jung

We expected him to make all the plays on ground balls and he has done that. Still shaky on pop ups...still does not know which way to turn the glove to take throws while holding the bag. Those were always going to be the challenges and they still are. If he could not field ground balls we were really in trouble. Plus he has not been challenged with making those plays on the bag late in games when the pressure is on. So if you want to take his ability to field ground balls as "its all OK" go right ahead. Everybody is entitled to their opinion.

I finally have it figured out and boy do i feel like an idiot. JBJ's splits RH v LH pitcher. Watch JBJ against a LH pitcher...he takes as balanced and measured a swing as he can take. Fights to keep his shoulder from opening....take a decent cut..gets a hit. Watch him against RH pitchers....foot in the bucket...bailing out...flailing away helplessly...with a bad case of homer syndrome. Watch him and see if you don't agree.

I absolutely think we need Shaw to be playing regularly. I don't think we have enough pitching to hold teams down past Price and a super bullpen only helps you if you can hand it leads. Pablo looks flat terrible in the field and at the plate and other than Mookie, Travis and Sam, nobody is doing anything at the plate. We have to get Shaw into the lineup while keeping Hanley in the lineup. As much as Hanley is not my kind of player, the Sox are forced to gamble on him. But we just have to get Pablo the hell out of the everyday lineup. There are just to many holes in this offense and trading out either Castillo for Shaw or Pablo for Shaw would appear to be a welcome improvement. While these games mean little what does mean something is situational baseball in these games. Do you get the runner home from 3rd with less than two outs.....NO we don't. Do you get some runs out of bases loaded and one out. NO we don't. So while this will be the 7rth game in a row we are going to lose and the record itself is meaningless, what sits behind that record is not at all meaningless.

I wish Hanley was just swinging at hitters pitches that way. He wasn't. He was swinging at Pitchers pitches that way...he was swinging at every pitch that way. No pitchers were not just tossing BP up to Hanley trying to entice him to swing for the fences. They simply kept the ball away from him so that when he did swing for the fences, nothing happened. Hanley can't pull low outside sliders. He can't, I can't you can't, Stanton can't, Barry Bonds can't. Farrell does not sit vets unless he feels that he has exercised every other option. Great place for a young ballplayer to come and stew on the bench. Hanley IMO has a vision of himself as a hitter at this stage of his career. Hanley IMO has always had some vision of himself...not always the same one but some vision of himself and frankly does not care who else does not share that vision unless again he is hunting up a paycheck. Once he has a paycheck guaranteed, then whoever won the "prize" is stuck footing the bill for Hanley's vision of himself whether he can or even should try to execute on it. Hanley wants to be a DH and thats all he wants to be. Now he has no idea at this point what it takes to be a good DH. But as usual he doesn't care. Hanley wants what he wants when he wants it and thats that. Hello Albert Haynesworth. We are really and truly stuck waiting to see if Hanley will go to the plate with the purpose DD wants or if he will go to the plate with the purpose that he wants. Given that being meat to pitchers when he goes up there looking to swing for the LF fences regardless of pitcher, count, pitch type, pitch location, game situation is apparently not part of his vision but is part of trying to hit ML pitching the entire season probably hangs in the balance. They will simply not throw him the pitches he would need to make good on his vision and guess what, he is not hitting low outside sliders over the LF wall, good shoulders or no. Surprise surprise.

OK so here is one of the things that frustrates me about Hanley...You're damned if you do or damned if you don't with Hanley. So lets for argument play both sides of the issue from last year. Option 1 If his shoulders (and now it shoulders plural as to damage and potential additional injury due to having big joints that are damaged) were fine, then we can't blame his shoulders at all for his slump in performance. Oprion 2 If his shoulders were not fine, he certainly knew it, knew it would rob him of power and yet continued AB after AB after AB to swing for the fences....did not matter what the team needed, did not matter what anybody wanted......Hanley just kept flailing away trying to pull the ball over the LF fence. Didn't matter if he was home or away, night or day...didn't matter where the pitch was, what kind of pitch it was, whether he had a snowballs chance in hell of hitting the ball out or not......simply did not matter. So there ya' go. One example of living in HanleyWorld. No damage to the shoulders...can't blame them. Damage to the shoulders...Well then what the f*** was he doing????

