jung

Sure I am going to let the media have an impact on my decisions with millions of $ at stake. In a word.....No! But sweeten my pot by $1m on a $10m deal and I am outta' here!

Aceves is not off to a good start as far as keeping his nose clean is concerned. I think Farrell will try to rein him in but will not be tolerant of what he has seen so far. Pulling Ace from the last game was the right thing to do for a number of reasons, not the least of which was Farrell protecting his own players. Hopefully Ace gets the message that he needs to focus on pitching, not all this other ********. If all this other ******** helped him succeed you could almost tolerate it even though it puts a strain on the rest of the team. However it does not help him succeed. Frankly, I don' think it will work out. Zebra's don't change stripes. It is likely asking too much of Farrell to expect him to force Aceves to change. Sure a guy can make the staff take less time between pitches. Aceves is short a sandwich or two of a full picnic and has already proven that he will let his frustrations on the mound get the better of him. That is a problem on a whole different level.

Day one and early spring are different things. But if you are not going to start with everything then you are going to work the rest in on some schedule or another.

Generally, pitchers never start the Spring throwing everything. They start with FB. They have always started with FB. Then work the rest in. Nobody starts throwing everything from day one. It seems to me that both the number of balls being beaten into the ground early on is up and that pitchers started working off-speed and breaking ball into their work earlier. It would make sense for both to coincide. I will have to check to see if there is some way to collate the data for ground outs one spring to the next across baseball. I don't think there will be a way to find spring pitch mix year to year. However total ground outs might be there in some form or another.

They usually do not start throwing off-speed as early in the the Spring games as they have this year. Of course working off speed is not a new ST phenomenon. Usually there is a more gradual pace and the hitters see many more FB's as a % of total pitches early. I have not seen a spring where the hitters were this far behind the pitchers early and across baseball. The only thing I can suggest to account for it is the only thing I see that seems different....that being how early the pitchers started working off-speed and breaking stuff. The hitters are not K-ing to any extraordinary degree. They are pounding out a bunch of ground balls, mistiming breaking and off-speed pitches. The hitting so far has been truly feeble across hitters and teams. I have hardly seen many balls in the air because the hitters are pounding everything into the ground. That is not just true of the Red Sox games I have seen but virtually all of the games I have seen. Lester's curve ball today was a good example. That was an insane curve ball for March 17th. The curve Inman was throwing to the Sox was an insane curve ball for March 10th. I would say the pitchers are over a week ahead of schedule compared to where I am used to seeing them in the Spring. Maybe the changes forced upon teams because of WBC has something to do with it. Can't tell.

Well I have to say I was happy to see how freely Drew seemed to be moving before he got beaned. Seemed to be fine with the glove although I just was not able to see enough to determine what kind of range he still has out there. Can't really tell what to expect out of him at the plate. I do really like the way Iggy is wearing his new swing. Whatever chance he has to cross the Mendoza line appears to be linked to that new swing. Hate to see another guy's injury be the reason that a guy gets to play. But Iggy has had such a lousy time of it the last couple years, maybe it is falling into place for him this year. New swing, chance to play and show off...who knows?

Ells has been one of about a zillion hitters I have seen seemingly surprised by how early in ST the pitchers started throwing their off-speed and breaking stuff. He is constantly swinging over the ball instead of swinging "inside" the ball (a popular term of use these days). He is always early and hence ends up swinging over the top of the off-speed and breaking ball grounding it weakly somewhere. The total number of GB outs by hitters so far this spring seems staggeringly high as an unscientific observation. I actually am wondering what managers will do if this pitching trend in ST is going to continue. Will they give the hitters more batting practice so they don't lose confidence? I really don't know. I can tell you that if you don't see something you can hit, very often you end up not hitting anything. It almost seems unfair to come at the hitters this way. Heck they are likely all scared shitless by the threat of in season drug testing. That may well finally be the straw that breaks the PED use back. Now they have pitchers throwing off-speed and breaking stuff one week or even less than one week into the ST games.

All the pitchers, just about everywhere have looked pretty good so far. I think these last couple of days I have seen more of the hitters finally catching up to the pitchers. More guys are starting to be able to handle the off-speed and breaking stuff. I think the number of hitters filtering back from the WBC has made a difference and even the guys that have spent the entire time in ST are finally starting to catch up and are getting better cuts at the off-speed and breaking stuff. These next couple of outings should be interesting for all of the pitchers, ours and those pitching for other teams.

As usual it is even worse than you might think. While none of the Sox budged from the dugout to defend Ace as the Rays started to meander onto the field, I guess Ace's bullpen mates felt compelled to defend him. So they started leaving the bullpen on their way to confronting the Rays that had come out of their dugout. So how good would that have been? The Rays everyday players in a bench brawl against our pitchers. Just perfect...lets get a bunch of pitchers injured in a ST bench brawl defending that idiot! The guy who just could not contain himself cause some opposing hitter had the audacity to hit a ST dinger off of him. Doesn't somebody want to start a franchise in Alaska? Lets ship him to Alaska. Hopefully that will be far enough away.

A few of the young guys that have not had much of a spring so far had good days today. Lavs and Iggy both had good days at the plate. Bard pitched well for his inning. Mr. Volcano Aceves started and gave up a gopher ball. Then he hit the guy the next time he came up. Some of the Rays started out of their dugout. However the Sox stayed at home and Farrell pulled Ace from the game.

Ace hit the guy in the back the next time he came up. Almost had a ST brawl goin'.

