jung

I should have known Petite would not stay that bad for too long. Just another veteran pitcher that refuses to suck for too long. Making the Sox work for their hits now.

Yankees remaining schedule is surely tougher than what they faced before the ASB. Then again they can only sink as far as 5th and they might just get there.

Four days rest and still comes up lame. He may already be doing this but the way Vic's back and hammy have been, I would think he needs some really customized stretching before each game and maybe in between innings. Not sure he has any chance of playing through the remainder of the season otherwise. Either that or we might have another guy headed to the DL.

Oh my God these guys are too funny. The Steinbrenner's should buy them new unis for the rest of the season and then burn them at the end. As much as I hate the Yankees, this bunch should not even be in the same unis.

Petite is just looking to get clobbered tonight....location awful...we should kill him if remains like this.

I would be looking to keep sharp implements away from Jacko for the duration of this game and maybe for the duration of this series. Jacko is the enemy but nobody deserves to go out like this.:D

Come on Felix....don't start walkin' these f***s

The last few games Felix has had the best curve ball I have seen in his entire career. Looks like he has it tonight as well. Good chance he will just cut though this Yankee lineup......being what it is.

I think the Sox would be out of their minds if they at this point did not plan on a middle infield of Pedey and Iggy, going forward unless they have some grand plan to solve what will be a difficult rotation problem in the coming years. I suspect they are going to need a middle infield that good at the rate they are going. I still think the Sox will find a way to talk themselves out of Iggy because he is big time atypical for a Sox SS. However IMO it would be dumb dumb dumb.

Well I will say this much. We are going to find out REAL FAST, what the Sox brass really thinks of the team that they have constructed for this year. I for one would not be at all surprised to see them make modest moves in the effort to make a run. I don't expect them to give up any prospects that they really care about. Although I would not be surprise to see them spend more money as they can do that. If they give up prospects they really care about, even one of them, then they will be telling us they really think they have a shot at this thing with this set of guys.

It seems to me that we have been hearing that the "plan" was to move XB to 3rd all along. Now that WMB is flaming out, why should that change now? Even if WMB does not flame out, why should the plan change with regard to XB?

Bailey to the DL which was not really that much of a surprise to me. I had written off Bailey for all intents and purposes. Even though I had little in terms of expectation for Bailey at least he was another arm that Farrell could bring in to try to get through an inning. Now that he is officially on the DL, this team has a real pitching problem as both the rotation and the pen are leaking oil. Losing Mller really really hurt cause we really don't have a way to replace the pitcher he had become. Similar to our rotation problem in that none of the options available to us are 90% of Buch. They are not even 90% of Buch at 90%.

Oh good...lets let if Snyder can make another shot put attempt. Clearly he was going for distance on that last one.

That actually sounds about right at this point UN. Why is XB more of a gamble than Holt? I guess you could say that Holt has already played a few games up here. However XB could get hot and completely outplay Holt. I think we know what Holt is at this point.

Maybe they did not MRI the cuff. But Jeez I don't think I have ever heard of a rotary cuff diagnosis coming in through the back door like this. Hence, I just don't think it is the cuff.....yet.....

I am hoping Iggy at 3rd was just a stop gap measured based on FO thinking that WMB would make it back. Now that WMB coming back is almost off the table from what I have seen, they have to find a way to get Iggy back to SS full time. Not sure how long Holt can go before he blows up. Synder has obviously already blown up.

Thanks for posting up the links 700. Clearly this is the Sox now trying to understand more about what they are up against. Maybe the Doc will order another MRI. Although the last one was on June 27th and he has not done much of anything that would tax the shoulder more since then. Obviously this is just an opinion but I suspect that the Sox are going to find out more about their pitcher than they want to know but should have suspected given the history.

Can you lead me to something I can read on this? I am just wondering if this is Buch looking for a second opinion or the Sox throwing their hands up and looking for more info before they are forced into the FA market for a SP.

A rotator cuff injury is not that hard to diagnose. If it is a rotator cuff he is headed to surgery sooner or later. However the way they started this whole thing is not suggestive of a rotator cuff. I don't think it is that serious. I am more inclined to take Buch at his word that he simply refuses to pitch at less than 100%. Again as I have stated elsewhere he continues to discuss "discomfort". He does not come right out and talk about pain. That is a hell of a spot to leave the Sox in though. Buch claims to be at 90% now. Do we think 90% of Buch is better than anything Workman or Webster or Ace have to offer?

Whatever it is, (and I would not call Buch tough at this point), he has likely forced the Sox into a tough corner as the deadline comes up. He won't be taking the ball before the deadline and I would not bet on the SP they have now if they really think they have a shot at this thing. As good as their record has been so far they have not really gapped the teams that matter. They are only 2 up on the Rays and 4 up on the O's. That is not much of a lead even over the O's.

In case anybody is wondering, Buch missed his Thursday Bullpen session complaining that he was too sore to make that. Good luck! To me he sounds more and more like a holdover from the entitled Red Sox player era.

