jung

Hey..... we got our inning tonight. Some people are never satisfied....then again...if you blinked....you missed it:D:D

I have recently gotten the feeling that this is the kind of thing that Farrell gets ridiculously stubborn about. Ells will still be batting at the top of the order at a .151/.225/.550 or something like that in August with Farrell still waiting for him to get hot. I could be wrong but I just feel those stubborn as hell vibes just radiating off of Farrell.

Talk about a useless make talk stat from NESN..... "that makes four grand slam home runs by "A" Drew in a Red Sox uniform. Meaning between them....Who gives a f***? So I guess we should send Mother Drew a dozen roses or somethin' Is that what that means?

That is just the crap that WMB has got to lay off of. Wow...swung at two of them in a row there...just cannot lay off that s***

Needless to say these additional camera ops for Maddon are infuriating. They need to start to show shots of him with his head in his hand and a fifth of rot gut, half empty by his side. Those shots I would like to see.

and they will come out of trap doors in the floor of this dungeon, like lions coming into the Colosseum in Rome to eat more Christians. We will be wondering where the f*** these guys came from.

If these f***s creep back into this game my head is just going to explode. I hate the way Maddon walks around with that smug, confident "I know something you don't know" look on his face even in situations like this.

Gotta' wonder if the Rays risked getting that run home down 8-0 with no outs cause it is Salty back there. I can see Maddon deciding that Salty was not going to be able to make a play on the ball anyway....on history it would have been a good bet.

Gonna' piss me off if we were the healing medicine they needed.

Great inning.....makes you wonder if the Rays brain trust should have gone out there and made sure Wright was ready to pitch. He has not looked ready at all. Still not able to keep Sox from lacing his pitches, even after the GS.

Issue with this offense has not been RISP or LOB if you will. Leaving guys on at a rate in May very similar to what we did in April. I agree with Remy on Wright. He does not look like he has gotten prepared to pitch. I see that much more than you would think since they get all the time they want to warm on an injury situation.

Runs.....runs.....runs....more please. Surprised Madden did not pull some unhittable donkey out of his ******* that he has been saving up just for this situation.

Wish we could have won last night's game. Losing the first game of a Rays series is just another thing for me to hate....hate...hate....hate They get one game up on you in a series and it is almost like they play it like a hockey game in the third period up by two goals.

Oh yea...I forgot to mention that I hate all three of their fans too.

This dump of a baseball park finally gives us something back thanks to that s***** surface. I truly hate this team and their s***** ballpark. Place should be banned from baseball.

I was just going to comment about how frustrating it is to play this Rays team as they are like water eroding away at you all game long... do most everything right (like taking second on the ball bounced in the dirt) and make few mistakes (like moving off of second base like that). A usual Rays game that they win has you wondering what the f*** just happened.

Jeez Lester is catching too much plate tonight so far

Our lead off hitter is a pseudo-lead off hitter. Has never generated enough walks to hit lead off. Some day the Sox might figure this out. Obviously this is not the day.

This is clearly going to be one of those dangerous 1st innings for Lester

Honestly I don't know why we continue to sit Nava for Gomes. Yes, Nava seems to do better from the left side. However Gomes has not been either as reliable in the field nor as solid at the plate and this team is struggling to win games right now. Last time I said that, Gomes hit a HR his first time up. So maybe my big mouth will come in handy again tonight. As for Carp, they would do just as well to buy Carp a pair of cement overshoes and dump him into the Charles River. He is not getting even a sniff of a place in the lineup even for a game. I really don't think there is a reason to panic but I do not consider shuffling the lineup a bit being in panic mode. I would consider it an effort to get back to the offensive approach they had in April. Farrell admitted today that there are cases where hitters are getting "frustrated" and changing their approach. However honestly I think there were some changes going on before frustration would have set in. I just think guys sort of abandoned something that takes a fair amount of discipline to maintain. That is really the thing in my mind that separates that ******* Joe Maddon from other managers. That Rays team is always offensively disciplined. They may not be offensively good but they are always disciplined.

