jung

Not real sure about this. I saw video of Mitch the other day. His swing looked terrible (to be expected at this point). But he did not look great either. Looked to me like he had put on some tonnage while convalescing.

So Cash has an actual starting pitcher going tonight in Chirinos which makes the clown show, three ring circus he was running last night even more of a mystery at least to me. 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 1. Travis d'Arnaud ® 1B 2. Tommy Pham ® LF 3. Austin Meadows (L) DH 4. Avisail Garcia ® RF 5. Matt Duffy ® 3B 6. Michael Brosseau ® 2B 7. Guillermo Heredia ® CF 8. Willy Adames ® SS 9. Mike Zunino ® C

The hitters are making it easier to succeed with a smaller repertoire as well. If you can really command a couple of pitches you can really drive most of this generation of hitters nuts. They are swing happy for the most part. If you can command a couple of pitches AND pitch inside, now you are really talkin'. You could be on the way to a Cy Young the way this generation of hitters approaches their AB's.

Posted a few days ago that Erod is pitching like a grown man. He does not have many pitches in his arsenal but what he has is really good (change/FB) is what he really now depends on (ho-hum slider and cutter). But considering the sludge that passes for MLB pitching these days, it appears that if you can really throw two pitches and especially if those two are FB and Change, you are in business. Erod is clearly in business.

This is ridiculous now. This is truly an embarrassment. These are two teams that are supposed to be fighting for a WC spot with other teams totally effected by the results of this game and Cash leaves Beeks in to just get lambasted, scores three runs in the 8th and brings in one of his middle infielders to pitch???? Get your head out of your ass Manfred. Stop dreaming of games in London. Wake the f*** up you IDIOT!

Lets see....the last O's game I figured I had a great new idea for MLB to market. Now I think they should just change MLB to Barnum and Bailey's and Ringling Brothers Baseball. What the game is doing to accommodate the lack of pitching is beyond laughable to sad.....just sad. That and the rocket ship are just about enough to do the game in.

Nate has always challenged hitters. It is one of the things I like about him. He just does not have much to challenge them with at the moment. Still totally unsure how he will do in this role, whatever the f*** it is.

So maybe this game was supposed to be some sort of training session for Beeks. I have no idea why Cash left him in there for all of that and then let him pitch to 3 more guys in this inning......ridiculous. Just gave up the game unless he is planning on his hitters having an explosion that overcomes a 7 run deficit.

It is just a most extreme extension of "give me all ya' got for as long as ya' got it" which is simply going to burn out more arms faster. As bad as MLB pitching is now, the opener nonsense is just going to make it worse faster with more guys filling out MLB unis that should not be here at all.

Of course the nerd in the booth goes on about the "opener" as if its some innovation when in fact its just a concession to the lack of good starters and good pitchers in general wearing MLB unis these days.

Surprised Cash kept Beeks in there for all of that. He was falling apart the entire inning. Still in there now. Maybe Cash is setting up for more than one "opener" game this series and needs arms to get through it. Who knows with this opener horse s***.

Sale pretty much stayed within himself in his last start against the Jays and that not only helped his FB command but seemed to help his command of everything else. Kept his FB between 91-93 up till the last FB he threw which he humped up to 96-97. That was a horrid 3-2 pitch that was so far out of the zone that it did not even deserve a swing. But many hitters now will swing at a pitch in the ear hole having convinced themselves that they are swinging no matter what. Sure enough, the hitter swung and bailed Sale out. Had the hitter let it go, he would have walked and Sale would have been facing bases loaded, two outs.

The thing is, he can't often if at all throw his FB up and out of the zone any longer and there is often very small degrees of dif between the pitch thrown with enough velo to have it rise out of the zone and not having enough zip to do that. It is certainly not the dominant pitch it was for Rick for a couple years. Its not even a good pitch for him now where its landing at 91 or so. Sale is trying to overthrow it to get it up there. Thankfully, Rick does not appear to be trying that approach. Again, I doubt it matters. Rick will have thrown close to if not over 2000 innings by the end of this year. The Sox are not going to extend him pitching the way he is pitching. IMO, so starts his years of real decline. I doubt he can just will his Sinker back into being either. Guys get old. If anything Rick hastened the process. But he got a Cy out of it and at the back end of it, a WC. But it probably cost him a couple more years of decent pitching at a time when the pitching is soooooooo bad at the MLB level that a couple years of even decent pitching might have been just fine for Rick.

The best Changeups are thrown by pronating which is actually the secret to ERod's newfound success with the Change. If you don't pronate that pitch it leaks back across the plate and just gets murdered. Price was throwing it allowing it to leak back over the plate at the start of the season and got creamed with that pitch. Price threw another one this time in his O's recent start just like he was throwing them at the start of the season and once again the pitch got crushed for one of the HR's the O's hit off of him.

The only year Rick hit the kind of velo he had from 2015-2017 was in his rookie season, 10 years ago in 2009 when he was only throwing 17% FB's. He threw his FB a hair harder than that at 93.5 in 2012 but only threw a FB 13% of the time that year. Right in the middle of his big run here including the Cy year he started throwing his FB virtually as hard as he has ever thrown it at a rate of 27, 21 AND 29% in successive years. This year he is throwing it 32% of the time at the lowest velo of his entire career at 91.5% on average. I just don't see him getting the kind of juice back on his FB that will allow him to pitch like that again. It hardly matters. With 1,973 innings on that arm to this point this year the Sox would be out of their minds to extend him. Would be dumber than extending Sale through 2024 at the start of this season. Have you seen Rick generate the kind of velo on his FB he was generating in his Cy year? I haven't. It started to slide last year and he is nowhere near the kind of velo he was generating in his Cy year this year.

