jung

Beckett without a good FB is pretty tough to watch. He clearly does not want to throw it because his velo is down at 90-92 again and he is catching to much plate with it.

I don't either and that covers more years than I care to remember. Beckett is up in the zone again tonight and getting to much plate so far.

Christ I just saw what you meant...a bag-head at Fenway park. I am going to go slit my wrists!

Isn't is amazing that Lowe still has that hard and heavy sinker after all this time? I was always amazed at how heavy it was.

I expect a good start from Beckett tonight. He seems to relish these "f*** you world" moments and son of gun he has another one here tonight...what a surprise!

I have about the same view of V as a Manager as I have had about our starting pitching. I was not particularly impressed with 1,2, 3 in our rotation before the season started so they really had to s*** the bed to play poorly enough to even play below my relatively low expectations. I don't think V has been good as the Manager of this team but I did not expect much from V anyway. Ya' don't stay on the shelf for that many years in a profession with so much turnover without there being some reasons. I even think the amount of time V has been on the shelf have contributed to some of his issues as a manager. I actually wish I could say that V has just been background noise but unfortunately I don't think that has been the case. I can say as I have said elsewhere that I don't believe in his wildest nightmares this team plays as poorly as it has played. I think managing this team has turned out to be much more challenging than V envisioned it to be. I can't really say that is V's fault though. It is a poorly constructed team of disjointed parts. They don't play well together as a team and it is difficult to discern a cohesive, concerted effort from what they do on the field together. I know we have very little to look forward to and as a consequence I think we on a daily basis add more an more emphasis to our expectations for the return of Ells and CC. However I would not look for that to be like some sort of light switch turning on. This was a poorly constructed team with Ells and CC. They will simply add to the individual talent pool when they return and surely that will have an impact. Like I said though, don't be surprised when it does not turn out to be some sort of light switch that suddenly turns them into a juggernaut.

No question...hard to figure...I even thought that maybe they knew something about Abreu that was not common knowledge or something cause I could not explain to myself why they would not take a shot for league minn. considering how much of a mess they have been in.

Maybe they passed on Abreu because they bought into the idea that they have enough offense which I have never thought to be true this year. They just can't score enough to overcome the combination of starting pitching woes, defensive woes and bull pen blow ups. The bull pen blow ups seem to have made their way off the edge of the cliff and I am beginning to wonder if that would be as much of a concern if V would just be a bit smarter about how and when he uses the pen and who he brings out of the pen. More times than not when one of his bull pen moves works I tend to think to myself "wow we dodged a bullet there" and when they fail I tend to think to myself "well that makes sense". I rarely if ever find myself saying "good move V".

Now that is a good point 700. Nava as opposed to Abreu is kinda' humorous. They are clearly grabbing at straws. In part that is why I don't think the things we have been talking about are all that radical. If the Sox are going to look at two weeks of Nava down on the farm and take a crap shoot on that, why does any of the other stuff we have been tossing about look so radical.

The kids are my euphemism for the guys that have never really made it up here and have either been minor league players forever or are minor leaguers as a part of their development. His age is right there on the stat sheet so it is not hard to see. They clearly need some help in the outfield. They have to "try" something. I would rather they try this a different way but I think what we have been suggesting here is just to radical for the Sox to try. The point is I don't think Nava will hurt the way Byrd and d-mac have been playing. Unfortunately I guess the way the Sox are doing this there is not a way to keep Ross, Byrd and d-mac sitting at the same time with a RH pitcher on the mound so I guess Byrd plays. He probably is the best of a bad bunch of options at this point. Ross is really struggling against RH pitchers and has maybe been marginally worse than Byrd in the field. d-mac has been better in the field but can't hit anything thrown by anybody at the plate. Byrd has been less LH/RH pitcher dependent than Ross. I guess Ross' outfield difficulties seem more across the board whereas Byrd does not seem to be seeing the ball at all well. I don't know which one is scarier.

Looks like Nava has had a great couple of weeks in Pawtucket and has really lifted his BA so this is a good opportunity for the Sox to give this a shot. They surely need some help in the OF. The more the kids come up the more at least the Sox are fun to watch and the are not hurting this team.

