jung

Well that was quick...even faster than I thought it would be.

One thing I should have added is that I do agree that starting pitching is not our only problem however I believe it to be our biggest problem. The Sox have not produced timely hitting and their defense has been terrible in that it makes monster mistakes in big moments that may not be recorded as an error but still results in the other team getting extra outs and extra runs because we don't make the plays we should make. If we did not get a belly full of that in Seattle and Oakland, we are just not watching.

The problem with the pitching stats that are being forwarded is that they are pitching stats for the staff as a whole. The absolute gorilla in the room of baseball is starting pitching, not a combination of starting pitching and relief pitching. No question that even the Sox starting pitching numbers have improved over the course of the last few months...although we have played quite an assembly of weak offensive teams over that period. Even with the weakness of the offensive teams we have faced, the bulk of the improvement in pitching has been in the relief squad. As I said somewhere earlier, some on the board have looked forward to the time in the schedule when we would be playing against our direct competitors. On the one hand, there is cause for some optimism there I think. Many of them play something akin to the brand of baseball that the Sox play. We just saw what happens to the Sox in close, low scoring games. Now however, we are going to see our pitching staff again face some real offenses. Lets see if we really wanted what we have claimed we have wanted when we get through this part of the schedule and lets look at those starting pitching stats again after that.

700 just so I understand....so Bailey was into his initial rehab program and pitching off the mound and had to stop and take a few steps backwards....is that what I am hearing?

The EEI talking heads, especially the midday guys that talk baseball the most are on about "having to give Papi what he wants". I am so sick of the have to give them what they want ********. You have to trade Youk cause "that is what he wants". Never mind what you get back for him, you have to do it. You have to give Papi what he wants...never mind that as long as the Sox are willing to pay him in arbitration for 1 year deals, the Sox basically have him over a barrel, you have to give him what he wants. This for a bunch of guys that had the same sort of easy schedule run early in the season that the Yanks had and did nothing with it. I don't want to hear about the injuries either cause they were basically playing a AAA team about every other week and in some cases every week. So now everybody wants to be hopeful because we can make up ground playing our competition directly.....we will how much we like that in the next few weeks.

I think if people think V wanted to use Iggy in every game as the starting SS that would have been a misread. I think ultimately you would have seen Iggy used in games where V considered Aviles offensive assets not so important and his defense an issue. We just saw a whole bunch of games just like that.

I would say that the kind of mayhem that went on in the Pro Football of the 1960's is more akin to a particularly nasty NHL contest. There are actually more guys getting carted off of NFL fields today I think because of the size and speed of the players. Even the once feared crack back block all over the field and things of that nature no longer legal probably did not account for as many season ending injuries as just the sheer size and speed of these players. You have to believe that the equipment guys who can't provide the entire answer have to step up and do a better job of finding ways to absorb shock. Today's helmets for example though much better than what I wore seem hardly better relative to the actual task at hand. The same seems true for the other major pads although I guess there is some new stuff that is about to hit the gridirons that is supposed to be much better.

There is so much money tied up in football, they will find a way via equipment improvement, rules changes and waiver releases to preserve most of what makes football popular. It has already overcome massive changes in on field brutality and has grown by leaps and bounds in the face of those changes. I suspect fans would love to see the kind of mayhem that went on within the rules of the 1960's.

Youk may well turn out to be a nice add for the WS but Youk would have been far more unruly than Papi has been if the Sox had not moved him. You could make the case that the Sox should have gotten more for him but I don't think they could have kept him. Certainly he would have been gone for nothing at the end of this year.

