jung

Boy they have been trying to pick at Ross outside at the bottom of the zone lately. Fortunately Romero can't through a strike yet

Pedey man...gotta' love him

This run support argument from the NESN guys pisses me off as well. When you start the season as the team's 1 you are facing the opponent's 1. It takes some time to work that through and by rights if you have a legitimate 1 it may never work its way through during the course of the season cause your Manager may cycle you up against the opponent's 1 all season long. You get less run support as the team's 1 because you are generally pitching against the other team's 1 as well. What a shock.....your run support suffers. I do think that in light of his performance, V has not been cycling Lester up to face the toughest starter the opponent has to offer. However he did face some pretty tough pitchers this season just because of how rotation works out when you are put in the position of the team 1. The run support thing is nothing more than another facet of Lester simply not being as capable as a top of the rotation guy as the starters he is facing.

Why don't we just concede 2nd base to the lead off hitter and spare ourselves the time and pain of actually having to see one of our starters serve up one of those early junk balls.

Finally figured it out. d-mac has film of JH, LL and Tom strung together in a naked daisy chain and is threatening release to the press if the Sox don't keep him and play him. The sheer visual ugliness of such a tape attached to the Red Sox logo would burn such a hole into small children's memory banks that it would effect Sox ticket sales for decades. How anybody with an ounce of baseball knowledge can look at that swat...dribble....dribble....dribble.....5-4-3....out torture and still be willing to send d-mac out there is beyond me unless d-mac has a lock tight, dead nuts cinch, Ace in the hole that he can just drop on you at any time.

Now that Salty has finally settled in to a level of understandable and reliable performance I think Lavs might be the most expendable of the prospects on that list. He might be the most attractive as well at least for a team that wants a short leash to seeing the player on a ML roster. Plus there are reasons for Salty being where he is now. It is not like we have to say "well he just finally came around". You can point to specific differences in how he approaches both his hitting and his fielding. So I would be OK with the Sox building something around Lavs to get a real deal front line pitcher. However giving up prospects for a 1 year rental does nothing for me. So that have to get itself worked out as part of the deal if the guy is on the last year of his deal.

Some if the discussion seems a little unrealistic because it suggests the team is going to get these guys back and suddenly start to score 10 runs per game and it just is not going to happen. You can only play nine guys at a time and they have scored a fair amount of runs with the nine they toss out there day in and day out. Most significant is the degree that the games hinge more and more on starting pitching as the season grinds on....to the point where even powerhouse offenses simply get controlled by the better pitchers in baseball....you see it time and time again, year in and year out. We have had our SP for the bulk of the season. They have not suffered catastrophic season ending injuries to the mainstays of the rotation. We do know what they have though and like it or not....it just ain't enough. To me I just think we want to ignore it because we just don't want to deal with what we really have for starting pitching relative to the teams that really have starting pitching and additionally have better starting pitching depth. We already know how difficult it is for this team to win close, low scoring games. By August and September you have them in droves. It won't matter that Ells is there and CC is there and on and on...good pitching controls good hitting so much so that the best hitters in baseball end up looking like chumps. I think the reason why you see even the NESN guys talking about playing for the WC is because they are not as willing to ignore the fact that we are in the bottom half of the league for SP. That just does not work. Maybe BC has a card he can play here. If he does not play it, we will be lucky to find our way to that ridiculous 1 game play in. If he does play it, maybe we get a chance to play for the division. Although the reason I don't think even one more good arm gets it done is because I don't think Buch, Lester and Beckett will make it though the whole season without at least one of them suffering a truly season threatening injury....something past a 15 day DL stint. It looks more and more like they will get to the end of June at least still in the hunt. However the more I look at them, the more they play, the more obvious the SP issues become and we have not even gotten the point in the season yet where the dependence on SP becomes painfully obvious to everybody.

Great win for the Sox...I am a bit surprised by our lack of success against junkballers as well. I think I do understand it because it makes sense based on what I see from the Sox hitters relative to their approach to the plate....just a bit surprised that they don't make the needed adjustments. These are adjustments they should be making in any case.....never mind facing a junkballer. I will be interested to see what happens when this team faces teams similarly talented that play smarter baseball, teams that play tighter baseball. This team plays pretty loosely.

If the Sox get another arm maybe all that other s*** will matter but without another arm in the rotation I doubt it will matter. Hitting becomes less and less important as the season wears on and starting pitching becomes even more important.

It has been common practice for the guy rounding second in recent years to try to draw the cut off as opposed to seeing the ball go all the way into the plate and get the runner trying to score the second run...the idea being you stay in the run down long enough for the run to score....never used unless there are already two outs. Looked a little screwy with Aviles that time because it looked like the Jays did not really have a shot at cutting that runner down at home anyway but I do think that is what Aviles was doing.

Ata' boy Pedey!!!

No idea how Aviles laid off of that based on recent history

Obviously the Jays have been looking at Aviles tape. He has looked terrible on that pitch for weeks now.

Boy that looked like a Shop move by Nava

At least half the Sox fans that fill those Fenway seats have no f***in' idea what they are lookin' at. Just not that kind of crowd anymore...but hey they have the sell out record!

Son of a gun....hit the send button just as the pitcher threw it. Thank you Salty.

Well at least we have a shot at a Salty bomb here

This is just opinion but I actually think Beckett no longer wants to be here and that if true would be a very good reason to trade him at some point.

Did you guys see that Gammons rain delay thing from last night. I posted about it in last night's game thread. Anyway so the Gammon's story goes, Pedey very recently noticed that WMB was using a middle infielder's glove much like his own. They are smaller than what is standard for a third baseman. Pedey called the glove rep and ordered WMB up a true 3rd baseman's glove. However it has not arrived as yet. So at least according to Gammons, WMB is no longer using the small glove but is using a glove that is not familiar to him as his new glove has not arrived and has obviously not been broken in.

Actually, my bad, it was not a perfect bang bang play, in point of fact it was not a perfect throw. A perfect throw and the catcher would have had time to pick his nose and calmly apply the tag to Pedey.

I know it took a perfect bang bang play to get him but what is wrong with guys on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out and a RH batter coming to the plate....unless Papi would not have gotten to second on that but I find that hard to believe.

At least the right guy is up at the right time.

What I should have said was that WMB was the last best shot the Sox had at plating that run baring a Salty blast ala' home run or extra base hit. But Salty does not have the bat control to have done otherwise. Either he would have blasted something or he would have dribbled something or K'd. Salty does not have the bat control to do otherwise. I would not bank on Salty hitting a Sac Fly if his life depended on it.

Frankly I do not think this was the order V should have put out there tonight.

Well now we are looking at the real problem with this batting order against a guy like Laffey who is pitching tonight about as well as he can pitch. WMB goes down granted without advancing the runner. However Salty does not have good bat control and is either going to hit you a HR or be an out. If Agons were on third he would not have scored on that dribbler from Salty. Then who comes up...Mr Excitement himself dmac. Lucky to have drawn a walk there and then we get the pop up for the final out of the inning. The point is that run would not have gotten home from third either. WMB was the last good shot we had at plating that run.