jung

It would likely be a tremendous boost for his confidence if Lester could actually finish tonight.

Hey if Nava sticks more power to him. The things he does well are not things that are going to leave him at this stage of his career. He is a little like a college basketball player that stayed in college all the way to graduation thus coming into the pro ranks with much more experience than your standard draftee these days. He clearly has such little physical ability at this point that I think it is hard to believe he will be able to stick even as a ML sub. He is here from what I can tell because he got hot in Pawtucket just as the Sox needed more outfield help. So it has taken the best baseball he could muster at a very difficult time for the parent club for him to get an opportunity here. I love the kind of baseball player he is as he has had more smart, good at bats in the few games he has been up for than some of these guys have had all season while playing very well in the field. It is I think the lack of physical ability and his age that will keep him from staying up with any organization for very long. There is nobody I would rather be wrong about more than Nava.

I think it is only Nava's second HR and it is likely to be the only ML HR he hits this year. Plus the guy deserves something to take with him from this stint up with the bigs. He has really done a hell of a job. But lets face it, he is a career journeyman. It is entirely possible that this stint will turn out to be the highlight of his entire professional baseball career. Would be nice to have something from it to go up above the fireplace.

Holy Moly...can we get Vargas traded around the league for us?

Nava goes yard???? Hope somebody gets him that ball.

Pretty cheap chiseling hit for the first one.

Lester has had better location and control in 2 1/3 so far tonight than he has had in entire outings. Now he has got the Mariners reaching cause they know he is painting the corners

Hit and Run has not worked well for us so far this year, mainly because the hitters have not made contact with the ball to often. that said, so far V has really tried it in many cases with guys that are not contact guys to begin with. I hope that was not a straight steal by Byrd. If that is the case, I have no idea where he thinks he is going. He is to old for that s*** and has been out by a mile so far this year.

B Well not only that but Beckett would have willing gone ahead and allowed the media to run wild with the golf thing. However what choice would any of them had under those circumstances. Beckett is not going to leak the news that he was involved in serious trade negotiations either. As such there would not have been a "good" story for anybody to tell, just a bunch discombobulated stories.

The more I think about how far apart the various statements have been with regard to Beckett's missed start, his Lat, his playing golf on his day off the more I think there is something more to this than we have been told or have seen. In the first place it is sort of odd to me that injury caused Josh to miss a start or at least caution with regard to injury caused Josh to miss a start and then when Josh does come back and pitches a real stinker, he blames the time off in part for his performance. The more I think about it, the more I think that a deal was in the works to move Beckett, they did not want Josh to pitch and risk injury at that point and then the deal fell through. The one comment from Beckett that would support that possibility was that comment he made about the Sox sometimes not telling the whole story. That comment came out of left field at least as it relates to the issues at play at that time.

The Sox are getting to be downright Patriot like lately either because they want to handle injury situations like this or because this is another area where the Sox have gotten to be a bit dysfunctional. I would say that it is hard for us to understand what Ells could or could not do. The Sox provided a description of the injury but we don't even know if the Sox provided precise and accurate information. Just considering the location of the injury and the amount of time Ells will have been out when he does finally come back, would lead me to suspect that it was a pretty severe injury. It looked pretty severe when it happened. In fact that worries the heck out of me. I suspect Ells is going to come back pretty slowly. I only hope that at some point this year Ells returns to 100% of the player that we had before that guy landed on his shoulder. Football really does not provide a good equivalent example here I do not think. For one thing, you have 10 other guys out on the field with you at all times and you are all really working as a unit to make a play. So your injury can be masked better because your teammates can provide you more support. Also something like a shoulder can be wrapped and bound to the point where while it will restrict motion, the player can often still play. Your teammates really cannot help you in baseball and you really have to have complete freedom of movement in order to perform at all. In addition although I am not a doctor, it is hard for me to imagine that you don't run the risk of at least prolonging the injury trying to swing a baseball bat with an injured shoulder. I just hope Ells does not end up tweaking his shoulder even trying to take a cautious approach.

When Nava slips he must fall off a cliff edge to be playing behind d-mac because d-mac is just steadily and consistently bad.