Boy it is looking like a long time before guys are coming back to the Sox lineup that can even catch the ball reliably in the outfield. Last night the outfield was terrible again and we are not even talking about the lack of arms out there cause the throwing problem from the outfield will not be solved when Ells and CC come back. We would hope they could reliably catch the ball though. While I refuse to let Lester off the hook for last night's game in KC cause he let the lowly Royals hit way to many balls hard last night for a #1 in the rotation effort. There was a time when a #1 pitching for a team with pretenses to the post season would be required to go out and pitch a CGSO last night. Not only was it expected, it often happened when a contender in a slump came up against one of the dregs of the league. The expectation is not that great any longer but Lester's performance did not come close to adequate. It should have been obvious to everybody including Lester that the defense in the outfield is one of the weaknesses of this team and it was in large part a contributing factor to last night's lost game. At any rate, it will be a long time before we get Ells back and CC is not right around the corner either. We either need to get better defense in the outfield or we have to stack up the offense so that it is more potent than it is. Right now it seems to score runs but in bunches. Feast or famine and the feasts cloak the fact that to often we are outscored. So we can prevent more runs or score more. Where we are at the moment does not seem to be a very good spot to be. Aviles has played some outfield and I would be willing to bet that he is not worse than Ross and Byrd especially. So I think it makes sense to move Aviles out there and bring up Iggy so that either d-mac or Byrd do not play as many games out there. Then while they have some time with WMB still playing at 3rd I think they should give him some work in the OF so that when Youk comes back, maybe they have a spot to put WMB. Clearly neither move helps the defense in the outfield but it should bolster the offense some, especially against LH pitchers and I don't think the defense out there could be worse. Ross is simply playing to many games for this team and that in my view is why he looks so bad lately, to much exposure. Byrd looks like the outfield version of Youk...he has aged quite a bit over a relatively short period of time and should be nothing more than a fill in at most. Iggy to the infield and Aviles to the outfield might just help the left side when Youk gets back also. The Sox don't have enough pitching to get by with weak outfield fielding but they can be helped by better infield play. Seems to me this would be a way to try to get a more consistent effort out of the offense and it gives Youk a chance to get fixed. That might also end up giving the Sox a chance to move Youk which is probably one thing they really need to do to make room for WMB and possibly get some pitching in return. WMB is a risk but it just does not matter. WMB is the 3rd baseman of the Sox immediate future. Just bite the bullet and take the good with the bad. If Youk stays maybe they can continually rotate Youk between 3rd and sometimes 1st to give AGons a day off here and there. I don't see a good opportunity coming up to trade Beckett. Unfortunately, Beckett is not a team leader and you would want that to come along with the package. It doesn't. It would help a great deal for the team to accept that. I have already accepted that. He is unfortunately, the most effective starter the Sox have and while a bad start might put him more in line with Jon and Buch, right now he is miles ahead of everybody else in that rotation. Youk could be traded but only after he gets some time to repair himself.

As usual isn't the truth somewhere in the middle? On the one hand, a view that suggests that this incident goes to the top of the charts along with the things that are plaguing this team right now is probably a bit extreme. Thinking of it as nothing more than a media creation is probably just as extreme the other way. In fact if I had to lean it from the middle, I would probably lean it towards a serious incident and not toward a media creation. In the first place, while we are talking about Beckett being stupid enough not to realize that he could do himself even more damage playing golf with his particular injury I think it more interesting that Beckett is arrogant enough not to try to understand the risks before grabbing the golf bag. It would not have taken much of an effort on his part to have found out what was what. In the second place, this entire organization is in a state of flux, in a state of disarray and suffering from severe mismanagement and lack of leadership at all levels. Can we all agree on that? The team has young starting pitchers almost all trying to make a transition of some sort....Lester, trying to be a #1 (failing by the way), Buch trying to come back from injury, Doubront trying to get through a first season as a big league starter, Bard trying to convert from reliever to starter. It appears that Buch is "comfortable" with Beckett. They have apparently known each other for a bit. However what do you do if you are a young pitcher. Do you go to Beckett for help? Do you avoid him like the plague? Will management think less of you if you are thought of as part of the Beckett clique? Are we unwilling to acknowledge that there is likely yet another leadership void here that Beckett could fill if he were the type of person that would see that as part of his role, if he were up to the task? I will grant you this...his attitude is typical for the "vets" on this team. Agons when asked the other day about his start to the year answered with "by the end of the year MY NUMBERS WILL BE THERE." My numbers....why am I not surprised that a Red Sox vet would talk about this season in terms of his numbers as far as having a successful vs unsuccessful season. How much better would it have been if AGons said "by the end of the year OUR RECORD WILL BE THERE. I don't eve care if AGons thought that the focus of the questioning was specific to him.....he would have turned a goodly number of detractors to fans with that one turn of phrase but it just not in him. If AGons "prepares" a statement of some sort, sure he will come up with some canned phrases that suggest team but caught in a circumstance where his true or truer feelings are going to come out in a comment....there you have it "MY NUMBERS". It would not take much imagination to sum up this whole sorry assed version of a baseball team that way.

