jung

Johnson needed to pull the string on Agons there and never did it...Good job of hitting by Agons. Sorta needed more than that though.

Message to V...does not matter how good Josh is pitching...you are down 4 runs V...needed a baserunner there.

What has happened so far....I will make it easy for you. Get your DVR and rewind the one of the Nats games from this weekend and you will know everything you need to know about this game.

That was pretty close to a non-playable direction...Reyes made a hell of a play on that....and...welcome to your pitcher starts off your next inning at the plate again...although the Sox will likely be forced to PH for Beckett at that point.

Wow we are not even going to clear the pitcher for next inning again...I can see it coming.

And the other shoe that was bound to drop much discussed and much ignored....the Angels are starting to play ball....the second WC is not going to be a piece of cake either.

Told you guys this month was going to be a real "rubber meets road" month. While the other teams that we have to worry about have narrowed their eyes and gotten serious our Sox have not opened their's yet.

Can you believe the Marlins have scored 4 runs on us over 6 outs?

These guys are so hard to watch lately....I don't even know what to post anymore. We give up another run...have given up runs in two out of two innings and start the inning with our pitcher batting because we did not clear him last inning.

Wow, another weak offensive team manufacturing runs on us while we dick around

V caught by the camera daydreaming about that ESPN job.

On top of everything else thanks to that great move on the base paths we did not clear Beckett for next inning.

Ben seems to have drawn a bead on part 1.....Lose games

Holy crap what the f***!! Toss out Sweeney sleeping at 1st...K Mike at home.

What a horror show of an inning. I hope this does not turn into the kind of thing for Agons that happened to CC last year. After awhile it seemed like the ball had a homing beam on it pointed right at CC and things just got worse and worse for him in the outfield. Hope the hell that does not start to happen to AGons out there.

Ya' but strike 2 should have been the kind of pitch that a LH hitter should love.

Agons is seeing more good pitches to hit...baffling that now that he has gotten that far he does not appear to be doing much with them.

Johnson probably lucky not to break a finger there.

I know WMB has played 4 out of the last 5 or something like that. but doesn't it seem like when they get into these cycles of sitting him, he ends up sitting for a few days in a row...play one...sit a few days in a row....?

I know Native has gone to the trop many times. Wondering if any of the forum members have been to both the Trop and this park and have any comments on this park in comparison. Any things we should watch for that are particular to this park?

Boy we need a win tonight. What a rotten weekend for us. Rays win three straight....Yankees win three straight and 8 of their last 10 (I think) and we lose three straight. Yuk! As far as WMB and Youk go I think I would disagree with the patience at the plate thing. Youk has been very patient at the plate since coming off the DL. To be honest I think the Sox are doing themselves a real disservice playing WMB this way though. If they are going to do this then maybe the Sox should send WMB down. Playing him once every three or four days and then maybe not liking the result stinks. That is not really even giving WMB a chance.

The lesson from the Nats series is now truly devastating really good pitching can be.

I think Agons made a decision about his plate appearances somewhere along the way. He started to really, really focus on just going to left field. It appeared to me that he had decided for whatever reason that he would focus on going to left whether at Fenway or not. He could still tattoo the wall at Fenway and could still get to the gaps when not in Fenway. While his power numbers suffered, he was still hitting doubles and singles with regularity. However it became to obvious to opposing pitchers and advanced scouts that Agons was really focused on going the other way. For the most part at least during the period I am talking about here, many of his early swings in at bats that I have complained about were early swings at pitches that he could take the other way. In other words if the first pitch a pitcher threw was something on the outer half or at times even outer edge, Agons was hackin' at it. Once what he was doing became obvious to opposing pitchers they started to either keep going a little farther outside and a little farther outside to get him to chase or since he was still insistent on trying to go the other way even with two strikes on him, they would bust him inside with two strikes and Agons could not get his arms out of the way. He would just get jammed and usually hit a little dribbler someplace. In the last couple of weeks he has faced Matusz, a guy he kills and he killed him again but other than that performance, has not done much. He has started to lay off first pitches finally. Still not getting any walks but he is starting to see better pitches to hit. He did crush that HR the other night. That was the first low inside pitch I have seen him crush this year. Sunday he saw good pitches to hit just about every at bat but did nothing with them and that really does baffle me. Don't know what to think about that at all. Hopefully being more patient again will continue to get him better pitches to hit and will also gain him more free passes. I am not sure what is going to happen with his power numbers. While he hit that classic low inside pitch for a big HR the other night, it does look to me like something happened to his ability to drive the ball deep to the opposite field. The ball is not really carrying even to the wall in Fenway like it used to for him. He had that one HR that was truly a Fenway HR barely over the wall the other night. So, that is what I really worry about. He does not seem to be able to drive the ball the other way like he used to.

I will be especially happy for Buch if he is all the way back and will be very happy for him if he can pitch injury free for the remainder of this season. The way the board responds to these pitchers appears to be just another way to describe the problem though. We have argued for months about Lester as the 1 and whether he was doing it or could do it. I think as a board we are finally determining that there are just to many negative issues going on for Lester right now to call him a legitimate 1. Then our next move was to anoint Beckett the 1. But you could tell there has not been much conviction in that. It was a fall back to general disappointment in Lester. Now, Buch might be the guy. Maybe he is at least relative to Lester and Beckett. Well we are just describing a top of the rotation that is just not solid nor dependable at present. I know we all look for different things and some of us are harder to please than others. The only thing I saw that I liked out of the weekend series was smarter, better plate appearances in general on Sunday. There were guys that did not do much with the better pitches they saw as a consequence of making better plate appearances but they were by and large more patient and saw better pitches for it. Just about everything else went the wrong way. We were out-pitched again. Aviles showed us his lack of range going to his right again and probably in a way that made it real difficult not to see it as it is. Plus he is vulnerable on balls hit right at him and he showed us that as well. Pedey may not be sound enough to give us what we need from him and what we expect from him. The super-subs seem now to be hitting tough enough competition for a long enough period of time for them to be faltering maybe a month short of what we really need. Now I guess we are down Nava and don't even have his play to appreciate at the moment. Even Sunday we planted guys on the bases where they landed after a hit. Sunday was much better compared to Friday and Saturday but this weekend we had guys on second with no outs, guys on second with one out, guys on first with no outs and just could not move anybody at times. At the same time that our opponent was generally out-pitching us, he was also manufacturing runs along with way or would knock one out on occasion. Guess I will just hope for a better result today but hope is about all I have at present. I would love to see this trend of smarter baseball and better plate appearances continue and generate more hits and more runs. At least that would be something I could hang onto that is more tangible than hope. This team really kicked my butt this weekend.

I could be wrong about this but WMB up and Youk gone may not have happened in the off season for the same reason it rarely has happened around here in other off seasons. It seems to me that the Sox have a track record in recent years of reluctance to be a half year to a year early bringing guys up and the other end of that is they are regularly a half year to a year late moving the guy the up and comer is replacing. This element to the way the Sox deal with this specific issues seems to transcend realities of who is in the FO which is another reason I think that in reality it is LL that takes it upon himself to make or at least govern these decisions.