On 86 games played....You are kidding right! As for what I have seen Hanley backsliding into at the plate, he is again taking wild swings at low outside sliders....insisting that he is going to take a low outside slider deep. That 500' HR he hit the other day might actually be the worse thing for him. His first AB's this spring represented exactly what DD is looking him to do. Now the deeper we get into the spring, the less of that there is, the more of Hanley flailing for the downs there is...who knows....you can never tell with Hanley. At least there is that to separate him from Albert. It got to the point with Albert where he gave you one good play, not to say a play where he actually tackled somebody or made a sack, but a play where he actually tried. Once you got that one good play out of Albert...get him off the field...you would not see another. IMO, Hanley just carries that a little further than Albert does but the thought process is the same.

I doubt Elias will get the starts. I think Wright will get them. In fact early in the season is the best time to unleash a knuckler on hitters that barely have their timing. If Elias gets the job IMO it will be because he is really impressive here in the spring.....last stint....not so much.

Hanley will just be fine based on what????? He might be. But to cavalierly say he will be makes little sense. - He is struggling with pop ups and plays with his foot on the bag (not a big deal if he had a history of working at this stuff, which he does not) - He does not want to bat the DD wants him to bat....he MAY do it, but it is pretty obvious that he does not want to....Since when does Hanley do anything other than what Hanley wants to do? Expecting anything outside of his very specific desire zone, not even comfort zone, but desire zone is a challenge UNLESS he is hunting for a paycheck in which case he will say just about anything. - He has no history of being able to maintain focus and concentration and yet they are sticking him in a position that just about requires that you maintain focus well beyond what appears to be Hanley's capabilities I have already seen him slipping back into the hitting profile he sees himself in as opposed to the one DD wants and we still have three weeks of ST to go. So what is actually going on in that head of his. "OK, I gave DD a couple weeks of what he wants...now its back to what I want....hurrah" If Hanley goes back to that profile, he will be meat at the plate and then we can wonder about how much tolerance we will have for meat at the plate combined with his defense at 1st. So I would not rule out Hanley being fine....but I for one will have to see it before I believe it based on his history. For my money, this guy is the Albert Haynesworth of Baseball. I swear to God, they are brothers separated at birth by circumstance.

How many years has it been since we have seen Hanley throw in earnest? Certainly not since the shoulders came apart. I really don't think Hanley can throw across the diamond with anything remotely approaching consistency which is probably why 3rd is out...why they don't even talk about 3rd for Hanley. I think the Sox will do everything they can to get Shaw, Ortiz and Hanley in the lineup and batting order at the same time. They will put Shaw in LF some and risk his glove out there. Not much of a risk IMO as Castillo is not the fielder some think he is. They will put Shaw at 3rd sometimes. Surely they will put him at 1st to spell Hanley as well. But the Sox will really want Shaw, Hanley and Ortiz in the batting order at the same time. This will also mean they won't have to worry as much about how much progress Vaz has made as a hitter when he comes back. They need enough punch in the order so Vaz, by far the best defensive catcher and the best receiver they have can be in the lineup. Will Hanley hit the way DD wants to hit and not the way Hanley wants to hit. Frankly, what hopes this team has probably hinges on that. Light candles folks....cross fingers.....

Price second outing tonight. Threw all FB's but looked very good doing it.

Tell me Hanley worked at LF...you can't Tell me the Sox didn't tell him not to strain himself out there....you can't Tell me he didn't eventually just start letting balls fall at his feet....you can't Tell me Crawford was emotionally and physiologically wired to play in this town....you can't Tell me Panda is not headed into this season as big as he was the end of last season realizing that Panda's pound packing period is IN-SEASON....you can't What is bat s*** crazy is "gee I wonder why Hanley and Crawford failed in LF"...thats' bat s*** crazy

