jung

There are lots of things I don't like.... The only thing that makes this a tough choice is that the Crawford contract is such a disaster...if I were to pick Crawford it would not be a reflection on the player...though I just think he is the wrong player for this team even if fully healthy and playing at his best However, Beckett and Lackey are so bad on all fronts that even with the albatross that is Crawford's contract...either Beckett or Lackey beat out Crawford by miles. There is a natural tendency to look to a guy like Beckett for leadership by the other staff guys even when he appears to completely resist that role. I simply do not think the staff will ever look at Lackey that way. So Lackey in my view should only hurt them one way...when on the mound...how he pitches and how he reacts to issues like errors by his teammates. That said, you could actually take the view that the Sox really started going downhill with the arrival of Lackey. I think I would take a practical view here. Beckett will be very hard to get rid of yet he is poison. Lackey is hard to get rid of right now but I actually think he could be moved once he starts pitching again. So, I pick Beckett mainly because the question is who would I eliminate....almost a free pass to get rid of an *******. I take Beckett because I think ultimately the Sox will be able to move Lackey.

One thing we need to think about relative to V and his handling of pitchers in this game is that the bullpen has been somewhat abused in the last few games. I am not sure it had anything to do with the way V handled Beckett cause V has left the starters in to long all season. It should have been clear to anybody watching the game that even in the early innings after the first, Beckett was getting by because the Rangers were helping him out of innings and because he was able to use his curve ball effectively. In truth he was throwing gopher ball after gopher ball up there and the Rangers simply were not hitting them until, bing-bang-boom and out they went one after the other. If I were V though, right about the time when I starting posting that Beckett was getting away with murder and simply could not get away with this much longer, I would have been ready to pull Beckett the very next jam he got into. There is a chance we could have pulled this game out if V had done that. The lost game is truly all on Beckett though.....just awful pitching....terrible for the entire stint. If he had not discovered that curve ball the Rangers would have been into double digits by the 4 inning. That is how bad Beckett was today.

Without that curve ball....Beckett would have been crunched to the tune of double digits today. Did you ever think you would see the day when Beckett was being bailed out by a curve ball....then again, 6 runs in 4 and 2/3 innings is not exactly getting bailed out.

This was only a matter of time today. Hamilton cleans out 89 mph like it was nothing....because....it is nothing.

So much for getting away with murder. Luckily, nobody on base for that dinger

Beckett is just getting away with murder right now...everybody has to have some good fortune sometime though. I can't imagine him getting away with this to much longer. Sox have got to post up some runs and put some distance between them and the Rangers today.

Rangers helped Beckett out of that mess....Sox need some runs here. Oh well...I guess 1 is better than none

Other than Kalish...Sox have no outfield arms what-so-ever

Beckett has not been able to keep the ball down other than Curve Ball. Not following through and leaving the ball up every time.....would be surprised if he can hold the Rangers down here.

I would like to see Ciriaco in there everyday also. We probably won't though. Gotta' justify those awesome off season moves.

Do you ever get the feeling when AGons is running that the wheels are literally going to come off, meaning his legs detach at the hips, leaving him a helpless torso with arms trying to drag himself the last bit of the way home?

AGons pulled one. That is about the only thing he had not done since starting a return to some sort of hitting form.

Having first inning troubles is bad enough...today Beckett could not even get anybody out before giving up three runs and was throwing pitches that the twins would have eaten up. If he had not discovered that he could throw a curve ball for a strike he would likely still be out there right now with the score at about 5-0.

Beckett is throwing nothing balls and struggling to hit 91. Oh boy...just recorded his first out on another nothing ball. Can't come back from this kind of back issue that quickly. I doubt he is right.

