jung

Why is he even messing with Chavis like this

X....that is the way a hitter hits the FB.

Who knows. Maybe London is slanted from CF to one of the foul poles and its 520 down one line....260 down the other.

Got it tied up! Artificial surface and 378 to dead center field in London. I don't even know nor want to know what it is down the lines. What a stupid idea.

All these pitchers have to do is stop throwing Chavis breaking and off speed stuff RIGHT THERE and he is toast. One of the funniest things I have seen in baseball.

Erod looks more like and has pitched more like a grown assed man than at any time since we have had him at least. Living off that Change this year.

1. Leury Garcia (S) CF 2. Tim Anderson ® SS 3. Jose Abreu ® 1B 4. James McCann ® C 5. Eloy Jimenez ® LF 6. Jon Jay (L) RF 7. Yoan Moncada (S) 3B 8. Yonder Alonso (L) DH 9. Jose Rondon ® 2B 1. Mookie Betts ® RF 2. Andrew Benintendi (L) LF 3. J.D. Martinez ® DH 4. Rafael Devers (L) 3B 5. Xander Bogaerts ® SS 6. Jackie Bradley Jr. (L) CF 7. Christian Vazquez ® C 8. Michael Chavis ® 1B 9. Eduardo Nunez ® 2B

This year looks to me more like a failure at all levels: - DD does seem to have run up against his usual issues, busting the budget and raping the farm system though it got as a WS win - Cora and the coaching staff did not end up with a rotation ready to start the season which cost them at least 12 of their first 18 losses without even a fight - The bullpen generally is a bunch of journeymen only really capable of each filling a very specific sort of BP niche, none of them closers by the way - finally and maybe more disconcerting to me than anything else. 1-6 in the order is viciously inconsistent at the plate. This is a FB hitting team that is not getting FB's to hit and if the recent trend in baseball holds, they are not going to get FB's to hit. X can hit breaking balls and Holt can to some degree and that is about where it ends unless you want to count Chavis who can ONLY hit breaking balls and only if they are thrown for possible called strikes down main street. All by way of saying, I view their chance of getting past both the Yankees and Rays at zero. They might claw past the Rays but unlike last year, I seriously doubt they will enter the post season 5 at better than the 4th or 5th best team. THEY CAN"T HIT BREAKING PITCHES and the increased volume of breaking pitches is the big whoops of the year IMO. Probably keeping Manfred up nights considering how he has tried to massage this game in a particular direction.

Great time for this guy to come along while our offense is sucking ass against opposing starters as it is.

I don't know how the Sox could have chosen Brasier to close based on the smallest sample size in history for making such a decision. Never mind the when of it...2019 post season, the length of the sample size was laughable. I also don't know why there is this quizzical commenting I see around baseball once again about why the 9th inning is so tough. Its not hard to figure. The pitcher is facing hitters that know its the last inning and they are behind. They are as focused as they are ever going to be in that game and THAT is the reason why. Brasier, at best is one of your journeyman bull pen slugs and the chance of him succeeding as a closer over the 162 was about as thin as it could have been. I suspect, DD not getting into money for that specific role is simply Henry unwilling to keep feeding the monster that is DD when it comes to a franchise farm system and franchise budget. There is simply no possibility that DD will not bust your budget no matter how big it is and raid your farm system to zilch no matter how deep it might be unless the owner restrains him. That said, they are INVENTING ways to lose games this year. Everything but the fielding is letting them down at one time or another this year. As such I am not entirely convinced that even a Closer pulls them abreast of the Yankees or even the Rays. The whole right side of the infield is a train wreck just as an example. 1-6 in the batting order is intensely inconsistent and have fallen prey even more than other teams to the newfangled (at least for this version of MLB) tendency for pitchers to throw breaking pitch after breaking pitch.

However may innings they pitched, Nate, Price and Sale, down, ERod up, Porcello... about even, the entire Rotation was not ready to start the season. Three of them pitched less than the norm, one about the norm, one above the norm in ST. They all basically SUCKED through 4 turns through the rotation. In fact, regardless of his position in the rotation, the ONLY one that looked remotely ready and able to exceed our expectations was ERod, the guy who pitched more than the norm for a ST. Not to say any of us likely had high expectations for Erod. The fact remains that Erod is the only one of the starters that has exceeded them by any amount AT ALL. Price was closest to meeting expectation while not exceeding it and the other three were trash. So while it might only be partially a question of innings none of them pitched worth s*** until about 4 turns through the rotation. Did the coaching staff manage too strictly what the Starters were doing between ST stints? Did they literally tell them to take it easy all ST regardless of whether they were in an actual ST stint or not? Hard to tell....but there is no changing the history. They basically sucked when they were supposed to be the strength of the team. They taxed a bullpen full of journeymen as a result and gave up about 12 of their first 18 losses without even a fight. That said I am a bit more concerned at this point with our 1-6 in order and their inability to do a damned thing with any consistency v opposing Starters than I am about our Starters.

