jung

This place is a little shop of horrors for anybody in a Red Sox uni

Oh for f*** sake....I know it is a bad place to play but for crying out loud ya gotta know what you are up against in this park.

That was a BP pitch to Molina Holy Crap...target practice out there..."lets see, I think I will hit this one to CF"...." Oh and I think I will hit this one to RF".

Well at least we got the 3 runs looking like the offense we can be. But since then it has looked more like the offense it has been recently. Don't like seeing Ortiz pondering his feet on the bench.

Radio guys were saying that when San Diego was just here "nobody came". I wonder what they really meant by that. Was attendance in the low 100s'....less than 100? I don't think I have ever heard anybody say "nobody came" before and given how bad things can get in Tampa I just don't know how to process a comment like that. If somebody said "nobody came" to Fenway, I would think that meant something like 10,000 showed up.

Jeez guys...wake up and get out of Wills way

Nice play by WMB. As much as I think his general hitting approach and skill needs improving, I am so impressed with his year over year improvement in the field. Gives me hope that an off season of work on his hitting might yield the same kind of result.

Just got back from my kid's little league game. I know Lavs is here cause of those two whacks off the mask to Ross. But I though it interesting that they got him into a game pronto. In reality though I am sure the Sox like Salty from the left side more than from the right side. So I guess there is really nothing to read into Lavs getting into a game that quickly.

Happy to see Lavs up. At least it suggests that the FO has seen enough of you know who and is ready to give Lavs a shot. Sox have too many K's in the lineup and Salty is one of them. Would love to see evidence tonight and in this series of the Sox going back to the offensive approach that they had earlier in the season. Would also like to see them going back to taking early leads as opposed to playing from behind.

I would prefer WMB attempt to solve the issues he does have differently. If you check pitchfx he is now taking balls on the inner half or right down main st and shooting them to RF. Pitches on the inner half and pitches right down main st are not his problem. His problem pitches are low and outside headed lower and more outside. I don't want him taking middle middle pitches and pitches on the inner half and shooting them to RF unless there is a specific reason to go to RF, like hitting behind a runner. WMB takes pitches that are middle middle or on the inner half and deposits them in the parking lot over the monster in LF. I do not want to trade away HR's for opposite field hits. Besides, taking those pitches to RF does nothing to resolve the real problems that he does have. What I would like to see him eventually do is foul off pitches that are strikes on the outer third of the plate or take them with less than two strikes and foul them off when he has two strikes. The point being that those are the pitches that he appears having difficulty seeing and that often end up off the plate by the time he swings at them. If he can concentrate his efforts on the inner half, he may well become one of the great mistake pitch hitters of all time. IMO he has that potential. But he won't get their until he stops swinging at pitches headed off the plate outside and/or low and outside. I want him to continue to take those pitches that he has now been shooting to RF and continue to bang them off or over the wall in LF. I do not what to see him do anything to mess with that ability he has to send those pitches into the stratosphere to LF. Shooting those inner half and middle middle pitches to RF will mess with his HR stroke and will do nothing to solve the real problems that he has at the plate.

Badly.....BADLY!!!! It was all the usual suspects as well. Granted this is not the offensive juggernaut of the championship years but when you think about the talent on this team relative to their performance that is when you have to realize they are not playing the kind of baseball they need to play to even have a chance to win games. This is not an issue of playing like s***. They are wayyyyy past that now. They are just not playing a brand of baseball that is a winner for them. To be honest there has been so many sign posts in the road that this is where they were headed.....that they were defocused away from the kind of baseball they needed to be playing. All I can say is that if Ferrell does not have enough ammo to call a "hold on a minute here fellas" meeting behind closed doors at this point, I don't know what it is going to take. Even if he is able to grab them by the throat at this point I suspect it will take a bit to get this straightened out. If Ferrell does not feel compelled to do anything at this point or if they are not in the mood to be responsive then no telling when they will come around. I just hope they don't produce some monster game scoring runs all over the place playing like this cause something like that will only mask the underlying issues. They have time to work this out. They don't have time for the "hey its only one game and its early still" ******** because while they are not or should not be the mess they have been the last 11-12 games, they are not the monster they were for the first 26-27 either. They have proven that they can play and compete with good pitching and a sound, patient offensive approach based on who they are, not who they think they should be. They have also proven that they are a cluster f*** playing this kind of baseball. Honestly, one of the reasons why I was not optimistic about this season was that I could not convince myself that the Sox would play the kind of baseball that this team as constructed needed to play to compete. Nobody was more surprised than I was when they came out in April and did exactly what I did not expect them to do, what I did not expect them to have the discipline to do. That said I guess I should have paid more attention to the complaints out of Toronto last year about the way Ferrell handled that bullpen because that was the other surprise for me. While he must have had a very positive impact on guys like Lester and Buch and really all of the pitchers from the perspective of the empathy they must feel from him, I have been less than impressed with the way he has handled the pen so far and downright pissed off at the way he handed the 9th inning in all respects on Saturday.