The proven successful formula in MLB is a solid 1/2 combination in the rotation. There are other ways to do it but that is what everybody aims to have. Had Lester and Buch proven out, especially this year, the Sox would have that at reasonable money. Instead Lester runs into his annual blue funk AGAIN and Buch runs into his annual injury issue AGAIN and that is the framework for what the Sox face. Buch is about a year and a half away from serious consideration for contract extension...at what price if that is what the Sox want to do? They don't have to do it. If Buch was logging solid years they might do it to forestall Buch headed into FA after the 2017 season. Maybe he will turn it around in that period. That is what it will take now. In fact if I were the Sox I would not be interested in extension and let him play out his contract, signing him at the team option numbers as long as he does not suffer such a major physical meltdown along the way that it no longer even makes sense to pick up the 2017 option or maybe even the 2016 option. He makes so few starts on average and suffers such extended periods off the mound that even the 2016 option might be in jeopardy for him. This could have been a watershed year for him. Instead it turns into another short year. I said even before this year started that it was the "prove it" year for him. He is just putting too many short years in the bank and his 29 start season becomes an outlier just like Ells 32 HR season. Those option years are right at the cusp of too much money for a guy that can only average less than 20 starts per year. It about forces the Sox hand unless Buch turns it around surely in 2014. The Sox would be better served pouring that money into a guy that has more of a chance to sit in the 1 or 2 hole for an entire year even if that guy costs more than $13M per. They might even be better served gambling on a guy that is working his way to the top of the rotation by then as again Buch will simply have put too many short years in his bank account. Lester's 2014 option will likely be easier for the Sox to pick up than Buch's 2016 option will be at this rate. As far as my Johnson comment, I already said Buch's situation is not exactly the same as Johnson's but similar. We don't really know if this is healthy Johnson or once again injured Johnson, do we? Did we know Lackey was hurt. There is so much money at stake these days that the injury issue is getting to be as cloak and dagger in MLB as it is the NFL but for a different reason.

Buch has a hell of a lotta' talent but if you can't stay on the field, you can't stay on the field.

Given the question marks in the Sox rotation, Workman is worth more to them than to anybody else at this point. Funny we started the season with some folks thinking about having two 1's and for different reasons, BING-BANG-BONG, they have turned into two 5's.

The last time Buch pitched was June 8th. The next time he is scheduled to even try to throw is Thursday this week. So That is 40 days down and he will not be ready to pitch IF Thursday goes well. Six weeks down and if Thursday does goes well I would guess another three weeks to get back his arm strength. So assuming Thursday goes well, he will have three weeks of work that Buch will have to survive. Given his rather fragile nature, I would not have much confidence in Buch's ability to get through that process without another glitch occurring somewhere along the way. If he tried to rush three weeks into two, it just exacerbates the situation. At the next level of concern, even if he survives three weeks of getting back to what he needs to be just to pitch ML ball, he started the season as strong and as capable as we have ever seen him. So even surviving, if he does, I don't hold out much hope that he will be that pitcher again this year anyway. If Thursday goes well and every day after Thursday goes well Buch will have taken himself off the mound for 9 weeks minimum. If Thursday or any day after Thursday is a problem then you turn back the clock again to Thursday July 18th and start all over again. This is why I would not have shut him down completely. Buch has just walked himself down this road that has basically destroyed his season. If Buch continues to struggle with this thing, tossing him out there in the playoffs, having missed everything up to the playoffs is going to be the cut the cards gamble of all time. So, based on how this has gone so far, would you bet that Buch will not suffer any further set backs through what will now be a fairly long process, much like ST? If he is incapable of hitting his self proclaimed mark (100%), would you toss him out there in the post season? If so, you would be riding on a wing and a prayer cause he would have missed too much time to depend on him at that point. This is really my point. Buch has basically caused himself just as much and maybe more personal loss and will have cost the team in ways that will likely make it hard for him to continue here. 1) He has tossed what remained of his regular season down the drain. Nothing short of a miracle will recover that. 2) He has put post season participation in jeopardy especially if he does not take the mound until then as nobody should or would have confidence that he would just go out there and perform under those circumstances 3) He has put his entire career at risk since every right thinking GM will consider him a pitcher of great potential that simply cannot stay on the field. He will have been given years of rope all now wrapped around his neck and be in a pickle even worse than Josh Johnson's similar predicament. 4) He will likely force the Sox hand as far as his remaining a front line pitcher pitcher is concerned. This has been years now of the same thing over and over again. Frankly, although his situation might only be marginally better, depending on what this damned injury actually is, his predicament could very well be better had he pitched cautiously through this period. He would not have to go through what in effect will be a second ST. He would have at least retained some level of respect from GM's along the lines of how they would feel about John Lackey now. Again unless I know what the damned injury actually is, I can't really say definitively one way or the other. However he is the guy that keeps talking about "discomfort" and "not feeling right". Does not sound all that dramatic to me. By the way I doubt this is a bursa sac injury. You CAN further damage a bursa sac by continuing to inflame the area. Doctors have already said he would not hurt it further throwing with it. So, it can't be a bursa sac injury. The alternative of simply saying his season was over weeks ago was probably not considered because of a number of factors similar to those mentioned above. Buch has used up all his rope. Too many seasons of "same s***, different day".