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Good Catch! That really speaks to the unmitigated gall of these clowns from MLB. All of their nonsense has been a complete FAILURE. Nobody knows their biggest stars today. There are NO transcendent MLB players now for example...none...nada...zippo. What Manfred totally misses is the reason why HR's and the Steroid era brought MLB back from the graveyard. MLB was in the hole with the dirt being thrown on top and boy did they deserve it. Owners caught colluding (how stupid and arrogant could you be) followed by a strike and BOOM.....slow death, dirt being thrown in the grave atop their idiot bodies. But the Steroid era brought it back. It brought it back because it was not every tom dick and larry, 160 lb soaking wet hitter knocking Superballs entirely out of the park and because we still had pitchers that would compete, that would challenge hitters and we had fans that could see the compete level from the pitchers. Nobody is really interested in all these Bombs for the sake of the Bombs themselves and nobody is interested in launch angle and boom or bust HR or K baseball. They are interested because of the battle, the compete level, the "challenge" of hitting against good pitching and hitting a HR against good pitching. They are interested in seeing great plays in the field, not some half-baked fielder scratching his ass with one hand and casually reaching over a few inches with his glove hand to make a catch tailor made by some computer geek positioning. To bring back a phrase from possibly the most famous SNL spot in history "Jane you ignorant Slut" is about all I have to say to Manfred and his idiot goons.

So Torre and Jim Leyland (who knows what his MLB function is) chewed out Verlander in the Cora's ASG Managers office for shouting out the MLB juiced baseball farce. You have got to be kidding me MLB. We have Verlander shouting it to the heavens. We have David Price taking baseballs apart and unwinding them in the bullpen during games, ON VIDEO and you yahoos from MLB who won't admit your complicity are chewing ANYBODY out. f*** off Torre and you too Leyland.

If I were the Sox and I actually thought I had a shot at this thing, I would not be leaving myself at the "lets find out" stage for a Closer, nor would I be risking the $17M I just invested in Nate to find out. Then again, maybe they don't think they really have a shot at going all the way this year. Frankly to me this is just another example of how cross purposes the Sox FO has been all season and in the lead up to this season. They lean a little this way and a little that way. In this case, they are leaning both ways at once! I really don't think they have had it right since they won the 2018 Crown and I am also worried that DD is simply in lame duck mode already.

You have to get up in the pen and warm up to come in and relieve. There is no way that warming up and pitching one inning two or three days running is easier on the arm than starting, and going 5-6 innings, once a week. It just isn't. Sit out by the pens one time and see how hard they are throwing out there when they are preparing to come into a game and tell me that is not worse for the arm than preparing to throw competitively once per week. Then add the natural intensity of the Close to the whole equation, the need for the Closer to face hitters that know that this stanza is the last chance they have to pull the game out of the fire. Good luck convincing anybody that any of that will be easier on Nate's arm.

I suspect that Sale might be the only guy they were trying to get deeper into the season because his late season fads are becoming legendary now. As for the rest of them, Nate has been down, Price has been down and BJ, their backup has been down. Not sure that favoring the Starters because of late season 2018 stress has worked out if that was the rational either. Certainly would agree that using Starters in relief roles when they still had starts to make in the post season should have and likely has had some consequences. However all that says is that if you think you have a window provided by the contractual control you have over your young stars, using your starters that way may likely win you a WS run (don't think the Sox would have won in 2018 without doing that). However thinking you are going back to back playing Manfred-ball and using your starters that way is likely more than optimistic.....Its Alice in Wonderland optimistic. Better off pulling a Bill Belechick and making some hard choices before the season starts if you really want to try to go back to back. Seems to me the front office avoided all of those. All they did was can two of the guys from the pen apparently acknowledging that there 2018 pen was not strong enough....then did nothing to even replace them.

Happy to see them get one as long as they get a Closer to boot.

You would have expected him to come out and say that he does not want to close? I would not have. In fact, I would prefer to start is more than I would have recommended he say. What he says is simply an indication of what he thinks his arm can handle. Its not more than that. But its not less than that EITHER! There is actually something of a bonus to starters in the whole "quality start" nonsense. Notice across MLB they are now struggling to make 6 innings. We have created an interim step in what would have been considered a successful start and human nature has taken over as it usually does in all things. So now, they can argue that they are doing well to make six innings and SON OF A GUN, they now struggle to make 6 innings. Who would have thunk it! So if I am a pitcher with multiple TJ's and a cranky elbow with bone chips floating around in it, give me a six inning stint once per week with a throwing day tossed in between and $17M clams to do it, and I am happy as a clam. The pitchers did not create this mess. They are just responding to it. However all you have to do is watch the games to see even the top starters in MLB now pacing themselves to 6 innings. For those that don't know what a pitcher pacing himself to 6 innings looks like, your mileage may vary.

