jung

The word on AJ is that he cannot take the heat in the big market kitchen and is thriving in Pittsburg because it is a small market team like the last small market team where he did well.

Seriously though, I actually think the AL East teams (or at least the one I know the most about) get used to pitchers trying to get ground balls and simply do not know what the hell to do with a team full of pitchers that are trying to pitch them into the big parts of the outfield because they can and because they have outfielders that can go get the ball. For my money we are playing the 5th game in a row based on that premise and we still have not figured out what the hell to do.

dice is infinitely unvaluable

And the innings go by one by one....the innings go by one by one....the innings go by one by one AND WE SUCK Do you think some time on this west coast swing our nitwit offense will realize that the pitchers they are facing are just pitching them into the big parts of the ball park so that we can play catch with their outfielders.

I agree on Darvish...glad Texas decided to be the gluttons for punishment this time. Now if we could only get New York interested in a Japanese pitcher.

I rarely agree with the NESN guys but if dice is hurt why is he still just sitting in the dugout with that dazed look on his face. Looks like I am going to look in about 5 more innings.

I have to admit taking it for granted that the Sox had the Reddick/Kalish thing right because I had not seen enough of Kalish to have an opinion worth a s***. However Reddick never looked to as lost as Kalish looks at times either at the plate or in the field. Then again maybe Kalish really just needs more time. By the way, any more questions about our Starting Pitching? Oh I know, we have this guy and that guy and this other guy....but this is the guy on the mound tonight....I suspect if we had an option to pitch somebody else we would have.

Then both lineups could have had 1 big overgrown singles hitter to play around with

Thank you dice you piece of s***...why don't you just walk up to the plate and hand it to him.

And Gonzo just fails to often with guys on base this year which is why his hitting streaks are so quiet. Just to many ways to get him out this year which is just another way of saying Gonzo has really not been a tough out this year.

The Sox put themselves in the position of needing to win games in a park they were not designed to play in. If you look at what we should have done in May and June vs what we did and what we face coming up, you can look forward to these games if you want to, but I would have preferred to look forward to them with some wins in the bank from the light part of our schedule this year. We put nothing in the bank and then the Yanks and Angels went nuts in June. The O's did not fall apart as much as we want to think so (going 13-13 to your 15-12) and now we really have no rope left. As my post in the game thread from last night points out the Yanks and Rays have the easiest schedules of all the competing teams here in July. I estimate that the Angels have the toughest with the Sox second toughest to the Angels. I believe we will have to generate a better winning percentage here in July than we have at any time this year and will have to do it with a tougher schedule. So hold on to your seats folks. Its going to be bumpy ride with no time left for putzing around.

Whoever they toss out there better win ballgames. The last bit of rope the Sox had got used up in June. There is nothing left to give as I see it. Either they win at a serious clip in July or very likely pack in the whole season including this silly assed WC format.

People probably don't want to come to terms with it but the two loses to the M's were likely the defining moments for the 2012 Sox. All of our worst features really dinged us and cost us two games we really had to win. We got out-pitches again in pitching duals. We got hurt by putting defensive liabilities in positions where defensive pluses help you and defensive liabilities hurt you because the Sox insist on valuing hitting over defense even to the point of putting defensive liability players in defensive plus positions cause they can hit.....sometimes. Our situational hitting sucked with the exception of a few occasions in the two games we won.