Your pitching has to step it up in the second half. Pitching usually really starts to bubble up to the top in the second half and our pitchers have not been able to keep pace. What a shock since they did not cover themselves in glory in the first half either. It is however true that our offense seems to make it easy for the other guys. Oddly enough we seem to be able to hold our own against the traditional power pitcher types but really have no answers for guys that can and have the confidence to throw off speed stuff and breaking balls early in counts. It is like our hitters somehow have convinced themselves that a breaking ball is a juicy pitch when the count is 0-0. If the hitter catches a break and gets a hanger early in the count like that, AND he was expecting breaking ball then he might have a shot at doing something with that pitch. However swinging at it just because it looks like a strike makes little sense. The kinds of swings we tend to take against those kinds of pitches suggests to me that the hitter was expecting FB and got breaking ball instead. In that situation swinging makes no sense at all. If you have two strikes and have to protect the plate, fine. However that is a completely different situation than count 0-0 and you are swinging at a breaking ball when you expected a FB. It has been so hard to identify a specific offensive plan with regard to how the hitters approach their plate appearances. I happen to believe that hitters have to guess along with the pitchers. They have to go up to the plate with something specific that they are trying to accomplish, looking for a specific pitch in a particular location to get it done. Lou Merloni claims that he likes to think about hitting the other way around....he likes guys to always be hitting like they have two strikes but unless you are simply going to be satisfied with putting the ball in play somewhere I don't see how that works to the hitters advantage. Hitting with two strikes, you want to have somewhat more bat control as you must protect at that point......so you are likely to shorten up on the bat in order to have better bat control. Do you really want to do that with less than two strikes? I would always prefer looking for a particular pitch in a particular location with less than two strikes because that is what is going to make the ball look as big as a grapefruit coming up to the plate. At two strikes, sure I am going to be willing to take what the pitcher gives me and do the best I can do with that. Before that I want to give myself the best chance to drive something someplace or the best chance to accomplish a particular task based on the game situation. I think our failure at the plate is often a failure to be guessing with the pitcher, looking for a specific pitch in a particular location. How often do we sit there anticipating something exciting to happen because we have a guy on base or a runner in scoring position. Here comes our hitter and he hacks away at the first pitch he sees, hitting some weak grounder someplace. Instead of looking at a possible rally the guy is running down the first base line trying to stay out of the DP.

That rotation might just be doomed to fail right from the start...then again a number of us where pretty skeptical about the chance the rotation they trotted out this year would hold up their end. In all honesty I think the best you could hope for with that bunch would be "adequate" for next year. They will have to pry away a real 1 from somebody or they will be left in the same position they were in this year....no staff leadership....no stopper....no 1 and one of the lessons from this year is that not having a true 1 is a big problem. It is about time we take Beckett at his word. He has entered what he appears to view as a next phase of his career. We can see part of the next phase of his career in his lower velo and his transition...half completed, to a control pitcher relying on location and secondary pitches. The part we cannot see but appears even more of an issue is this "thing" of Beckett struggling with where baseball actually fits anymore for him. Lester is a basket case. He simply cannot get out of his own way. Blowing a gasket about ball and strike calls literally every outing is a joke.....unfortunately the Sox are likely forced to rely on him to make some sort of contribution next year as well. Buch appears finally to be turning into the real deal at least as very sound rotation contributor. Keep our fingers crossed that he can stay healthy. Felix will hopefully continue to improve and contribute at a high level. Morales will hopefully continue to improve as well. Relying on Felix and Frank could be tough sledding though. They are young...they will likely make mistakes....they have talent but they are not blessed with buckets of talent. Neither is a budding Strasburg. They will have no choice but to pitch Lackey and hope for the best. So you have to plan on seeing Lackey a member of the rotation next year like it or not. I suppose that could be OK. You clearly need more than 5 or 6 guys that you plan on starting over the course of a season anyway. What the hell...toss Cook on the heap as well. It could work with a true 1 at the top of the rotation. Without one, like it or not Beckett, Lackey and Lester become the guys that set the tone for that rotation....Moe....Larry and Curly in baseball cleats....good luck with that one.

Gammons wishful thinking...."Lester has to be the #1 on this staff"....Please....Lester has not been able to pull it off for two years running now....all this ******** about "he knows better than to let this stuff with the umps get to him"...well if he knows better than just stop for crying out loud. It is ridiculous...the guy just self destructs...can't do it but as usual....you can always rely on a Red Sox player, pitcher of hitter to just do exactly what he wants to do...to allow their emotions to run away with them like some 5 year old.....why have I often referred to them as petulant children????? because so many of them act like a bunch of petulant children

Holy s***....this guy Adams is all motion. By the time you have to deal with ball you have already seen what looks like seven elbows and eleven knees.

