jung

Well at least Hernandez is featuring major suckage as well.

And that is one problem with pushing a pitcher up like this....he is obviously shaken by the way he has just been hammered. His confidence is likely going to need some nurturing after this. Good think we have Farrell who very likely knows it better than I do.

There is way more to pitching in the ML than Stuff.

There is really nothing wrong with him. He is just not ready to pitch up here quite yet.

Wow its an out!

Very common practice to try to take the extra base by Drew to draw the ball away from a play at home with two outs insuring that the run scores. Looks bad but that is a very common way to play that since you are willing to give up the out to get the run with two outs.

Lets see at this rate we should have a .......6 hour ballgame! Fans getting their money's worth.

IMO, biggest problem for young pitchers coming up to ML is that they are just not used to seeing every mistake pitch or near to every mistake pitch tagged and then some.

That is true VA. You really cannot tell when Castig is about to have to back down a little to finally call what turns out to be a fly ball. He really gets me on the fouls because sometimes he does not even tell you it is near the line until he finally calls "foul ball" and you go....what!

I know....sometimes it is just too funny....like when a ball is hit to left and bangs off the wall and Remy is talking about how later in the summer it would be a Home Run, completely ignoring the fact that a heavy breeze was blowing out to left field. While this year they seem to have even ratcheted up the homer stuff they are still not as bad as many of the donkey broadcast crews around the league.

ESPN has that big network feel but I actually think NESN handles the video aspects of covering a baseball game better than just about anybody. I hate these little specials and interviews that NESN insists on sticking right in the middle of the actual play but the replays are great and the way NESN does them is really good I think.

To be honest, while I like Nava better batting from the left side, after last night's mess I wanted his patient bat. I guess Gomes can be patient as well but most of them CAN be patient. You know Nava will be.

Well I was hoping I would find some numbers for Gomes vs Hernandez that would play into the decision but there are none. Never faced him.

I guess it is sore or bruised but not broken ribs. Still and all, to be honest having played both games with bruised ribs, I would prefer playing football to baseball with sore ribs. You know you are going to be hurting playing football but you can do some things without having an impact on performance. Hard to think of anything that you do in baseball that would not be more difficult and painful with bruised ribs and I would expect performance to not be as good until he heals up.

I have not noticed NEXN+ audio being crappy. Maybe I have just been lucky. Should be a great night to flip back and forth between NESN and NESN+

I know I have said this before but this has been and is such an interesting baseball team and season. We always have so much good stuff going on. Some of it is due to not so good stuff like injury and such but there is always something to keep the baseball interest high.

Please don't be broken ribs...Jeez this one play is sounding more like a nightmare by the minute.

Boy I don't want to see WMB hit the DL. That said, he has exacerbated his problems at the plate by jumping on any early count pitch that looks like it will be inner third and many of those end up in on his hands where he can't do anything with them. So now he is almost always 0-1 down in the count against everybody and then they immediately start teasing him with pitches low and outside headed farther outside and lower. Before you know it he is at two strikes and then for the most part they have him. Trying to jump on anything early in the count that looks like it might be something he can handle inside is not the solution for him cause he is swinging at too many bad pitches because of it. He has got to learn to lay off the teasing, low outside stuff with less than two strikes and foul that s*** off with two strikes. Once he has the confidence to do that, he will be able to be more selective on the inner half of the plate and hammer away at the pitches that he can handle inside. He kills those, not just getting base hits but hitting HR's and extra base hits. However he is not going to get there at some point during the regular season. He needs to work on it this regular season and then really work on it in the off season. There is every chance that he comes back next year having made as much improvement at the plate as he made in the field this last off season. He clearly has made huge strides in the field. So, I think this season is going to be a struggle for him at the plate. If I had my druthers I would have him stop being so aggressive looking for anything inside, s***** or not early in the count as that is not helping him. He should start the process now of building an approach at the plate that will work for him instead of trying to band aid this one.

True but Pedey and Vic involved in a HR contest that is clearly having an impact at least on Vics approach at the plate is just plain stupid.

They have really very gradually slipped into this ******** offense. The regulars are winging like mad men all over the order. David has remained David. The rest of them have jumped off into the deep end.....

BA= .302, OBP = .400, OPS =.749 Looks like he must be generating BBs, and base hits while not hitting for much power. He is not K-ing at the rate he had begun to K at up here. Not tearing up AAA but not doing badly either.

I am always happy to watch a baseball game, especially a Sox game. As far as the result goes, I hate it when they plsy stupidly...with their heads up their asses. They waisted a very well pitched game by Dempster, which is not to say that Diamond did not pitch well. Diamond is just the kind of guy that gives the Sox fits, especially when they are going through one of their dunce cap phases. So Dempster's performance was encouraging and the fact the Farrell recognized that his team was playing like s*** and he was not going to just stand for it was encouraging. He tried like hell to get himself tossed from this game, I suspect to try to wake these guys out of their stupor.

Dempster with a very honest appraisal of the balk call sorta' makes the NESN talking heads look kinda' foolish or at least blind. But But But..Dempster did not get out-pitched in my honest opinion. Our offensive approach and effort tonight was simply s***. True you can make the case (and I often do) that if the other guys gives up fewer runs he has out-pitched you but our offensive approach was such crap tonight that I even have to flip on my usual position in this regard.

It was not going to be as potent from a power numbers perspective. However the patient at the plate, take the ball back up the way it came in, speed oriented offense we featured earlier in the season is and was much better suited to this team than what they are doing now. That offense really took off when the guys at the top kept doing what they were doing and left the power stuff to Ortiz and Naps and to some extent WMB and Salty. Of course WMB and Salty have been off their game but the Sox have got to stay the course as far as patience at the plate, smart aggression with the right guys on the base paths and everybody doing their part in the offense instead of suddenly everybody trying to bash down the walls.

Dempster actually out-pitched Diamond and did not get rewarded for it. Please please go back to the offensive approach we had at the start of the season.