Good grief...this is not that complicated. Hanley failed in LF because he didn't work at it and then the Sox in their wisdom told him he could just take it easy out there. Telling Hanley Ramirez that he can take it easy anywhere at any time is like inviting him to take a lounge chair out on the field with him. So the combination of Hanley not working at it at all and the Sox telling him to take it easy produced Hanley caring more about how silly he looked out there trying to make plays then with carte blanche from the Sox to feed that inclination. Did Hanley at that point decide to work at it....NOOOOOOOOO...he just let balls fall at his feet. I guess he somehow convinced himself that walking over to pick up a ball that was almost at a dead stop was less embarrassing than actually trying to make a play on it. Oh by the way he has not put much more work into 1st than he put into LF. Crawford was simply ill equipped emotionally to be here. He was a card carrying basket case and he still is one. You can't play this game stiff as a board....nervous about things like "Oh my God where am I going to be in the batting order tomorrow!" Still and all I have more faith now in Hanley than in I have in Panda the Inhaler able to devour half the planet for lunch and still somehow expecting to play baseball at an MLB level. He is gonna' be fun to watch come June if the Sox have not finally just given up by then.

The simple truth of it is that at least at this point Vaz is a front line catcher and Swihart is well Swihart......not a front line catcher. There is so much drivel that comes out of the Sox PR machine that if you listen to that nonsense you will have no idea who is what or who is doing what. But my biggest concern for Swihart as a Catcher is that he might always play like what he is, a conversion. If there is one position on the field other than Pitcher that a player is born for, its Catcher. If Swihart never can pump his BA over lets say .275 and his OPS over lets say .750 as an MLB player, is that enough to overcome his deficiencies as a Catcher. He does look a little like Salty II without the power and with more ability to at least track pop ups from behind home plate. Salty used to look like he was going on safari for a pop up. Imagine if we had Hanley at 1st and Salty behind the dish....Oh my God!!!

Well I watched the game. Porcello was throwing a lot of FB's AGAIN and trying to throw the Sinker. The Sinker just was not moving at all and his FB has always been terrible which is why he cannot throw it as much as he has been forced to throw it in recent years when the Sinker is not sinking. But the ineffective Sinker is really the issue. When it is ineffective, the few he throws suck and his FB sucks. So that turns out to be a lotta' sucky pitches and the ball ends up flying all over the place. That is exactly how he started last season and didn't get it sorted out until about half way through. The ground balls he was getting were not on good hard Sinkers, they were so so sinkers that the hitters just did not get to with enough on them to do much. The Sinkers that didn't sink and the FB's he threw.....ugh......OFers did not have to take an afternoon run after this game. I did not notice him throwing too many curves. Honestly, he rarely got to what is a curve ball count for him. Some OFer was already trying to chase the ball down before he got there. Forgot to mention that while I saw none of the Pirates game today Kelly apparently went 3 or maybe 3+ scoreless, a good sign and probably a welcome sign for Farrell. Porky apparently had a HR and an error....figures.

Thing is I do not believe under any circumstances will we see more than a flier taken for another pitcher here. So if they do anything at all it is who do they take that flier on.

Well for one thing I think Boston would love Timmy....guts out his rear end and pitches his heart out. He is definitely a guy that has learned how to pitch. But man when he threw he had one of those motions that posed all of his body weight against his arm and he buggy whipped that arm. You were just waiting for that arm to follow the ball to home plate. If he is not asking for the world in money.....I would be willing to take a flyer on Timmy. Again....he would have one thing going for him that the ever PR conscience Sox should realize...Fenway would love him.

I agree with you completely on the upside thing. In fact, BC could have looked at the same numbers I have been looking at BEFORE he extended Porcello. What the hell WAS he looking at. A guy throwing less and less of his bread and butter pitch year over year should have sent alarm bells going off all over the place. Instead it said to BC, here let me give the guy more money than he could ever expect in FA....duh!!!!!!!!!! Eddie probably has the most upside. He HAS to be able to throw slider and change in the same stint with the same relative good result. Eddie can't live on FB/Change or FB/slider. It ain't happening. It has to be FB/Change/slider. And he has got to completely slay the tipping dragon. After Eddie, rating for upside only it is probably Kelly followed by Johnson followed by Owens.... followed by ......followed by........ IMO after Johnson its really wait for the next generation toiling down there in the minors for the next couple years and do we think Johnson can pitch without breaking down. I know people will disagree with me on Owens and thats fine. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. We have certainly seen the best Buch has to offer.

