jung

There are a number of umps in this league that set up to "see" the black on the inside and are really just guessing at the black on the outside as Hershiser alluded to. That is one way to do it I guess. It does piss me off when they miss pitches out there as pitchers are really trying to hit that spot.

Way to come back buch. Lets try strike 1 against Cano

They were saying 8:45 start time last I heard anything. Not sure if that has been updated.

I guess its watch some hockey for an hour or so.

In fairness to the Sox, I think it is less that way this year than in most years Ital. I really do not remember too many Sox teams that were really adept at winning close low scoring games....they always seemed solid in the blowouts and vulnerable in the tight ones. But again I think they are better at it this year than their historical norm even in just a third of a season. As for Nava, I have thought him our best LFer for the entirety of this year. I think he is too slow of foot for either regular CF or RF but he does appear to have the arm for RF. But if I had my druthers, he would have already been playing everyday in LF and should be there when injuries etc allow for it, IMO assuming Gomes does not play in some noteworthy fashion and the straight platoon continues. All these guys are getting more playing time due to injury. How they all use it might say something about how this goes the rest of the year. Nava was our best LF even when JBJ was here earlier this year as JBJ was simply not a good LFer for that period. JBJ was not much at the plate and he was simply not good playing in our LF. In my view, Nava would have outplayed him in LF. However, JBJ would blow Nava away in CF. I guess just being able to say that tells you something about how I feel about this idea that all three of the outfield positions are essentially the same.

Who knows....If Iggy can finally stick as a ML hitter, then maybe it all works out for the best regardless of what eventually happens with Drew.While Drew has not hurt the Sox defensively imagine what a middle infield of Pedey and Iggy would be like? They would gobble up anything and everything between them.

Mad man Cooke tossed from yet another hockey game. Slammed McQuad into the boards and sent him off with a probably concussion. The "changed man" Cooke tossed yet again and likely suspended for one game anyway. Still 1-0 Bruins.

Shucks...thought they woulda' left Hughes in to get pasted for a couple more runs.

I agree that there are more called strikes. I am referring to the types of swings hitters seem to take. Fewer and fewer guys seem to take the kinds of swings that Victorino takes or Pedey or Jeter or Ichiro. Seems like hitters that you really would not expect to be swinging for the fences end up swinging for the fences. Ells for example had been trying to pull the ball, which is why he had been rolling over so consistently. With the exception of two to LF and one to CF all of Ells 2011 HR's were to RF with several right down the line in RF. I hope that effort is behind him for this year as Ells is just the kind of guy I think really should not be swinging for the fences, especially where he is in the order. Anyway. I expect that the big swing and miss does play into total strike outs although not as a one to one relationship. I wonder how called "third strikes" plays into it. Are umps more inclined to get the hitter outta' there if he already has two strikes? Is that maybe their one answer to the question of how to shorten the length of ML games?

Strikeout totals are in my view directly tied to the lack of discipline hitters show at the plate. This is a fairly recent phenomenon at least as such a widespread element of the game. Everybody swings from the heals except for the notable exceptions...guys who have developed as bat control specialists, like Jeter and Ichiro. Pedey has been heading in that direction, thankfully. As 700 says everybody is swinging now for the long green. HR hitters are in a different salary category from every other everyday player. Almost anybody that swings a decent bat is trying to get into that category whether their chances are slim or not.

Will be interesting to see what happens around 1st base as a position and around WMB as a player. Hard to say the Sox are "set" at 1st and there are several infield prospects working their way through the system. In part my thinking about WMB and what he might accomplish as a hitter is tied to a concern that he is not going to get as much time as one might think to prove himself. I do think he made terrific progress as a fielder in the off season and that this year's fielding mistakes are tied to his problems at the plate more than flat out poor technique in the field. But I do think that if he does not establish a niche for himself as a hitter he will be left with prospects climbing up his ass in short order. As it is the Sox need another power bat and he might be a part of the answer. Depends on what direction they take him as a hitter and how he responds.

Farrell says he likes to have one on one discussions with his players. Wonder if he decided it was time to have one with Ells.

I think this is their real motivation for sending him down. In fact I even think they are doing Aceves something of a favor. He is getting paid based on the terms of a contract so he is not losing any money. If they can keep him coming back for spot starts that is likely the very best way for him to prove that he can be in a ML rotation for somebody. I think Ace has made it fairly clear that a rotation job is really what he wants.

You would have expected Nava to be more patient than that in that situation. Pretty bad AB.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ:D

Hate interleague with the DH/no DH thing. Stuck with it in the WS as well. Wish the leagues would get it straightened out. Don't think it will happen though.

Didn't see any of it so far. Too much family stuff to do for the holiday. Any HR's so far?

