jung

Geezus Red Sox ...get in the batter's box and stay there. What....beni thinks he is something special? Vaz thinks he is something special?

Remy: JD was not chasing pitches last night. Yea Jerry. He didn't have to. That guy was throwing batting practice. If I could I would go back over the last two years and see how many of JD's hits were simply off of weak cheese or sloppy, rolling up to the plate Sliders. I suspect the bulk of his hits were that and probably by a wide margin.

The question.....How do we find another starter who is a 5 inning wonder? Geez these guys are tough to find.

Cashner is a perfect fit. Well on the way to struggling to make it through 5 innings, like the rest of them.

What, NESN...no shots of dour DD sitting up in the stands? NESN can't be bothered. OB needs the time to yammer about Cashner's K totals so far.

The epitaph for this season should be Mookie and JD discover the breaking ball [on film]. Neither sees them well from the batter's box.

Funny but I don't get that saved by acquisition feeling from Cashner.

Well for one thing I guess we won't be missing Steven Wright who could not have pitched effectively today even if he was not nursing his big toe. 110 with a 70+% dew point is no bargain especially for the pitchers.

Geez I thought this was going to be a night game. This could be interesting. 1. Mookie Betts ® RF 2. Rafael Devers (L) 3B 3. Xander Bogaerts ® SS 4. J.D. Martinez ® DH 5. Andrew Benintendi (L) LF 6. Christian Vazquez ® C 7. Jackie Bradley Jr. (L) CF 8. Brock Holt (L) 1B 9. Marco Hernandez (L) 2B 1. Jonathan Villar (S) SS 2. Trey Mancini ® RF 3. Anthony Santander (S) CF 4. Renato Nunez ® DH 5. Dwight Smith Jr (L) LF 6. Pedro Severino ® C 7. Chris Davis (L) 1B 8. Hanser Alberto ® 2B 9. Rio Ruiz (L) 3B

That is not saying much these days! Even these days there are at least 10 better OFers than Mookie for 2019. His ranking as a really good OF is much enhanced by the difficulty of playing Fenway RF. But he has not been special and in fact has fallen back behind Dewey again as a Sox RFer of note.

In the first place, the Red Sox have not shown a cohesive team effort to get back to the big dance even one time over the first 100 games. I do not believe that a team can show you NOTHING for a 100 games and then come on in the end to get anywhere. Yes, teams can come on at the end. But if they don't show you anything for 100 games it is highly unlikely that they will pull it together to come on and really get anywhere at the end. The only cohesive effort on this entire team including its coaches and management has been X and Rafi. Clearly X has assumed Pedey's old role as the leader of the infield. Having played 3rd base it is X that has had the most influence on Rafi. I don't buy the Sox PR dept BS that JD has been the most influential player on Rafi. JD has his own issues to worry about. I think Rafi has made so much progress this year for two reasons. He has taken X's leadership and advice to heart and X signing his deal has proven to Rafi that if you have talent AND YOU STICK TO YOUR KNITTING LONG ENOUGH, you will get paid. The rest of this team has been a shambles. The entire outfield is a train wreck. Not one of them backup any of the others. JBJ has made his usual quota of great plays but he has also boned up more plays than we are used to seeing and he does not back anybody up either. The MVP and RF GG has been only average out there and Beni is a joke. The entire right side of the infield is a wreck (thank you DD for the Moreland/Pearce disappearing act and that guy playing 2nd on occasion that can't really play 2nd). I await the next Holt injury which should make things oh so much better on the right side of our infield. All I can say for the catchers is that they have had their moments. But that is it. Neither has truly distinguished himself. Vaz has been better at the plate but considering the rocket ship baseball can we really call what Vaz is doing exceptional or is it just better than we expected of him at the plate. Everybody and I do mean everybody in MLB that is anything more than a pure Punch and Judy hitter is going to have 20+ HR's by season end, a ridiculous state of affairs. In the second place, our pitching sucks. Our rotation which was anticipated as the strength of the team have woefully underperformed to that very reasonable expectation and they show no signs of improving enough over the remaining 60 games to be that strength we had anticipated. You can't go from Rotation projected as the strength of the team to Rotation underperforming and mystically make it up elsewhere. This is real baseball, not computer baseball nor fantasy baseball. Our BP sucks and adding Nate at the backend, a guy that might fall apart as soon as he gets there is no consolation. Nate cannot rescue an entire pitching staff underperforming and neither can our recently acquired O's starter. DD sat on his hands, resigned his 2018 in season acquisition binky's and for some utterly mysterious reason extended Sale past the 2024 season at the start of this one. Henry has quite obviously said NO MAS to adding considerably to the payroll this year. I don't blame him. I am at the point of being resigned to whatever their fate as the 2019 edition of the Red Sox. I can stand less of the NESN broadcast crew and OBs endless repetition of meaningless small sample size stats covering about a week of a season. "So and so leads the league in RBI from......well......last week to this one". How about calling the game OB. You think you might just call the game. I also don't like the hard left turn the broadcast crews have made regarding the rocket ship baseball. They have suddenly gone silent or in outright denial about where all these power numbers are coming from having established a pretty realistic position on the topic earlier in the year. Of course NESN is ......a Fenway Group property so I thought their realistic analysis during the first half of the year was the shocker, not their current head in the sand, denial position. Where the Sox end up is where the Sox end up. But for my money in spite of over 60 years of Sox fandom, if there are not 5 other teams more deserving of a post season spot including the WC play in game, it is simply indicative of what a mess MLB has become and that concerns me more than whether or not the Sox make it to the final five only to get bounced out either in the play in game or in the first round.

