jung

I think the way Josh is throwing these days is quite sustainable. His location is simply impeccable and he now reminds me more of Greg Maddux than I thought he was capable of. I thought he would eventually get to some version of this and do it well enough to be successful but he is doing it at a level that can potentially get him back to top five in the league I think.

Aviles seems lately to have attended the AGons school of First Pitch Swinging. I would not have minded so much if it were not for the fact that both of these pitchers are dealing tonight and the Sox had a guy in scoring position. That was a decent pitch to hit but as I pointed out a few days ago, according to the Stamford study done a few years ago, there is no worse pitch to swing at from the standpoint of success than the first pitch of an at bat. Even when hitters fall behind in the count there chances are better than when the count is 0-0.

Screwing up on one pitch in a particular location can eventually get a hitter completely fouled up. In Ortiz situation, it was the high inside pitch. Ortiz convinced himself that he could handle that pitch...a pitch he has not been able to handle his entire career and it screwed him up royally...not unusual once pitchers find out you have a weakness they can exploit. David got out of it by laying off that pitch. Agons has a little more going wrong than that although it started for him by being to focused on going the other way and to anxious to jump on those outer half pitchs early in the count. Now he really has gotten himself in a hole because pitchers have a formula for retiring him at this point. It will take more work on his part to snap out of it but in my view, he has to start by seeing more pitches and getting more pitches to hit that he can handle. I would like to think it is all in his head but to be honest I don't think that is the case.

If Agons made better plate appearances he would not fall so far so fast. He is not a selective hitter when he is going good. When he is going poorly if anything he becomes frustrated and seems to be looking for a way to get back to the dugout ASAP. He would see more pitches if was more selective and getting a few better pitches to hit would surely get him more hits even when he is going badly.

Price is a great LH pitcher but it has not taken great LH pitching to crunch Agons lately.

I think the other thing that I had expected right from the beginning of the season was Josh fully making the transition from power pitcher to a guy that depends on location more than power. That does not mean his FB is going to fall to 89 mph but I do think he will throw it at 91 and 92 with great location and will mix his pitches as he has. If his location is bad he will get tagged again, as he has.

I thought that was pretty close to the phantom out at second also. However that has been accepted convention for a long time now. I guess I am OK with it as long as the guys that want to call the Phantom out at second call it the same way every time.

People need to stop expecting leadership from Beckett. He is not a team leader...does not want the job from what I can see. As long as he takes the ball every 5th day and pitches the way he can pitch that is what we should expect. Upon retrospect I am not even sure at this point if Golfgate wasn't just another case of the Sox usual f***ed up communications....with the media....with each other.....with anybody! V was all over the map regarding Golfgate.

Notice how good Beckett's location is with FB. As long as he can locate his FB like he has and can keep the cutter low in the zone he is fine. His location with the FB and the curve is what makes his cutter so tough and allows him to throw it where Lester can't

Geez will they ever take the camera off Madden and his Clark Kent glasses. Probably goes on the road with blue footie jamies with a big red S on the front.

Byrd has to go back to the warning truck again.

Stockton....Byrd on the warning truck....the warning truck.....get on the goodbye truck Dick.

Man I gotta' credit Youk...he has been the most patient at the plate of the Sox regular hitters since his return. Making the pitchers pitch like crazy and maybe looking like he can get back to what he was or close to it. Jury still out but impressed so far.

God can I survive the Fox nitwits for a whole night?

The Reddick and Lowrie deals pale in comparison to trading pitching prospects especially pitching prospects for which some amount of time has already been expended meaning the player is much closer to making his way to the MLs'. I hope we don't soon or ever see repeats of that stupidity. It is true....you can never have enough good pitching. The truth of it is that we don't have enough good pitching....never mind having more than enough or anything like more than enough. Even when some of these guys get back what will they do other than add more middle of the pack mediocre arms. What the hell are they trying to do down there....make it so that V can bring in one guy per inning for entire games "and here comes are normal 2nd inning guy. His last 2nd inning appearance was really encouraging as he was able to record three outs without giving up more than two runs!