There is a huge difference between backpeddling and putting words in a persons mouth. Find the post where I claimed that we were unilaterally dominated by junkballers? Go find the post where I attached any % to it. I repeat it has happened more than I expected and in several instances where we were undone by a pitcher of that ilk, we were far less competitive than I would have expected us to be with the Jurrjen's June game being the best example I could think of. Maybe if I review the games that SFF mentioned in his post, I might find one of those to be en even better example than the Jurrjens game. I would have to do direct comparisons. If you look you will find several posts from other posters suggesting the same thing that I suggested. You will find them both this year and last. If anything it looks like SFF thought it was more prevalent than even I did. But I would never have suggested that the Sox would have had more trouble with soft tossers than hard throwers. I don't think it likely that I would find a single MLB team that would have more trouble with hard throwers than soft tossers. The only standard anybody has to meet to favor one side over the other is 51%. So if your point is that we are more often dominated by hard throwers than soft tossers then I would again say, No s*** Sherlock.

Great...once again you took whole topic back insisting that one side of argument must be provable 100% of the time in order to be valid. There is nothing that you posted that is a surprise. "There is a significant correlation between fastball velocity and K/BB ratio." No s*** Sherlock...really. What a shocker that is. I never said that we are dominated by pitchers of that sort 100% of the time. I never even implied it. I never even implied that we are dominated by them 50% of the time. I am suggesting that in the games where we are literally dominated by pitchers that would not be suggestive of that sort of dominance, we are often not even competitive and I am suggesting that there are more of them than I would have expected. I have never set a standard for anybody here that demands they offer a proof that is unilaterally true for all cases or even half the cases. You could not survive such a standard UN and nobody discussion baseball can. How can you for a sport that regularly glorifies success at ratios of about 1:3. If Tom Brady could only complete 1 out of every 3 passes would we consider him a great quarterback...No we would not. That is football and this is baseball. I can't take this level of ******** any longer. You have your opinion, I have mine. Enjoy yours, explore to any degree that makes you happy and I will do the same. But don't put words in my mouth.

Yes I do......Did I make any reference to handedness of the batter in conjunction with the location comments middle to low and outside ? I made every comment along the lines of the one we are discussing without reference to LH vs RH batter. I never brought LH batter vs RH batter into the discussion. That is also why I tried to take the discussion away from pitch type because it requires a different pitch from a specific pitcher to move the ball "away" from a RH hitter than a LH hitter and taking the discussion there in my view misses the forest for the trees! A slider for example will move in to one and out to the other. We are not really talking about the pitchers although since the discussion turned to where Jurrjens was a pitcher in 2012 I thought it made sense to add some detail. Really it is a discussion of the team and how feeble their hitting effort as a team appears against pitchers that come in here not really having outstanding years, not really exhibiting outstanding stuff that can dominate us while bringing very little to the table. I think that is the basic comment most of the posters have been making here relative to this topic. To me, the Jurrjens game is the best example of that while not being the only example we have seen since the beginning of last year. I should note that as I stated above, it will be interesting to how this pans out within the AL East generally this year. I went through the whole year last year mainly focused on the Sox and not really much paying attention to this issue as a possible AL East issue. Then we got to the post season and I thought the hitting performance by the AL East representatives was in a word.... appalling and I said so. Based on the 2012 post season, this may well be an AL East issue more than it is a Red Sox issue. Is is relevant? Are any of these discussions really "relevant" in the overall scheme of things? If we keep it to baseball only, which baseball team was acknowledged to be the most versatile, flexible, all around "team" of last year.....the Giants....No? Who won the World Series last year? Did an AL East team even get out of the AL Championship game?

Look at the number of outs recorded middle to lower outside quadrant in the Jurrjens plot and combine it with called strikes and wiffs. You know a team only gets 27 outs in a baseball game. How many outs do you think an opposing pitcher needs to get a particular way for that to make a significant contribution? We often think of an 8 or 9 K performance as significant as a strike out performance. I don't that is far wrong. That is 33% of the total outs allowed a team in a game. So what are we going to do now...establish different standards to make a point. Must a team or a player need do something 100% of the time to be worthy of comment on this board? That would not surprise me either. In fact almost nothing I read here from certain posters surprises me any longer. This is a discussion board folks, not life. If you are going to treat it like life I have a suggestion for you....GET A LIFE!