They have been pushing power baseball, power pitching and power hitting. The prevailing theme for pitching, "give us all you can for as long as you can". This is particularly true for Starters. Approaching this game from a perspective of devolving it down to one dimension from what is its best feature at least from my perspective, its multidimensionality makes little to no sense to me. We have evidence of this effort to massage the game all over MLB: - Not dealing with the shift limits player fielding agility and supplants it with computer generated positioning....there is a great "advancement for you". Next will be an award for "best computer data" sitting along side the MVP and Silver Slugger winners. - The rules around second base does not protect anything as we should well believe here in Boston. It simply biases toward larger ballplayers and away from agile ballplayers - the juiced baseball....need I say more on that score as it has gotten to be more of a rocket ship year by year since 2016 and Manfred has room to go farther if he chooses I think the DH was an OK move on the part of the AL. But remember the AL had already become by that point the "retirees" league, an old folks home for broken down ballplayers that could still hit. Probably torqued them off something fierce that the NL did not follow suit. At this point there are enough broken down ballplayers around both leagues that if I were the NL I would just give it up at this point. The Manfred trade winds are against them anyway. But much to Manfred's chagrin, the self-correcting nature of baseball has foiled his plotting to some extent. With all talk, all the PR about 95+ flamethrowers and team management literally instructing their pitchers to give them all they have for as long as they can and all this launch angle garbage on the hitting side, breaking pitches are quite suddenly and over a time span no greater than 2-3 years more prevalent than ever. Contemporary Hitters by and large can't hit them, not if thrown the way they are designed to be thrown (might end up a great asset to Chavis because all he CAN hit is a breaker thrown for a strike). We can already see the response from hitters as they now look to adjust in the only way they can....look for pitches in locations that can suit a purpose....go the opposite way, go yard, whatever till two strikes and then protect the plate, just as they used to do it. This has got to be driving Manfred crazy because he is right in the middle of many of these changes favoring an one dimensional game. It would be ridiculous for us to think that all these changes have not been for the purpose of converting baseball to mainly a power game both side of the ball and it would be equally ridiculous at this point to believe that Manfred has simply been oblivious to the changes in the baseball itself regardless of his protestations otherwise. Manfred is likely NOT oblivious to the rocket ship and is much more likely the root cause.

I would agree with that. I just don't see it as an advancement in the game. It is simply the way the game is played today having been massaged to this point by the powers that be in MLB. Like most of the goo-gah they have gotten us to swallow as producing a "better game" I can only reply.....Ah-huh. Sure it does. I await the laughable absurdity of "expansion" under the auspices of this so called better game that they have massaged into being.

I would agree with that and have said several times around this forum that Barnes is the "best" Cora has got and has to fill the "fireman" role because nobody else can. As such Barnes is not available to close. Heck he is not really even available as the set up man unless it dovetails with a fireman assignment. The mess that is this pen even exposes Barnes in ways he was not exposed in the past. For example, his efficiency seems to fall off dramatically if he is used two days running even if in one inning stints on both days. That second day is often enough... ugly. Arguably it is STILL difficult to see us get to the end of the regular season boosted out of even the wild card. It is equally difficult to think of us in terms of either the best team of the five there or even one of the two best teams there. We can muse about how you just have to get there all we want to....it sounds more like wishful thinking by the day. It looks more to me like a year when the Sox get to a wild card birth as the 4th or 5th best team making it as opposed to a team showing its true metal late in the season and going "all the way" based on a run from there.

I still don't like how Starting pitching is crushing our offense. Its gotten to the point where crushing is an apt description. You can't just put up goose eggs inning after inning and expect to make it all up v opposing pens. If you can't score enough to keep games close getting to the last three innings it hardly matters that you are 5-6 in total runs scored. Plus, its hard to make the case that mucking about at 5-6 in runs scored is anything to write home about anyway.

I don't think its the fact of the losses as much as the team is losing every conceivable way possible except fielding. Its poor starting pitching or inconsistent hitting 1-6 or lousy BP or the short bench. Its just always something IMO. To me it just says 500 team. They have tons of talent but can't get out of their own way. If they were a no talent team IMO they would be right down there at the bottom sucking exhaust. Instead of their talent putting them in the top tier of teams, it only allows them to bump along like this. Imagine if they fielded the way most of these chump teams field...my God that would be another 5 losses this season. The only part of the team that is bereft of talent is the BP. Have said they are a collection of journeymen from the start and that is exactly how they pitch.

As he peeks out over the LF wall as if he is hearing impaired but sure he hit it a mile. PLEASE....send him back as soon as able.

Where are you looking Hammer.....you were a foot off strike 3

Just stop OB....just stop OK.

Christ it would just as well be Giles. We can't hit this guy's FB either.

Crap Biagini....There goes my tease!

Only Nunny....only Nunny

We can rip what a s*** team the Jays are all we want...they have ripped the ball all day long....really all series long but today particularly. All loud outs and base hits.

Eck ever looking for the silver lining quips: "Smith saving the bullpen if you think about it" Yea from further embarrassment.

Wow just wow. If they just do NOTHING in the 9th, they deserve to be booed off the field...truly...THIS is embarrassing.