jung

Baseball players are so superstitious. It might take an army to get Shane to start to bat from the left side again. This works against lefties and works against righties.

Hey I could live for another couple decades and this is as close to Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz as I am ever gonna see wearing Red Sox. Plus you gotta' take into account that depending on what year you want to talk about, either our version of Glavine or Maddux has been on the shelf for three months. Not many Red Sox teams would be winnin' on pitching with the top guy on the shelf.

Felix is getting away with some rotten pitches as well. Maybe Eck is right. It is a dreamy game for Felix....dreaming of ST and being overweight and salivating over his next hamburger like Popeye's Wimpy.

Hey they aren't winning games on this "vaunted" offense...thats for sure.

Oh come on Felix...your are spoilin' the mood.

Amazing to me to see a Red Sox team winning on dominating starting pitching, a rare occurrence in my years as a fan. Feel like I have been time warped back to the Braves of a few decades ago or the Orioles of even one or two more decades ago.

Everybody is talking about four pitchers like four pitchers matters in a post season playoff. I suspect we do it because that is what we have...four really good pitchers and we want to make what we have more relevant in a post season scenario. The guy at the top of the rotation is the guy that matters once you hit the post season cause you are going to see him in games 1 and 4. If he can dominate you in games 1 and 4, your only real chances are games 2 and 3 out of the first four. That makes a 7 games series tough to win because you you are getting stoned in games 1 and 4. Don't know how many hockey fans there are here but if you told me I was going to face a dominating stone me goalie in games 1 and 4 of a playoff series, I would have a hard time thinking I could win that series if what I had was a pair of solid but not dominant goalies. I would feel that way even if I was told that the opponent's second string goalie was going to play games 2 and 3 and was not better than average. Detroit is the only team that really worries me. However I don't see much chance of Detroit not getting to the ALC game unless they happen to fall out of 1st in the central. I just don't much believe in this "anything can happen" stuff when you get to teams like what Detroit is this year. If Price represented in my eyes what Scherzer represents, then I would fear the Rays as well. I just don't think Price is as consistently able to go out there and just stone you like Scherzer can. Scherzer is going on average a ridiculous number of innings per game for a starter and that is a real concern. Our offense chews up middle relief...a great strategy for the regular season. But you may not see much middle relief in the post season and I am not sure the Sox offense can sustain itself without it.

The one worry about an offensive strategy that works in April and transplanting it to October is that in October you are much more likely to run into a pitching performance like Peavy's last night. The Sox get to middle relief and chew it up. Well, if there is no middle relief cause the starter took the ball all the way up to either the 8th or 9th innings...that is a problem for this Sox offense. I think it likely that the Sox have taken this far enough now to win the division. They have escaped the dreaded west coast swing and the last of the Interleague games. But I just don't know how far this team can go in the post season without a true 1 in the rotation facing teams that have a 1. Looks a little to me like last year's Orioles with less offense.

Dempster has been fading and I suspect he will continue to do so. The interminable wait for the return of the mighty Buch is really getting to be a concern. I am convinced that he is not going to immediately come back as he left us....far from it...yet that date for a return of any kind seems now to be end of first week in September or something like that. 3 months on the shelf....almost criminal. The problem with "solid" which the Sox starting pitching surely is even without Buch is that once you get to the post season, you face some monster starter in games 1 an 4. We don't have a guy that can play that role save Buch at his best. The rest of them "might" give you that kind of start but I would not depend on it. The sands keep shifting under our feet in that regard. One night we would "definitely" make it Lester in game 1, the next night its Lackey. In truth it might be Peavy. There is not a single one of them that you would auto-insert into game 1 of a seven game series. But hey....a good deal has happened this year that nobody was expecting. So it is an enjoyable ride for us fans. I just wish I felt like the offense might pull us through a post season game 1 where we are not likely to match up in the starting pitching. But I have little faith in that. They are prone to being cut down and out with a whimper and not a bang.

Eck and Schill do the same thing. They both allow us to enter the mind of the pitcher while another pitcher is on the mound performing and that is priceless in its own way. If you did not know it already you end up realizing why some stud with a super live arm attached to a 5 cent brain is just kidding himself. Every pitch Schill ever threw was processed through the pitching computer that resides between the ears of the truly big league pitcher. That is true for Peavy as well.

That was the most impressive win since the ASB and that might make it the most impressive win of the year.

Schill, who I guess we don't like here, is right again. They do not score runs the ole' Red Sox way. Haven't all year. Except for Ells who is usually swinging as he is leaving the locker room, they all waste tons of pitches, draw walks and get past starters who they rarely abuse. Once they get to the middle relief guys, our hitters start to handle those guys. They struggle when they run into starting pitching that can get to....lets say at least the 7th inning cause that is pretty close to set up man and closer time.

I can take it in dosages....I think if I went to a Country Music Festival, I would be so depressed by the end....I would come out of there looking to load every chamber and play Russian Roulette

The Eagles......"Life in the Fast Lane" Country Music....."Life in the Trailer Park" ....Just kidding!!!!

Actually it is the pitching that has kept this team competitive since the ASB. They certainly have not been winning games based on their hitting. That whole 2nd most runs scored stuff is BS. This offense does NOT show up nearly often enough. Scores 12 one game and 2 for the next three games. But pitching....that is why I insist it is so important, especially in crunch time of a pennant race. They have pitched their asses off since the ASB.....even without the vacationing Buch. Peavy was a great addition and Lester found his balls again just in time.

At my "advanced" age, I have seen the economy from all sides at least the contemporary economy....Was born not long after WWII and lived through what was really a post WW economy when we were the only major industrial power not laid to waste (we lived off that for a looooong time). But this "service" economy suck balls! I have a lotta' sympathy for kids coming out of college into this mess. Don't like the decisions corporate America has made for a long time now. Worst thing...the people I blame are in my generation and the one immediately before mine. The bunch just before me (fifteen-twenty years younger than my dad and fifteen-twenty years older than me) turned out to be a bunch of silver spoon stuck in mouth *******s and my generation thought we had to feel guilty about all of the worlds injustices...so much so that we did not IMO take care of business.

I wish Pedey would go back to swinging like that when we are behind as well as when we are ahead. When behind Pedey has been pressing a bit too much.

I take it just in time for you to go

Atta' boy Agonz you suck s*** idiot....man on base...Oh s***.... time for me to make out

You know what....I would rather have a pitcher that could get a hitter to swing at that s*** that Crawford swings at than have a hitter that will occasionally hit it any day.

I actually think 700 is old enough to have had Lincoln for an attorney in a head on buggy accident whiplash case. (that might roust him from his slumber).

Sixty Bell

Hey look kid...cut it out. Fifty-Sixty is supposed to be the new middle aged. I am supposed to live to be 120 according to the experts. I just hope the hell they have whole armies of robots or some s*** like that to keep us stitched together at 120. I am going to start to need to take delivery of my first caretaker robots in about five years!

Looked like Peavy was acknowledging Vic for cutting that thing off as he was leaving the field. Probably did not look like much on TV. But Jake knew enough to appreciate it.

Wow...did Vic ever look beautiful out there cutting that thing off. I guess I have just been lucky enough to see a fair amount of Vic before he came here. He does some goofy things like that stupid throw he insists on making to 1st base...but he really is a hell of a ballplayer.