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It is a pretty heavily RHed lineup we have right now. All we have to do is look at the last two series to see what happens to teams with limited lineup flexibility the way the game is played today. I would be reluctant to give up on Devers. He appears now down to the kinds of stupid rather unprofessional fielding mistakes common to this generation of young players....does not work hard enough on his footwork, leaves himself in poor position to field the ball cleanly, takes his God given talent too much for granted and does not work hard enough to build on it. Sort of the opposite of Mookie. But its not for lack of trying. He has just not figured out that there is no God given talent replacement for stupid in the field. The only replacement for stupid in the field is.....not stupid in the field and that takes time and working on the right aspects of your game. Crossing right in front of X the other night distracting X into an error was classic and the very same mistake the Oakland RFer made when Laereano was trying to catch the ball in Right-Center field in the last A's series. It is just stupid s*** the contemporary player seems disinterested in learning and that the contemporary fan simply seems incapable of even noticing. Both player and fan are becoming oblivious to things that were standard fare expectations for MLB players not more than 15 years ago. Meanwhile MLB continues to work the rocket ship baseball angle year by year encouraging the worst instincts of both player and fan.

The team owes Pedey $12M per till after the 2021 season and the business side of the Red Sox is very PR conscience...quite possibly the most PR conscience org in business, right up there with LA. So they are in something of a box on Pedey. Best the Sox can hope for IMO is Pedey voluntarily giving it up. Maybe they buy him out of his remaining deal. Chavis should stay but be moved around the diamond. He should play some 1st some 3rd and as little 2nd as possible. If they truly want him to be a 2nd baseman, he has to learn the position and this is no place to learn as much as he has to learn. As for his hitting, lets see where he is when the league discovers the hole or holes in his swing. Every hitter has them. Positionally he looks like more of a 1st baseman to me than a 2nd baseman. We have $12M invested in 1st base now and I am not sure that investment would make sense were it not for DD trying to take as much advantage of the young players in his everyday lineup and his rotation as he can before the window closes. Past the 2019 season having $12M invested the way we have it at 1st base now likely makes no sense at all.

0-3 Pearce removes the face paint for his last AB.

Come on X. Be the assassin.

It appears that this year, anything on the barrel or even part of the barrel in the air is going. its only a matter of how far. Wait till we get to real hitting weather.

Just got back from having a tire repaired. So only heard the Cordell HR. Cordell??? Cordell with 3 HR's on the year? At some point I have to believe that pitchers and pitchers agents are going to start to put up a fuss about rocket ship baseballs. Its going to have an impact on their salaries at some point.

Still don't trust them. The case you are making is that they suck generally and that moving to the other side of the plate so that they can at least always face the pitcher from the opposite side of the plate at least gives them a chance. Our example here is Sandy. Is Sandy a good hitter against anybody....even passible against anybody? Monada is likely the best Switch Hitter the CWS have. Forgot Areu....RH hitter only but when he gets hot, he hits anybody.

This is another suspect lineup that Rick could take full advantage of. CWS lineup today includes 3 Switch Hitters. I never trust switch hitters as the pro that is actually almost equally proficient from both sides is rare. Usually they become switch hitters because at some point in their drive to become a pro they realize that they are just flat awful v same handed pitchers and moving to the other side of the plate becomes a necessity. Key for Rick....probably the two pure LH hitters. Alonso is falling apart at the moment. Delmonaco is coming on. Even with guys like Holt out we seem to have so much more lineup flexibility than a number of the teams we face. Our general lineup flexibility might actually be a big part of why we can afford guys like Leon and JBJ on this team when their main contributions are out in the field.

1. Andrew Benintendi (L) LF 2. Xander Bogaerts ® SS 3. J.D. Martinez ® RF 4. Rafael Devers (L) 3B 5. Michael Chavis ® 2B 6. Mitch Moreland (L) 1B 7. Steve Pearce ® DH 8. Jackie Bradley Jr. (L) CF 9. Sandy Leon (S) C 1. Leury Garcia (S) CF 2. Yoan Moncada (S) 3B 3. Jose Abreu ® 1B 4. Yonder Alonso (L) DH 5. Tim Anderson ® SS 6. Nicky Delmonico (L) LF 7. Welington Castillo ® C 8. Yolmer Sanchez (S) 2B 9. Ryan Cordell ® RF

As commical as tonight's score was, tomorrow is the CWS bullpen game.

