jung

The targets Napoli gives his pitchers are miles better than the targets that Salty gives his. It's not even close.

Well that was a terrific 1st inning. We have no idea what Perez has or does not have. The Sox never looked at enough pitches to have any idea whether they guy was vulnerable or not.

C'mon Remy Perez beat Ciriaco to 1st.

I just don't understand how this team can play so consistently poorly. You would think they would look at these games and realize that their performance as a team is incredibly substandard. Pedey gets into a post game presser last night and says "none of the guys in here like to lose." Well then do something about it. When does it finally dawn on somebody that the same approach every game is simply not working.

I suspect that somebody will be brought in here that we will all acknowledge to be a legitimate 1 but Buch could easily end up being our 2 as I think Lester will still be here but likely as a 3 at least next year. If Buch stays out there and does not miss starts I don't think Lester will be straightened out enough to pitch better than Buch.

And one ball rolling right between the wickets.

At some point it may actually become worthwhile to have the whole damn thing fall apart this year...as others have said, this organization will do everything possible to avoid the truth and it might take a complete collapse for them to finally give up maintaining the elution of a team and make the kinds of changes needed.

Unload him on somebody that does not mind seeing the ball go past his glove, falling out of his glove, between his legs, etc etc. There must be somebody out there thats' OK with that.

I liked the sound of things much better when folks were tossing about deals that included Johnson and Hanram. If Johnson and Hanram included I can tolerate Bell.

I just think the Sox would be better off trying to expand on the deal and get more out of it that Ramirez and Bell even giving up more to do that.

Crawford may be a bad fit but that is no reason to trade him off for Bell and Ramirez. They can work out the right players with Ramirez and Crawford as part of a deal that might work out OK but I don't think Bell Ramirez for Crawford accomplishes very much.

I actually think it is Beckett that has suffered lost velo over the course of the last few years. Although the fact that Lester's velo is up on par does not encourage me at all because his throwing motion is just so awkward now. Who the hell knows where his velo is coming from. What if he finally injures himself throwing like this?

HanRam would likely be more of a hitting threat in Boston as others have mentioned. Frankly, the thought of seeing either guy (Crawford or HanRam) in Boston for years is not very appealing.

I wonder at this point whether they will stick with him as long if he starts to go south in his next start as rapidly as he has because he does not get enough better to save the Sox from another lost game when he is like this. It is almost like if they have any hopes of winning the game, the just about have to have somebody up in the pen in the 1st inning. Who knows anymore. They can't be blind. This team does not have the horses this year so while they are not going to admit that maybe allowing Lester to start under these circumstances is close to saying that anyway.

Looking at Lester's mechanics, I know they are screwed....no doubt about it. How much help has Salty been at helping Lester recognize his screwed up mechanics? I don't know. He does not make many trips out to the mound seemingly when Lester is pitching but that might not mean much. Pitchers have to be responsible for their preparation as well. They should not be relying on Salty to do their prep work for them. Both Salty and the Pitcher for a particular game should be ready as the battery for that game. As I said earlier the only thing I can "see" that I don't like is Salty's targets. I just think they are terrible. Along with being generally terrible it is hard for me to detect much change in the way Salty sets up one pitcher to the next which would says to me that the way he sets up would suit some pitchers more than others although it is the catcher that needs to adapt to the guy pitching, not the other way round. One thing that is universally true for pitchers is that they do not want to be guessing where the catcher wants the ball, while they are mid-windup. They want a clear and defined target and they want it to be in a good spot to a particular batter. From what I can tell, more often than not, Salty is sort of nebulous about where he wants the ball. More often than not he is not far off of a little to outside or inside of middle of the plate which can't be right for most of the staff. He wants to be more definitively on the outer or inner edge as middle is middle and nobody wants to be middle unless the pitcher is in desperate straits just to throw any strike at all. It does not matter where he has called for the ball because the pitcher needs to throw at the center of that mitt. He can't throw to the edge as a target or Salty's wrist as target....Salty needs to put the middle of his mitt where he wants the ball. How many times have you seen catchers that want the ball off the plate set up off the plate entirely? Ever see Salty set up off the plate entirely? Just give the pitcher a nice firm target where you want the ball to be and don't tell me that you want it just an inch or two from dead middle of the plate cause I just won't believe that. On low strikes he really does have a tendency to stab at he ball as he tends to stab at it more than he should on any sort of pitch really but it is most noticeable to me on pitches low in the strike zone. That may be more an issue relating to his height than whether the ump can see over him or not. He may just not be able to get down there far enough when he sets up because of his height. I can really only comment on things I can see with my eyes as anything else would be just a flat out guess on my part.

