor, literally beaten to the floor. Then the NBA tightened up its act because the game was simply ugly...truly ugly at that point. Sure you got to the line if you were driving to the basket AFTER you picked yourself up off the floor if you could pick yourself up off the floor. All fouls were hard fouls. Virtually every foul of that era would be a candidate for the extra penalty today. That is how ugly the game had become. But since having eliminated Continuation the offensive player (TATUM for example) drives knowing he has to get to the hoop to score. He might get the AND ONE on a foul but he has to get to the basket. Without Continuation the play continues instead of the inside ref raising his hand on first contact on the drive indicating a foul with the offensive player going to the line either with two shots or one if he made the basket before the whistle blew. So now we see a player like Tatum develop this drive whereby he tucks the ball under his arm like its a football and wards off anything in his way with his off hand, arm, elbow and anything else he can ward off with in order to get to the hole. The Euro Step is actually designed to turn ballplayers into pinball machines with guys banging off of multiple bodies on the way to the basket and assuming they are going to earn a foul call somewhere along the way. Often....NOPE! I am not even sure Tatum knows that half his drive techniques would have been offensive fouls and probably should be now. In addition the refs appear to have lost any feel for body contact on drives. Their focus is entirely on what goes on above the shoulder. The only body play the refs appear conscience of is the Block vs the Charge and even that they appear only to be able to discern in the open court. You never never saw the great ballplayers even of the Bird/Johnson/Jordan/Bryant eras play with so little finesse. Maybe you would see a hook with the off arm and hand now and again. Even the Aircraft carriers, Shack for example would lean on the defender to make some room for himself and then go up strong on the inside once he had the ball. But they would not bull their way to the inside. They would use their big bodies to push the defender off the spot they wanted on the floor. They would get the ball on the blocks and go up very strong. So for guys driving now its feast or famine. Either the ball is tucked under their arms like its a football or its just out there to be taken or bounced off their own bodies. Even their behind the back crossover dribbles hang the ball out there so far that it can be stolen easily. A good ballplayer, somebody that thought he handled the ball good enough to drive would be embarrassed beyond belief to have a behind the back crossover stolen from him. the ball is so far in front of Brown when he drives I simply do not know how he ever gets to the basket without dribbling it off his foot or having it stolen from him. Curry handles the basketball the way really good players used to handle the ball. Other than Curry I don't know who I would recommend as somebody that does not have to tuck the ball under his arm or he is going to be stripped of it. I would bring back the Continuation because the NBA game is headed for ugly again just not quite based on defensive initiative but instead based on sloppy ball handling.

The Celts got beat by the Celts. The most important Celtic players play NY Summer League basketball and if they continue to play NY Summer League basketball they will lose in big series: - In the first three games of the Heat Series they played no defense....zero....zippo...nada, not bad defense....NO DEFENSE. The double teams were late. They were often caught in between and reaching for the player they were supposed to double team. Often were caught chasing the basketball around the half court. There is a similarity between basketball and baseball. These guys are professional athletes. If a pitcher throws meatballs down main st pitch after pitch....even the 9th hitter in the lineup is going to clean his clock. If a basketball team does not play tough hard nosed defense mediocre players will take advantage of them. If a team with as much talent as the Celts have even plays just good defense against a team like the Heat.....the Heat would have been done and dusted - On the offensive end they come down the floor, head fake from 4' outside the 3 point line as if the defender cares about any of that. All the defender has to do is stand there. Often Tatum or Brown or Smart end up dribbling the ball off their foot or off their noses or off their asses....whatever. - Can Tatum move without the basketball.....EVER? Does he not realize that with his talent if he did not insist on taking the ball up the court when everybody on both teams knows what that means he would get much better much more makable shots or does he just insist that he will either launch from Mars or he will bull through three defenders to score? - As for Brown....Good grief....since when does setting a screen mean that you just run right through the defender....just crash into him and keep going? Another guy that insists on having half the court cleared for him so he can.....dribble the ball off his nose or off his ass or off his foot. - Smart....fine player if he is not throwing the basketball into the first row or dribbling it off his own ass - Horford...past it. Used to be a team player. Does not seem to have the energy to play team basketball now. Don't have enough fingers and toes for the number of times a Celtic defender was expecting Hereford to switch and he just stood there - Grant Williams....Big Baby with far less finesse and a somewhat better jump shot. Has to concentrate to look like a professional ballplayer of merit - Robert William....has his limitations but at least he plays tough D and team basketball. Did not miss a single shot in the Heat series because he knows his limitations - D White.....fine player and he plays team basketball. V good defender with a good shot - not sure what to say about Brogden other than that he was fading at the end of the season before he injured his arm. The rest are not actually worth much comment. Don't have much to say about Joe Coach other than that if your team does not play like a team where do you go to address that?

