jung

Its pretty amazing what the modern day starter cannot tolerate. Rain delays were once just rain delays. Now, the starter is shot and its not just the Sox starters. All over the league, managers are trying to add days of rest between starts for most starters. First the number of complete games dropped. Then guys were going 5 and maybe 6 if lucky. Now they can go 5-6 for half a year. But of course advanced stats say get your spin rate rip as if that does not tax pitchers more.

Do the Sox have somebody up in the pen?

Verdugp being Verdugo. Houck can't find the plate with a hunting dog and Verdugo hits a lazy fly ball early in the count.

Oh for f*** sake

That should do it thankfully. The Marlins do not belong on the same field with the Red Sox.

Edwards palmed the ball and threw a knuckler to home. If he just set himself and threw Duran would have been out at home. Duran's speed intimidated him into a mistake.

Bell has a loop in his swing. He is late on everything and on plane on nothing. What the hell is he even doing in the BIGS. Oh I know....filling out the Marlins roster.

Bell....another guy that will have to close his eyes and get lucky. NOPE

Surprised we are here in this game. Sox have enormous athletic talent. Marlins have none....zero.....nada.

Marlins hitter tries to look cute handling his bat and of course DROPS THE THING!

Its like the Marlin hitters don't care how bad they look at the plate. they just keep on keeping' on. The guy who hit the triple basically hit it with his eyes closed as his head was all over the place. He then had the audacity to stand on third and wag his finger like "No No No...you are not getting me 0 for 5". Laughable.

Wow.....can you imagine having to watch this Miami team for 162 games?

If Rafaela does not stop swinging for the fences he should be benched or sent down till he learns that his real asset is his speed meaning he does the team much more good getting on base and disrupting the pitcher and keeping the merry go round going round. Same for Duran.....though not as obvious. Same for Wong. Yoshida is both slow and only has warning track power. The legit power hitters on this team without Casas are Rafi and O'Neal. Thats it. Now that he has been charted by the league he will keep seeing pitches where he can't hit them out or anywhere for that matter.

God the Marlins suck. So many suck teams in baseball this year. They could not hit a barn door with a base fiddle. Worst swings and AB'sI have seen by one team all year and I have seen some bad swings this year.

But he did not have Mark Beleaguer swinging for the fences. Weaver favored 3 run HR's. Ya' gotta have two on to hit a 3 run HR.

Again using the Sox as an example....Ted Willians had actual power like Rafi and like O'Neal. Duran does not, Yoshida does not, Rafaela is a Joke in this regard as is Wong. Our speedsters would do much more good for this team getting on base and disrupting the other team's pitcher than hitting one run home runs. This Red Sox edition is mightily helped by the reality that MLB is chock full of crap teams.

Bill's comments regarding advanced stats have nothing specifically to do with the Red Sox. His comments are about how far flung and contrary to the good of the game all this statistical nonsense has become. Players have been ground down to a nominal standard that discounts aspect of the game that are actually at the heart of the popularity of the game.....AND.....MLB's insistence on trying to use them to expand the game's popularity have been a giant FAIL. If you like spread sheets and minutia you are happy. If you like the game itself.....not so much. But we can use the Red Sox as an exhibit for the issues. As for this constant insistence on lifting the ball, Duran has 10 HR's, Rafiela has 9, Wong has 7. We have two legitimate HR threats on the current roster and not on the IL. Those would be Rafi and O'Neal. The rest are still swinging for the fences with occasional success. Yoshida has warning track power but he is still swinging like its going over the fence. Duran is less effects than Rafaela who is a JOKE in this regard. Oh and the way the stat masters have screwed up pitching is even worse. Our Sox staff is running out of gas at the start of July.....not that they can go deeper than 5-6 innings. They can go 5-6 innings to the end of June. Cora trying to find ways to extend rest between starts.

https://nypost.com/2024/07/02/sports/bill-james-godfather-of-sabermetrics-blasts-computer-guys/#:~:text=However%2C%20the%2074%2Dyear%2D,in%20a%20thread%20on%20X. I agree Bill. But you started this mess and you even engaged in minutia first.

Well if Alex Spiers is right and the league is just now catching up to the Sox pitchers turning into full time junkers....that would be disconcerting. Tha Padre hitters certainly look like they are looking for the junk. I don't see any budding Greg Maddox in this bunch.

ot This is the time of the year or thereabouts when pitchers stop giving the hitters their pitch to hit. Its a little early yet, but not much. Every year is a new year in MLB and there is a tendency to forget past years and chart hitters by their current year performance. Its is about now when the Pitchers say "enough already" and the hitters do not get their pitch as often. I would say that mid-June is a bit early for the pitchers to start getting stingy about throwing a particular hitter his pitch. But IT DOES eventually happen during the year. Watch and see if hitters like Duran and Rafi get fewer low center cut or or low inside pitches to hit. See if O'Neal keeps getting so many center cut pitches right down Main Street. This year, the Sox have some very unSox-like tools to bring to bear when they hit their summer swoon at that plate. Should be interesting to see how it plays out.

I think this is a fun team to watch no matter where they end up. American League power house's cannot handle the go-go Sox. They just do not know how to play this team. First, allowing Duran to get on base is a big mistake. Pitchers keep throwing knee high pitches to our LH hitters. That is just STUUUUPID. The only low ball you should through a ML LH hitter is a slider from a LH pitcher. Everything else.....the Pitcher is just asking for it down there. Pitchers keep throwing Rafi low balls as well. Duran gets the merry go round going. On the other side of the plate, pitchers keep throwing RH hitter O'Neal pitches right down main st and he keeps crushing them. The one aspect of this club that is reliable is the go-go kids. This edition of the Sox reminds me of AL teams of the past running into a go-go NL team and simply not having an answer. Heck our catcher can run. Teams know how to beat the wall bashing Sox. Is here enough pitching in MLB any longer to beat the Sox the old fashioned way....by keeping the boppers from bopping? Just don't know.

More like feet stuck in the mud Dom. This team is as fundamentally UNSOUND in the field as any MLB team I have ever seen. Even when they are not making recorded fielding errors they are STILL making fielding errors.

Once again if the Sox knew what base to throw to, how to hit the cutoff man and other fundamental aspects of baseball that do not show up in the errors column but cost runs, they would have won this game in 9 innings. Then again, their 1st baseman Smith had to make some incredible picks to keep the error count down.

I agree. The point I was trying to make is that at least it is not a boring team to watch. They are an interesting team to watch. They have young, athletic players that are raw talents. In the old days, raw talents were refined in the minor leagues. Its a bit late to be lacking fundamentals in the big leagues. So it is much like watching a team of players with wonderful athletic talent that don't have much of an idea what they are doing. All of this cacophony about off speed pitches is also interesting. I am not convinced myself and it does not look to me like much of the staff is convinced either. None of them are a budding Greg Maddux. None of them can even do a decent imitation. So I don't really know where this is going. But it is yet another interesting thing to watch. Will they get better? At least as to fundamentals, it appears that osmosis will have to save us. However this does look like the basis for a better team someday. Till then, being an interesting team to watch will have to do in my case.

Didn't mean to post it twice. Not even sure how it happened. Forum does seem less than responsive to keystrokes today.