jung

You won't find me posting much here in the fall or winter time. After the WS even if I have something to say I am not likely to post it here. Usually I start posting here in earnest once ST starts, sometimes later than that. I probably did not even see that thread. In fact I think I just saw it for the first time just now because I went looking for it. Posters don't really follow the same patterns of posting. Me, I don't really have much interest in the hot stove stuff....certainly not in posting about it....never have. Show me who we are starting the season carrying and who the competition is carrying and that is when you are likely to see me comment.

I DID voice it here at the time. Flat out said I would have tried to bring Nate back but that Pearce made no sense AT ALL!

There was simply NO REASON....NONE to extend Sale when DD extended him and out to 2024 no less for a guy with a rep now for punking out at the end of seasons. That was a lotta' money to pay for a starter under those circumstances when DD really did not have to do it. I do not believe as some have commented that Sale was injured and the Sox knew it. That simply does not make sense. That he is wearing down is fairly obvious. Wear is not injury and wear has never been considered injury. Tissue shredding and bone crumbling and tendons snapping....that is injury. We would have preferred that DD wait and not extend Sale when he did and if we would not have preferred that we are out of our minds. As for Eovaldi, that is another starting pitcher overpay. I would be more specific in my comments about DD than some have been here. Where he really overpays IMO is starting pitching and he has done that now twice in the same year....Sale and Eovaldi, both of whom are worrisome expenditures into a John Henry that I suspect is getting leery of simply allowing DD free access to his bank account. Then of course there is that annoying tendency of DD's of simply throwing stuff for the pen against the wall to see what sticks. That simply flies in the face of where this game has been going for at least 10 years now. I don't like the way this game is going but if I had the purse strings for player personnel what I don't like becomes irrelevant in the face of an obvious trend. DD seems to be fighting the trend which is IMO an untenable position. I have no issues with the Price deal and JD was fine but not better than fine. Price was a gamble at his age for that kind of cash and term. But the gamble has paid off in a championship and its late enough in his deal that if he folds like a cheap suit....that is sort of how these long term deals work out anyway. I have no issues with JD either except now JD is making noise about wanting to be on firmer footing with the Sox in a more solid deal than he has. NO WAY!!!! JD has trouble hitting breaking stuff right into a cadre of MLB pitchers starting to throw buckets of breaking stuff at him. IMO the hitters that are really thriving now are those that take advantage of the fact that nobody pitches inside effectively anymore. Devers dives across the batters box. So does X. Bellinger by God sets up with his elbow hanging over the inner third of the plate. JD is not going to change what he does. He is a process hitter that lives off of weak cheese. He has his process. He is not going to deviate. NO WAY do I rewrite JD's deal and if he wants to opt out.....thanks for the 2018 effort JD. X has been a real treasure here. But I think the player himself is as responsible as DD for that one. X must have been sending very favorable vibes and his response to just having signed a big money, long term deal is so singularly rare in this day and age that the Sox must have felt very comfortable with that deal going into it. They live with the player and must have known his character is as it projects and frankly even from the outside looking in, if any young Sox player looked like the kind of guy you would do this for even before the deal was done, its X by a country mile. Pearce was particularly senseless. Hated it from the minute I heard it. Moreland was a bit of a mystery as well but Pearce was just flat out bad and smelled bad right from the start. I don't think DD will be kept past his 2020 contract expiration. Might even go before then as its tough to have a Pres of baseball ops that is a lame duck.

hasn't restarted a rehab assignment yet. However the "hope" expressed by Sox brass is that he will be back for the O's. Not sure who's ******* they are pulling that from if he is yet to restart a rehab assignment.

Still a decent chance at a win. We simply do not know from one day to the next if we can get anybody out. That is the actual problem. That is the way it has been all year long. Doesn't matter who's laundry the opponents are wearing and it hardly matters who we send out to the mound....Would do as well with a deck of tarot cards trying to guess from one day to the next if we are going to get anybody out.

He has been out for three months....that is as close to death bed as it gets for somebody we are pining all these hopes on. Call it what you want. He is not enough to rescue this mess.

We would be kidding ourselves to think Eovaldi comes off his death bed to rescue this mess.

And that is why we don't put anybody away. Not convinced we can really go anywhere with only a couple of hot hitters, a bunch of broken down starters and a catch as catch can pen. Every single game is a struggle against league lames and we end up really struggling against the better teams.

I would bet real money that all it would have taken to have turned this into a split series 2-2 at best would be if the Jays were still carrying Tellez. Heck it might still be a split series. We put NOBODY away this year....NOBODY. Will be interesting to see if we can put the lowly O's away in the next series.

That was an odd looking DP. Did Mookie not get out of the box?

