jung

Then they better trade for "Anyone" because his replacement is not on this team.

God Damn it, I want a pop up says Nunez. The baseball gods oblige.

Jeez....waiting to see if Vaz hit got through the infield was like me waiting to see if my bowling ball is going to come back to the pocket.

He probably plays Russian Roulette hoping he pulls on the chambered round.

if you are wondering, Beni gets to that.

The guys we are supposed to be depending on have just choked up a dog of series to this point. 1-6 in the order has sucked. Now Vaz up to 5 only points out how ugly it has been. Mentioned it earlier. But I think Sale has burdened himself in this start in a way that is effecting him. Left a slider right in the middle that was not hit and then left 94 right in the middle to Correa. That one was hit.

Speaking of ailing backs...looks like Correa's is back up to snuff.

Vaz and Sale managed to cross themselves up. Actually if the Catcher is expecting heat and gets the bender he is lucky if he does not catch it with his mouth.

You have to know Chris is feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders today.

I think Remy is wrong about Miley. That is not actually a lean he has on that pick off move. That said, if I tried what Miley does I would be in traction for a month.

Mother of God

Looks like Springer finally wore his back out hitting baseballs. In truth missing baseballs hurts worse with a bad back. No telling how his back got that way....but there is something going on there.

I strongly suspect that for whatever time Pedey comes back, Cora will have Pedey lead off before he puts Betts back at lead off.

Looks like Cora is really pissed off now. At least he has moved JD to LF from RF. Still don't think JD should be in any part of a Fenway Park OF especially in wet conditions. Is Cora flat nuts! Nunny at DH again. Hope for better luck today. Sale is going to really feel pressured to come through here. He is "apparently" this year one of the few guys that feels compelled to show up for big games. 1. George Springer ® RF 2. Alex Bregman ® 3B 3. Michael Brantley (L) DH 4. Carlos Correa ® SS 5. Yuli Gurriel ® 2B 6. Tyler White ® 1B 7. Robinson Chirinos ® C 8. Josh Reddick (L) LF 9. Jake Marisnick ® CF 1. Michael Chavis ® 2B 2. Mookie Betts ® RF 3. Xander Bogaerts ® SS 4. J.D. Martinez ® LF 5. Christian Vazquez ® C 6. Steve Pearce ® 1B 7. Rafael Devers (L) 3B 8. Eduardo Nunez ® DH 9. Jackie Bradley Jr. (L) CF

After the Saturday game I suspect the attraction to Thorny for Cora is to have a ready made surrender flag to throw up if he wants to send his team a message...like wake up, your s*** DOES stink.

RF in Fenway is no bargain for physical risks either. you have no foul ground approaching the wall in foul ground in RF and you have the optical illusion created by that bulge in the RF wall from the foul pole out to the bullpens which is what sent Tori Hunter heels over tea kettle a few years ago or can crush a shoulder if you bang into it. Hard to think of the Green Monster in terms of an optical illusion. Its there and you know its there. Can you imagine a guy JD's size going heels over tea kettle into the bullpen like Tori did? It is as you say, tighter in LF and you are more likely to still think you can make a play going into that foul ground and toward the foul ground wall in Fenway LF than in Fenway RF. No fun....ask Swi or Ramirez. In my view, those are all cases for keeping JD out of the Fenway OF entirely unless absolutely forced to it by circumstances (as in injury to everybody else). There are plenty of Corner OF's in baseball that do not present anything like the challenges of the Fenway OF. As for the specifics on JD's throw, you can sometimes get away with a throw like that from LF because the Catcher has the play entirely in front of him. He has the runner coming down the line and the ball coming at him parallel to the runner. The whole play is right there. Make a throw like that from RF and your Catcher has to manage to catch the bounding ball and then turn into the runner coming down the 3rd base line.

Its corner OF. Frankly, I don't think JD should be playing OF anywhere but Corner OF and he should not be playing Corner OF in anything but the least taxing Corner OF's in baseball. That would suggest that JD should not play Corner OF in Fenway at all at any time and Pearce should be sent out to LF if need be in Fenway. Approached from the perspective of least taxing the dif between one corner OF in baseball and another is nominally nothing. If you can't do that with JD, keep him at DH. Cora is over-managing and turning something that is not that difficult into rocket science. Play JD in LF in Fenway or not in the OF at all in Fenway. Pick your spots around baseball for opportunities to play JD in the OF (least taxing corner OF's in baseball) to keep his hand in out there. Suppose JD had not only thrown the ball into the ground from RF Friday night but since his bad throw was footwork related lets toss a turned ankle or twisted knee in there for good measure. Now what! You just lost the best and so far only consistent bat in your lineup for some number of games. Then there is the issue of what the Sox got in return for offense by sitting JBJ Friday night. They got NUNEZ at DH. Whoopie ding-dong!