Like I said in the thread last night...OK ya' wanna' respect the Rays organization for what it has accomplished fine....blah..blah..blah..I have some respect for what they have accomplished as well, at least as far as it goes....they have never won it all so lets not get carried away here. I hate the idea of celebrating a wild card appearance...I just think that is stupid although I guess the Sox have done that as a team before after exiting in the first round. The Sox have not done it as an organization though. The Rays have done it as an organization....yea....yea we won......nothing???? Oh well yea anyway!! They have gotten to the show so I guess that is something. But I can't stand that team. Finally I have more Madden haters on board with me. Took last night's fiasco but finally it looks like there is more of an appropriate amount of hate building up for these jokers. They can take their ALCS, their stupid basement dungeon ballpark, their stupid manager with his crooked eyeglasses, their stupid Ray and the idiots in those stupid uniforms and pack them all off to someplace awful and it would be fine with me...Oh I forgot...they are already in someplace awful!

I don't know if you saw the presser I was talking about. To be honest I was pretty stunned to see him discuss it in that presser because as I recall, he was not asked about it. He just brought it up. So, you know this is a real deal problem when the guy is sitting there in his post stint presser and just volunteers that he is really struggling with this arguing with the umps thing and has to gain some control before it eats him alive. Could be that V had just chewed him a new ******* before Lester walked into that presser. I was still pretty stunned.

He appears to know what is wrong and can't control it at least as far as this thing with the umps goes. I don't know what to think about Lester. For my money he has struggled now for over a year as his progress has turned into regression. Think of where he was going into 2010 and 2011 and where he is today.

Well to be honest I really agree with the posts from last night (some of them mine) that tried to discuss Lester's issues. 1) He has really allowed this whole thing of the umps to get to him and he is allowing them to beat him as a result. His last start he made a point of even saying in his post stint presser that he knows it is killing him and he has to stop. So what does he do, his very next start. The exact same thing. He begins to pout. He losses focus and before you know it the ball is being thrown for the most part right down main street as a response to his frustration with the umps. 2) Problem 1 plays into problem 2 which is..... He throws the cutter far to often without setting that pitch up the way Beckett does for the most part. So now, not only is he throwing the ball right down main street, he is throwing cut fastballs right down main street, a meat pitch if you ever saw one. There are varying views on which problem is worse. To me it is his complete inability to control his emotions and maintain his focus because of what tonight's home plate ump thinks is a strike. Instead he lets this whole ump thing totally get to him and at that moment he is defeated. Does not matter what he is going to throw at that point, he is done. So for me, that is the first problem Lester has to solve. These are the same s*** umps that ump every game in the ML's. Stop pouting. Figure out where tonight's ump is willing to give you strikes and work from there...just like every other big league starting pitcher worth a damn and certainly just like what every #1 pitching for every other team must do. If he solves that problem, his issue with the cutter is similar to Buchs. Pitchers throw the pitches they have confidence in. Pitches they don't have confidence in are pitches they cannot throw for strikes or pitches that they throw "wild in the strike zone" which is the same thing as saying you can throw it for a strike but it ends up right down main street. If you have no confidence in your location with particular pitches you won't throw those pitches. In my view Lester does not throw enough even of the regular FB because he does not have enough confidence in the pitch. The cutter is not a main line pitch. It is an alternate pitch best thrown by a pitcher that can locate his FB and that has either a decent slider or a decent curve. Two things happen when you throw to many cutters. It is to easy for hitters to get on because it is a difficult pitch to throw constantly and fool anybody. If you can keep it down and throw it as an alternate to a well located FB, you are in business. If not and/or if you get the cutter up in the Strike Zone, you are meat. For the most part Lester has a good enough cutter if he were not throwing it so often. If he was locating his FB and especially if he had a good slider as well, he throws a good enough cutter. But Lester throws the cutter to often without having set the hitter up for it. People often argue with me that Lester has the best cutter of the Sox starters. I often argue back that Beckett knows more about how and when to throw the cutter than any other Sox pitcher and has more confidence in the pitches he needs to make the cutter work for him. I like to judge things based on results. Lester's cutter may be a thing of beauty and an artistic success in that regard but the HR's that go buzzing over the fence are aesthetically more appealing and every one is a run to boot.