When there are enough of them that are baseball fans or actually for MLB''s sake give a rats behind about MLB wake me up. As a group, they just don't care and frankly, I don't blame them. My kids friends are hockey fans, basketball fans, AMERICAN FOOTBALL fans, football fans. They will ooh-and -ahh over HR's when they glance sideways at video screen and see one. They make no effort to watch games, much less understand the game at a level that would allow them to know what the heck is actually going on out there or end up with any genuine interest in it. They make no effort to even determine when a game might be available to watch. Its wallpaper to them. Again with 5x the viewership of the 18-49 year old demographic tied up in the 65+ year old demographic and none of the MLB's crap having moved the needle at all, what happens to MLB when my generation starts dying off. We don't have that far to go before we start pushing up daisies. Viewership is generally down across the board. Attendance is down in all likelihood because game attendance has transitioned from sports entertainment to general entertainment and there are plenty of ways to spend general entertainment dollars.

I said before the season started that they should have brought in a decent, not necessarily good, certainly not great (if they did not want to spend the money) Closer because they were putting too much burden on guys that had never closed. They should have brought in a guy that could have helped them understand how to prepare for the 9th inning and how to pitch in the 9th inning...could have led them by example. BUT NO......lets just toss the Bucket-o-Fried Chicken Bums at the Closer role. "Something is bound to stick". Hasn't stuck yet and Nate is simply the next experiment, the next thrown at the wall hope. I don't have a problem with Wheeler though I am not convinced we can get even him.....EVEN HIM and with Nate we are setting ourselves up to put him on the rack and ultimately back up on the shelf now at $17M per. If they were going to do this with him, they never should have brought him back. Starting.. fine, selected pen duty.... fine, closing not fine as closers have to be able to go on back to back and sometimes back to back to back days. Seriously doubt Nate's arm will stand up to that and I don't buy the argument that Nate had some ulterior motive in flat out saying HE DOES NOT WANT TO CLOSE. Don't buy it. We are just making excuses for this mess like a bunch of Celtics Green-teamers.

Get a Closer...even a slightly over the hill Closer would be better than the trash they have closing now or just throwing Nate to the wolves. Throwing Nate in the Closer role and bringing in Wheeler makes 0 sense. Wheeler is just Nate II probably slightly worse. They are virtually the same pitchers. Get somebody that has closed successfully. He does not have to be currently great at Closer to beat the trash we throw out there to close now and won't have to be great to beat Nate in that role. Frankly I don't think it much matters what they do. The Wheelers of the world are not likely to save this team from itself. JD is making noise about wanting a more permanent deal at more money. Mookie has been distracted all year by his contract issues. Poor baby, $20M is such a burden for him to carry. This entire team, certainly the members of it other than X, Rafi, Vaz and Price has whaaaaaaaaaa-ed its way through 90 games and will likely whaaaaaaaa its way out the year.

A far cry from multiple TJ's and floating bone chips in the elbow. Nate is a fragile egg and taking him out of his comfort zone is simply cement headed particularly now that we are on the hook for $17M per. Sending him to the pen to get his arm back in shape is one thing. Keeping Nate there or worse, putting him in the Closer role is sheer lunacy.

Yup. never missed a beat...no multiple injuries and surgeries either. Had awesome command of all his pitches as well. Funny how there are not many guys pitching today that we will ever say either about.... never missed a beat, no lost seasons, awesome command. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Nate.

With all due respect that is an absurd comparison. You cannot compare career stats from a pitcher that accumulated those stats pitching on average of 1.06 innings per appearance with a guy that has accumulated his career stats pitching 5.44 innings per appearance. Its not the same thing....its not nearly the same thing. In the first place Nate has done NOTHING in his career that suggests he can pitch single innings in his leverage in multiple games per week....NOTHING. There is absolutely nothing that would suggest that would "save his arm" either.