The biggest disappointment I have in baseball is that I have lived long enough to see it come full cycle from the days when players were almost forced to work under conditions of indentured servitude to the situation we have today where players now spend a goodly amount of their time positioning themselves for their next negotiation. This is particularly hypocritical coming on the heels of Ortiz "leave us alone and let us play" comments. So in other words David you don't have any use for the media during the season unless you can use the media to try to make your case and posture as a means of negotiating your next contract though the media. This saddens me no end. Worse than that, this seems to be something that continues to grow and grow in the number of players doing it and the number of instances and it is already to the point where I can barely stand it any longer. Baseball is no longer the national pastime. Football is the National Pro team sport of choice for most now and it is not that surprising. If these guys don't watch it they are going to make themselves so damned unlikable and I mean all of them that they are going to end up killing the golden goose.

I think Bard will be back next year as a middle reliever or he will end up in some sort of a "change of scenery" trade to a team that is going to take a shot with him based on the potential he showed earlier in his career. Being part of a trade might be the best thing for him really as coming back to Boston even next year might be tough for him.

I am really worried about the Sox chances going into a big series now with Ells, CC, Pedey and WMB out of the lineup. The Sox have found ways to live without Ells and CC at least up till the last couple of weeks. Add WMB and Pedey to the list and that is just to many guys out. In fact, I would argue that if for any real length of time, Pedey and WMB are harder for the Sox to live without than Ells and CC.

I do expect the Iggy will play somewhere as a ML SS, maybe not Boston though. The end of the steroid era means the end of big power numbers and a return to even greater reliance on pitching and defense. I think what you will see the end of is guys that are Utility Infielders like Aviles butchering SS on a daily basis.

Geez you guys keep making excusing for why he was not closing while ignoring the obvious....he was not closing because the Sox no longer believed he could close. I suspect they have done a good deal wrong here but I suspect they were right on that one.

Bard could go the hypnotism route. Then we would find him standing idly on the mound one game and needing to be escorted back to the dugout like that Mets pitcher decades ago.

Well I don't know that any player is paying any attention to this ******** from Ortiz regardless of what he thinks of himself as a team leader. Any player knows this is about the money. However if the Sox have made mistakes in offering long term big money contracts to other players, each contract for each player is an isolated event unto itself. One thing has nothing to do with the other. 1 year deals for Ortiz are working to the Sox advantage presuming they are willing to trade the higher 1 year dollars for the freedom to just end this when age does catch up to Ortiz. I would not look to move Ortiz unless all hope for the year was dashed. Like I said, I don't think a single player will pay any heed to this nonsense.

Ortiz does not have a point. Arbitration gave Ortiz a huge one year income. He is full of s*** with his comments about security. He is humiliated, embarrassed...this in the middle of the season from a guy that just recently claimed to be THE team leader. What David wants is the one year $ numbers and he wants them for 3 years or at least 2 years. I no longer think he would even be satisfied with that money for two years. It does not work that way. You get the most dollars for the shortest term...simple. As the years go up the dollars go down. $14 for one probably translates to something like $10 for 3 for $30 or $12 for 2 for $24. Well I got news for ya'. Ortiz likely does not even want $36 for 3. He wants $14 times 3 and even $36 for 3 is ridiculous for a DH that would be 39-40 years old at the end of that deal. He is making $8M more than any other similarly positioned player so he is getting the Max money. How do I know he wants the 14 x 3? Because based on how it works you would have to be dead and to stupid to fall over to not want the same arbitration deal all over again if you were Ortiz based on how it really works. He made $14 this year. He will likely make $16 in arbitration next year. That will be $30M over two years when a 3 year deal would net him the same $30M. So after making $14 and $16 in arbitration he will likely be able to come back and get at least $16 in arbitration in a third year AGAIN if he does the job next year. But that is not good enough for Big Papi. He wants 14 x 3 for $42M "GUARANTEED" or some other nonsense number. So right in the middle of the season, the season after the September collapse, a guy making this kind of money at his age as a DH is now whining because all of baseball is not going to roll over and negotiate differently for him. You don't get the max money AND the security of term. You either get the max money or you get less money and term. Thats it. There are no other options. Add to that the fact that the Sox are eking the best possible performances out of Ortiz by using the incentive of one year deals and the fact that Ortiz has very few options for teams that can and wlll pay him this kind of money...he should just shut up and play.