Not an inning goes by that Melancon is pitching that you are not holding your breadth waiting for disaster to strike. I am not sure I have ever seen a pitcher pitch more useless, hazard filled innings and still be in uniform at this point in the season. Usually if you suck this bad, your team just throws in the towel finally and surrenders to the inevitable. It is almost like BC just refuses to believe Melancon is this bad.

WMB just had a day off. Not sure why he would need another so quickly.

Well it is hard for a hitter to look good if the pitcher can get to that spot under his hands. Earlier this year, AGons could not hit anything inside. Did not have to be in under his hands. He has at least been able to hit balls on the inner third of late. It has been so long since AGons has pulled the ball that I don't even remember what that looks like any more. It would appear that he does have trouble getting around on the inside pitch such that he can pull it. He does have a pretty smooth stroke.

I just don't know what to do other than watch and hope at this point. This team and this organization has so many issues and the players all whine like you read about....just incredible...Beckett is such a joke....."I do what I want to do when I want to do it but my performances of late have been difficult because I was worried about being traded". Worried how Josh???....your a 10/5....you get to shut down anything and everything.....unbelievable....Lackey is a joke.....Lester is to some extent....Ace is to some extent going that way....and Padilla is just nuts As for V, I wish he was just not so much of a wiseass with the players....they don't get it....they were never going to get it. Much of what V does gets overblown but why leave the player wondering if you are just being a wiseass or might really mean to ding the player? You are the manager for crying out loud....the guy with the power to simply sit a player's ass on the bench, denying him the one thing he can do to improve his position in his chosen profession. Please stop making believe the sort of wisecracking stuff you toss in everybody else's directions is good to go for the players also. The blame for what we have is still mostly on the owners/upper management and the players. Owners and upper management for creating an environment and pushing a player personnel perspective that created this mess of a team with Theo also deserving a fair amount of blame for seeing his job in terms of that perspective. But the players get the bulk of the blame for playing so poorly, so devoid of anything that looks like a team.... for throwing one manager under the bus and trying to throw his replacement under it as well....whining the entire time, allowing game after game to just go down the drain uttering the usual platitudes along the way "we will just have to try to win tomorrow....tomorrow....tomorrow...tomorrow. One of my problems with them is that I get the impression that their "team meetings" are no better. They likely devolve into finger pointing at everybody but themselves and suggestions that they just can't play under these "unbearable" conditions.

Crawford is getting some really good pitches to hit. Would like to see him doing it for a longer period of time especially since I have no idea why so many pitchers are pitching him inside and catching a lotta' plate as well. If he runs into pitchers that are going low and away again I would like to see what happens then. Agons is now back to being able to work across the plate pretty effectively and that is good to see. However I am left with only one conclusion with regard to Agons and frankly it bothers me. To me his real issues this year started during that period early this year when he was absolutely insistent that he was going to go to left field. He completely ignored for a period pitches that did not allow him to go to left field and was entirely to focused on pitches that would allow him to go to left. The situation became so exacerbated that for a time Agons was not even able to protect the plate with two strikes. He ended up with two really ugly zones for him. Pitchers would tease him on the outer edge and then just keep going farther and farther outside getting him to chase or they would get him looking out there and bust him inside under the hands. He got caught looking outside constantly by that pitch inside under his hands. If you notice now, he has worked his way back and is able to handle pitches inside while still being to go the other way when he has a pitch that he can hit that way. But by the same token look how long it took for him to work his way back. I doubt any of Agons early season efforts were a Magadan idea as no hitting coach would recommend that a player put himself in the position AGons was in. Many a Red Sox player has had to learn that being overly focused on that damned left field wall can often do more damage than good and that may well be what happened to Agons. If that is what happened here I hope he has learned his lesson.

I wish I had not been out earlier but it looks like they have actually been patient, hit behind runners, sacrificed on occasion. moved runners along....things that they generally do so seldom that the game strikes you like an oasis would in the middle of a desert. and Cook for the time I saw him seemed to hardly make a mistake and could even sneak a high heater past somebody on occasion. On the other side of the coin even with his 9 K's Yu seemed sort of brutal as far as some of the juicy pitches he was serving up. Dempster/Lester should be interesting tomorrow night.

I would be surprised to see Ace tonight with this lead. The Sox must have been overcome with emotion and renewed passion for the game knowing that their beloved manager V will be here for the rest of the year. Yea.....thats it.....thats the ticket.....