I just heard this on radio and damned near laughed my ass off when I heard it. The last game of the College World Series, The COLLEGE WORLD SERIES outdrew ESPN's MLB national baseball telecasts that week. In fact, the College Softball World Series outdrew ESPN's MLB national baseball telecasts that week. Who the f*** does MLB think it is kidding with this s***. Everything they have tried, some of it they are unwilling to admit to is FAILING. I might actually outlive MLB and that was hard for me to imagine not more than a decade ago.

Based on what is Nate to be considered a "good closer" at this point....what record of closing does he have? I decent starter...I can buy that one....a good closer...sorry not buying.

So on what planet should Nate be a $17M Closer with no real experience in the role? We are looking more like Celtics Green Teamers every day.

Closing saves Nate's arm...how so? He has no history of pitching under high stress late in multiple games in a row...NONE....NADA. Sending him to the pen to allow him to work back into shape makes sense. Sending him out to close now, tomorrow, next week, next month, makes no sense at all. In fact, now I am back to where I was. Don't get Wheeler unless the Mets give him away. Work Nate in the pen until he can work his arm back into shape and GET A CLOSER.

At what level of expectation? For 90 games the IP/G by starters in the AL is led by Houston at 5.67 innings per start. The Sox sit at 5.17 IP/G by our starters. Neither team uses an "opener" that I am aware of, though both have had bullpen games. Unfortunately, you can barely tell the dif any longer between a bullpen game and a "regular" rotation game. If the best this league has to offer is still less than 6 innings per start where do we think we are actually going with better rotation performance over the remaining 72 games? Do we think we are going to go flying past 6 innings per start per game? I don't think so. Nobody but nobody in either league is exceeding 6 innings per start as an average including the NL. As I have already stated maybe in this thread maybe in others, the NL has more pitchers that actually challenge hitters which is a thing of the past in the AL. The Nats are averaging 5.93 In/G per start and the Dodgers are right on the same pace at 5.82 In/G per start. 5 of the top 7 teams in In/G per starter are NL teams. Surely the lack of a DH contributes to that difference to some extent but clearly NL pitchers challenge hitters more than AL pitchers do. I have no problem with the Sox pursuing Wheeler. But he is simply Eovaldi II. Nate challenges hitters now more than any Sox starter since Sale can't throw his Slider worth squat. I appreciate that in both Wheeler and in Nate because I am so sick and tired of watching Sox starters not challenge one damned hitter. I don't appreciate how often both leave the ball over the middle of the plate. I like that they challenge. I just wish they would challenge with more success. I don't think we will appreciate how often Nate will leave the ball in the middle of the plate as a closer nor do I think we will appreciate his tendency to need to get into a groove off the mound before he finds the plate. Plus Nate is on the record NOT WANTING TO CLOSE. Yet the Sox already have an investment in him. What the f*** are they doing asking Nate to close? Want to get Wheeler...fine...not even sure we have the assets to get Wheeler, never mind better than Wheeler. But Wheeler is not big money. Get a Closer to go with him or at least a Closer that stands a chance at closing better than anything we can toss out there including Nate. That should also not be a major investment. They could of course wait to see where they are after the 14 games with the Yankmees and Rays which will put them most of the way through 34 straight games in 34 straight days. The Sox could be dead about half way through those 34 games. In fact, if they play them the way they have played the first 90, they will be dead at that point.

Also you can see it in the way the OFer's track the baseballs. Sorry folks, you are not a CF because you guess how the ball is tracking better than the average bear. You are standing in CF particularly because you KNOW how to track a baseball. How many times have we seen the CFer retreat to where he thinks he needs to be only to see the ball keep going and going and going either over the fence or 10-20 past where his best effort to track the ball put him initially and its not the prevailing breeze either. This happens regularly now, hitting into the wind, with the wind, indoors, outdoors, does not matter. How many line drives do we see now that just never come down. And yes, the number of times now a hitter can simply give up all the power in his swing, be entirely out on his front foot and flick the barrel of the bat ONE HANDED and hit the ball out to the opposite field power ally is just flat ridiculous. Balls go out now that look and sound like they are hit close to the label of the bat. Balls go out that the hitter has just barely gotten some part of the barrel onto the ball....they are going out left and right and center in swings and contact that simply should not yield a HR's and they are going out on all sorts of pitches, not just 98 from the pitcher. In fact, its often not 98 from the pitcher. Chavis can only hit Sliders thrown down main st. Does he appear to have any difficulty hitting them a long way???????