The division is gone. We can make a WC. The problem is that the idea that "anything can happen" if you can get to the WC is IMO a fallacy. While I don't get to see every team play every game like I do with the Sox every team with a shot at the end has to show some championship timber sometime during the season. The Sox have not shown one iota of championship timber in 100 games, not once, not from John Henry who clearly has said No Mas to DD as far as spending more this season, to DD who just settled on bringing back his binkys to Cora and the coaching staff that have been doing I don't know what to too many of the players who are preoccupied with something other than getting back to the big dance. I can't really blame Henry. He is a businessman and I expect him to act like one. As for the rest....not real impressed this year.

I would say...doable, as in easy to bend over a desk and pound senseless.

See now why wouldn't MLB adopt my idea. They have every other half assed gimmick under the sun. Wouldn't it be more fun to see Yankabonehead just drop through a trap door right off the rubber almost like the clown at the carnival dropped into the dunk tank. Yaka would fling his arms in the air in shock. His mitt would probably fly off his hand and that is all that would be left on the mound....his mitt and his cap.

Look at this idiot....Yakabonehead. Here Manfred....I have a new innovation for you. A trap door under the pitching rubber so these bums can be dropped right off the mound and sent directly back to where they actually belong....the Instructional League!

He has the one thing you need to truly be successful in this version of MLB....and NO Mr Manfred, its not velo. Its command. If he can hang onto that and not go all loopy about Velo the way Porcello did a couple years ago, he should be just fine.

JBJ might just end up the last of the trio still here before long.

Actually we don't have the pitching to go anywhere this year. We are a middle of the pack pitching staff amongst some of the worst pitching across MLB I have ever seen. Its just not enough. Don't even want to think about what the f***ing Yankmees are going to do to our pitching staff. My God I am going to have to get out an old batting helmet just to protect myself almost a hundred miles away from the ballpark.

The funny thing about that is so many of these guys are nibblers now and no matter how hard they try to nibble they are either wild in the strike zone or wild out of the strike zone. I don't care that they are wearing the uni, not many pitchers in MLB that deserve to be filling out an MLB uni these days.

Geez OB you think you might ever just call the game some day. For the love of God.

That year he tried to turn into a power pitcher has done Rick in. He's a rag arm now.

If they can just get a guy on, it appears as poorly as Ehichelmen throws normally he does not appear to be able to throw from the stretch at all.

This guy is throwing batting practice.

JD loves weak cheese. So he should love this guy too.

Chavis should love this guy.