I argued mainly with myself about Youk and the possibility of just keeping him because logically that made the most sense. Then in those last few days, Youk had that little snit about nobody talking to him about whether he would be in the lineup for a particular game that same day we had that report that his brother had tweeted from San Francisco that Chicago was a much better town than Boston and the fans were better etc. Frankly for me that was Youk warning the front office that he wanted out and would not be pleasant to be around if they did not get him out. I keep saying that the amount of money available to players now has just warped everything all out of shape. Youk thinks he has a shot at a final contract and he is probably thinking that if Ortiz can land $14M for one year in arbitration he can land a contract for maybe $10M yer for a year, maybe $16M for two years but he was not going to make progress toward that sitting on our bench. In addition you have to know that the Sox would have talked to Youk and gauged his tolerance for being kept around to play second fiddle to WMB. You cannot expect guys like Youk to sit back and let that kind of money just slip away without taking their shot. This whole thing has gotten totally out of control and now that the genie is out of the bottle I don't see any way to get him back in. Teams want to use their assets as efficiently as they can and players want to milk the system for as much as they can and the amount of money being tossed around is off the hook. Guys can have relatively long careers and still make the bulk of their money in the last 10-20% of their time in the bigs because of the escalating pay scales. Seems to me that in spite of everything they go up as much as 15-20% per year by position on average with the average pay bumping the arbitration numbers and the arbitration numbers bumping the pay scales back and forth. Youk remained fine as long as the Sox were "working the phones" so to speak but I think the minute that effort slowed up or the Sox showed Youk that they were going to try to keep him, it all would have turned ugly.

That shot today looked ominous. I think Agons hit that just like the shot that Salty hit the other day. Salty's cleared the wall by a good bit.....Agons died on the track....granted that track is on Mars but there was a pretty big difference in the pop Salty delivered to the ball and Agons.

Thanks for the clarification on the record. My comment about improving pitching over the season is made based on several of the comments I have made at this forum about baseball going back to the days before the steroid era. This might be a year again were that happens. April at 4.06, May at 4.06 and June at 3.99 suggests that. July has obviously just started. The change over the course of the season will not be dramatic. At least I don't think so, not this year anyway. More important is who you are playing at any given point in time and the relative merits of those offenses vs your pitching and vis versa. Of the two elements I discussed in the longer post the latter is far more important than the former.

And so what were the pitchers on the other end of those games...stiffs? Their pitchers controlled our hitters better than our pitchers controlled their hitters. You cannot look at these numbers in a vacuum. Yes our pitching has improved...just not enough to change outcomes significantly. I should also point out that you are using the cumulative ERA stat and our relief pitching accounts for most of that improvement over months. Yes our starting pitching has also improved some but not nearly as much as our relief pitching and frankly starting pitching is much more important. But look at the offensive numbers for the teams we have been playing particularly in June. They are very weak teams offensively which has been contributing to our "better" pitching stats. They feature better pitching themselves which is driving at our hitting stats. Again that is why I believe you cannot look at these numbers in a vacuum. You have to look at who we are playing, where we are playing them and weigh the pitching numbers against the offenses we are facing and their pitching numbers against our offense. If you look across a season, you will generally find that offensive numbers go down as the season progresses and pitching stats improve as the season progresses. So, sure our pitching numbers are getting better, but not by enough especially with regard to starting pitching. Also you are pointing to a record of 30-26 as if it is something for this team to be proud of. What is that...something like 535 winning %? Where the heck are the Sox going with a 535 winning %? I do think that if Pedey and WMB and CC and Ells have to stay out of the lineup all at the same time for any length of time considering Agons lack of power, then the offense will really fall off the map. But Pedey and WMB have only been out of the lineup for well a day or two at this point. Look I take your point. Our pitching has improved. I just don't think it is improving at some anomalous rate relative to what we normally see during a season for one thing and is "showing" improvement as much for the weak offenses we have generally faced over the last couple months as anything. However, since you brought up the most recent road trip, I do think there is another element to these loses and in this most recent 2-5 road trip that needs to be considered but it is neither offense in the form of hitting or pitching. Our defense has sucked. But there again, this is a team, a franchise and an organization that constantly favors offense and hitting over defense and pitching and in these close low scoring games, one big mistake in the field can kill you if your opponent is not making big mistakes in the field. We were making mistakes around home plate which are death because every one of those turned into a run in games that were being won and lost by 1 run at a time. We were making mistakes at SS, the most important defensive position on the field and we were making mistakes in CF, the third most important defensive position on the field.