To be honest the amount of player movement and resulting experimentation being contemplated is one of the things that makes me seriously doubt that the Sox are going to be able to make much progress toward the post season this year even with the added WC. It is not the only issue but it is one of them. We have Youk who if the Sox had their druthers would have just started this season and had as close to a typical Youk type of good season as possible. Instead he ends up validating our concerns about what might go wrong with him this year about as completely as possible leaving the Sox with another heavy contract player and really not many options as far as what to do with him. In truth I think the Sox are forced to give Youk playing time. While it does showcase him, I really don't think that is what they want to do with Youk this year. The Sox would really like Youk to makes his way back because if he does, the Sox know what they have in Youk. As well as WMB has played and as much as I would maybe prefer that Youk just disappear in some way that gets the Sox something in return in truth, the Sox really don't know what they have in WMB. Might he turn into a pumpkin via his lack of experience at the ML level? Might pitchers learn how to pitch to him and take the edge off of how sharply he has performed at the plate so far? Yes on both counts. Neither possibility diminishes WMB's value long term but if Youk were gone and WMB turned into a pumpkin at that point, all you have to do is look at how the Sox look with Youk doing poorly to see how they would look with WMB doing poorly. They designed this year's roster with Youk succeeding in mind possibly even considering exercising the team option on him for next year if he really excelled. As much as I don't like it I don't think the Sox end up sellers on Youk unless they end up sellers with a capital S this year. So in my view the Sox end up having to give Youk time at 3rd mainly because they really can't afford to give up on the Youk that they were hoping to get this year. Then we will soon be confronted with the dice experiment. Bard will soon eat through the innings that the Sox have probably allotted to the Bard to the rotation experiment and will likely have dice up here with the Sox trying to figure out if he can pitch well enough to move Bard back to the pen for the balance of the season. There is the Cook experiment sort of still born at the moment but still hanging out there waiting to be revisited. There is the fact that while Salty has these moments of glory there is little to suggest that they are more than that and it is hard not to want to get the Lavs experiment going because the Sox also know what they have with Salty at this point. The difference between Youk and Salty is that while if Youk gets going the Sox will want what they can get from Youk, if Salty gets going you are still stuck with little that will help this team succeed. While Salty is strong and capable of going deep this year even when he is giving us the best he has to offer at the plate he is still surrounding his successful at bats with tons of punch outs to pitchers that are not what you would consider Cy Young candidates or even top of some team rotation candidates. While we would desperately like to pencil CC in for a season similar to a TB season we have nothing to go on that says there is more than a 50-50 chance of that happening. Add to that now the fact that Ells has suffered a large joint injury. As such, a degree of uncertainty exists with regard to what we might expect from Ells when he gets back. If you don't think that is so, tell me we have the player we thought we would have in Agons....who has turned into Wade Boggs in a larger suit size. And then there is the one thing that has been pretty reliable so far this season. It has gotten to the point where you could pretty much rely on 1,2, 3 in the rotation stinking up the joint. While I love seeing us finally win a few games and I love seeing some of the Pawtucket gang really having a major impact after I wake up from my victory induced drunken stupor I am stuck with the same set of problems that I had at the start of the evening.

Youk will have to get plate appearances to "indicate" which way his hitting is going. You sure can't take Ortiz out of the line up to do that. Might be able to spell AGons a bit to get Youk some at bats but I don't see any other places for Youk besides 3rd or an occasional appearance at 1st.

Boy the Sox are going to have so many different jersey types to peddle this year...100th year jersey. mothers day breast cancer awareness Jersey, they had that other "original" Sox jersey they wore for a game.....and then there are the regular 2012 jerseys all with the Fenway 100 year patch

I just don't think the Sox will move WMB anywhere that he has not played before unfortunately. I think he actually has played a little SS though. I have to go look but somewhere I seem to remember he has played a little at SS. The problem or one aspect of the problem is that he would have to play everyday. Keeping him here to have him play a couple times a week won't really do the Sox any good. In that respect, they might end up sending him down so that he does play every day.

Think its d-macs first day on a 15 dl stint.

As usual nothing is simple for the Sox. Nava is not the player that WMB is but Nava is really not blocked at this point. Who would you rather have out there....Byrd???? d-mac even if he was not on the DL????? WMB is likely going to have to go back down once Youk is ready. Either they have to get some production out of Youk or they have to do something to get his trade value above zilch. When does Youk come off the DL? I think he must only be a few games away at this point.

At think this last batch of runs put it over the top as far as Aceves is concerned. I would bet he would still have been in the picture at 6-1.

Nice shot Pedey...tough play for a guy that does not play out in our CF that often.

So do we think it will be Padilla and then Aceves again today? Ace has thrown a lotta' ball on consecutive days.

Well not sure what Bard while I was outside but 1 run in 6 innings of work is a about what you would expect to get from a 5 doing his job so doesn't look like there is much to complain about today. From what I saw he focused on the hitters without going nuts over they guys on base...a problem in his last outing.

Missed the last couple innings given the big dog her seasonal outside bath. Sounds like Bard had to throw a bunch of pitches to get through. Did he walk a bunch a guys or did something else happen?

Amazing what a little youth can do for a team of cranky old guys.

Wow...walk walk base hit walk holy s***