jung

Coming after Vaz in the strike zone here. Don't blame him

My first chuckles of the new season. Thank you!

Come on Devers . Geez I would have hoped the lazy stuff left behind from last year.

Ah back to game threads. Couldn't be happier. Nice to see you all back.

I think Rick "lucked out" in that the liner was tailing toward RCF and away from him when it hit him. If that had been headed toward his right side and tailing left like that it would no doubt have stuck and would have been much worse. The absolute worst shots with pitched or batted balls are those that are tailing into you instead of tailing away from you.

There is no Spring any longer in Southern NH. We go Winter, Summer, Short Fall, Winter. Somehow the State Legislature must have sold its soul to give us a short Fall to suck in the leaf season crowd. Spring is gone here.

Cora had guys that will be on the 25 man out there the bulk of the game on Saturday and they looked like a team again. I hope Pedey plays as long as he can play protecting that knee as he did Saturday. I don't think he should stop trying to protect the knee out there in the field even if it feels pretty stable.

Well I think Cora (assuming he gets there) intends using the same formula out of the pen he used in the 2018 post season run. Using starters as relievers in the post season is not new. Has been done forever. Using starters as relievers that have multiple additional starts ahead in the same series....that has not been done in a long long time and I am not sure it has ever been done to the extent Cora did it in the era of the 12-13 man pitching staffs and multiple post season series. I actually am hoping for a better regular season across baseball than we had in 2018, mainly for the good of MLB even if it means the Sox have to work harder to get to and through a post season. IMO, 2018 was not that great for MLB generally. The general quality of play was terrible. If anything one thing that distinguished the Sox is that they actually played the game more as it is intended than any of the other teams that got to the post season and all of the teams that didn't get to the post season. X was a tower of strength in the middle of the infield. The catching core was on balance anywhere from very solid to outstanding. the OF was an absolute monster. They played from a broader base of skill sets than virtually anybody else and they pitched very well on balance. Not the best, but combined with everything else, they pitched more than good enough. They had holes. But everybody has holes now because there are too many kids playing that should be in the minors for at least one and sometimes two more years and too many broken down vets still playing. I am looking forward to the 2019 campaign. What else is new. You guys know that now in retirement it is rare for me to miss more than two, maybe three games a season if that. Interested to see how Cora handles his second year at the helm as well.

IMHO, Cora is holding the guys who are obvious 25 man roster guys out or at the least very slowly bringing them into preparation for the 162. Good catch on the lack of ST innings for the rotation. I do think it is just indicative of how little Cora is working what will likely be the 25 man. Maybe he wants them to bust down the door to the clubhouse on day 1 of the regular season to get to the playing field. Maybe he just knows how rugged 2018 was and how short the period between such a long season and the next ST. I just don't know. We shall see I guess.

OK, I have seen all of this guy DeLaGuerra I can stand for awhile. He can't play Short. He can't play 2nd. Where is this guy supposed to be playing because from what I have seen, the Sox don't know. Does anybody on the board know?

I would also offer as to the lack of hitting early in ST, I cannot remember a time when pitchers threw their secondary pitches as early in ST as they do now. Usually they took a bit more time to shake the cobwebs off the arm. Now, I am having a hard time finding the "shake the cobwebs off" period. Hitters always have to catch up to the pitchers but its been like watching them try to hit whiffle balls from guys that can actually throw. As for the guys that "hope" they can throw....not so much.

Not only that but as generally expressed in a post i made much earlier in this thread, IMO the Sox came down the stretch in great shape going 19-6 in July, 18-9 in the dog days and 15-11 in September. The September record is not as impressive but they would have had to suffer an epic fail by September to fall out of 1st and Cora knew it, managed like it. Whether some of our Yankee brethren like it or not if we want to call what we saw early in the 2018 campaign from most MLB teams, MLB quality baseball we would be putting our head in the sand. In addition we can see with our own eyes that there were guys on these 25 man rosters that have no business being there on day 1 of the 162. Just the way it is these days. Assuming I am guessing correctly on Cora's direction at this point, I have a hard time questioning it. In spite of my own skepticism at times and expressed in these pages last year, I have to say that Cora did a masterful job managing his assets last year, all the way through from beginning to end. I would be denying everything I know about this game to claim otherwise. Hence I have no basis to question what he might be doing at this point in ST. I should also add that the managers that appear to be enjoying success these days are the managers that are completely invested in the MLB we have today, not the MLB we had 10-15-20 years ago. Cora might be the best current example.

