jung

The only shot the Sox have at the division is to play lights out and have the Yanks collapse. The Sox can't get there even playing lights out ball unless the Yanks collapse. I don't see that happening. However I do not think either the Yanks or the Sox are very well situated for post season play. The Yanks had the pitching but have suffered injuries to pitchers. The Sox don't have pitching to begin with. So as staunch as the Yanks have been so far in the regular season they may not fair that well in the post season either. The Sox could get that first WC but must pitch better even to get that I think. A Garza or Dempster kind of arm may just be enough. Second half baseball generally offers up more tighter, close games though and that is not a Sox strong suit. No dinger last night and the Sox would have lost that game as well as they simply cannot get a run by any other means than brute forcing it home. Painful to watch but true none the less. So, I think they can get into the WC if they pitch better and play something between 600 and 650 ball. Once there though they will be forced to use their best pitcher to try to win the one game play in I fear and that will likely kill them in the short series that would follow. Remember all that talk about how early it was when they were losing games to s***** teams that they should have been beating with ease regardless of the injuries? Got late awfully fast didn't it?

They have lost to teams that don't field half the talent that they field injuries and all. That is why they are only three games over 500, not because they have lost to the iron of the league. Their starting pitching has sucked. They don't play like a team. They give the opposition way to many outs. They can't scratch out runs in tight games injuries or no, much like tonights game which turned out to be a typical Sox win in every respect. Unfortunately there are just as many typical Sox losses out there.

Amazing what passes for a 3 yr/$10M player these days. I would love for Ross to stay but 3/30 would be an overpay. What else is new. The Sox have got to be the most overpaid, underperforming team in baseball so what is one more.

While I still think coming inside to Ross is a terrible idea especially in the situation he was in tonight....having now seen the replay several times, I actually think they have been trying to get in under his hands this whole series. That is a little different effort than coming inside to drive the hitter off the plate giving the pitcher more control over the outer half of the plate. That still does give the pitcher a better chance of getting the hitter out with a pitch on the outer half but it also offers the added benefit of likely coaxing a swing and miss out of the hitter thus leaving him with two strikes against. Still though, even if they were trying to get in under his hands, that pitch was not close to that location and was still right in his wheelhouse as were the pitches that Ross hit out the previous night. Still monster mistake pitches but at least I can rationalize why a RH pitcher might try to get in under Ross's hands.

What happened with Ross over these last two games with the WS was more about the WS getting stubborn about how they planned on pitching Ross even though it was the way wrong idea about how to pitch to him. Did not learn their lesson the game before this one and paid for again tonight.

I still think Buch will keep this up for the remainder of the year and end it the best/most consistent of the Sox starters.

While it is the convention for RH pitchers to try to get the RH hitter looking inside and also keep him from reaching out across the plate when they throw low and outside for the out, I think that is a huge mistake to Ross. We have seen very few teams try to pitch Ross the conventional way because of what happened tonight. You want to miss inside with that pitch to accomplish what you are trying to accomplish as a pitcher. However if you get to much of the plate and especially in that situation where you had to know Ross had narrowed his focus down to FB inside, you risk exactly what happened. I would not try to drive Ross off. I would simply pitch him outside. Ross cannot reach out and jerk that pitch over the fence. In fact he can't do much at all with that pitch. Stupid. You would have thought that having thrown Ross two cookies in the game previous, they would have decided that was not working but in fact, more often than not if a team comes in with an idea about how they are going to pitch to somebody they will rarely change it at least not for that series. That will probably not stop Ventura from telling himself that he should have told his pitcher and pitching coach that in that situation, he did not want them to try to come inside even in an effort to miss inside and drive him off the plate a little.

You don't really think that was location they were trying to hit with that pitch do you? NESN post game is trying to suggest it was the same mistake that Lester made to Youk the other night. I don't think so. I think they were trying to get the ball inside but much farther inside than that so they could set Ross up for down and away for the out. Ross did exactly what he could do in that situation. He does not go the opposite way at all well. He is a dead fastball pull hitter. He had no choice but to sit fastball and focus on the inner half. Got the mistake and hit it. Told ya' it would take a bomb for the Sox to win this game.

As I said

Ross has one shot...sit fastball and hit it out

If that ball had not gone into the stands the WS would have been up another run. So down the right field foul line from a RF hitter looks like a pretty good piece of hitting to me and something the Sox could not do if their life depended on it.

Hitting behind the runner...what a novel idea. Ya' can't make this stuff up.

We are trying to win 3 out of 4. We have already lost one to the WS.

What a sorry assed bunch. Three hits, nobody hits behind a runner one time to get somebody home. Get a wild pitch to move Aviles over...thank God but that goes for naught. This is not a team....this is a disjointed bunch of mismatched parts.

They better get Ortiz out of his boot cause without a bomb they are going nowhere.

If we win it will be because somebody bombs one outta' there. Three hits back to back and no runs....ridiculous.

This team is so frustrating to watch. I want to go hang myself. I hate that we cannot play small ball at all....not even a little bit. Scratch out a run....can't scratch their asses. It is either bombs away or nothin'

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen....exactly what I have been talking about in the Crawford thread where I felt compelled to discuss our inability to sacrifice or hit behind runners. Ross fails to hit behind Pedey. We end up with three hits and no runs. Some teams can get runs out of no hits. We can't get runs out of three hits.

This is part of the problem. We really needed Ross to hit it out cause he was not going to hit behind Pedey even with a left hand pitcher. So since Ross was not going to and did not hit behind the runner we have bases loaded and no runs yet.

Well this is no time to try to scratch one out. Ross is not at all good at that. Over the wall Cody!!

My God this is awful. For crying out loud can we never scratch out a run. I know I am the guy that has been saying that we can't scratch out a run but this is ridiculous now.

We can't possibly have that many 4 game series left in the season. Most of them must be 3 gamers I think?? I have to go check. I think they have to go balls to the walls at least to the deadline if they expect management to do anything for them this year as far as roster moves.

Interesting weekend if the Sox win this game. No more time for 2-2 splits. That simply makes the last four games a waste. Must win tonight and take this series and every series for that matter.

Just walked in the door. Galling to come home to a sac fly by the opposition.

Youk is nursing that same gimpy hamstring I guess.