We have a couple guys now with rib issues which really sucks. It will not be comfortable for either player. Honesty there is a real chance in both cases that this f***s with their swings. Swinging WILL hurt. As sure as I am sitting here, both players will take the needle before games if these injuries are as advertised. Not sure there is even another way to play for them. As for WMB's problems at the plate, they are what they are. He has to discipline himself. We could be looking at a terrific hitter once he gets himself straightened out. Guys who can become what I hope he is, become all time great hitters. He has the physical tools. Hopefully, the effort to get him where he needs to go will be unwavering. I am a little concerned that he and those assisting him are just a bit off the mark in what they are trying to accomplish. That worries me mainly because of the potential I think is there and not far away far away for WMB. I am much encouraged by the defensive improvements he has made in one off season. Clearly he is willing to work.

Well, I have a hard time with calling WMB a defensive liability this year. I was as critical as I could have been of his defense last year. So, I do see and have seen his defensive issues. However he has made tremendous improvement in his defense during the off season. I don't see how that would not be acknowledged. IMO, he is now a solid defender at 3rd base, not perfect but solid. As for his hitting, his issues have been well documented here. However I don't see any realistic options to WMB at 3rd at this point. Maybe they brought him here a tad early. Frankly it is unusual for the Sox to bring a young player up a bit before his time. I think they figured they could polish that apple well enough up here in the bigs, did not want to revisit the issue of a 3rd baseman from outside the organization and did not want Youk any longer. Right or wrong I don't see a viable option at this point and I would not send WMB down at this point. They are committed to him and he knows it. IMO, it is too late to consider options like sending him down especially without a replacement candidate worth considering. Ells needs to be dropped in the order at this point. My choice is Vic at the top and possibly Nava in certain situations. Pedey does not like lead off. He carries enough of the load for this team. I don't want to see him batting lead off. I can swallow the idea that he is a more natural 2 hitter than a 3 hitter. He is not all that out of place as a 3 though.

Bell if you mean Gomes is going to position himself back in the clubhouse with Aladdin's Lamp, a rabbit's foot, a four leaf clover and a horse shoe trying to make with the magic, I believe you. If you are saying he is going to be magical in the batter's box.......mehhhhhhh.....not so sure.

This discussion started in last night's game thread but while I go to the game threads as long as there are posts to read there, I really don't know what everybody else does. Looking at the numbers for April and May, while it looks like we are leaving a ton of guys on base and that it is the LOB numbers that are at the center of our run scoring problem, LOB is actually deceiving. We had 188 LOB for April while scoring 135 runs in 26 games. At the half way mark of May we have 98 LOB but have only scored 47 runs. So while our LOB rate is only slightly higher in May we are scoring far fewer runs. At this pace we will only score 94 runs for the month. Runs scored has tumbled off a cliff but LOB is only slightly higher. We will leave 12 more runners on base for a whole month at this pace but will end up short a whooping 41 runs for a month. So 29 of those 41 runs (41-12) are locked up in run scoring opportunities that we are not creating this month because we are putting fewer guys out there on the bass paths. Hence it is not really LOB that is the problem for this offense. Where are all those other runs? They are not in HR's. We are actually hitting HR's at a slightly better pace in May than in April. We had 26 total HR's in April. We have 16 HR's so far in May. We are hitting more 1 run HR's in May than we did in April. 17 out of the 26 April HR's were of the 1 run variety. 11 out of the 16 May HR's have been 1 run HR's at the half way mark. So the missing runs are not in HR's either. Although a clue to the problem is in the number of 1 run HR's we are hitting in May as compared to April. We look at the LOB number as the cause of our run scoring problem. But, if LOB is about the same, and our HR rate is actually higher then we are simply not putting runners out there on the base paths at the same rate in May that we were in April. As for what happens to us as fans, it is only human nature. When you are desperate for runs, you really miss every runner that gets on that does not score. But as you can see from the numbers, the number of runners we are putting out there in the first place is the bigger problem by far. Actually in the interest of accuracy, I should say it is by far the bigger difference from April's success to May's lack of success. If you think about it, these numbers fall more in line with some of the comments we have made about the offensive approach changing. The fact that we are hitting 1 run HR's at a higher rate and putting fewer runners out there on the base paths to begin with are numbers that substantiate that concern. We gotta' go back to what we were doing in April. We are not doing it now.

Nava would be a good choice to lead off especially since he is super patient at the plate. Ells has gotten a few walks tonight but he had some pitches that were just so far off the plate that the walk was just conceded to him. Nava is much more patient generally and will earn more walks in tough AB's. He has a better eye than Ells and will earn walks when the pitcher is just missing....something I don't see Ells doing. I want to start more games and more innings with lead off on first and I don't much care how he gets there at this point.