And there ya' go. The "younger generation" will figure out that they are being sold a bill of goods and honestly they have very little tolerance for that now. We have sold them down the primrose path over too many "so called" dyed in the wool, take it to the bank American standards and they are not real interested in supporting you once you have your pants down around your ankles. Too many charlatans have worn out that path for them. If I were MLB I would NOT have tried to cloak efforts to create an environment biased toward larger, less agile players in some half baked, "we are trying to protect the players" nonsense. They don't care if a player keels over on the field as long as MLB can't be blamed for it. They simply don't care about the players.They should not have promoted power pitching as they are running through pitchers faster than crap through a goose and as I have posted earlier, there is simply no getting around the fact that everything that happens on the diamond starts with THE BALL (now f***ed up beyond imagination) in the hand of a pitcher (now f***ed up beyond imagination as to their nominal performance across the league). IMO" - they never should have focused on so much replay. It just sucks up too much time the way its used. They should have restricted it to HR calls and foul balls....PERIOD. Plus you what to tell me, younger fans would not LOVE to see Billy Martin kicking dirt on the umps shoes? - they should have NEVER changed the rules around the bases and I would even question whether they should have done it around home plate. Around the bases it has simply provided a false sense of security to the infielders and has biased away from agility and footwork. It has robbed away one of the most beautiful plays in all baseball, turning the DP in the face of the oncoming runner and has done NOTHING to actually protect players. As for home plate, Astros Jake Marisnick just crushed the Angel's catcher Lucroy at Home Plate just days ago in a completely legal play. So those rules changes are just more MLB nonsense. - never should have tried to convert the multi-dementional game of baseball into a uni-demensional power game both from the mound and from the batter's box. They have killed off more pitchers than you can shake a stick at and they can't backfill them fast enough. The result of that is guys that in past decades would never have made it out of AA ball, now pitching in a MLB uni. - should not have engaged in this effort to change the baseball multiple times not to redress an imbalance but specifically to create absurd imbalances. - should have done something to mitigate the shift as the shift is being fed by computer data. Nobody cares about whether a team has a good computer geek or not. I have yet to see an award for MVCG and if I ever do, that will be the last MLB game I watch. The shift helps bias hitters to get the ball in the air and hit a HR when in fact any number of other decisions and actions from the batter's box would be effective for a particular time and place in the game. All in it has created uncompetitive, nibble around the edges pitchers that don't challenge any hitters and that don't have enough command of their pitches to gain control of even one side of the plate. Pitchers no longer challenge hitters because they either can't or won't. They are either not good enough to do it or not confident enough to do it and probably BOTH! Hitters are allowed to reach across the entire plate and even a few inches beyond that, a complete travesty and a detail of the game that younger fans do not even recognize while heralding today's hitter as the best ever....Best ever MY ASS! If I had my way and I was trying to direct MLB's efforts I would have biased them away from all of these rules changes and all these manipulations of the baseball and all this power propaganda. I would have drilled into young fans something that I have said here many times: Everything that happens on the diamond starts with THE BALL in the hand of THE PITCHER. First understand what he is trying to do with that ball at a level of detail that allows you to determine who is pitching competitively and who is not, who is challenging hitters and who is not and suddenly all of the actual beauty of this game opens up to the viewer. I would have lived or died with that as a sports enterprise, pass or fail at least pass or fail on what you are, not some fabricated facade. This is coming from a hitter. I HATE PITCHERS (a little strongly worded but not far from the truth). But if as a fan you cannot or refuse to understand what the pitcher is trying to do not at a stat level of detail or wins level of detail but at a field competition level of detail you will always be lost and the game will always be a mystery to you. Efforts to change the game as a means to continue to avoid what MLB should have been doing all this time will only rob them of fan base faster in the end.