Once that ball went to the backstop I am a little surprised they just didn't walk Rafi and pitch to X. There was no reason to believe Sanxhez could get Rafi out. He just does not have the tools to get him out. Surprised he got him out even one time tonoght. At least Sanchez would have and a chance against X.

Erod is not doing badly. He has tamed that Change and has it acting like he wants it to act, When you consider how poorly the rest of them have pitched, ERod looks like a Star.

The OTHER JBJ in full bloom again.

Erod is really pronating that Changeup tonight. Not sure he wants that much movement on that pitch. He just wants it to not act like everything else that comes out of the LHer's pitching hand. We will have to see how this goes if he keeps throwing it that way. I would like to see him continue to go deeper into games as he has lately and he might just earn too many balls out of the strike zone not offered at that way.

Please God win this game. Pitch, hit, field, whatever it takes!

Tarp coming off the field. 7:40 start for the Wed night game.

That is not the issue. As the previous poster's question implies, the bell curve for ratings has followed MY GENERATION out of what was a much broader base of demographically based fandom. Its the trend that is the issue, not whether older fans will stay home more. The bell curve is now too sharp at its peak and that peak is 65+ year olds. Do you actually see many young fans at the park that have any earthly idea what is going on in the field of play or are they just having a good time, out on the town, singing Sweet Caroline? Judging by most of the young people I know, when they do get older they sure as heck won't be watching MLB baseball in enough numbers to matter.

His MO is to overpay and then I guess ask the owner for more money. At some point the owner is going to exhibit some control especially having just won a championship. Seems to me that this is the same old DD....overpay, which ends up biting him in the ass when he needs to make moves. That must prompt him to go to ownership for more money and ownership has to make a choice at that point. Given DD's history does that sound like his MO or not. I think DD's real problem is that he has NEVER exhibited any interesting in modifying his MO which leaves an owner like John Henry left to manage him constantly. I think Henry has his championship. in fact he has four them in 14 years. He does not need to win this year. His revenue stream is not nearly as dependent on winning as would suite us. I suspect DD's days here are numbered frankly.

So I have made a point about the demos in the ratings from baseball before. This game from last night: The 18-49 male demo only pulled a 2.1. The 65+ demo (meaning me) did an 11.8. So while I have pointed out that the 65+ demo is pulling down 5x the numbers of the demo MLB should actually want, last night my demo actually exceeded 5x the 18-49 demo. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT MLB! Oh yea, Manfred, this is working. Get your head out of your ass and fast because it won't be long before my demo is pushing up daisies.

Holt hits to the opposite field. He hits breaking stuff in an environment where pitchers are obviously now throwing more breaking and off speed stuff. He is without question one of the most professional baseball player's in this current crop of modern MLB players. If the Sox think its a pack it in 2020, he probably would be worth trading as much as I would hate to see him go. If somebody made me an offer that was just much more value coming back for Holt, I would very likely have to take them up on that.

Oh but Cashner is DD's prime acquisition this year. I expect DD to overpay to sign him to a 4 year deal unless Henry fires DD first.

That and DD's reliance on his old formula of overpaying for star and would be star starting pitchers right in the face of MLB generally having to face up to the damage done to MLB pitching over the last ten years. That was a pretty risky MO for DD to continue to push with this bunch and in this time. What he has gotten for his trouble is an overpaid, underperforming rotation which under the circumstances was more likely than either a performing to expectations or over-performing rotation. They have basically all crapped out with the exception of ERod who is the only guy that has improved on his 2018 capabilities. Can't call Price an improvement at this point and the rest of them are just a disaster, having folded like a closet full of cheap suits.

I suspect John Henry is going to push DD off HIS particular mountain soon enough. Clearly Henry is already exerting some control and doing it just after winning a WC. Hardly could have expected him to jump in sooner than he has. It is likely clear to John Henry that DD has not really changed his stripes and will decimate Henry's budget and will never allow the farm system to flourish. Yes Henry hired him to bring us another championship by adding to the team's core pitching and young stars. He has done that. Now Henry is stuck with a looooooong arduous management job over his Pres of Baseball Ops and I very seriously doubt Henry is interested in that.

The "other" JBJ is almost fully out again.

Because the rest of the AL is such crap, 18-10 does not mean a damned thing anymore unless you are maintaining a pace like that for the entire season. Plus we don't steamroll anybody. Half the games we win, we could just as easily be losing regardless of who we are playing. If you can't pitch you can't win consistently. OB can rave about our hitting till the cows come home. It doesn't matter. Our starters suck and our bullpen sucks. As for Dana, in any other professional team sport if the entire asset a coach was responsible for sucked ass as much as our pitching sucks ass, would that coach survive?