Had JD not thrown the baseball into the ground on Friday night we would have been down only 1 instead of down 2 at last bats. That was a nothing throw from RF that JD simply did not make as his suspect footwork failed him on the throw. JD might have gotten away with a throw like that from LF but not from RF. You don't play down 1 the same way you play down 2. It is a huge dif, certainly greater than the dif between down 1 and down 3 and down 1 and down 4. You don't get to a more significant tactical and strategic difference between down 1 run and down 2 runs until you get to down 5 runs. We would have played our last bats differently had we only been down 1 run instead of down 2 and we very well could have come back and at least sent that game to extras and won it there if not crawled back to a tie in the 9th and won it while still AB in that stanza.

You leave the GG RFer in RF for one thing especially in Fenway. You don't turn your GG RFer into a barely average CFer because now you are going to force somebody far inferior to him playing RF out to the most difficult RF in all baseball to play. So that for starters. Next while Beni is not a good CFer either, Beni is a better CFer than JD is a RFer especially in Fenway. So if you are going to sit JBJ you keep Mookie in RF, move Beni to CF and either play JD in LF (the easiest of the three OF position in Fenway) or you keep JD at DH and play Pearce in LF. As Cora plays it now, he turns his entire OF to s*** and allows aggressive teams to push said OF to try to make plays they are incapable of making regularly just as the Astros did with JD on Friday night. While Beni is not much of a CFer, he can play barely average CF as easily as Mookie can and at least your premier, GG RFer is playing RF in the most difficult RF in all baseball to play, Fenway RF.

The Astros did not even play all that well Saturday night. Their pitching gave up buckets of walks. We did nothing with them. All the Astros did was nudge us a little and we folded up and went into "I want to go home and cry in my beer" mode. Worse, the Astros literally felt that we were so out of it that they could just bait us into beating ourselves and they did that continually both Saturday night and Friday night. Friday night, the Astros punished Cora and the team for thinking it would run that s*** OF out there to play in the toughest OF in baseball when we actually have the very best OF for playing in Fenway Park just right there, Beni in LF, JBJ in CF and Mookie in RF. We sat the league GG CFer, moved the GG RFer from his premier RF play to CF where he is barely average and moved JD, now an average OFer in any OF position to what is the most difficult corner OF position in baseball, RF in Fenway Park. There are ways to sit JBJ if you want to Alex. The ways you are choosing are crap on toast. The Astros played like a team that wanted to win Saturday night, buoyed by the sort of confidence we brought to the game many times last year and we came looking like we did not even want to be there. We looked like we had a tough night Friday night, stayed out too late, yawned, rolled out of bed and crawled out onto the field as if it was a ST practice day in Florida. Kinda' funny since it appears the Sox did not bring their game with them to Florida this Spring but then managed to somehow leave it there. How do you do both of those? Did they have "their game" for about one day in early March and that was it? Did we miss that Spring game when they basically ejaculated the entire first quarter of the season in one magnificent and meaningless performance? This in a game that it should not have been hard to get up for in our own building. Sadly our everyday players have looked much like this for what is now about 25% of the season. Saving JD, 1-6 in our batting order have been streaky at best so far. Frankly, it matters little to me who was pitching for us Saturday night. It matters more to me that the Sox starting pitcher on Saturday night appears to have been a phycological hurdle that our own players could not get over.

Mercifully ends

There are so many crap teams in MLB these days that I think it likely that we will win lots of games this year beating the snot out of them only to find ourselves hog tied and bent over the back of a couch with our bare asses waving in the breeze to be drilled senseless by either these guys or somebody else. The whole team plays like JBJ hits. Couple of weeks of "wow that was GREAT" followed by "OH MY f***ING GOD".

I would rather that we had played a game like this against the Tigers. We would not have beaten Sisters of the Poor tonight. So why would it matter. Would have done almost anything not to have barfed up a game like this to the Astros or actually two games like we have to the Astros.

I smell "this is why its so hard to repeat" just oozing out of the local media and fanbase right around the corner. Yea....tough to run the bases and make plays with all that hardware hanging out of your pockets. Maybe leave the hardware on the mantel over the fireplace why don't you!

Even that was embarrassing though. The Astros were just toying with us...purposefully trying to coax another bush league play out of us tonight. Do we actually think the runner at 2nd base did not know where the baseball was as he just stood there coaxing us into the run down play? If this were Bill Belichick's team he would be replaying this game in gory detail in slo-mo and with narration to the Patriots until it was coming out their ears and they were begging to be allowed to make amends.