jung

Nate so far way out-pitching Cole.

I have not been real impressed with Cole coming down the stretch. He has been backing hitters off the plate tonight but does not seem to know what to do after that since he has not done it all year. He is jerking pitches all over the place. Should have thrown Rafi a pitch that was at least tempting after backing him off the plate. Payed for that. The Change to X was a laugher. Should be throwing X heat as he has had trouble with it since hurting his wrist earlier in the year. Cole's pitch selection has just been mystifying to me coming down the stretch as well. Does he any longer know what kind of pitcher he is?

Finally!!!!

ERod should get this guy. My grandmother has a better swing and she is no longer with us

Always amazes me when hitters are looking for pitches they can't hit anyway. No idea what Keboom was looking for 0-1. Should have been looking for the pitch he got and took.

ERod is throwing absolutely nothing right down main st at 0-0. Not sure why the NAT's are not just jumping on that.

That was a pretty pathetic 4 innings of hitting.

Man Sox games are just wizzing by lately. 3 complete innings in 50 mins. AGAIN

Geez X I think ERod could have done that.

Well if this guy keeps walking' people he will walk one and the next guy with pump one over the fence for 2 runs.

What is it with the popups asks Eck. Try a level swing guys.

Show them how its done ERod

Well I would hardly call those 9 iron they are popping into the air "in the hitting zone".

At some point you have to ask if the Sox are swinging at this s*** on purpose or if they all need glasses.

Pitchers should try moving Judge's and Stanton's feet in the batters box. Fizzle....fizzle....fizzle go the pinstripes.

Dalbac taking grounders at 2nd base. Oh come on Cora...PLEASE!!!!

Nice throw JD

The main cogs in the Sox hitting wheel's inability to adapt is not encouraging. Either they have to change those main cogs, particularly JD and maybe even X as he appears to be aging none to gracefully or they have to change the manager who seems to simply not care or they have to change the entire system that generates this attitude of not caring about fielding and not caring about plate discipline because they appear not to have realized that they were being analyzed and taken apart while they are being analyzed and taken apart. Fielding has been hideous all year and bringing in a guy to play 1st base that was not a 1st baseman is also less than encouraging. The Sox have gotten slap happy about just moving bodies around the infield and outfield and it shows. As for their big bats, clearly they had been analyzed and taken down a notch 1st half to 2nd half and had no answer. Their hitting suffered during HITTING SEASON! The answer was to adapt which they did not do, obviously. You can't change out the 3 guys you most depend upon for offense to win games in the middle of the current season. But "Oh well, nothing we can do about it" was not the right answer. They might back in to a WC at this point. But there is not much here to consider championship calibre at the moment, not AL championship or any other championship.

You can't just take the OPS first half v second. Who gets the AB's and what is their OPS, first half v second. Player 1st H OPS, 2nd H OPS, 1st H AB's, 2nd H AB's X .930 .749 321 199 Rafi .917 .829 330 246 JD .926 .791 324 238 Kike .747 .826 279 217 X Renfroe .780 .884 281 227 X Dalbac .673 .953 243 170 Arroyo .762 .846 143 15 The big 3 of X, Rafi, JD fell off significantly. Kike and Renfroe improved and got AB's. However they were not enough to make up for the collapse of X, Rafi and JD. Dalbac improved mightily but did not get enough AB's and neither did Arroyo. I did not include VAZ as his OPS remained the same 1st Half v 2nd Half.and Plus if there is one tactic that crosses over all pro team sports its control the big guns of your opponent and let the rest do whatever. Control the players that win games for your opponent and you stand a very good chance of beating them. That would be X, Rafi and JD for us. In retrospect, Bloom might have been better off not bringing in Schwarber and Cora might have been better off moving Dalbac up in the batting order to get him more AB's once he started clicking. That might have been just enough to pull them up into a solid 2nd WC from nowheres-ville. The pitching has been for s*** all year long and that was going to be their Achilles heel from the start. They had to hit enough to make up for middling pithing at best. They had a rotation of 5 inning wonders that got worse as the year wore on and a patchwork, inconsistent bullpen.

This is not unusual especially for the Red Sox. They rip through the league like murder's row in the first half. Then the entire league has a book on them and they fall apart in the second half. Is their approach to AB's any different the second half than it was the first....NOPE....not from where I sit. Have pitchers been taking advantage of that in the second half....YUp. Don't just look at X man. Look at all of the Sox bats from the first half and look at the second half numbers. A couple have done reasonably well but in the main, the numbers are not even close.

Well look on the bright side. Manfred will certainly be tickled at Sox recent total game times for 9 innings.

They look like a team polishing its golf clubs! They are either choking it up or simply want out of this season. There is no real way to explain coming into Baltimore in this situation and losing 2 out of 3. They are going to go down in the same old way they have been going down the whole second half.

Boy does this look like a stubborn team of hitters that are just going to keep on keeping' on no matter what. Cora grinning from the dugout does not seem much interested either. The Sox may pull this game out and they likely will back into the WC.....not looking forward to much beyond that. And if I have to hear more from the NESN crew about pitches that the Sox "just missed" I am going to puke.

What the f*** are they doing?

I would agree with that but not to the point where you are piss poor at fielding as a team. We are truly piss poor. The Astros have hit one more HR than we have on the season to date, yet are miles ahead of us in fielding stats. The Astros have scored more runs than we have scored but only 3% more runs with both teams well up in the rankings for runs scored. In other words, just based on the numbers, the Astros have not scarified fielding to hit HR's or to score runs generally.