jung

Well Cora has been very defensive about this thing about slow rolling the rotation. I mean he was jumping out of his chair after the 4th game of the season vs. very very very mild questioning from the assembled media. Repeating is so hard especially in contemporary MLB. This has obviously not worked out early and they are truly digging a hole. But its easy to say, this ain't workin' NOW. Heck I am guilty of it. This team is dealing with a lotta' stuff. Mookie is now league MVP, GG RFer and team leader of the WS champs. JBJ has his first GG. ALCS MVP and is the CFer for the WS champs. Devers probably thinks this is all just fun and waaaaaaay easy (boy is he wrong). X has his new contract. There is a lot for this team to work through. In retrospect, if anything I might have determined if Cora that the everyday players were likely to not handle all this stuff well early in the season and in spite of trying to extend the rotation into the post season, I might have worked them harder figuring pitching had to carry us through these early games. But there I go again, Monday morning QBing. I don't think the same things are effecting both the everyday players and the pitching staff. But if Cora can be criticized IMO it is in not calculating that the pitching staff was going to have to carry them early....until the everyday players got sorted out. I tend to think that if Cora went after the everyday players hard as a means to try to prevent this, he would have been met by a stone wall as that was not his style all last year and its just hard to deal with these millionaire baseball players.

Well I expect the everyday players to snap out of it before the pitchers do. To me the everyday players just got caught reading last year's press clippings and expecting to win games by just flopping their mitts out onto the field....NOT! The pitchers ....the way they are throwing...you just don't know. Will they have gotten enough work in by Fenway Opening day? That will be the start of the 3rd time through the rotation for them. Will it have been enough work by then? After their first starts, I did not expect much out of their 2nd starts and now I am not at all sure about their 3rd starts. Sale might just say f*** This...I don't care about the plan. IMO he will throw 93-94-95 again when he wants to do so and insists on being allowed to do so. I think Price is fine. Right now I would not give you ten cents for the rest of them.

JD can't even see this guy's pitches. JD is leaning out over the plate now. If this guy thinks he can paint one on the inside.... JD is done. He tried....couldn't do it.

I know JBJ has done poorly so far. But LH hitters should be crushing this guy. Monday morning QBing. But if I wanted to win this particular game, I would have left JBJ in CF, Mookie in RF, sat JD. JBJ would not have been playing against the fence for the pitcher for one thing.

Salty needs to just go away. He is terrible.

I am not convinced this light ST workload for the rotation is working out. Sale and Price have been "tolerable". Sale is pitching a completely different way and its going to look like a struggle for as long as he is doing this. Price looks fine to me. The rest of them suck ass. ERod is just being ERod as in useless. Nat can't find the plate though he is throwing as hard as he always throws and Porcello is short arming the baseball. It might all come out in the wash later. But it sure looks ugly now. The everyday players look WS hungover....all of them are busy looking at last year's press clippings.

I expect at this point they are trying to see if he will at least work his way to full extension. He does need to pitch his way out of this. But this is work he should have been doing in ST. Now they are stuck trying to get him to get back to full extension during actual game action. I am sure Lavanche sees it. Hes not blind. They tolerate it with Hembree. You can't tolerate it with a pitcher like Rick.

Forget it. Get him outta' there before he hurts himself.

Not expecting much from Rick this inning. At this point if he just starts extending toward home plate I will be happy with that. Look at that 0-2 to Jones. Was that short armed or what?

So I think I can offer that IMO Rick was not ready to start the season. He rarely short arms the baseball. Hembree does it all the time. He does it so much that if I were his coach I would be motivated to tell him not to do it before he threw his first pitch of a stint. Rick is not generally a short armer. For a Starter to be doing it would suggest he has not been releasing the ball at full extension during ST and he is just not there yet.

Rick is committing the mortal sin of short arming the ball. He is not extending toward home plate.

Why don't they just put a cheerleader's outfit on Salty and get it over with. At least we could laugh at him. Never heard so many nonsense excuses in my life.

What the heck was Mookie doing...his best Puig impression?

I thought mookie was back too far in CF. Its the Pitcher hitting for God sake.

Geezus H Christ....this is looking like another triple bourbon on the rocks night.

Thank God that was foul cause Devers was going to throw that into the ground even if fair. He has to be willing to move his feet or he is NEVER going to be a good or even average 3rd baseman.

Ump how much of a strike does it have to be to call it? Frigging ump. That was disgraceful.

Well at least they got a run out of the lead off hitter of the inning doing his job. I just hate when lead off gets on and we just flub up the rest of the inning. Of course we have seen darn little of lead off hitters getting on so far this year.

