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Geez our pitching just sucks....sucks....sucks Every time you think they have shown you all the suckiness they have in them, they come up with a new level of suckiness.

First pitches have to be middle middle to e worth swinging at...if they are not...don't swing....simple rule that seems to evade the Sox on many occasions.

Geez Ciriaco swings at some of the worst pitches in the history of worst pitches if there is such a thing.

Cameron was a flat out mistake but the cavalcade of stars like d-mac and Cook have been very very hard to stomach. Some of these other jokers have been continually jammed down our throats being promoted as big league players and they have been a joke. While I hate the idea of the money spent on mistakes like Cameron and Jenks having these other guys continually projected as somebody that should be on a ML roster is insulting.

Well it would likely have to have been a well placed ground out but they have not done that to often this year either. While it might not seen like the game can turn on a play like that given the propensity for the Sox to give up runs, you are much more in the game at a 3-2 score than 3-1.

They have seldom been capable of giving up an out to get a run this year no matter the means. Not being able to get a guy home from 3rd in a situation like that is criminal. That was a hell of a play Iggy made at SS to close out that last half inning. Would have been nice if he could have bailed the Sox out and gotten a hit to get the guy home from 3rd once they already had two outs in their half.

Stewart is a complete mess. There must be somebody they could use am option on giving him a shot to gain some experience up here. Cook is not coming back to this team next year....if we see Cook on the 2013 roster, that would be about the most depressing thing I could think of. So give somebody a shot at seeing what it is like in the bigs, assuming there is somebody that makes sense as far as using an option is concerned. Frankly, the more I think about it, maybe Stewart makes more sense than Cook as Stewart must have an option that they are using already this year. As bad as he is, I would rather see him than Cook as there should be no chance of Cook remaining in the Sox organization next year at any level. The Sox are more likely to keep Steward in the system some place next year.

I know AAA pitchers are likely to get lit up in the bigs when they first come up but I just don't see any reason to pitch Cook any longer. Nobody can be as fine with their control as Cook has to be to succeed. Throwing Cook out there is like throwing raw meat out on the field for a pride of hungry lions.

I have missed very few innings of this season from hell but I did miss the first Ciriaco gaff at 3rd from a couple weeks ago. It it was anything like this one, I think I see why he plays a better SS than 3rd even though SS is a tougher position. You get a different view on the ball from 3rd than from middle infield. Some guys can adapt to it. Others can't. A good 3rd baseman won't get caught in no-mans land like that. The way he started was the way he had to keep going and once he did not continue to commit, he was lost. He turned what would likely have been a not so difficult play into a really tough chance. It is really really difficult for guys to get used to having to commit to cutting across in front of the SS on that play and staying with that commitment come hell or high water. While the hot smashes at the hot corner can be difficult plays, as long as you are wiling to take a few off the chest and the shins for the team, guys can usually make those plays. Committing to cutting in front of the SS and dealing with that short hop can be a whole different deal.

The way Cook is pitching this inning he is lucky he has recorded any outs at all.

No Jerry that pitch to Grandy is not down for Cook. Cook can not be between the knees and the belt-line. That is not down for him. Cook has to be between the middle of the kneecap and the bottom of the kneecap. Both of those pitches, the one to Grandy and the one to Cano were candy.

Crowds have been light lately but people are taking advantage of the last of the summer weather as well.

Go Daddy got hacked! Well that was certainly more ambitious than hacking TalkSox. I was on TalkSox just as it died which was at about 2:00 Eastern at least here. Not sure if that helps any.

I am sure the site was hacked. It happened in the afternoon....just before the first Spanks game...what a coincidence! Sure it was. I hope nobody tried to access the URL linked in that post. I would worry about that if you tried. While Zend is a real company, did that link look like the link a real company would post? If you did try see if you can do a security diagnosis with whatever Internet Security Software you have to see it if turns anything up. The biggest hacking scam going is to put you in an uncomfortable position and then provide the supposed link that is going to make everything all better again. The link or "cure" often turns out to be a virus that might infect your computer depending on certain variables and parameters, not the least of which is often a date out in the future when the virus actually attacks. It sits dormant until that date arrives. So, just because nothing has happened yet, if nothing has happened yet, I would still run a scan and see if ti turns anything up. Don't be embarrassed if you tried to access the link and it is buggered. The whole thing is designed to elicit sort of a knee jerk reaction out of you before you have a chance to think it through. Just run a scan in an effort to see if you are OK. Maybe the administrators contacting Zend might not be a terrible idea in an effort to see if Zend can tell us anything about that link. I absolutely hate this s***....particularly when it seems tied to a baseball series. Get real. Life is costly enough without having to deal with this kind of ********.

The problem for the Sox ala' Loney is that he is a FA this year. Some nitwit team will give him more money than he is worth and more money than the Sox should be willing to pay for him. If that does not happen then I do not mind him over there that much. He is athletic as hell around the bag but does not hit his weight for power. Come to think of it, the guy we had was not athletic as hell while still being a great defensive 1st baseman but disappointed with regard to power numbers.

