jung

Well the Rays are overhauling the yanks as we speak. Jacko has probably gone to the mattresses and called a priest. If they do overhaul them and win the east that could upset the AL East apple cart big time and send the WC teams out west.

I realize that on this night V had to use seven guys because as usual our starter was hitting the shower before the networks convert to mainly adult based programing. But done is done. There is no second guessing totally done. Your guy is just out there hoping that the hitters miss the pitches. That is no bet at all. While good pitching will always beat good hitting, you will earn a healthy respect for ML hitters any time you are in the park and the pitcher is completely played. 175 pound SS's start bombing the fences and if you leave the guy in there long enough it begins to look impossible to record an out. Aceves was pitching somewhere between where I started that last sentence and where I ended it and had to come out regardless of the consequences to tomorrow's game or game after. Seven relievers in you are kidding yourself at that point anyway. It is a no win situation though. V has already ragged out these arms at least once this season and maybe even twice. At some point they just cannot recover without a long rest and I am sure V knows he is stepping right on that last nerve right now.

I have no idea on Aceves. He was done BEFORE the first bomb last inning..and obviously so. I mean if I can see that he is done from waaaaaaay out here in the ozone....V should be able to see it from where he is sitting.

We got our Ross apology. We likely won't get a Salty apology since he probably does not even know what they hell he did wrong.

Good to at least see the entire board recognizing s***** play behind the plate for what it is. I was counting games I thought Salty had cost us in another thread between his crappy targets, the way he calls games and outright mistakes. I had credited him with two loses on outright late inning mistakes. The other two coming in back to back games earlier this year. This will make three games if they lose this one. Add the likely losses from the effect he has on the pitchers and I would guess that Salty by himself may be worth something like 5 to 8 games this year on the minus side.

Well Aceves clearly had nothing left. That was a hit waiting to happen. He is still throwing nothing balls right now so they may get more.

Another of this team's fine qualities is its excellent defense. Where were you going Ross...which part of the plate were you blocking Salty?

Seeing Ciriaco finally playing 3rd this way makes it even more ridiculous that they won't even try Aviles there. Why is he even considered available for the position if they will not play him there under any circumstances. At the very least Ciriaco is a way better SS than he is a 3rd baseman and a way better SS than Aviles ever thought of being. Why is moving Avlies over there so difficult unless he is impossibly bad....which I guess could be the case. Still does not make sense though.

Wishing as we speak kap.

Issy has that generous streak in him. I hope Scoscia leaves him in long enough to allow him to indulge his generous streak.

Well the Sox managed to hold them off for that half inning....now at least get back to a tie please.

Well that is one run back. The Sox are back to giving up the runs they are getting lately. Hopefully they can hold the Angels to no runs this half inning.

I think these are wyo's first Fenway games though (last night and tonight). So I am sure he is enjoying himself. It would be nice to get at least one win out of two visits though.

That is one fine bunch of baseball players we have here.

No question that people are drawing a line from the team's on-field performance through the lack of attendance at the funeral. At the very least they are linking the on-field performance to the lack of communications and a lack of leadership both from management and from the players that are considered team leaders relating to attendance at the funeral. I still think to go or not go is a personal decision. I would not have allowed a team request that players attend to sway me one way or the other if I was a player. Making the buses available was fine. Making sure the players knew the schedule of events was fine. Requesting that players attend may as I indicated earlier have even been a deterrent for some players. This organization has probably earned a reputation even with the players to use virtually everything and to view virtually everything from a marketing perspective. I would likely feel uncomfortable about the possibility that upper management would have used attendance at the funeral in a way that was disingenuous. However, I am surprised that more players did not feel personally compelled to go, particularly some of the vets. How many guys are we really talkin' about here? Without naming names I can think of 5-6 more guys that I would have expected to go. There are a lotta' guys that just are not here anymore for one thing. I don't know if one of the vets did a head count and finding only four were going sort of queried some of the others privately. No need for a team meeting here or anything like it. I do think that one of these guys that are purported to be team leaders should have queried some of the other guys. But at the end of the day, if the number is four.....well.....thats' the number. To be honest to some extent complaints about the poor attendance sounds more and more like buying into this idea that the Sox are one big happy family and how can we be buying into that at this point. Lets face it, at some level that is very likely why Management wanted better attendance out of the players. We can argue about what they are but I cannot believe anybody thinks they are one big happy Sox family at this point.

