jung

Just knock that thing off the monster Jackie...or over it

Is that so Mr 13 posts. How is the weather in Cleveland?

That is going juuuuuuuust a little too far.

We have to get their starter out of the game. This ump is perfect for him. We can't get him to get the ball up in the zone. The only time he is even throwing it waist high is when he knows he has us looking at our shoelaces for pitches.

That is why I thought JBJ had a real shot against their starter. He is trying to go oppo every AB. Basically saved his season.

Hitters hit mistakes. What the heck do you think the Guardians are hitting off of Eovaldi?

Said it weeks ago...every team can be pitched to. The game starts on the mound. We are just not used to this kind of pitching. But we better get used to it.

Not really.....I would say from the last two weeks on, its all been benders, FB's mainly thrown off the plate just to change our eye levels. Sliders and two seams to our RH hitters and changes and cutters to our LH hitters. We were not getting anything like this heavy a dose with FB's only thrown for show earlier in the year. Had we been pitched like this earlier in the year on a steady basis, we would not have scored so many runs. Then again, there are only so many teams in this league that can execute this kind of pitching.

What we are seeing is a preview of how we will be pitched in the post season.

That was a ridiculous play by kinsler. Defense keeping us in this so far.

We don't need the getting another run right here.

Kid has got them all looking at their shoelaces for pitches and they can't hit the pitches out over cause .....they are looking at their shoelaces. Oldest rule of hitting....don't look for pitches you can't hit anyway. Find a way to get the pitcher to throw you something you can hit and then be ready for it.

There's one. Beni got one up and out over the plate.

Unfortunately, this is a good ump for this kid. He is yielding low strikes and we can't even do anything to get him to get the ball up in the strike zone.

That was a shame. Of all our hitters, JBJ might be the guy that could clock this kid.

This has the feeling of another great game tonight. Rare to have a team in here that can actually compete with us.

All I can say is that its a good thing that Kinsler sports a great glove.

Mitch and Sandy save a run.

True to an extent. But it has gotten to the point that the only two sox hitters getting high heat to any degree are Nunez and Rafi when he is in the lineup. The other RHers are now getting a real steady diet of sliders low and away and two seams down. Not even seeing many 4 seams thrown for strikes. Lord knows I do not want to see another slider experience with our RH hitters like we had in the 2015 and 2016 seasons.

Notice that as the season has moved along more and more pitchers are pitching us down and down and away...often not even trying to finish us off with high heat. More often opting for a slider down and away or a two seam down to our RH hitters and following the Manaea example from early in the season, changes and cutters to our LH hitters. Kid had JD looking so much at his knees for pitches that he didn't even have to throw him a rising FB....just anything at the waist froze JD in that AB.

1. Mookie Betts ® RF 2. Andrew Benintendi (L) LF 3. J.D. Martinez ® DH 4. Xander Bogaerts ® SS 5. Mitch Moreland (L) 1B 6. Ian Kinsler ® 2B 7. Eduardo Nunez ® 3B 8. Sandy Leon (S) C 9. Jackie Bradley Jr. (L) CF

A K can't come on a Change or a Slider or a Curve or a Cutter? Thats news to me. Probably news to everybody else too. Those who have been tracking this material have produced documentation that the percentage of FB's to off-speed and breaking pitches was tumbling even early in the 2017 season, has been tumbling since the 2008 season recovered slightly for the 2014 season and then went off a cliff edge from 2016 through 2018 to a point were it is obvious to anybody that cares to look. This stuff is not even hard to find. A simple google query should be good enough.

Pitchers have to stay off the barrel of the bat and the only way to do that is to stay out of the middle of the plate. The barrel of the bat is what allows hitters to literally hit HR's one handed especially with the rocket ship baseball they use in the ML's now. The launch angle swing does make it possible to turn what used to be considered mistake pitches into pitches you can get away with, like a Change up but not in the middle of the plate. You can get away with that pitch more often now than before everybody was trying to launch. That is why LH pitchers now believe they can throw Change ups to LH hitters and get away with it, something you would have never seen in decades past. By the same token, pitches in the middle of the plate are more likely to get tagged and are more likely going to be extra base hits or HR's than ever before. The Curve has clearly returned to the ML's in a big way and for all the noise about pitchers throwing 98, they are maybe throwing more breaking pitches than I can remember, maybe ever, all in an effort to stay off the barrel of the bat and keep the hitter from timing his pitch. The Cutter, much maligned as a junk pitch through the years is big exactly because it fools the hitter just enough to keep the ball off the barrel of the hitter's bat. What we are not seeing as much off from what I can tell is pitchers rearing back and simply throwing the ball past hitters. Kimbrel take notice.

But that is the problem with leaving a Change in the middle of the plate. You can leave it up...these days....OK, miss your location off the middle of the plate OK....middle of the plate, all the hitter has to do is wait half a tick and often even on a half swing from a decent hitter and its by-by.

Kinda' surprised JD swung at that pitch in his eyes.