Well MLB has changed. When the ASG was a great game to watch and a hard fought game, away games were effectively a train ride or a short flight away from home games. Travel was far less tedious than it is now. Take it from somebody that had to fly major miles for a career, a day in the air is NOT a day of rest and I don't care what you pay for the seat on the plane. Now, taking 3-4 days that could be spread throughout the season for rest purposes and then not even resting your best players right in the middle of a championship season for an "exhibition" is just harebrained, scatterbrained MLB nonsense just as most of their recent crap is nonsense. In 1970 for example the AL east had 5 ET zone teams and one Central time zone team. The AL West had 4 CT zone teams and 2 WT zone teams. The NL East had 4 ET zone teams and two CT zone teams. The NL West had 3 CT zone teams and 3 WT zone teams and nobody had to fly to ridiculous to get to Seattle to play baseball games. For all intents the worst thing an ET zone AL East team had to do was get its asses to Arlington TX. The worst thing the AL and NL West had to do was jump over a time zone to play their CT zone rivals all clustered in the CT zone and back again. Teams stayed in the main within their divisional play as well. Compare that to the laughable insanity we inflict on ballplayers today. Steroids, PED's?... They would be justified carrying Comfort pets, hypnotists and mystics as far as I am concerned, never mind Steroids and PED's. In addition there was real rivalry between the NL and the AL owners that sifted down to the players. It was so competitive between the two ownership groups that it bordered on hate. The NL was the league of speed and agility having accepted integration at a far quicker pace than the AL and the AL had become the "retirees" league and was known as such. Why the heck do you think it was the AL that adopted the DH? Now while there is still a DH league and a non-DH league, the players are basically playing for the MLBPA. That is their "team". Everything else is just laundry for them. Can you blame them?

The problem is that a vast majority of a drop in the bucket does not get it done. The 65+ year old geographic is 5x the 18-49 year old viewership and my group (the 65+ group) is not exactly growing in size. So unless they actually teach these kids the intricacies that make baseball a great game all MLB is doing is slitting its own throat. Watching uncompetitively pitched Superballs get hit over a fence one after the other and calling it MLB baseball ain't gonna' get it done. Frankly the ASG "Home Run Derby" is hardly different than what MLB says passes for an official regular season game now. These kids might be ignorant to the intricacies of baseball and that is on us and on baseball. But they are not stupid. Where MLB appears to be heading will ultimately prove to be not worth the young fan's time nor the young fan's money BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT STUPID. You could more readily make the case that MLB is stupid for thinking they will get away with this. Who for example will really be interested in the career records of baseball players when one can no longer rely upon the baseball one season to the next. Making a change to correct an imbalance is one thing. Instituting change that CREATES absurd imbalances is quite another. The entire business dynamic of regular season baseball games is built around a cost and ticket price structure that is unsustainable for what is basically turning into a farce, a charade. MLB is becoming general entertainment as opposed to sports entertainment and at $50-$100 a pop for tickets that is just going to come crashing down around their ears at some point and likely all at once too. Probably will happen right about the time my generation (65+ of age) starts really pushing up daisies on a regular basis.

I can't stand the thing. It might be tolerable if I did not have to listen to the MLB shills (broadcast crew) telling me how excited I should be and how wonderful the game is that I am watching. Weighted against the time it takes out of the regular season for what is an unofficial "show" game smack dab in the middle of the actual regular season and I simply refuse to give them the benefit of my viewership. f*** em'. Its as ridiculous as.....as ridiculous as....squeezing three days off out of five from the end June schedule so that you can cart two of your premier teams across the Atlantic Ocean to play two frigging games in London!

They actually keep records of THIS crap. What a farce.

But I doubt their revenue streams have much to do with the baseball itself any longer. A trip to the park now could just as well be a trip to a carnival. Doubt very seriously that many of those fanny's in those seats have much of an idea what they are looking at between the lines. The viewership is in the 65+ age category is 5x the viewership in the 18-49 year old category. What are most of those 65+ year olds (like me) doing, using baseball games as a remedy for insomnia? These games sure as heck are not an aphrodisiac. However, there is two problems with that: 1) it brings MLB out of the realm of sports entertainment and into the realm of general entertainment. There are plenty of ways to spend general entertainment dollars. As soon as the crowd that does not even know what they are looking at figures out that all these HR's are just flat BORING because there is really very little exciting about watching a guy hit a Superball over a fence this whole experiment in uni-dimensional power baseball is done at least for the sport itself. 2) what happens when those 65+ year olds die off and they have run out of steam convincing the current crop of 18-49 year olds that there is anything at all exciting about seeing a guy knock a Superball over a fence. Its still only one run per HR. Are they going to start to offer multiple runs based on the distance the ball travels? There was a TV show called Home Run Derby that ran for a time in 1960. It ran for less than a year and died like the dog it was because it was an utter and complete BORE! They should just stop calling it baseball now. It is already just about unrecognizable mainly because the pitchers can't or won't throw competitively and there is simply no way around the fact that everything that happens on the diamond starts with the baseball in the pitcher's hand. In fact its probably both. The pitchers both can't AND won't throw competitively. Just call it something else and then they can do whatever they damn well please.