At some point in the middle of this utter and complete two year disaster, the Sox are going to have to deal with having ignored run prevention to the extent that they have. We don't have sound defense. We have defensive standouts in particular positions but not in the most important positions. Give me a plus defender at SS and Catcher and give me minus defenders at 1st base and elsewhere all day long. Don't give me minus defenders at SS and Catcher and then tell me the defense is sound cause I have plus defenders at 1st and 2nd base and don't talk to me about adequate defenders at SS and Catcher because in doing so you have de-facto doomed the defense to minus status in the overall. The outfield is basically armless. Crawford has so far been a disaster in LF and I continue to point out that he has sucked coming in on balls never mind what he has or has not done at the wall. Ells is far and away the best of them as far as ranging in the outfield, catching up to and catching the ball but that is as far as it goes. Aviles is a butcher at SS. Salty continues to be a terrible catcher having improved his throwing only over these last two years while continuing to do what appears to be a terrible job handling the pitching staff. So far WMB has not been an upgrade to Youk defensively although I continue to hope that will improve. I said in another thread that if I had chosen to track it I am convinced that I could have found an error or a defensive play not made or a double play that should have been made resulting in extra outs for the opposition in virtually every game this year. While the starting pitching is by far the biggest problem this team has, it only overshadows the lack of timely hitting and poor defense by this club by virtue of how bad the starting pitching has been. However you add Salty's numbers as a factor in how bad the pitching has been and you begin to see how much this organization has ignored run prevention in total as a consequence of focusing almost its entire attention on glamour signings that have simply added more disassociated pieces to this team, adding to its disfunction and lack of cohesiveness in virtually every aspect of the game. Fortunately it has not destroyed the farm system in the process having only put something of a hole in the train of players that should be making their way to the bigs. But by the time this season is done, IMO, we will not have a one year disaster but two years of utter and complete failure at the ML level. The starting pitching deserves the most attention going forward because starting pitching is so important but there is much about this team that is not just wrong but critically wrong. I have railed against this notion that you accept a butcher at SS because he can hit constantly at this forum and while it might be hard for some to see how and why Aviles is a butcher at SS, you don't have to be that astute an observer to see that he is not a plus defender at SS and his hitting is simply nothing to write home about. As for Salty, most of his HR's have been meaningless bombs lost in the background noise of yet another loss while his defense and lack of effectiveness handling the pitchers is something the team has to live with, every pitch of every game he catches.

I don't like it either 700. The first WC deserves a shot at the crown without being encumbered by this ridiculous play in game and the resulting impact to its pitching match ups for the division round. This second WC should just be going home and planning to do better next year. They had a good system. This one is stupid.

Notice that since the ESPN guys don't see our guys play that much the lack of ENERGY from our dugout is a palatable, noticeable thing to them. I have been afraid of this since the first Blue Jays game...have been thinking about this way earlier than that but really scared of it since the first Blue Jays game....when you consider that the first half of the season was the easy half regarding schedule, I think we could be in for a total collapse here, much like last year. Clearly we are going to lose this game making four straight and considering how little focus there is and how little energy there is from our dugout....I suspect we are going to get creamed. Only bright spot is that it has all happened before the trade deadline. This team is going to leave nothing to the imagination.

The Sox have looked so much worse since they started this stretch against AL East and/or better baseball teams. But this so falls on Beckett and Lester. The Sox had a nice little run going after the ASB, looking like it could be the start of a longer run and BANG Lester and Beckett gave up monster runs in the first innings of back to back games....the offense failed to respond....Cook had a less than sterling outing and the bullpen failed in that game and before you know it, the run is done, they are back to 500 and back in the basement.

I'm sorry but I see no reason for Aviles to still be getting so much time at SS. I did not like him there when he was hitting cause I knew that had a shelf life. Now that he is no longer hitting, there is simply no reason for him to be in the lineup.

The difference between these two teams just in offensive concept and cohesiveness seems to be miles. Their fast guys do steal bases....our fast guys steal bases...sometimes. Their hitters get hits in key situations....ours seem to fail all to often with the exception of Ortiz. We score lots of runs but can't buy them when we need them. It all does start with the starting pitching though and part of their reluctance to do anything but play for the big inning surely relates to the lack of confidence in the pitching. That combined with the number of times trying to manufacture a run has blown up in V's face in the form of poorly executed bunts, sacrifices and all manner of offensive play failures has I think made V pull his horns in completely. I think the last straw for V was that missed Punto bunt a few weeks ago where I think he ended up popping the bunt up into a double play for the first two outs of an inning and then the next guy up did something equally stupid to end the inning with no runs scored from having two on and nobody out. To be honest I think that was the last time V tried to do something other than just send them up to the plate one at a time with an instruction to hit the damn thing somewhere. I won't spend any time on the defense in this post although I think you all by now what I think of that.

Damn....Agons still seems somewhat vulnerable in under his hands. At least now if the pitcher makes a mistake with that pitch and catches a little more plate, Agons seems to be having a bit more success now than a month or 5 weeks ago. But if he gets to the inner third Agons is still having trouble with that pitch.

Boy I really don't have a good feeling about Hamram in Boston if that is the Miami deal for Crawford.

I am really wondering what Aviles is doing at SS. Ciriaco can play there....Aviles is only hitting 262 and his OPS is down to .698. Can Iggy be much worse? Surely Iggy would be worse but consider Aviles is a butcher at SS, either put Ciriaco there or bring up Iggy.

Terrific job by Felix there. The dif in velo between his FB and his breaking stuff is unreal.