Well, this is why I thought June would be important. Before the month started I thought we would have a month where the real competitors got serious and started pounding out some victories at a pretty good pace, forcing the Sox to beat the putz teams we were playing at the same or better clip which we really did not do. Had the O's won 1 more game in June we would almost have nothing to show for the month. June Records: Yanks, 20-7 Angels, 17-9 Sox, 15-12 O's, 13-13 Rays, 11-15 The Yanks just went nuts in June and really put a bunch of distance between themselves and the competition. We have plenty of games left with the Yanks but we will have to win those games at a very sporty clip not only to try to catch them but because the Sox are in a real battle just to make a WC berth. At 17-9 the Angels have now done just what some of us thought they would do....win enough games to stick themselves right in the middle of the WC race in all likelihood breaking up the death grip the East has had on the WC. The Sox compiled the 3rd best June record, in the process probably closing themselves out of the division unless they can beat the Yanks in their head to head meetings at a clip that today seems hard to imagine. The O's did not exactly fall completely apart although we would like to think so. They went 13-13 going into the part of the season that should favor SP. Their SP has not shown well of late but still looks more potent than the Sox SP at this point. The Rays are the team that really croaked in June playing the month at an 11-15 clip. Again their SP should show up a bit more in the second half but they may well have played themselves out of the division race in June. The Angels have a tough road ahead in July playing 11 games against the East and 10 against the Central and 5 against the West, many against Detroit and Texas. They match up well with Detroit but should struggle against Texas. The Sox have a tough road in July as well playing 4 against the West, 9 against the Central and 13 games in the tough East. I would guess we might need something like 15-11 just to stay in the WC and that assumes our WC competitors do not have a great month while we are still putzing around. That would be one game better than June with a tougher schedule. Probably need something like an 18-8 to make a real dent in the Yanks and something like 17-9 to actually look like a team that is going anywhere instead of a team just putzing around. The teams with the easiest July path would be the Yanks and Rays. The Rays play 8 against the West, 9 against the Central and 9 against the East. The Yanks only play 23 games in July, 10 against the West, 1 against the Central and 12 against the East. All by way of saying that by having played yet another month of ********, barely better than .500 ball against teams we should have been creaming, we have set this up to be all but over by the end of July. The Yanks don't have to "clean our clocks" at this point. Another month of screwing around at 500 or so would likely seal our fate just as surely as cleaning our clocks would. As early as May some of us kept looking at the required winning percentage that remained as a means to judge our chances commenting that we were already creeping up to .650 needed at that point. The team surely does not look like it could sustain anything like a .700 winning percentage and Ells, CC and Bailey don't turn them into one that can. The way the Angels are now playing the Sox are in for a hell of a fight just to get into the 1 game play in. They can thank their stars that the O's and Rays Starting Pitching has cooled a bit although Starting Pitching usually starts to show its metal on the other side of the All Star break if a team has it to show. I really always thought that the one WC team did deserve its distinction because it often had compiled a better record than one of the division winners had compiled. Now, with two WC teams, all you get for playing 162 games is a one game play in, a game where you will be forced to use up your best SP. That puts even the winner of that game at a distinct disadvantage in the first real playoff series. Seems to me that WC team 1 gets screwed and WC team 2 would be better served going back to the drawing board and coming back next year prepared to make a better effort. This was the fly in the ointment of looking at what we were doing in April and May and June and talking about how early it was. Those were our easy schedule paths. Those were the months we needed to be putting wins in the bank for the tougher schedule months we had ahead. Now we are stuck with a situation where nothing but the very best month we have played so far this year will do for July. Less than that and we may not even be in a WC any longer. I am sure BC and his bosses are looking at the same thing. Makes you wonder how much they will be willing to give up to bring in another arm for the rotation, something they need desperately to make something of this year. That is something beyond brick sales and bat sales and more pink hat sales. As for lasting impressions from June, the two most important games of this year may turn out to be those two extra inning losses to the M's as we really really needed to win those games to turn June from 15-12 to 17-11. So I will again question the logic of building a team around offense and ignoring defense even in the two most important defensive positions on the field. What would June have looked like if Salty had made those two plays at home at the end of those two games or even had made the easiest of them? What would they look like if we could have pitched with the M's which we did not do. The Sox have nobody to blame but themselves for having put themselves in a position where two games in a park that did not favor their skill set against a team designed to play in that park might have sealed their 2012 fate. Maybe they will get lucky. Doubt they are going to get much better without help from BC.

Thank God we won this game. Got home late to see us in another tight Safeco deal. Saw something about our record in close games this year which was not all that appealing. We will see more of these close, tight, low scoring games as we get later in the season. Fortunately I am not sure the Yanks team profile is that great in those kinds of games either.

The other element to this that I think will make it almost impossible if not impossible for Ortiz to make it to the hall is that at least from what I can tell, there is another aspect of voter and voting perspective that will make it tough. There now appears an element of thinking that seems to have turned from reasons to vote a guy in to reasons not to vote a guy in. I don't think that existed in the early days of HOF voting. I really don't think there was a alternate side of the ledger that some voters considered. Maybe that all started with Pete Rose...I just don't know but you can tell that it is there for some. I still think the most relevant issue for Ortiz is the DH thing and the simple fact that it takes so many votes to get to the hall in the first place. There will be a pretty large number of folks I think that will put the DH thing on the negative side of the ledger and then there will also be some number of people probably much smaller that will stick that PED thing into the equation. When you combine them with the folks that will just not think his numbers are deserving to begin with (and there will be some of those) I just don't see how Ortiz can get in. I don't think the other guys that compiled most of their numbers as DH's will get in either.

I am not sure that Bard would not have fallen apart on his own to be honest. I have always had my doubts about him. I just don't think he has it. I have said before that I think the Sox deviated off the path they had started him down because they concluded he would not be a reliable closer. At that point I think it became a "what do we do next with Bard kind of thing". I don't think the Sox ever thought much of the risk involved in seeing if Bard could be a starter because they really did not have a plan for him at that point and getting a starter out of the deal would have been just fine by them. The amount of time Bard has spent as an effective major league anything is miniscule. At some point I think we just will need to deal with that. I suspect the Sox already have and will try to see what they can get out of Bard because he is a Sox property. I doubt they are losing sleep over it though.

Watching Salty whiff on another catch at home was really irritating. He has played better defensively of late and last night's play was a tougher play than the one from the first game but that is two plays that were game ending that he just did not make. That is a tough way to lose games but the Sox and their willingness to accept weak defense at the most important defensive positions on the field is always going to cost them games. Take the good with the bad I guess but that is two games in three nights.

That is I think correct ORS...that was one of the lists that was never supposed to be made public and there was a big stink about it having been made public. None the less, his name was on it.

I am telling you it just irritates me no end that he does not toss the mask waiting for that ball to come in from the outfield...that play is so much tougher to make with the mask on. So you might take an elbow in the chops...tough s***...that is the job...get rid of the mask and give yourself half a chance to catch the f***in' ball.

Game over.....losing games like this is really pissing me off....can't lose games like this....just can't and again Salty will you take that f***in' mask off and throw it as far away as possible...much tougher play to make tonight than the other night but he still needs to get rid of that f***in' mask trying to make that play.

Man they are just eating Aviles up with that s***.

So far Kalish has not looked ready to face ML pitching. Starting to look less confident by the day....I think it might be getting to him at this point.

Kelly...Name is to short...gotta be a sucky pitcher.

Really have not "earned" the runs we have so it would seem the offense still owes us something at this point. Geez get a run.