I think Porcello cares a great deal. He does not leave the mound looking much like he is about to start a champagne celebration. Usually during these stretches he leaves the mound with this, "holy s***.....it wasn't there today either"....look on his face, not sure what to do next. He has got a good deal of career left. Yet if you look at the glide path of his use of the sinker, his jet liner hits solid ground in two, maybe three years...tops. Not finding his sinker in the Spring really would not be that big a deal either with the exception that he did not find it last year till about mid-year and I cannot tell you whether the drop in year over year sinker numbers are serial over the course of a year or if they just represent the time within a season when he found it again or when his arm let him throw it again. It occurs to me that the sinker is not a particularly easy pitch on the arm and he has thrown a ton of them over his career when you consider this has been his bread and butter pitch forever. So while being relatively young, there is a fair amount of sinker mileage on that arm. I have not looked this year, but up till last year, you could still find the early scouting reports on Porcello as he was breaking in and they were full of glowing praise for his sinker.

At least Porcello's issue is pretty much there to see. His sinker has been going to hell in a hand basket and it has been now for more than just his time here. If you look at his numbers....he has been throwing it less and less since I think as early as 2011. It has been very gradual till the last couple of years. But he really has been cutting back on it and there are has been more instances, more stretches during a season when he throws it in some cases not at all. He really has no replacement for his sinker. Last year when he could not or would not throw it, he threw mainly a FB as a replacement and he threw more curves. He does not have a great curve. But his standard FB is just meat...especially if hitters know with a high degree of confidence that it is coming. Then also, when his sinker is not working and he still tries to throw it, it is also pretty much meat. So I would not be that worried were this not a trend that now goes back to 2011 of fewer sinkers being thrown and less effective sinkers being thrown. I can only hope that as he did for at least a time last year, he finds his sinker again. Because he just does not really have a replacement for it and he is so hittable when he is throwing too many FB's and an ineffective sinker.

Oh for the love of GOD...ML execs decide Owens fate, not some dumbo in Pawtucket or Portland.

Regression in MLB terms is considered when the team moves you up the ladder and you go backwards! Owens was recording 1.78, 2.94 and 2.60 ERA's in Portland over two seasons and those jumped to 4.03 and 3.46 in Pawtucket. MLB calls that regression. You can talk about peripherals forever when opening day comes it will be Wright in the 5 hole for the Sox and not Owens. That is all you really have to know. Even given that the Sox want desperately for it to be Owens, it will be Wright.

Porcello was up in the zone today and his sinker, the most important pitch he throws was not working for him today. That is really the only thing to be concerned about. While there were a couple of balls that were of the seeing eye variety in the man he got clobbered...deep balls, against the wall or over it in one case. That was a nastier stretch than you would want especially against the Rays. But it all really revolves around his sinker. It either works or it doesn't.

Owens is still here because we have nobody else down there other than Johnson who may not be really back from injury yet. Owens has already been on a glide path into solid ground when he simply did not make the progress that was expected of him. Since that time not only has he NOT made more progress. He has regressed. But since we don't have any viable replacement yet he gets to stay. But he will only be a space filler for as long as there is nobody else to fill the space. Just to cover the base Owens is 23, turns 24 in early July this year. As for Wright..what is a long term Knuckleball project...a guy that can't quite throw it consistently enough so that there are not instances when they cannot even get a guy up in the pen fast enough before the game has been lost. Knuckleballers are inconsistent. We know that. They have got to at least be able to hold it together enough in their bad outings so that you don't lose the game just trying to get a guy up to come in. Nobody wants to lose a game between deciding it is time to get somebody up and getting said replacement in the game. I suspect Wright has it in him. But he probably has this year to prove it or he might be gone as well. At some point you need to come to terms with the issue of simply not having good options for these guys and we don't. In some cases that is why they are still here. Thank God for Eddie who we got for Miller. Where the heck would we be WITHOUT EDDIE?

Please when he is gone from here come back to me. They really don't have better options YET down on the farm which is ANOTHER problem. But when they do...he will be gone and that will be that. Maybe this will work. We are losing Eddie for anywhere from 1-3 starts as along as he does not have a set back. and who is going to get that job....WRIGHT....the knuckleballer that nobody likes....the guy that is basically a long term knuckleball project. That should tell you everything there is to know about Owens.

Of course Castillo gets a chance what the hell else are they going to do with him at $11m per