jung

As if there is a guarantee that dropping Porcello into relief in game 3 assures winning game 3. It doesn't. If Cora has a lead and can't find a way to get to Kimbrel in game 3 he should find another line of work. And yes you are a troll, an admitted troll when it suits you and at other times, not so much.

I am sure you would love to see the Sox use up two RH starters in Game 3 in NY. Nice try. Trollmanship and not rational for the Sox...wonderfully rational for a Yankee fan.

and of course the best way to get ahead of Tanaka is to make him try to nibble early in counts instead of just letting him throw nothing-balls to an 0-1 count. There is no excuse for letting Tanaka get away with that. You have to force him to nibble early in counts and if he can do it fine. Good on him. Allowing him to just throw nothing-balls to an 0-1 count is just suicidal. The numbers just do not support what you are suggesting here and they don't support what the Sox did in the Tanaka game.

If we can't win Game 3 without having to go consider Porcello in relief then just take your chances and start Porcello in Game 3. The whole reason Cora is not starting him in 3 is because he used him in relief and he wants to give him another day of rest. So now he is going to do the same thing in Game 3???? Just start him if you are going to do that. Cora is already over-managing this series. I actually think Evo in game 3 is sort of a weird decision. But it only makes sense if you are going to save Porcello for game 4. Starting Evo in game 3 and then going to Porcello in relief again makes no sense at all.

I would not bring Porcello into game 3 if Evo is not getting it done. We need to win one in NY to get it back to Fenway. Porcello has to start either game 3 or game 4. If he is not going to start game 3 he has to start game 4.

Holt definitely plays in games 3 and 4 especially since they are in Yankee Stadium. I would likely go with Devers as well the way the Yankee RH hitters hit in that ballpark.

That said letting Tanaka get you to 2 strikes is just death. BA against at two strikes is .165 for the season. That is cumulative. So the hitter is not helped much even in the count or at a full count. He gets you to two strikes and guts you with a pitch that looks like a strike that you can't hit. You can't go into a game with him thinking he won't have both his Slider or his Split. His Split is the better out pitch. But the Slider is no slouch either. Tanaka was throwing NOTHING 0-0 in counts especially in the early innings and we just took and took and took. You can't do that with him into his 2 strike stats. Its just suicide. Its playing to his strength. Sox got 3 hits off of Tanaka. A single and a HR off of first pitches and a single off of second pitches and that was it. As you run through his results by pitch, it is just all downhill from there. Anybody think it would have made more sense to be looking to swing earlier in counts? You can't play this game based on playing it to the competition strengths. You are just asking to lose. So I care not whether Tanaka COULD have started nibbling early in counts if we were beating up on his nothing balls early in counts. If he could adjust and did adjust ...good on him.

Fine...so if we get a starter who is flat terrible we will win.... Problem is we won't get starters that are flat terrible too often in the post season. Up to the 7th inning of last night's game there had been 44 runs scored in 8 post season games. By the end of last night's game there was 47 runs scored in 8 games by all teams playing. That is post season baseball. We will see if we can play post season baseball. We can IMO. But we haven't yet.

It is absolutely not over. But if the Sox keep going to the plate the way they have in these two games, I don't like our chances. Take a home run by the best hitter we have out of these first 18 innings and we have done absolutely nothing, in one case against a pitcher Happ that was flat awful. We certainly can pitch better than Price pitched last night. But we are not going to generate as much offense as we are used to from the regular season and we are not likely to generate any offense that will lead to post season wins going to the plate the way we have been for the first 18 innings. We are waiting till our 2nd and 3rd times through to adapt to their starters. Can't do that in the post season. Its too late by then. You have to focus on what the opposing battery is trying to do from the very first pitch of every game....REPEAT....from the very first pitch of every game. If you don't beat these starters early, they will be gone by the time you get your 3rd shots at them anyway. If they are not gone by then, it means they are beating you so badly that their pitch counts are low and they are just mowing you down. So that "strategy" from the regular season does not work no matter how the opposing pitcher is doing. None of the post season opposing batteries are going to lay down for us because of the gaudy regular season offensive stats of some of our players. But in fact that is how we are hitting, like we can just throw our bats out on the field and they will just lay down for us....about like the regular season went against most of the sludge we faced all year. We have to focus on what the opposing battery is trying to do right from the very first pitch of the game and calculate how we will hit when we get to the plate right from what happens from the first pitch of the game. When you are in the dugout, no visiting the buffet table, no extra trips for a fresh up. Keep your ass in that dugout and watch everything the battery is doing with every one of your hitters. I know we are not doing that. I don't even have to be in the park to know they are not doing that. Tanaka was not nearly as dominant last night as he can be. We let him do exactly what he does. We did it by stubbornly taking good pitches to hit early in counts early in the game. Right from strike 1 to Mookie we should have seen that he was not terribly confident at that point in the game and was throwing NOTHING at 0-0, trying to get to 0-1. You are not going to have much success against Tanaka letting him get 2 strikes on you unless he is flat out terrible that night. Getting you to 2 strikes and then gutting you is what Tanaka does. We know that is Tanaka's plan. Pitching beats hitting. It just does. The game is designed that way. Everything that happens in this game starts with a pitch, a huge advantage for the battery over the hitter. So our hitters have to know before the game starts what a particular pitcher and battery is going to try to do and start making decisions about the opposing battery's level of confidence in that plan right from the first pitch to the first batter. Tanaka has a plan. Sevarino has a plan. Happ has a plan. CC has a plan. They all have a plan. They are all good in the post season and they all have a plan. That is just the way it is and they WILL beat you because you don't have the advantage....THEY DO! We are going to the plate like we do what we do and by the 3rd time through the order we will have this figured out or we will catch up to the starter. Not gonna' work in the post season. Didn't work with Tanaka and won't really work with any of them unless they pull a Happ or a Price and are flat terrible. Funny thing about this is that if we get through this round, there is better pitching down stream for us to face than we are facing now. If we think we are going to be putting up crooked numbers regularly, think again. Not going to happen. If we continue to bat like all we need to do is roll our bats out onto the field, nothing is going to happen.