Some of the younger guys are probably starting to run outta' time to impress. Lavs has gotten more AB's than any other catcher in camp and has once again done nothing with them. You bounce his spring against Salty's and the offensive gap is simply too great. While you can argue that it is just ST, Salty has just completely overwhelmed Lavs offensively. So while I don't expect much more improvement by Salty defensively or as a battery mate, the Sox are in a box. I have been as critical of Salty as I can possibly be and Lavs just won't help me out a lick. Arghhhhhhh

Yea but I don't put much stock in that sort of on air "honesty" when you hear it from the color guy in the broadcast booth cause it will get a color guy fired. So there is no sense in hoping he will get the job cause he would not keep it if he got it. The organizations have right of refusal and they don't want somebody in the booth telling the world that their latest potential gleaming star is really a flash in the pan. That stuff can be tolerated in small doses from the post game "back at the station desk" but they want no part of a guy using the live broadcast with its ever present immediate replay as a means to tell the audience exactly why said player is a flash in the pan. This is true for all of the organizations though. It is not specific to the Red Sox by any means. The post game show Producer and Director can exercise much more control over the on air talent and that is where you will mostly find a guy like Eck unless NESN has to plug him into the game broadcast booth for some reason. An organization might let a guy like Eck do radio regularly where he does not have the benefit of video to tell you the "truth" as he sees it. All the guys with regular TV broadcast gigs like the jobs Remy and Orsillo have tread the same fine line or they don't get or keep the job. Most of them do not get anywhere near as close to the line as Remy and Orsillo and are much closer to that whack job "Hawk". Heck we are lucky to have Remy and Orsillo as the rest of that NESN broadcast crew including the guys in the truck seems pretty weak.

I would like to see more of Eck also. Whenever these guys come in for short stints they always rely on their anecdotal stories to pull them through. Invariably, Jim Rice's anecdotal stories are about.....well....Jim Rice. Eck tells you more about the guys he played with and against.

You folks in RI project to have a pretty fun minor league season this year.

Jim Rice is never going to make much of a booth analyst or anything like that but given the opportunity to just talk about baseball, like he is getting tonight you almost always hear something that makes sense but that you just did not know or had not thought about in a long time or maybe ever. So two comments from Jim tonight: You cannot go up to the plate looking for six pitches from a pitcher or four pitches or even three pitches. Two pitches are all he looked for and then he looked for location. To Rice, it was either a FB or it as not a FB. He says he treated all off speed and breaking balls like the same pitch and just cared about the location. He used dice-K as an example saying that he would not have cared a nit about six pitches or the gyro-ball. As far as he was concerned, it was either a FB or it wasn't. In my case, my baseball career ended at guys that only had two pitches. However maybe that puts that whole dice-K and his six pitches thing into some perspective. Jim might be short changing the cutter though as I don't think many or maybe any guys were throwing the cutter when he played. Second item from Jim was that the players all taught each other as much about playing the game as any coach ever taught them. Jim says he no longer sees that happening. The players no longer help each other like they did when he played.

Felix, once settled in, has really kept the hitters off balance. I have yet to see any team of hitters look like they have caught up to the pitchers yet this spring. I am really struggling to remember seeing so much off speed stuff so early in a spring from the pitchers though. The hitters just don't seem to have taken enough swings as yet and are for the most part out ahead of anything off speed or breaking that the pitcher is offering. Tons and tons of GB's hit so far as the hitters have not even been able to get many balls in the air so far this spring. That goes for all of the Spring games I have watched so far.

Thanks 07

It took him about 16 pitches to have any sort of pace at all. Walked the lead off hitter. He was truly groping for his arm angle and I mean really groping. You could tell he was trying to find his rhythm. Past pitch number 16, he was in much better shape. Maintained his arm angle....had good pace and pitched much better. Was catching hitters timing the FB and swinging over the off speed pitch when they got that instead. Ended up getting a couple of ground balls to get out of the inning. Early problem had him throwing about 27 pitches to get out of the first inning.

Was Iggy announced with back spasm's? If so, guy cannot catch a break to save his skin.

Felix can't find the plate so far tonight...pitching around that spare tire still I see.

Vasquez has an ungodly quick release.....something like 0.2 sec under average. Imagine how much that is in real terms. Heck you could almost lollypop it to 2nd and catch the guy stealing. He has a better arm than that so he is turning that 0.2 sec advantage into Out by a Mile at second base.

The very very best you could reasonably hope for would be that JBJ would go nuts for a month maybe until the ML scouts had a book on him, had it distributed to the pitchers who would then go after his weaknesses wholesale and likely turn him into a whiffing machine. I don't see anything about JBJ that suggests he would miss out on that vital period of ML activity where the player has to overcome real live ML pitchers coming at him with the knowledge of his current set of hitting weaknesses in their back pockets. It basically stops them all dead in their tracks, particularly if they have little experience with pitchers of that caliber in the first place. Worst case, he gets hurt somewhere along the way or just does not adapt well to being thrown into a ML regular season and does poorly right from the start. If my GM did that to me AND cost me some millions doing it, I'd seriously consider firing his ass. I might fire his ass even if the best case scenario played out.

But making JBJ the fourth outfielder robs him of valuable playing time. We can't be thinking that after one year of AA he can afford to do that either and that is the rub on JBJ. He still needs playing time. So bringing him up now forces him into the everyday lineup here. I don't think he has seen anywhere enough pitches and will just end up ML cannon fodder this year if we bring him up now. As I mentioned earlier I would also like to see him add another year of bulk as well.

How is blowing away $millions in control for a few weeks of service this year any different from the whacky decisions about FA players that the Red Sox have made and we have criticized them for as regularly as clockwork. Even the low estimates of the cost of having JBJ start the season in Boston runs into the $millions. Frankly at least for my money, he looks like he could not only use a little seasoning at AAA but could use a year's worth of bulk before facing the rigors of an MLB season. I don't see how the risk/reward adds up. Then again, the Sox have not been the most ardent arbiters of risk/reward.