I hope I did not discourage folks from the Bruins game tonight with my early comment about both teams struggling in the 1st period. There is simply nothing quite like the ebb and flow of an NHL playoff game. After the first period both teams got sorted out and in the end it was an incredible game. You would not think it from a 4-3 score but the goaltending was simply unreal. The Bruins had to muster incredible plays to score and the Blue Jackets had to muster incredible shots to get the puck past Rask. Great night for Boston sports with Sox and Bruins winning. With any luck the Celts will pull themselves up in the Bucks series.

I just looked at the physical stats for both players because I keep looking at Chavis and Pearce and so far really could not see much of a dif in height. Pearce is listed at 5'11" and Chavis at 5'10". Seems to me that if Pearce is tall enough for 1st, so is Chavis. 5'9" would be a no.

Well now I can watch the Bruins and Blue Jackets futz around at Center Ice 20 minutes at a time. Both teams on edge and sloppy so far. CWS pitcher was making horrible pitches to everybody. Even Beni's blooper was a horrible pitch. The pitcher deserves giving up a hit on a pitch that bad. He is lucky Beni did not send that one over the fence to go with the other 3 dingers. Funny...the ump is giving a generous strike zone to both pitchers and still that guy could not keep from throwing garbage up there.

Don't go in there with sorry gas on Mookie.

Rafi handing out errors to teammates now.

Eck's strike zone tends to widen out for our guys pitching. Ump called it a strike though. That is all that counts.

It is reasonable but I think Rick makes north of $21M now on a 3 year deal. Will he take 3 years at a reduction in a contract that makes it up in incentives? This IMO is the dilemma MLB is creating for the Franchises with this loony rocket ship baseball: - Is MLB done fooling with rocket ships for baseballs or are they going to continue to modify the ball to promote this game of fly balls just going and going and going - I think they have already now gone too far but I would have said that before this year! - how are Franchises to value pitching and pitchers under these circumstances? - If it were me valuing pitchers, I would only really value the big "K" numbers pitchers in the game and everybody else could pound sand Why would you pay big money for a Pitcher unless he at least holds the potential to K everybody when every Tom, Dick and Larry fly ball just keeps going and going and going. We do realize that the baseball they use in the Home Run Derby is NOT an official MLB baseball but is even more of a rocket ship than what is used in the regular season.....RIGHT. So they can take this even farther if they want.

You never know how a Pitcher is going to react to a particular situation until he has to face it. You also don't give a young Pitcher the chance to learn from it unless you allow him to face it. Have no issues with the way Cora has handled the late innings this year and remain convinced that he will continue to make judgements about whether the tougher opponent AB's will come in the 8th v 9th inning and will use Barnes/Brasier accordingly. I do wish our Catchers would use what mound visits they have when they have them to burn. Vaz should have had at least 1 mound visit left at that point in the Thursday CWS game. Stop waiting for the Coach to bound out of the dugout. IMO A mound visit from Vaz would actually have been more effective for Brasier the other night even than a mound visit from DL. Tell him to "take a breath, calm down, your stuff is great.....I know because I am catching it. JUST THROW THE f***ING BALL."

So this start and those that immediately preceded it should put the "Sale is injured" talk to rest, FINALLY. While I remain skeptical about the Sox plan for the Rotation this year I like seeing them pull Sale when they did in this game. IMO this is not the year to push Sale into too many high stress pitches early in the year. But that is actually why I remain skeptical about the overall impact of the Sox approach to the rotation. Sure, you can limit their ST work which simply means you have pushed ST work off into regular season play. You can hope that has a residual benefit late in the season. However, you really cannot predict how many high stress pitches your Starter is going to put on his arm over the course of a season. They could and IMO should do this with Sale when they have the opportunity. Hard to imagine they could get away with it with the other Starters in the Rotation and not burn out the pen.

Heck of a come back by Sale in that inning. Two on nobody out to out of the inning.

That is not the point and you know that!

Boy NESN did not even throw a graphic for Holt up in that run down of injured players. That is worrisome.

And if he gets hurt out there as he actually could have and probably should have on that very play....just as Swihart did playing out of position, then will you be happy with this decision? As for his hitting, talk to me when the ML pitchers learns how to pitch to him.

Don't know if anybody is listening to the booth chatter. I think it is pretty hysterical that Jeter is suddenly impatient with his team as an owner instead of a player. LOL

Actually ML coaches are not well positioned to nor adapted to teaching rudimentary skills for a particular position. The expectation is that the player has that already. It will be about 1,000 repetitions easy if not 2,000, heck more likely 3,000 before Chavis stops being a goofy footer around 2nd base.