Hey maybe it is a little bit of an advantage to manager and coaches to be headed into a series where they might see even better pitching. At the rate they are going a couple really good pitchers could pitch two shutouts in a row. "This cannot be our approach to plate appearances going into this series guys" might be a good topic for a closed door discussion. It is not like they are playing the same brand of baseball they were playing and now stink at it. They are not playing the same baseball that got them out to a zillion games over 500. They just aren't and they do not have the lineup to play this way successfully. Although now some of them have managed to develop some individual hitting problems as a consequence of screwing up their plate appearances. For his part, WMB is young and needs to grow as a hitter so his issues are different. We will need to live with his issues and hope he improves.......quickly. Drew has really not hit consistently since the season started. He has been better lately but still goes through 0 for 12's and 0 for 11's etc. Thank God for the Starting Pitching.

Bu-By Ells......I suspect that genius Gibbons had a RH pitcher out there just to make sure Ells came to the plate.

Notice how quickly and effortlessly a team that was grunting, groaning and grimacing to squeeze runs out its ******* is scoring on us now...bing-bang-bong...two more runs. Now it is us on the porcelain throne grunting and groaning...trying to squeeze out runs. But it can turn around for us....but not if our guys just treat this s*** like business as usual. I would pinch hit the batboy for Ells! Think that might send a message?

They certainly are not playing to what they can be. I don't know who snuck into their bedrooms one night and convinced them that they were all wearing superman suits under their unis. I suspect Jacko hired a hypnotist. "Round up the usual suspects"

I forgot this guy looks like Ells younger brother. Not exactly an advantage at this point.

Another time when I am going to have to look at pitchfx later but I think WMB just flat missed that one. Good pitch for him to hit I think. I did not catch all of it. Damn dog walked right in front of the screen. That is why I don't want him trying to take pitches on the inner half and shoot them to right. I don't want anything to interfere with WMB's ability to take that pitch and send it into the parking lot behind the monster. On the outer half...different story depending on the count.

No comment....the words got stuck somewhere in my throat and I am gagging on them right now!

Patient in the late innings until....the safari guide himself comes to the plate.

UN is not on to day it but remember yesterday when he commented that we are waiting for the late innings to get patient almost like Oh OK we have been getting killed all day long, lets get back to baseball in like the 7th or 8th inning so it looks like we are playing ball the same way we were at the start of the season. Here we go again!

I wonder if putting a baseball bat right through one of the ballpark speakers would say just exactly how I feel about that?

Ons early sign that we were headed for trouble was that the one run home runs started to pile up. They have been piling up for a couple of weeks now at least.

We've seen those pitchers before and we will see them again. This is a matter of looking internally and getting back to where we need to be. Who we face is who we face. Don't mean to make it sound as easy as pie...it is not, but who are facing next is the least of our issues. One thing that you either like or don't about MLB is that players are generally left to their own devices when things go awry. If they ask for help they will get it but more often than not, they are left to slay their own demons...much more so than in the NFL for example. Frankly I always wished that managers and coaches were more proactive, especially when it comes to changes like the Sox are going through. For example, I doubt that Farrell held a meeting and told the guys at the top of the order that they needed to start swinging for the fences for example. So, when it all goes sideways like this, I really think Managers do have a platform to step up and say "wait a minute here fellas'. This is not an issue of tomorrow is another day ....or any of that s***. We are not playing the ball that we were playing." or: If he does not want to come out and say it....he makes the changes in the lineup that effectively say the same thing. Players usually get that message.

Unfortunately we can make the case that we really brought it on ourselves. This team was certainly due to come off the performance highs we saw earlier but we somehow decided that we were something we are not along the way and they are really lost now. I often joke about Salty being on safari again for another pop up behind the plate. Right now the whole bunch of them are on safari at the plate and somebody lost the compass! Opponents are getting so far up on this team that they are going to the plate loose, easy and comfortable and you see the result when hitters get that comfortable. From 5-1, the Jays have been on cruise control, drinkin' smoothies with the top down and the sun shining. We can recover though to be the team it has the potential to be. Farrell has got to run this team a bit like Madden (did I remember to tell you I hate him) runs his team.

Jesus I am getting tired of pitchers setting new career high water marks against us. "Most pitches Jenkins has ever thrown in a starting role"!!! And down goes Ells again...somebody wake up Farrell.....please.....