jung

Great....The rays will have to give their opening a 3rd inning just so he can get some work in.

Good escape by Erod. But that is such a typical Erod inning, minus guys crossing the plate.

Atta' boy Erod...wouldn't want to have two good starts in a row now would we. Why break such a perfect record. Erod on to plan B in the first inning. 15 pitches...no outs two on.

1. Andrew Benintendi (L) LF 2. Mookie Betts ® RF 3. Mitch Moreland (L) 1B 4. J.D. Martinez ® DH 5. Xander Bogaerts ® SS 6. Rafael Devers (L) 3B 7. Christian Vazquez ® C 8. Jackie Bradley Jr. (L) CF 9. Tzu-Wei Lin (L) 2B 1. Yandy Diaz ® 1B 2. Tommy Pham ® LF 3. Austin Meadows (L) DH 4. Avisail Garcia ® RF 5. Daniel Robertson ® 3B 6. Guillermo Heredia ® CF 7. Brandon Lowe (L) 2B 8. Willy Adames ® SS 9. Michael Perez (L) C

I know you had them last year. I remain skeptical on Stanton. To listen to Murderers Row you would think the Yankees won the 2018 WS....NOT!

We are terrible right now....flat terrible.

They are a little bit more of an honest RH hitting team this year with Torres and Andujar. Before those two...NOT. I would not give you Stanton. He has been meat since his face got crushed by a pitch. Throw him one FB inside and he is done for the rest of an AB. So you are welcome to pay him to perpetuity. The park is still an embarrassment. 318 down each line with low walls and then that ridiculous section out to the end of the 2nd deck which is where most of those RF HR's land.

Still can't stand the park. Too easy to build a team to take advantage of this place while opponents coming in will NEVER in their right minds build a team to play here. Judge is the only honest RH hitter on this entire pinstriped fraud team. Would you build a team of Vaz's?

X with a pop up that everywhere else almost compels the infield fly rule gets to Judge about 6' from the warning track. Place is an embarrassment.

I have no clue how Brazier gives that pitch to Gardner up in the count like that. The rotation is starting to come around and the pen now has just about the same disease that the rotation had at the start of the year. FB's that don't rise out of the zone and are just meat in the locations where they are thrown and crap secondary pitches. Christ let him hit it ANYWHERE but there. Actually I cannot stand this park nor can I stand the pinstriped frauds.

Very good move here by Cora. Work is yanking pitches all over the place. As likely to have walked the game tied as anything if he stayed in.

Another blind as a bat ump.

When Vaz is our hitting star, you know the offense is struggling. But if Vaz played here, he would love it. He would not be tempted by the Green Monster which is not a great way for him to go. He could dink his way to RF through an entire career.

This is about as good a start as we can expect from Nat I think. Kept out of the middle of the plate for most of the game. Put that split finger in his pocket for the night thank God. That was doing nothing. But this is a good start for him. So on average it has taken the Sox rotation 4 turns through to start to get rolling. That is about right for a ST.

Vaz has gotten a few of these in this park. Place is made for his swing.

Here goes Nat again. Wild in the strike zone. Meatball to Voit. Meatball to the next batter gets fouled off.

So you think they actually gave Swi an opportunity to develop as a Catcher, the position they drafted him to fill. Were those other positional opportunities really opportunities or were they acts of team necessity because they had allowed Ramirez to talk them into the idea that he would actually WORK to be a LFer? Which do you really think that was?

How did you pull "don't blame Swi for being overhyped out of my posts? How does that make any sense. Its the organization's job to know what they are doing and why they are doing it. Frankly, by the way, very few catchers are made out of whole cloth during their baseball careers and if they are, you better devote them to full time catching from the moment you make that decision. You want your kid to be a catcher, stick a mask on his head and a catcher's mitt on his hand about when he pops out of the womb. Don't forget as well, the little experiment in LF completely stilted for over a year Swi's development as a potential professional catcher and completely stilted his development as a professional hitter. They either wanted a catcher, converted or not or they did not. They were IMO yanking meat the entire time. I would bet real money that Swi was handled this way throughout his amateur career as well..."athletic, can play multiple positions, good bat"...frankly those guys end up playing all over the diamond in amateur ball. Once they get to pro ball, if you really are trying to convert him to a pro ball Catcher you LET HIM CATCH.....PERIOD! None of this LF nonsense in the most physically dangerous OF (Fenway) in all baseball across all three positions.