Where I will agree on the offense is that Tanaka was NOT as dominant as I have seen him or as any of us have seen him. I have no idea why we were taking early in the count early in the game. Tanaka was throwing fatter pitches to that end early in counts than I am used to seeing from him. You just can't let Tanaka get you to two strikes that often and think you are going to beat him. You aren't. If Tanaka comes out of the box throwing with the purpose to get to an 0-1 count you will know it right from the first batter and you absolutely have to take advantage of that. If you don't catch him then and let him toss up goose eggs on you he will gain confidence in his pitches and by the 2nd time through be less likely to toss cookies up there early in counts. X got a cookie to hit that Tanaka immediately took blame for with his battery mate. In other words while that was an early count pitch, it was a clear mistake and Tanaka knew it. Missed his location by a mile. So there might be a couple points made in this thread that speak to our offensive ineptitude: - You can't wait for the 2nd and 3rd time through your order to adapt to what the opposing starter is doing. Its too late then in the post season. You have to watch from your first AB's in the game and begin calculating from that point - if you are facing a pitcher like Tanaka that lives to get you to strike 2 and then guts you, you can't think you are going to succeed letting him constantly get you to strike 2. You might have a little success, but not enough success. So don't think that just because you are great hitters you can just go to the plate and do what you do. Pitching beats hitting. The game was designed that way. Everything that happens in this game starts with a pitch which is a huge advantage for the battery over the hitter! - Finally as has been said in this thread in other ways, they need to put their regular season behind them because if they don't that is what they will carry out of this post season, great regular season stats that went nowhere AGAIN. They are hitting a bit like they think they should just be able to toss their bats out there on the field and everybody is going to roll over for them Nope, if anything there is even better pitching downstream in this post season than they are facing now. There are very very few slugfests in the post season. You are not going to throw up big crooked numbers often no matter how gaudy your regular season stats. 8 post season games to a point in the 7th inning last night.....44 total runs. That is not some accident.

Our starters have to pitch to the characteristics of Yankee Stadium. We are trying to keep our LH starters away from the place which is a good idea because they are terrible there. But if our RH pitchers don't pitch to the characteristics of that place, I don't like our chances. If we are expecting to win post season games scoring 7-8 runs a game...think again. Does not happen in the post season.

I have to admit it still amazes me how relief pitchers pitch in the era of the pen. I would have thought you would have done anything as a LH pitcher not to walk LH batter Benni there...just anything, including grove a pitch.

Erod really is not a relief pitcher. Erod is never around after the 5th inning, which means he is never around when his jams leave us with only 9 outs to work with to make up for his crap. I thought it would have made sense to come with Erod early and then come with the guys that are at least used to being around later in games. Loosing Wright really puts us behind the 8 ball as he was going to be long/middle relief for a team desperate for "good" relief of any kind. What did the TBS announce team say, to that point only 44 runs scored in 8 post season games so far. You just don't put up big crooked numbers in the post season. You have to be able to pitch in the post season or the OTHER team WILL put up crooked numbers. Porcello has to come up big in NY.

By the way...didn't many of us say that our hitters would struggle to score runs in the post season AS MOST HITTERS STRUGGLE with good pitching in the post season. You don't generally score in the post season the way you do in the regular season. You are mostly facing the best pitching in the game as opposed to the dregs of the game.

I am OK with Sandy staying in up to the 6th. If we are still down 3 or more at that point, Sandy needs to come out.

Earth to Red Sox. If a Tanaka pitch starts at your knees its finishing at your shoe tops, at best. Wonder if Price would ever point to himself and say "my fault" after a blast as Tanaka just did.

Come on Sox. Force Tanaka to throw it over the plate.

Keep waiting for Gardner to age enough for his vision at the plate to go. Good thing I have not been holding my breath.

Warning track power. Needs to stop swinging for the fences early enough in his career so that it does not screw him up. I am actually happy to see him going oppo, especially in this park.

Which has nothing to do with how poorly Price pitched. I actually would have Sandy out of this game at this point or before his next AB because we are over a bloop and a blast down. But that decision has nothing to do with Sandy's "input" into Price's performance tonight.

Don't chase Sox.

Its simple. You just can't blame the catcher if the pitcher is just piping pitches to bad locations. I didn't see Sandy holding the glove where any of those pitches were going.

Price was actually worse tonight than Happ was last night....a stunning achievement!

Price didn't hit a location for all his stunningly deep game stint. Hard to blame Sandy for that. Price flat sucked as usual in big games.

Swinging at that 3-1 pitch killed Kinsler. Then again, our Designated Pitcher was on deck. So I am not sure it mattered much.