And in my view there is a direct correlation there between views expressed in the off season now being played out before our very eyes. There are more good teams this year in the AL and the result is that more teams are going to rob wins away that we would like to have. So you go 10 and 3 over 13 games and can't move out of the basement. It does not matter whether some of these teams will be there at the end or not. They are going to take wins away making it harder to make up ground. That does not mean there are not some really crummy teams out there also. In fact I still think by the end of the season we are going to see some God awful records. But we will also see more middle ground than we are used to seeing. The Sox absolutely could not afford to get off to a slow start this year 1) because of the profile of the league and 2) because the profile of the team did not suggest the ability to go off on some monster run of wins. All we heard was how early in the season it was when in fact, we needed those wins so that we would not be where we are today...able to rip of 10 wins in 13 games only to find ourselves still sucking the tailpipes of the entire division.

Jesus H Christ do you think at least a season would be merited before passing such a final judgement on these moves. I don't might questioning them but when you see comments that suggest the definitive jury is in one way or the other 40 games in the result is really just lost credibility. This is particularly true when in some cases the same people look at Salty and deem him still to be a work in progress....still on the path to ML catching at a high level when we should have seen enough of Salty by now to know what he is and where he is going. But oh no...Salty is still improving...the jury is still out there but Reddick, well in the case of Reddick, a player with as much a history of feast or famine as you are ever going see, the jury is absolutely in and he is on the way to the HOF. Like I said, question the moves. That makes sense. Watch them develop. That is fun. Making definitive statements 40 games in just opinion......expressed as fact.

Maybe Reddick will continue and have an all star career. The point is Reddick started on just this kind of a streak for us and that turned completely around. So, his history so far is to burn very hot and then very cold. Geez we are so in dire need of wringing our hands over everything the Sox do (this suggests the mighty chart deserves mention again). My God 40 games in and there is no doubt about it....Reddick is the real deal, on the way to the hall of fame and clearly he is on the way there BECAUSE the Sox traded him. Sometimes ya' just gotta' laugh cause otherwise you are gonna' cry!

The issue is not how good the Rays are but how sucky we are. As has been discussed many times here, management allowed the team to become totally unbalanced signing far to many "stars" into long term big money contracts and retaining far to few cost controlled players still playing for their first big deal. That is death in the MLB that we have today. You tie your fate to these big monster contract guys and they become an anchor dragging you down. Heck the difference is so great that while we fans would probably have been screaming bloody murder, the Sox would in many cases have been better off building a team of more cost controlled players and pocketing the money instead of spending it as they did. Again we would have screamed bloody murder but frankly we just don't know any better.....have to spend lots of money....the yanks do so we have to. How is that workin' for them by the way.

I could be wrong but i think the choice from the Sox side to get Bailey would have been Kalish or Reddick...Kalish looks to be a way more promising player. I am inclined to think Reddick will cool off. Remember he came up and started out for us like a house afire and then what?????

Well so far Youk has done pretty well since coming back. It is really to early to tell if this is just a few lucky swings or if he is actually going to come back to being the youk we have seen in the past...just to early to tell. I am encouraged by the fact that Youk is making smarter plate appearances than he was making before being injured which is not to say that WMB was making poor plate appearances. The thing is that there are so few Sox hitters making smart plate appearances that even one more or one less makes a difference as far as pitch count and how many good pitches these guys get to see. I should point out that I was one of the guys that had his doubts about Youk coming back and like I said it is still to early to tell but at least he is not swinging the way he was just before going on the DL.