Did you not read this quote from my post? "I do think Swi's hitting is overrated and his potential as a catcher is also overrated." They decided to make a conversion at Catcher their 1st round draft pick. What the f*** was that about? I am saying that whatever Swi had, they simply did not care to try to exploit. That said, how does that excuse what they actually did to him over the course of the time he was here and the way they have exited him. Sorry...does not wash...not with me regardless of the fact that I have probably been the most vocal critic of Swi in this forum! Probably should: -never have brought him here - hever have kept him here as long as the did - never have used him like they did including that LF experiment that ended predictably - should not have scapegoated the kid and dumped him on his rear end as a means to cover for their new Golden Boy at Manager, Alex Cora

Look folks, there is little sense in crying over the Swi DFA. Swi was NEVER going anywhere here. The organization does not believe in him. I actually have trouble understanding why the Sox drafted him in the first round and then did what they did with him. They have chucked this kid under the bus from day 1. I do think Swi's hitting is overrated and his potential as a catcher is also overrated. But IMO, they took whatever this kid had and dropped it down a rathole. They can't help themselves with Swi. Any chance they ever had to throw this kid under the bus, they did it. They toss him in Fenway OF, the most physically dangerous OF in baseball across the three positions with predictable results. They have a disgusting start to this season. Their rotation can't pitch its way out of a paper bag save Price....SORT OF. What do they do?....They throw Swi under the bus after the ERod start with the "We did not stick to the plan" comment. Then as Sale's NY start comes up they DFA the kid to bring up Leon. How did that work out for us? So to be honest, I am more concerned about the mentality that created this mess than I am about the fact of Swi because the Sox were NEVER going to do anything with Swi whether he is talented or not! Deal with it Sox fans. Let the kid at least try to have a career someplace where an entire organization is not spending excessive amounts of gray matter trying to throw him under the bus. Final insult to injury, Swi gets to play the scapegoat for a team that can't pitch, can't hit, and can't field and came out of ST completely unprepared to play with a stunningly obtuse plan for the rotation that will have blown up in their faces unless and only unless they can get to the ALCS. That is the only way this grand Cora strategy works out.

True....but neither ERod nor Vaz on their own are smart enough to figure that out....proven time and time again. Hence I cannot credit either one of them for how that 1st inning was plotted out. Plus I don't think it was done specifically because anybody knew Erod would have a decent FB but to coerce confidence in a pitch from Erod who only has either no confidence in pitches or is neutral to them. "You are only going to throw 4 seams in the first inning Erod. SO THROW GOOD ONES!" Left to his own devices, the glass is always half empty for Erod.

Clearly the Sox Coaching staff and most particularly AC/DL plotted out ERod's 1st inning in his last game. Pretty obvious that he was instructed that he would only throw 4 seam FB's in that inning come hell or high water. Vaz would only put down 1 finger and ERod would only throw 4 seams. I have little doubt that the coaches left ERod and Vaz no choice, no wiggle room in that. That launched ERod into his best start of the season and pretty much the best start of the entire rotation to date in 2019. Beyond what they are clearly doing with ERod, I don't think the calls are coming from the bench.

Well actually I would not be so sure that it should work that way. its a Red Sox Forum. The rule for game thread starters has been built around whether the Sox win or not. Sox win, you keep the right to start the next game thread. Sos don't win, somebody else takes over. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that there will be many multiple opportunities for GT starters this year. We might even end up trolling the streets for them like 18th century ship's officers leading a press gang looking to impress a crew before sailing.

Sandy will struggle to end up with a BA that starts with a .2 He has no batting talent or skills....none....zippo....nada. We have a pitcher in our 8 hole in a league with the DH rule. The only reason JBJ is batting 9th is because Cora hopes he gets on for Mookie. There is no hope of that with Sandy.

Just to clear up a question asked earlier. I think Jackie Robinson day is in fact one day....April 15 each year. More often than not, we are playing on April 15 and almost nobody else is playing on that day. Hence if we travel the next day, we are likely traveling to a team that is celebrating the day on April 16 while we celebrated it on April 15. We have Patriots day and the Marathon which almost always puts us at home and playing on the 15th.