Drury: "Pivetta is not going to throw me another breaking ball. He's not going to do that. Ahh s***...he threw me another breaking ball"

He is actually not bad. Better than Youk I think. Now if he can just figure out who is still on this team, we might have something.

Never fear. The Angels work really hard at losing baseball games.

Merloni confusing Porcello with Pivetta. Geez that is something I would do.

Thx

Did Yoshida play in yesterday's game or is he still out?

You mean they were not responsible for knowing before they paid for him? They only have him signed to a 1 year deal. He can't come back now till end May the earliest. What did they actually buy even for the modest price they paid? The question I think we have had is, How many guys that can play SS do you have to let go or have up on the shelf to get down to Kike' and "god help us" Dulbec. Did we REALLY want to know the answer to that question? Is that what they hired Bloom to do, answer questions in real life that we likely only thought we would experience in nightmares? Not sure I wanted to know how Diabetic Duval would handle one of the most difficult CF's in baseball either....but we sorta' know now. Guys who have played CF elsewhere tend to get exposed at Fenway unless they are truly athletic and highly skilled Ofers....same is true for RF. Wall included, LF at Fenway is the easiest of the Fenway OF positions to play.

Yoshida scares the s*** out of me.

I don't see any evidence that Bloom has attempted to build an organization under him that is the equivalent of what the Rays have. Why not? Is he afraid to see it get around that he is not the genius behind how the Rays are constructed year after year....that it is actually a total organizational effort? Bloom was disallowed from talking to Rays staff and offer any of them jobs till 2021. But its 2023 now. Still nothing that I have seen. It looks to me like the Sox Brass bought in on Bloom and not on the Rays systemic methodology and I simply do not think Bloom is some sort of baseball genius. DD is a pure baseball guy. If you buy in on DD he will rape your farm system, spend lots of your money and give you a genuine shot at the title. Does not make DD a genius either but it does make him a guy with a proven track record for championships. I don't think Bloom can give you a reasonable shot at a title and I don't think he can do what Tampa does without the entire top to bottom organization that Tampa has or at least a very reasonable facsimile of it. Worth noting that Tampa has no titles. Didn't before....don't have any now. But they play an exciting brand of baseball that keeps you watching. Had they a decent baseball market in Tampa I expect they would pack the place out especially with the rules changes. Maybe they have no titles because it takes big important players doing their thing in big moments in the post season to actually win one of these things and maybe that is where the Rays deficiencies come home to roost. But the more accepted thinking is that you get to the post season and the hottest team wins the thing. Not sure I have ever really agreed with that. But that is the accepted thinking. I do think the Rays can adapt to the rules changes faster than other teams. That might help put them over the top. And actually I don't think its money that has prevented Bloom from achieving some measure of success here as much as its an inability of the Sox brass to actually make a definitive decision beyond bringing in one guy....Bloom. Bloom maybe does not have his hands tied by a lack of money but an unwillingness on his part to let us see behind the curtain and recognize that what was making and does make the Rays the Rays is the organization in total....NOT BLOOM himself. So from my seat, we are four years into Bloom's reign. He has done nothing that I can see that is even an effort to build a baseball ops effort that is a reasonable facsimile of what the Rays have. He does not have a team that is a reasonable facsimile of the Rays team. The younger players we have that we developed that were anything are gone other than Rafi. What we have left for young talent seems painfully lacking and the ML team seems rather old, well onto the back 9 and past it. So none of that feels particularly promising. IMO if what we headed into post Bloom's hiring is not a 5 year plan but a 10 year plan with the team neither playing exciting baseball nor winning championships, that is a problem. I think the canary in the coal mine for this tweener mentality (neither the DD Sox nor the Rays) is not paying Xander and having to watch what we are forced to toss out there at SS without him.