Holt should have done more with his pitch. If anything that was a better pitch to hit than what Swi got. If Holt had done more with his pitch Porcello could be bunting two guys over now.

Swi had a good AB there. Stayed back on the Curve but didn't try to knock it out of the park. Made sure to make solid contact and stay on plane instead of trying to bash the thing. That was a good AB.

1. Andrew Benintendi (L) LF 2. Mookie Betts ® CF 3. Mitch Moreland (L) 1B 4. J.D. Martinez ® RF 5. Xander Bogaerts ® SS 6. Rafael Devers (L) 3B 7. Blake Swihart (S) C 8. Brock Holt (L) 2B 9. Rick Porcello ® P 1. Jarrod Dyson (L) CF 2. Eduardo Escobar (S) 3B 3. David Peralta (L) LF 4. Adam Jones ® RF 5. Christian Walker ® 1B 6. Ketel Marte (S) 2B 7. Nick Ahmed ® SS 8. Alex Avila (L) C 9. Zack Godley ® P

I would not trade him. I wish Mookie had a larger physical frame. But I still would not trade him. I keep having visions of Mookie crashing into a Catcher or a largish infielder or even Beni or JBJ or the wall in the OF and crumbling in a heap or struggling with fatigue through the long regular season. Thank God he is so agile. Mookie does look a bit thicker to me this year than last...not much, but a little. I am liking that.

A catcher cannot delve all the way into the head of his pitcher and the knowledge of which pitch the pitcher wants to throw against which batter and in what situation. Really that only resides inside the pitcher's head. The Pitcher really knows how his arm feels that day. The Pitcher is the guy who actually KNOWS or should know what pitch he has confidence in throwing to this batter in this situation and on this day. The Catcher can be a great help but that is all he can be. The Catcher does not reside inside the pitcher's head. Now with ERod, has he EVER shown that he has any idea which pitches he wants to throw to which batter in what situation? Is there a particular pitch he has any real confidence in or are there only pitches he has no confidence in at all vs pitches he is sort of neutral about? The glass appears to always be half empty for Erod and that is a rotten way to pitch. Take the Sale start in Oakland were a poster and I started talking about Sale beginning to land his Slider. Sale had nothing going for him at that point. But he found 1 pitch that he could land. A Pitcher starts landing a pitch while he is struggling and you know what the Catcher does? The Catcher starts calling for it more and in more places. What the frigg else is the Catcher supposed to do. Too many times, ERod just leaves the Catcher, regardless of which one it is, just groping for something that ERod himself appears confident he can throw and sure enough, they get to the end of 5 innings at best, ERod has thrown a million pitches and the catcher still does not know what the heck ERod wants to throw! I have never seen a Starting Pitcher head out to the mound with no earthly idea what he wants to throw and no apparent idea how to figure it out more often than ERod. No wonder he ends up eventually throwing this lame duck up to the plate that just gets hit to Mars. I ask you to search your memory banks Sox fans or watch for it next time ERod pitches. How often does he look like he is just trying to nurse some lame duck of a pitch up to home plate totally lacking in any confidence in what he is doing out there?

It is actually a new world for JBJ and Mookie. Mookie is the newly crowned MVP, RF GG and the World's Champions also happen to be Mookie's team. JBJ is the newly crowned CF GG. Mookie is the RFer and in spite of everything else just mentioned above, its Mookie's job to be looking for JBJ not JBJ's job to be looking for Mookie. JBJ is the CFer. Its his ball if he can get to it. They almost came together in one of the games in Seattle. So it has already happened twice this year. It happens that JBJ caught the damned thing the first time. Mookie looked embarrassed after the missed ball in Oakland, rightfully so and JBJ looked pissed off, rightfully so. Mookie later went off on the home plate ump on a call that frankly IMO did not deserve Mookie's going off and then he bungled on the bases in the 9th. If folks remember I posted that Mookie looked frustrated and that visible frustration does not generally mean a comeback is in the offing in that game. It usually means the opposite is about to happen and sure enough! The whole team has got to get used to all these accolades that came their way and the fact that accolades are fine, but that was 2018 and this is 2019. They are playing right now with the weight of their various crowns on their heads and they are not handling the weight particularly well at this point. So what they are really adapting to is their new team and league status as individuals and as a team which actually should change NOTHING as far as the relationship between CF and RF. JBJ has to keep coming for balls he can get to and Mookie has to be the one that gives way. Its just that simple. They need to work it out.

Yea Mookie was clearly showing some frustration on his way back to the dugout after his K. That sort of visible frustration usually does not yield anything but a capitulation before the end of the game in a game of this type. It does not usually suggest guys getting fired up.