It does look to me like Cora is working those truly contending for a spot on the 25 man in more gradually than he did last ST. RemDog contends that the way to repeat is to start the next ST by turning the page completely from the championship season. Is that realistic given the amount of travel these guys have to do now having just gone through a 200+ game 2018? I noted in an earlier post that the biggest dif to me in the 2018 Sox and the rest of MLB was the basically God Awful early season baseball virtually everybody else was playing in 2018 when you compare it to the ball the Sox were playing. Were we playing great ball early? NO!!!!! Were we playing God Awful baseball as was virtually everybody else early? NO!!!!!! More telling, we did it with Cora sticking to his "rest through the season" formula for getting through the 162. The curent dynamics within the MLB is suggestive that seasons are likely to continue to go as 2018 did. Franchises appear all in on this idea of putting guys on the 25 man that just don't belong there right from the first day of the 162. The result....basically crappy baseball for a couple months. I cannot tell with certainty what Cora is actually doing. But if he is trying to ease the guys that will actually be on the 25 man into ST intending to produce the same sort of result early in 2019 as he got early in 2018 in spite of just going through a 200+ game 2019, I don't think I can argue with him.

If the team on the field can get an out before the team batting can get a runner on, its a big deal. I am less concerned about Mookie batting from the 2 than I am with whether Beni can handle the responsibility of the 1 whether he steals bases or not. We shall see.

Didn't they end up playing 200+ games all in last year including ST? Now we can sit back and claim that the job is win it again and we don't care that their 200+ games ended in November all we want to. They played at least solid baseball throughout the regular season and in the early going when so many teams were playing like utter crap, the Sox were for the most part solid even then AND still got to season end with enough in the tank to beat everybody else. Will they be able to repeat that having just gone through such a long season? I think that is the real issue for this team and I am not convinced ST baseball has much of anything relevant to offer in that regard. I would even go so far as to say the 40 man has proven itself to such an extent that I were Cora I would simply want them ready to play come opening day. They have nothing to prove to me that they can prove in ST.

He might turn out to be the last true base stealer as an everyday player (not a base stealing specialist) we ever see play this game. I will give him that. 10 total years, three of them at 74 total games or less is hardly what I would call much of a career given the expectations for Ells. If he actually had an arm you could credit him more for his fielding. Outside of his 2011, I don't see much to crow about.

Carlos Pena doing the Red Sox/Yankees NESN broadcast asked about Yankee forgotten man, Ellsbury. His comment: "What a talent", sounding like the usual every player is a HoFer according to ex-ballplayers. For my money if it is truly over for Ells, he is going to redefine Flash in the Pan to Nuclear Blast in the Pan.

I predict another year with Jacko being dragged to the ground by season end AGAIN....sniffle....sniffle.....sniffle. Heck based on history that is a better bet than any of the WS opening odds.

I thought Henry's comment regarding the Lester cluster was pretty funny. I just wanted to say "OK John, where are you going with this....or don't you know yourself".

Since the topic at hand appears to be the pen, given the overall weakness of anybody but the top three teams in baseball, Red Sox, Yankees, Astros it is not entirely unreasonable that the Sox could well get through the regular season on what they have for a pen though I would recommend getting somebody with closing experience even if he is not great. Once in the post season would it not be another case or could it not be another case of supplementing a relatively weak pen with a relatively strong rotation? I would question opinions like "the Sox proved everybody wrong about the strength of the their pen last year". Ehhhhh.....Not so much. But I do not see a good reason at this point to blow holes in what was a working formula last year save a guy that has actually closed in MLB for the regular season.

Very happy with this deal. Some TJ's turn out super. Some not so much. This one has looked to be positively bionic. A risk well worth taking IMO.

Miller is broken. Probably needs an offseason and then some before he is anything like himself again. May need some sort of procedure. Always hard to tell these days. But he is clearly broken.

More interesting than that, the Sox have a real shot at back to back WS. The NL is utter trash at the moment. Get out of the AL in one piece and you are winning the WS. Dodgers are way under the Lux tax so they could come up big filling the holes in their pitching. But frankly I just don't think they can get out of their own way and they are head and shoulders better than the rest of the trash over there. The whole NL can't get out of its own way. Compound that with what clearly is a strange upper management and baseball ops relationship with field management and the team and I have no idea what the Dodgers think they are doing. That said, getting out of the AL is no cake walk.

For my game thread buddies, man I am jonesing something fierce. Upwards of 180 games and then......nothing.

f***ing Panda. I would like to fly him up suspended from a helicopter and drop him right on Cherry's face. "Here Ben, Boston says HELLO".