But at least using OPS the Sox are already getting better offense than the competition. I guess you are arguing that if they bested the competition by more, then they would win more of those games. However they are already outperforming the competition offensively in those games. Look, the average score for the opponents in those games where the Sox score less than 4 runs is 4.75 runs. The nature of close, low scoring games is to be low scoring. Your pitching has to control their offense better than their pitching controls your offense. To say that you need more offense to win those games implies that offense rules baseball and is more important than pitching and we all know that is not true. Pitching controls baseball. Good pitching always controls good hitting. In fact, hitters hit mistake pitches from pitchers. Without mistake pitches you would be lucky to end games in nine innings.

I think you have to look at the teams they were playing at the time and the comparative batting stats in order to make an assessment of the pitching and its relative merits regarding wins. The Red Sox compiles a Team OPS of 775 in May and 754 in June The teams the Sox played in May and their OPS: A's, 629 O's, 763 Rays, 676 Ind., 713 Marlins, 675 Phils, 776 Tigers, 772 The teams the Sox played in June and their OPS: Marlins, 681 Braves, 728 Cubs, 671 Mariners, 642 O's, 645 Nats, 738 So as you can see, at least using OPS, the Sox were compiling better numbers than everybody they played in the month of May and June with the exception of the Phils in May. The Tigers got close but other than the Phils and Tigers, the Sox compiled a better OPS than everybody else they played in those months. While their pitching has gotten better, particularly their relief pitching, they are still for the most part besting their opponents in offensive categories and winning if there is enough offense to be had. They are now 4-33 for the season in games where they have scored less than 4 runs. So it is the low scoring, tight pitchers duals where the Sox do not fair all that well.

While I expect many more close low scoring games in the second half because that is the way the second half is, the Sox will still get some benefit from getting away from these huge ballparks. They still do not play well in close low scoring games but in addition, these parks where the opposing pitchers can just pitch them into the big parts of the ballpark is foreign soil for them. The Sox are used to playing in AL East style parks which are generally smaller. Pitchers pitch to K's or contact ground balls in the East. You cannot pitch to the outfields because the fences are to close and OF are generally not as swift. Teams that play in these monster parks feature pitchers that keep the ball between the tops of the knees and the belt if they can and from the middle out and just let the hitters play catch with their outfielders...guys that seem to be able to track down anything not hit on a line or hit out. Our guys simply do not adapt and games and series are just over before we realize that we just played into their hands.

No question that if WMB and Pedey have to spend real time on the DL, those two guys would likely to finally be two guys to many from the stock of everyday players. They simply mean to much to this team. I think there are things they can do. I don't know if they will do them. The mistake we might be making is in looking at these God awful last seven ball games and just want to put them in our rear view. In fact, close, low scoring games is something they are going to see much more of in the second half and Ells and CC can only do so much. They will not turn the tide because there are so many facets to the that kind of baseball that are weak spots for the Sox. Neither one will be stepping to the pitching mound and that is still the biggest problem the Sox have. As it is while I for one had hoped the could at least ease CC back in because he can no longer even throw the ball the same way anymore. He is really going through some changes. Now i think they will simply have no time to do that and will have to just toss both players into the deep end of the pool and see what happens.