AGons is an excellent defensive 1st baseman...definitely at least very good to excellent. 1st base just does not generate that much excitement defensively. Even 3rd is not as interesting as SS and then 2nd but I just want to see Ciriaco out there with Iggy and that probably means some 3rd base. Would also hope to see Ceriaco at 2nd with Iggy at SS for the fun of it.

One thing that strikes me about my own expectations for the coming month and the call ups is that while I am interested to see some of these players playing together, like Ciriago with Iggy and Pedey most of my expectations are for seeing them play together as part of a defense and run prevention. Sure I am interested to see how well Iggy can hit ML pitching but I am excited to see these guys play as an infield.

The workaround here that might have worked if in fact we have an issue with how many players showed up would have been for one of the players themselves to have spoken up and made the case for a strong player presence....maybe one of the older players could have or should have taken the opportunity to make sure that they understood how important it was that they as players show their respects. You do have to wonder how family members took only four team members making it. As a family member I would not have felt slighted for myself but given how much Pesky gave to that organization, I probably would not have felt so great about that for Johny himself...for his memory. That was one of the implications from my first post in this thread. Maybe the organization trying to press the issue had a negative impact on the player turnout and a player or players filling that role would have mitigated any issues players might have had about the organization and a player taking a leadership role in this case just feels right to me. I would hope it would have had an impact. Yea the timing stank...they just got in from a road trip....should have been able to get more than four guys out there.

The busses were secured for the use of office personnel and their families and were made available for the players but not specifically secured for the players. If the Sox did "request" that the players attend, then that may be where they erred. Deciding to go or not go to a funeral is a very personal affair. If I were a player I am not sure I would have trusted Sox Management to have left the funeral alone as far as efforts to spin player attendance ala' "one big together Sox family". Who knows what the Sox as an organization would have done....maybe nothing. The point is I could see players being a bit off put by a request from this Red Sox organization that they attend, especially in the case of younger players and a guy, Johny Pesky that maybe some of them hardy knew. Normally I would say that attending a funeral is such a personal decision that no outside influences likely had an impact. However only four attending leads me to think that the request itself may have had a negative impact on the player turnout. As much as I respect Johny Pesky for what he meant to the Red Sox beyond the 2012 team or this John Henry ownership era either there is nothing in my view that we can take from their lack of attendance or maybe the request from the organization that players attend had a negative impact on their actual turnout.

The three guys or I should say combination of two of three that the Sox could not do without was WMB, Pedey and Ortiz. Any combination of two of those three being out was always going to be more devastating than losing Ells and Crawford or any other combination of two everyday players you could consider. While with few exceptions they still can't pitch worth beans now they can't hit good enough to just mash away. They really don't have a way to win games at this point.

I don't think it will be to much longer before we will at least get a chance to see Ciriaco, Iggy and Pedey playing 3rd through 2nd in the Sox infield. That should at least be fun to watch. Wish WMB was not hurt but since I can't change that I would just as soon see a few games with Ciriaco and Iggy on the left side of the infield.

I surely cannot argue against Hart. Probably won't happen...makes to much sense. Man LL must have some pretty incriminating photos of JH doing something awful.

The biggest and most obvious difference between the Rangers and the Red Sox is Nolan Ryan and either John Henry or LL. While the Sox play hid the pea with who really runs the Sox at least in this context it hardly matters. Nether one can polish Ryan's shoes as far as setting a clear organizational path and evaluating talent is concerned. If JH wants to continue to be as detached as he has been he needs to put a Ryan clone in LL's spot for starters.

Another really tough night tonight. Looks more and more like the Sox are going to close out the season on a run of series the opposite of what we would have wanted, going 1-2 in three game series and lucky to split four game series. These guys are fooling around with 74-88 or something equally disgusting for a record.

I should have been more specific using the term "Clean house". I do mean they need to clean out that entire nest of idiots on the offices of the Red Sox.