jung

Right back to the batter's box. Get em' this inning.

Well the K to start this inning is hunky dory Nat. But you are throwing trash to LH hitters in the meat of their order.

Just cannot give the opponent a 5 run inning. They may come back and win this. But giving this BJ's team monster shots....are you kidding me!!!

The second one is a missed location...wild both out and in the Strike zone which he has been since the beginning of the season.

Why would Nat ever throw that FB in that location to LH hitting Smoak. That one is not a missed location. That one is just the wrong pitch to the LH hitter.

Nat gets the DP. But the best thing about going after the opponent with the kind of FB Nat has tonight is that if you can blow the hitter away on strike 3 with that thing, that is the imprint on the brain the hitter takes back to the dugout. The second time through if you work in more dink and dunk, the hitter has got the FB in his head and he is just dead.

Not sure why Nat did not go after the hitter with the FB. That thing is a monster so far tonight.

Ugly squander for the good guys.

If Devers never gets into an athletic position in preparation to make a play he is never going to be much of a fielder. Much more fielding is done with the feet than the glove. Sloppy or lazy footwork only makes it harder to make a play with the glove. In fact, I don't even watch ground balls to the fielder's glove. Why would I. The fielder is either going to catch it, knock it down or the ball is getting through untouched. I will know soon enough which one it is. I watch the fielder's foot work as soon as I know who has to make the play and keep watching it all the way to the play either being made or not. In fact if at the game in person I will pay attention to the fielder's set up positions, left side of infield for RH hitters and right side of infield for LH hitters.

Pitchers get overpaid and the degree to which they are overpaid depends on what the team values. Its an overpay for sure...but not a grand overpay. I suspect that the Sox, based on how Cora managed 2018 are looking for a higher degree of versatility out of starters than even we are used seeing. Professional team sports are copycat business operations. I suspect Nat would have gotten at least 15 per from almost anybody for a term as short as 4 years. Example of where this stuff appears to be going: Does Kimbrel have a contract with anybody yet 11-12 games into the new season? NOPE! Not getting what one thinks he deserves is one thing. On the sidelines completely is quite another.

The lack of ST work for the Starters is showing up in different ways. We have three LH pitchers in this rotation. The way the game is being played today regardless of what else is going on most LH pitchers cannot get enough RH batters out to matter without a decent Change. That pitch has become so important to LH pitchers that they are even throwing Changes to LH batters which was considered a no-no for decades. Not a single LH starter we have is throwing good Changes to this point in the season. They all suck ass in that regard and they all suck ass the same way. Their Changes are all up and out over the strike zone. The teams with power hitters have been knocking them out of the park and today we saw a team just wait on them and line them or dribble them through the right side of the infield. The two RH starters....Porcello's mechanics are awful and Nat has the usual disease of a hard thrower that has not had enough work yet. He simply has no idea where his pitches are going. Frankly at least so far "the plan" does not seem to be working. Hopefully it will pay off later in the season and hopefully they will not have given up so much ground early that it does not matter. Four more games and 10% of the season is done.

That was an awful baseball game...awful.

While the pitching has been a real disappointment, today we have been outplayed in every phase of the game so far.

Earth to Eck....you don't as a pitcher have to be used to guys running to at least give them a look on the base paths. We continue to slumber as a team.

The site froze up on page 7 of GT for me and I kept waiting for it to no avail. But I am getting tired of seeing Devers not take an athletic position at 3rd. So he was finally looking at that second 3rd base runner but looking is not anything that matters. Devers still looks like he is waiting for a bus over there. Surprised he wasn't chewing on his glove with his ankles crossed.

If one category sticks out on Sale other than the early velo issues its Sale from the stretch v Sale from the windup. He is just getting nothing done from the stretch so far this year especially early in games. Then again, if you are not going to do much work in ST, how much are you going to do from the stretch.

I am going to have to get used to Gibby being gone and not sleeping on the Toronto bench.

Christ, they gotta' show Bucky f***ing Dent on a celebration day. I actually really struggle with a good many of the Sox videos.

Fans are rather subdued for a WS ring day.

Myself, I will gladly take the Sunday Arizona win and let Tuesday or Wednesday take care of itself. This rotation has a looooooong looooooong way to go to actually pitch to anything like its potential this year. As I said in another thread, Price and ERod are closest to that. Good news in the case of Price and bad news in the case of ERod. Nat has the usual disease of hard throwers that have not prepared for the season. He is throwing hard but has no idea where the ball is going. His ball is moving all over the place no matter what pitch he throws. I don't expect post season calibre performances from Nat. But he is simply all over the map. Porcello's mechanics are a mess and far below his standard for consistent quality throwing and Sale is on some sort of plan apparently. Said plan suggests we might see Chris Sale pitch like he can again in May or even June unless he just decides that enough is enough with this plan stuff.

Not questioning your choice because frankly, we all have to make our own choices for our own reasons. Mine would be Vaz because at least when he has his head screwed on straight he actually has some hitting talent and he can go to RF thus hitting behind runners. In fact going to the opposite field is all Vaz can do with that swing of his. Leon on the other hand has no hitting talent whatsoever. Both need to be able to bunt better, particularly in the American League where the Pitcher does not hit. I consider Leon's receiving and defensive skills marginally better than Vaz's if that. Yet Vaz merely needs to give up on any idea that he can pull anything other than a dead inside pitch that forces him to pull his hands inside the baseball. The chances of keeping a ball hit like that fair are worse than my hitting the lottery this week. Just for the record, I don't generally play the lottery. That should say enough about what I think of Vaz's chances of pulling anything and keeping it fair.

Yup...this road trip was a tough haul for the Game Thread regulars.

Thank God!!!! Don't ask me why 3-8 feels better than 2-9. But it does. Hot tub shot was worth the price of admission. Might have been worth a plane ride to Arizona and a pair of binoculars.

We need the patented error/wild pitch combination.

I vote for spreading the Rotation salaries evenly out in the pen and spreading the Pen salaries evenly through the rotation. That should get something to happen quickly!