It seems to me that Bard is sort of stuck in the relievers role of coming into a game for a single inning at most and just getting the required number of outs to end that inning. He does not seem to me to be making progress towards understanding what a pitcher has to do to get through a series of innings starting with the 1st inning and most importantly controlling the other team's offensive efforts. While the starters and the relievers role are both pitching duties they are not at all the same things. The reason I don't think Bard is making any progress is not because he is failing to learn how to drive the car...he does not appear able to find the car keys! You would knock me over with a feather if even a young up and coming pitcher that had been starting for the bulk of his career did not think about his next start in terms of controlling the other team's offense while Bard seems to be stuck in the relievers role thinking about how to get out of an inning. For whatever reasons this coaching staff does not appear to see that they have a role in helping him get back the starter's perspective on a pitching appearance or maybe even establish it for the first time. It is certainly possible that the coaches are not willing to make this concession to the fact that Bard is attempting to do this at the major league level. It is in fact unusual for a ML coaching staff to be confronted with a starting pitcher that needs to learn as much about starting as Bard seems to need to learn. It seems to me that the only aspect of the starters role where Bard is trying to progress is in developing secondary pitches such that he has command of them. There does not appear to me to be an effort to think about how he will use pitches to control a team's offensive efforts over the course of a game. I just don't think he can do it this way and finally get to the finish line. He can't wait till he has command of three pitches and then start to think about how he will control an opponent's offensive efforts. He will be into the backside of his career before having a chance to be a truly effective starter at that rate. Maybe this is another aspect of the mess that Beckett is as the supposed seasoned vet of the rotation. How much help do you think Beckett is in this regard? The younger guys probably don't know if they should avoid Beckett like the plague or go to him for help. Would you want to be associated with Beckett or would you head for the hills? The point is that if Bard makes no progress toward truly making a transition to a starting pitcher they are almost cheating him at this point. They are just taking advantage of the innings Bard can give them from the 5 hole. I think Bard deserves better than that because while Bard is likely giving the Sox an honest effort at making this transition I think the organization has a responsibility to do more than just announce this transition and then pencil Bard's name into a spot in the rotation. That is where I see a lapse at this point.

So frustrating that the only SP they have that truly knows how to pitch is also one of the biggest jerks on the planet.

Well I will say this in defense of V. I don't think in his wildest imagination this team would have played this badly for him or anybody else. I have not been a big V supporter but he walked into a hornets nest of Machiavellian front office politics and mismanagement combined with a clubhouse full of pampered children that refuse to play as a team. They don't appear to help each other. They don't appear to talk to each other. Seem to talk to the guys on the other team more than they talk to each other. I would love to see one game where they were committed to forcing a good pitch to hit out of the pitcher every single at bat. Just make sure that every at bat they at least see one good pitch to hit. If the pitcher does not give up a good pitch to hit that is one thing. But so often they are just hackin' away at pitchers pitches and they are just not good enough to do that. And if these are the pitchers we are going to have to go with then coaching is going to have to work harder with these guys to try to get them to pitch to whatever strengths they do have. Beckett is the only starter they have that knows enough about pitching to not need the help. The rest of them including Lester need a good deal of help.

I don't think he would have made it home either. Like 700 said if he had been on the bag he would likely have made it home but he was caught in no mans land for no reason. The Sox had their chances though...this is another game where they don't take full advantage of the opportunities that they have. It is like they think the gods of baseball are going to give them enough innings until they are finally ahead and then end the game right there. Pedey had that at bat with a runner on...and swung at the very first pitch thrown to him to end that inning...Aviles had one good pitch to swing at in that last at bat (the second pitch of the at bat) and just let it go by. They are just playing such rotten baseball. Lousy defense every night, not enough offense some nights, not enough pitching most nights NESN talking heads talkin about never having recovered from the first inning...against the Royals!!!! Pleassssseeeeee!

Wow, this team is f***ed

Don't know why Mike did not swing at that FB down main street. Not sure what he could have been looking for there.

Good job,,,sweeney knew he could not let that go by

Don't know what you are talking about Eck...this nitwit ump has been calling that pitch a strike all night...sucks cause that is so far outside...I don't know what the hitter is supposed to do with that.

Be still my heart...a successful bunt...almost looks like the pitcher had mercy on him.

After that last effort last week it does not appear that they have worked on this with Byrd at all

Oh God Byrd to try to bunt again

Thanks God the ball landed in the hands of one of the few good arms we have out there..Aviles...that run would have been it for sure.