The discussion included 2012 and 2013 because I had suggested that the number of instances that a pitcher could come in here with little more than an ability to hit the lower outside quadrant of the strike zone and beat us with that had most notably increased In 2012. That appears to be the case this year as well. I hardly have to do a post count to suggest that many posters here made that same or similar comment regarding the early results for 2013. It is still early in 2013 and it is possible that posters are commenting mainly based on the 2012 results. However it would seem clear that as a group the board thinks the trend established in 2012 remains to this day. Standing Room asked for an example and I chose the Jurrjens game from last year because to me it was the most memorable example. As for Jurrjens himself, while 2011 was his best year, he has gone through more change in pitch type through 2012 and early 2013 than at any other time in his career. Historically Jurrjens has thrown FB's at a rate of about 40% of total pitches. That is fully 19% lower than the historical average of 59% for all pitchers including junkers from 2007 till today. His average speed for those FB's was 89.92 mph that day, which is about what his average FB was doing all of the 2012 season. Historically he has thrown sinkers and sliders, about 35% of the time. That number fell to about 20% last year and has fallen to 0% in 2013. Jurrjens has only faced 22 batters so far in 2013 and has thrown either that doing nothing, going nowhere FB or the Change to all of them for 100% of his pitches this year. Frankly I think Jurrjens is on his way out of baseball but clearly his most notable performance of the last two seasons was that June 2012 performance against the Red Sox, going 8 innings and flummoxing the Sox with seemingly little that we normally recognize for a dominant pitching performance. On that day while the historical average difference for all pitchers for all pitches is about 14.5 mph (top to bottom), Jurrjens was only able to manage a 6.48 mph difference in velocity between 90 of the 103 pitches he threw that day in June and a 10.92 mph difference between all 103 pitches he threw that day. Clearly then, he did not exhibit a greater difference in velocity than other pitchers had shown or now show the Sox. While his change in velo pitch to pitch was considerably lower than average, his movement on that day was about average for all pitchers and all pitches. So, while throwing such a low percentage of FB's at such a low average velocity establishes him as a junker neither the velo or the movement on his pitches that day would suggest those were telling features of his performance. What was telling was the percentage of outs and called strikes in the middle to low and outside quadrant of the strike zone on that day. In other words, all Jurrjens did was find the low outside quadrant with extreme regularity. That was it. That was the only notable aspect of his performance that day. The Sox either ignored pitches in that quadrant that were called strikes or swing at them, beating them into the ground thus recording outs at an alarming rate. They also recorded swinging strikes in that zone but Jurrjens only recorded 5 wiffs (or complete swings and misses) for the entire day's 103 pitch effort. So I hardly think swings and misses in any of the four quadrants were important to his effort that day. To me, of the exceptional performances by unexceptional pitchers against the Sox during the last two seasons, that one by Jurrjens was the most remarkable of them and that is why I used it. Now to be frank, I would not be surprised if the degree to which the slugger rich AL East has been flummoxed by fairly unspectacular pitching performances is on the rise. Think about the 2012 post season for example. The performance by hitters representing AL East participants was most unspectacular with the O's and Yankee pitchers doing little more in their series than Jurrjens did to the Sox that day in June. The Yankees were the last team left standing in that death march they endured and put the country through against the O's and then went on to record an equally unspectacular hitting standard in the AL Championship series against the Tigers. So I would not be completely surprised if this turned out to be an AL East thing more than it is a Red Sox thing. However, as I said earlier, I think one of the most common comments on our board or in our little closed community is the number of instances starting in 2012 and continuing this year when we have been surprised by the effectiveness of generally unspectacular pitchers pitching against the Red Sox. These are in the main Junkers doing little more than Jurrjens did that day in June 2012.

I am no longer amazed at the ability of some posters to be selective in the way they characterize other posters comments. What some people will do just to make a point. I also commented that the Guardians also helped Felix in the number of instances when they were not taking advantage of pitches right in the heart of the zone, mostly either beating them into the ground but also fouling them off, missing them entirely or taking them for called strikes.

I was referring to the NESN pitch tracker which is all we had at the time. I am sure you will recall that the NESN tracker had that pitch pretty much in the zone with the edge of the tracker indicator just sitting on the border and the rest of the ball inside the strike zone. Those of us used to seeing how the NESN tracker records pitches would consider that pretty much an unquestionable strike. In any event, the ump called it a ball and both pitchfx and the NESN tracker called it a strike with pitchfx showing it as much more borderline than the NESN tracker.

This one was a terrific game Pal but to be honest they have almost all been terrific games, win or lose so far this year. This one had twists and turns, plots.....humor...the whole nine yards. 7th inning had an argument over third out play at 2nd base cut short by "God Bless America" with everybody standing around trying to figure out how they could keep arguing and do the flag justice at the same time....funny as hell. On top of all that, just about the whole lineup had a moment to remember to take from this one. Great theater and a great win. Really win or lose almost all the games this year have been exciting and interesting to watch. They have managed to pack more fun into a month and a few days than they had in the whole time since August 2011. I really think that the opportunity afforded the younger guys by circumstances and the acceptance of those young guys by the vets has been as responsible for that as anything.