I actually think the bigger issue for Rick is that he cannot come up with the high heat FB that became his weapon of choice during his Cy Young season. That was the big change for Rick. He went from a sinker, slider. ho-hum FB pitcher to a guy that could elevate above the letters to where hitters could not reach his FB. The Sinker basically went away and turned into a standard looking two seam at that point and his Slider remained his Slider. Now his Sinker is still just a plain jane two seas, his Sinker does not do much on occasion (to your point about the baseball itself possibly) and just was never a power pitcher before. Hence, IMO he burned out his arm trying to be one as he just does not have the mechanics to really be a power pitcher. If he had them before the Cy year, he would have deployed that particular FB before his Cy year. Yet, he does not have the command of what remains of his secondary pitches to make a go of it on what he has. I just don't think he will ever be a top line starting pitcher again and is destined to work out his career producing sludge numbers till he finally folds his tent.

Never truer than now when most of them don't belong in an MLB uni in the first place.

I think you are probably reading too much into the ST regimen such as it was. Granted it was a mistake to approach ST as they did. But there are deeper problems with this Rotation than ST. They challenge NOBODY and as a Rotation at their command is nowhere.They don't even try to get swing and miss in the strike zone except for Eovaldi now relegated to the pen: - Porcello is now a rag arm nibbler having tried to turn himself into a power arm which lasted all of about 1.5 years - Price challenges nobody. The best thing I can say for him is that he will occasionally throw inside - Cashner is a card carrying joke - Sale needs clearly to abandon trying to throw 95-96. He can't do it without losing command of his FB and oh by the way every other pitch in his arsenal. He either will or won't adapt. Its up to him. - Erod has the best Change of the rotation regulars but he is still a two pitcher, now FB and change instead of FB and Slider. He might get away with it. MLB pitching is so piss poor these days it does not take much to distinguish oneself from the bums filling out MLB unis these days - Nate does challenge and can throw swing and miss in the strike zone, though his history when he pitches to contact is to induce some hard contact along the way. It remains to be seen where he fits. But now that we are paying him $17m per,, he's ours at that price. Frankly, the rotation which was supposed to be the strength of the Red Sox team is pretty much a train wreck. This team was built around the Rotation being the strength of the team and it is far from that.

People asking about Moreland and what happens to Chavis. Don't think there is anything to worry about. Just saw video of Moreland today and while his swing looks predictably awful, Mitch looks terrible. Clearly has put on some tonnage since being out. Not sure when to expect him and what to expect when he gets here.

The Sox virtually led and by big numbers from start to finish last year. The combination of being preoccupied with God only knows what in season (am I going to get a new contract being the most obvious preoccupation) and the lack of pitching has killed the Sox this year. There is no cure for a Rotation that is expected to be the strength of the team ending up one of the weakest elements of it. If anything the Rotation and the Pen are running neck and neck for futility and that CAN'T happen with an expectation for some sort of success. Everything that happens on the diamond starts with the ball in the hand of the pitcher. They had the very real expectation that the Rotation would be their strength....hence they simply (DD style) did no spend much time on the pen. You just cannot start with an expectation for excellence from your Rotation, get what we have gotten and expect to make it up elsewhere. Just not now baseball is played even now with all this rocket ship baseball nonsense and the worst pitching overall I have seen in my lifetime. Its not so much that the Yankmees have pitched that much better for example. Its that they were not built around their rotation in the first place and that is the dif. Also, I am completely non-plused by the way the OF has not functioned as a unit this year. Talk about a bunch of preoccupied babies.....PLEASE. Grow up for God sake. Nobody forced you guys to make a career out of baseball and if you were asked you would likely say this is exactly what you want to be doing. SO ACT LIKE IT! PLAY LIKE IT.

So there is a good example of what is wrong with MLB pitching today. They don't have command of ANYTHING. Not breaking pitches, not FB's not off speed....NOTHING. All this idiot had to do was throw strikes and let the Sox hit it with a 5 run lead and he can't even do it.

Cora looks frustrated...like he knows he is running out of games. News flash Alex....you have been running out of games since about March 30th.

Worth pointing out that though i got chided on the board for wondering about this day game in 100 degree heat with a 70+ dew point, nobody on either team has distinguished himself necessarily beyond the O's pitcher playing this day game after a night game in this heat. The way the travel schedules are now....RIDICULOUS, they should allow the use of specific PED's..... only do it with the full support of the league and under doctor's supervision. I would trade that for these stupid rocket ship baseballs in a NY minute and be damned proud of MLB's common sense for a change. Something I have not been able to say for a long time now.

A shame X could not do more with his AB. The two guys that can actually hit breaking stuff in this lineup are Rafi and X. Holt can...but its not like something Holt hits is going anywhere.

Said it last year and it has been even more true this year or at least more exposed to be true. There is literally no reason to throw the Red Sox a FB for a strike unless you absolutely have to do it for some insane reason. If a pitcher has command of his breaking stuff, these guys are MEAT.....stick a fork in them meat.