Amazing similarities between the Spanks and BoSox this season..with the exception of their records. However that even now seems an issue of timing more than anything else. Both teams have hung onto aging stars to long and have been to focused on acquiring and keeping those aging stars as cornerstones of their respective teams which might have been fine if they were not confronted by teams of younger, hungrier players. I honestly don't expect the Spanks to go very far in this year's post season assuming they don't fall all the way out. The whole super long contract "thing" should be seriously called into question at least based on recent results. If you are going to measure things in terms of championships, you don't seem to get enough of those even with those players in their primes and then you are stuck with them as thy age, become more prone to injury and less capable of coming back from injury. The reality of Ortiz this year will end up being a fantastic half year of play and that is likely what you could realistically expect of a guy his age next year as well. As much as you want that performance, does it really make sense to pay for it under the circumstances if you had to commit to more time than you can see out ahead of the player? Going back to my earlier comment about long term contracts (which don't apply in the Ortiz case) I would think that a team wants to remain as flexible as possible in this market not tying itself to these ridiculously long monetary commitments. That might even suggest that Ortiz does make sense for the Sox as he does not carry any of that "gotta' give him seven years" baggage at this point. Seems to me that strapping yourself to these long term GUARANTEED deals is the real killer. I am actually beginning to wonder if there are some overarching issues here with player longevity in this modern era that is really at the heart of the problem with the long term guaranteed contract in baseball. Has the travel and the schedule and the incentive to stay at peak performance levels simply become more than these athletes can handle? Some of them don't look like they are built for longevity to begin with (Prince for example) and you can't really point to the teams they play for and draw the conclusion that they are even a cinch to make the post season, never mind succeed there. How many teams that are really succeeding lately are succeeding based on building a team of "stars" that hang on long term vs teams that retain some level of flexibility, feeding new pieces into the puzzle on a regular basis? Maybe it makes sense to hang onto a guy like Jeter or Pedey for example...two guys for whom there is never a doubt about their commitment to the game they play and allow them to become the central figures that your team is built around but to keep new pieces feeding in around them as a means of extracting the most value and performance out of your organization. Even starting pitching, clearly the most important element to a team's performance seems to be a place where you want to be able to feed guys in before they become this year's candidate for surgery of the year. Sure a guy like Felix Hernandez is worth the risk of all the innings and all the pitches finally catching up to him but there are probably not five pitchers in all major league baseball you can say that about, not twenty-five.

Poor Jacko is stuck with the inevitable groping for answers, reasons why his mighty club went from cruising into the post season on the tails of a division win to clawing for wins to get there. Sure the answer might lie in something logical like injuries to key elements of the pitching staff finally catching up to the Skankees. Then again there is that off chance that Jacko talksox post number XXXX or some other in his long line of posts intended to do harm to the Sox or further demoralize Sox devotees here at a Sox site was finally one post to many. He cannot discount the possibility that the baseball gods have decided to seek retribution under the "he who lives in glass house" rule, messing with said rule being potentially as devastating as any curse associated with trading Babe Ruth may have been to the Red Sox.

What a shock...Beckett and AGons playing just about the same in LA that they were playing here. I do think they will do better out there eventually but I don't think they will turn over a new leaf and become for the Dodgers something they were not here. I think Beckett will continue to sprinkle a few good performances amongst some mediocre and real stinker performances and I think Agons will in the main generate great but for the most part meaningless numbers, disappearing late in tight games. Seemed to me that Agons often contributed mightily to some of our lopsided scores, scores that lead to the Sox landing close to the top of the runs scored stats for the year but was hard to find when the Sox just needed one truly meaningful run in a tight game. I think we were hoping for a player that could supplement and eventually replace Ortiz as he aged and frankly Agons never looked like that kind of hitter here. Agons is a terrific fielder as well. He was just miscast here. I think he is miscast at $20M per regardless of where he plays.

I like the game threads. I wish there was more traffic there but I can understand the lack of enthusiasm for watching. Day games are real rough now with folks trying to take advantage of the weather.

Well that lineup scares me but I am not sure it will scare an opponent.

I believe they will let V finish the year but trust me...there is no way in hell that they will try to bring him back here. He has been part of the franchise turning into the laughing stock of baseball. While I always thought LL wanted this circus. Even he would have thought V could have kept it down to three rings. It has been a three dimensional circus, never mind a three ring circus. No V will not return. In fact, they might actually allow BC to just hire the guy he wants to hire or they will bring in somebody over BC and allow that guy to hire the guy he wants to hire.

I don't know how he got to throwing the way he does. I can't imagine multiple coaches and staffs looking at that thing and not attempting during his development as a player to get him to keep his body behind the ball. Once you get used to throwing the wrong way it is really tough to break that. Heck I would have probably tried to shame him into it really early on. "Ells do you know you throw like a girl....in fact you throw like a girl with a weak arm."

Horseface slid into 1st thinking he would beat the throw by a nose...ha ha ha ha ha ha. The way he landed he might actually be a gelding now ha ha ha ha ha ha

Showing highlights of this mess of a game. dice looks like somebody is punching him in the gut as home run balls go zooming over his head. Talk about nothing pitches. Ells has such a pop gun arm. That is one thing I really wish was different about him. What a pop gun for an arm. They showed that throw he made to home where he reared back from middle depth CF and once again (remember last year) got it to the pitchers mound. Bounced off that erratically. Every time he throws it looks like a change up. He rears back, looks like he is getting his body behind the ball and.......it goes nowhere. Actually he never does really get his body into a throw. He throws his body to the side and it ends up being all arm which means it ends up being nothing.

Horseface is pissed! Hit into a DP with the tying run coming home. O's win O's win O'sssssssssssss Winnnn!