jung

This is where this concentration league wide on power pitching really bites. Sale has 8 K's in 4 innings. Whoopdy dingdong..... He pitched like crap. This was not an off day but an off-off day and he has a tendency to lose interest when he makes an early mistake. Does not recover all that well. Sox LH hitting lineup still does need to buck up a bit. They have not done much this year in games where they really do have to carry the load.

Clearly JBJ can make up for that at the plate.......I guess I have already had enough to drink today and its not even dinner time yet.

I don't blame Flowers on that. Sale has thrown the ball farther off the outside edge than that and gotten a strike. Has thrown it on the edge and gotten a ball. Now this ump is calling it three different ways in one AB.

Geez JBJ dropping his front shoulder so it does not cant his head on him makes sense. But how I wish his front shoulder was in the right place from the start. JBJ has got the busiest swing of any ML hitter I have ever seen. His upper body is all over the place. His lower body is all over the place. His head is all over the place. No wonder he is so streaky. About twice a year he has everything synced up and working toward actually hitting the baseball.

See that Slider from Sale. Good luck hitting that thing.

This might be an interesting come back inning to watch from Sale. A pitchers as good as Chris Sale does not have the luxury to make mistakes with his FB because nobody is going to even try to hit that slider if its on and hitting the Change is mostly a matter of bad location no matter who throws it. So a hitter is just going to sit FB. If its in a juicy spot to hit, if it really doesn't have movement, 97-99 even 100mph does not mean anything. A FB like that is the exact reason Kelly can't be a starter.

We can hope this is just holiday weekend booth stuff. If the whole season was like this or anything like this, it would be unbearable, good causes and all.

Sale doesn't get more of those FB's up higher in the zone or lower in the zone he is going to get more of them tagged. Doesn't matter what the name is on your jersey...BP FB's are going to get crushed in this league.

Another nice win with contributions all around again. They need to look at Pom at this point and try to determine what is going on if they don't already know. Sending him out there every 5th day at this point would suggest that they don't really know. I would rather have an effective Pom for later in the season if that is possible than see him continue like this. The way he is pitching even if he does not get worse the results are going to get worse.

Well done Beni

Nunez is way better at 3rd than 2nd. He is really an emergency 2nd baseman. But he is a legit backup 3rd baseman.

Maybe Cash is going to prove prescient in starting Romo in games knowing he is not going to go even 3 innings. or, maybe this is Cash's way of saying "this is getting ridiculous guys".

I don't think Pom is done as a pitcher. But there is something not right that they know or something not right that they don't know. Time to give up the fantasy that he is fine I think.

I'll take it but that was a 2018 MLB home run if I ever saw one. Thats just a fly ball with legs.

Good call......Sounds about right to me as well unless Wright still needs to be stretched out to start.

So Pom cannot even get a whiff of enough innings to be in line for a win. Muscled up to catch 91 low in the zone once while never having shown a single sign of being able to throw an effective rising four seam FB. I'd say they have to make a decision on Pom.

Whats truly weird is that Newcomb is at 86 pitches just to get out of the 3rd. Pom is not much better. Erod is starting to look "normal" but there is nothing really normal about any of what is going on with ML pitching these days.

That was really encouraging for Mitch. The Braves were obviously playing him to be late to Newcomb's FB and fooled by his offspeed. I would have thought that myself.

I was in favor of giving Pom one more start (this one) because at least his FB had bottomed out and it was worth it to see if it started to climb back for him. But its not and he is just too handicapped by this 89mph FB. After today, it makes little sense to just keep pushing Pom out there. I give Pom credit for his courage. He has actually given us some of the most courageous performances of this rotation since coming here. But once the entire league figures out that his four seam is not improving, he is going to get killed out there.

This kid might be a kid but if he can keep repeating Strike 3 to Moreland in that location, the LH hitters are going to have a heck of a time with this guy.

Hanley always was an enormous talent.....mostly wasted by an overemphasis on showing us that talent on rare spurts, like he was pacing himself always. He is sort of an Albert Haynesworth of baseball. But he miscalculated I think. He probably thought he could cruise through the season and stage a run of decent hitting later in the season as he has done before. But the Sox could not afford that even in trying to make a run to the post season. They simply could not afford to just throw that much money down a rat hole on the chance that they would even get that late run. IMO father time has finally caught up to Hanley at least to the extent of being able to turn it on and turn it off as he so often did or more likely Hanley just miscalculated. More likely Hanley just miscalculated because he left the Sox so few options. They could not send him to the minors. They could not sit him for extended periods. They could not even really drop him in the order. Nothing made sense. But you have to credit them for seeing it. Hanley might have even made it easier for them. Do we really think Hanley would have reacted well to being told he was losing playing time?

Really nice win...lots of contributions

Holt shows us again that he is very much a professional baseball player. Erod as well is maturing it seems. He did not have a great secondary pitch tonight and that makes it hard for him to pitch. While I don't like it when he nibbles, when he does not have a great secondary pitch on a given night he almost doesn't have a choice. Made it work for him tonight. Not sure we are going to see him in many games at less than 100 pitches for 6 innings though unless he can get one of his multiple secondary pitches to really be a + pitch as his Change was a couple starts ago.

Braves Catcher probably sending telepathic waves out to Tehran. "Do you get it now stupid? Now do you know why I didn't want to call that pitch?"

Now that was inside baseball funny.