jung

Finally JD gets one in the strike zone and parks it.

Get outta' this Eddie.

Eck declares Cabrera a DP waiting to happen. About 5th on the list of things Cabrera is waiting to happen.

Duran is too young and inexperiences to bat 2nd where your best hitter should be and batting Rafi 4th will just encourage him to swing harder, swing bigger and roll over......Oh look, Duran with the K and Rafi with the ground ball to short for a DP. Getting the leadoff hitter on and getting NOTHING for it is not a successful half inning for the team at the plate.

And the two guys in the wrong spots in the order, Duran and Rafi, prove the point.

He is a free swinger that does not have great plate discipline as if we don't already have enough of those. At least Schwarber will get one of Cordero, Duran, Dalbac, Gonzalez out of the batting order.

2B E. Hernandez R CF Jarren Duran L SS X. Bogaerts R 3B R. Devers L DH J. Martinez R LF Alex Verdugo L RF H. Renfroe R 1B F. Cordero L C C. Vazquez R LF Akil Baddoo L 2B J. Schoop R RF R. Grossman S 1B M. Cabrera R DH Eric Haase R 3B J. Candelario S C G. Greiner R SS Zack Short R CF Derek Hill R Hernandez back in the batting order. Not sure I like Duran batting 2nd....in fact I am sure I don't like it. Not sure I like Rafi batting in a spot that will encourage his worst tendencies either. But I am better with that than Duran at 2 in the order. Schoop would sure look good in a Sox uni. But never fear. We have Schwarber who I guess looks good riding a stationary bike????

The simple fact of the matter is that good pitching can control good hitting. It can even control great hitting. Once they get a book on you that is relevant to that year, you have to be able to adjust as a hitter or you are dead. Our plate discipline has been horrid all year long and the league has caught up to that fact. If anything our plate discipline has gotten worse as individual players try to win games with one swing of the bat from the 1st inning to the last. JD has yet to meet a low outside slider he didn't like. Rafi swings at virtually everything and it matters not that Remy ohhh and ahhhhh at his ability to hit crap pitches hard, he misses more of them than he hits. X man is now injured and it shows. However notice last night the most frustration he showed as a hitter that prides himself in plate discipline is when he swung at strike 3 OUTSIDE. Clearly he was asking himself what the f*** he thought he was doing swinging at that. Renfroe has decent plate discipline. Hernandez swings early in counts and thus has been swinging at good pitches to swing at. Merwin is a hack. Both of the rookies, Duran and Dalbac are simply too young and neither is the younger Rafi. Vaz is exhausted. Santana is a joke and the other bench guy is no better. Plewicki is a decent back up catcher. Verdugo is Verdugo. He is fine as long as he does not start to try to win games with one swing of his bat....if he does....here comes BennieII. That is EVERY HITTER on the team other than Schwerber who is also a free swinger! The value to Schwerber in my view is that he will get one of the rookies or hack Gonzalez out of the batting order. The pitchers have done better than expected early in the year with the starters toeing the line of the new standard.......5 f***ING INNINGS...... but are now struggling in some cases to even do that. So IMO the hitters have to pick it up. Hernandez has to be in the batting order. Hopefully X will get better physically. Cora needs to tell them to stop trying to win the game with one swing of the bat. They are a team and they need to play like a team, not try to heap all of this pressure on their own individual shoulders because they have tried that and ITS NOT WORKING! They are hitting worse not better. They are being teased to death by opposing pitchers. Be more patient and more selective and take what the pitchers are giving them. As for expectations from our pitching Hauck may be the solution some year...not likely to be this one. Sale is the epitome of a guy that goes 100% all of the time, will come back feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders though in truth he will still at that point be on a rehab year. Not a sure bet of any sort. But in THIS MLB, they should still make the post season. I don't see enough team here to go deep into the playoffs.

I expect we are gong to wish they got a hitter with better plate discipline than Schwaber as plate discipline has been this team's problem. The league appears to have caught onto that.

Opposing pitchers are just teasing these guys now. Said it a couple games ago. They are trying too hard. Individuals trying to carry the team on their backs and the one guy that is mature enough and good enough to carry a team for awhile, X-man appears to be hurt. If Hernandez and X were going and the other guys were just chipping in, you would have something. Hernandez IMO has to be in this batting order and X has to get healthy. Oh and the pitching is no better and no worse than anybody planned on it being at the start of the season.

Their plate discipline is just hideous now....actually has been all season. The league has caught on to it. The reason Hernandez is a stand out is that his plate discipline has been pretty good. So is X's but I think the wrist is still killing him.

Unless he makes a mistake, Soto is not going to let Rafi extend his arms.

I have no idea what Dalbac is going to do with this. Close his eyes and hope???

That is what Soto needed to do with Vaz. I don't care if you are throwing 101, if its right in a MLB hitter's wheelhouse, he will get wood on it. As soon as Soto got that FB just right out of the middle of the plate, Vaz couldn't handle it.

I am not convinced sitting Hernandez (unless he is hurt) made sense tonight off of 4 straight losses. He is the one guy doing anything consistently. The offense went from anemic to non-existent. 1 run off of some booted balls by the Tigers and one off a Renfroe HR. Said I was worried about getting down two runs in this game and still seems unbelievable to me that the concern was justified.

Can't believe I am saying this but I don't want to see the Tigers get up by 2.

I refuse to get excited about these 5 inning starters. But if there is anything worse than a 5 inning starter its a guy that can't even make 5 innings.

funny how the younger guys can't seem to check swing to save their lives. I don't think I have seen a successful check from Dalbac in a month and Duran can't seem to do it either.

It would have been nice to see Verdugo run as hard to 1st as the SS ran to 2nd base carting a glove and ball with him.

We just cannot seem to make any breathing room against teams lately. Might not matter against the Tigers. I figured with one out of Verdugo got the ball on the ground the Tigers would have a tough time doubling him up and we would have our third run....up 3-1. But NOOOO. As for the Rays, it appears that if you are not ahead by the 7th inning it does not look like you will win that game.

Most of playing good baseball is between the ears. Rafi has been going a bit off the deep end at the plate of late. He needs to calm down and get back to the normally over-amped Rafi which is amped up just about right it would appear. He is bouncing off the walls Uber Rafi lately and it is not helping his efforts or the teams purpose.

Unfortunately that is not saying very much at the moment. This extra frustration Rafi is expressing at the plate is likely his desire to put the team on his back. He is not that sort of player, not now and maybe not ever. Just have to see how he matures. At some point the harder he tries, the less he contributes which is actually not that unusual for a guy that is still young. The closest the Sox come to a player that can put the team on his back is X and X is still nursing that wrist of his. The other is Sale and that really worries me. Will he come back all amped up to put the team on his back. Not sure that is a great place for Sale to be. Also, I think comments made tonight about the Vaz workload are quite valid and worrisome.

Like I said the other day, Rafi needs to calm down. Normal Rafi is just fine. Uber Rafi is not helping us.

That is JBJ territory

JD is nowhere at present