jung

Why is Ross this high in the order against a RHer'?

Gonzo has been getting his wall swing going of late....well not there...but lately. The point is why have a guy that won't for the most part go yard batting 4th and have pitchers simply avoid the inner half to the guy hitting in front of him to prevent him from going yard.

There was a mistake that did not get hit

Mine as well go Pedey...the guy in the 4 hole is not going to drive you in from 1st base cause he is not going to go yard. When is V going to smarten up and switch those two in the order.

5 pitches for 2 outs....Sox off to their usual patient start...

Well many many hitters are going to sit FB. So if you toss one up there that is straight and slow, in a bad spot....good luck with that.

So lets see...pitchers would rather pitch around Pedey to get to AGons...hmmmm....not questioning it...I would pitch around Pedey to get to Gonzales also. Why give up Pedey going yard for a potential wall double if not wall single.

Miller comes up with Cook sent to the DL. Miller is checking his health insurance in case he has to come into any games that Salty is catching. Great...we have the only catcher in baseball that is going to end up on the FBI, 10 most wanted list.......for his play behind the plate!

At some point is just boils down to winning games. The Sox will eventually have to just win games. As they go deeper into the season without winning games we just keep inventing new deadlines, new hurdles, new lines in the sand when in reality they have to win games now, later, from beginning to end. The idea that we just hold on (whatever that means) until CC and Ells get back is another means of pushing back the calendar. What is hold on? How many games do they need to win while they are holding on because by the time this is done, they need to win over 90, probably over 92 and maybe 94. Right now they don't need much of a winning % to get there. But even if they win 5 of the next 10 games, the winning % they will need the rest of the way will be 6/10. That is just to win 92 games. Right now they don't like they can win 3/10, never mind 6/10. So that is why I am in favor of a shake up. I think they need more ways to win games than what they have now. If they can scratch out runs AND pound out runs while playing much better defense well they might just have something. I don't expect the pitching to get much better unless they can cobble together some sort of a trade and who wants to trade away pitching? Plus they get to bring the kids up at just about no risk. What would they be risking? Youk is hurt anyway. D-mac is his usual s***. Salty has finally broken the camel's back I think. How can you look at a guy that can play as badly as he plays at catcher day in and day out and then can throw in a stinkeroooo as bad as today and call that a major league caliber catcher? So Lars is no risk and doing this with Iggy at SS and by putting Aviles in the outfield keeps Mike's bat in the lineup while giving us an infield that might just soak up whole innings for our pitchers. An infield like that can be very frustrating to play against because there will be times when teams will not be able to get the ball past, them or around them as long as our pitchers keep the ball down in the strike zone. I really hope they make some moves and bring the rest of the young guys up. Agons is finding his left field swing again. I am concerned that Ortiz is taking so much of this on his shoulders that he is starting to swing at those high inside pitches again. Those are his undoing and he has got to lay off of those.

It is rare for guys at Youk's age to turn it around. I think he might be on the down side and sliding fast.

Last year is this year. Sox hold a team option on youk for next year

Lester's post game presser the other day was pretty telling. He was talking himself about the issues he causes himself on the mound when he lets all these things just pile up on him. However if you saw him and listened to him he really did not look like a guy that had the answer. He just seemed more like a guy that recognized the problem and was somewhat resigned to it. He really was not trying to but he really looked and sounded like a guy that was raising the white flag.

Oh gosh, that inning the O's had a field day. They got 7 in that inning I think....maybe 5 off of Cook???

V explained that what with the condition of the pen when Cook said he wanted to pitch V decided to let him try it telling him to say so if he was in trouble. I do tend to think V had to make the decision one way or the other at that point. Cook was not going to come out of that game without trying everything he could try to pitch. He could easily have hurt his arm throwing the way he was. This was such a screwed up day. If the press box fell forward onto home plate I would not have been surprised today.

As is d-mac. I will take that trade cause I already know how this version of the Sox is playing....like s***.

I think that by bringing up Iggy to play short, moving Aviles to the OF and playing MWB at 3rd (since Youk is injured anyway), you end up with much better defense, close to the same power numbers...maybe the same or better power numbers because Youk is not hitting and more speed and offensive versatility. So to me that part of what I would like to do, does not have a downside at present. You keep Aviles bat in the lineup which you want, you get d-mac out of the lineup, which you want...you put a good arm in the outfield, which you currently don't have and you end up with a monster defensive infield. I would probably not try to trade Youk...why..for what. He is on the last year of his contract and the Sox have an option on him for next year. Now the last part would be Lavarnway. I think you have to bring Lavarnway up to play catcher. If the Sox Management came to me and said, OK buddy, we will give you the infield you want and move Aviles to the outfield but you are stuck with Salty, I would have really pushed to change that but in the end would have taken it......until today. Today all my worst fears were realized. Salty is killing this team defensively and is not hitting. He is hitting "for Salty" but that is nothing worth protecting. I don't think you can keep Salty and off Shoppach because we really don't know how long it will take for Lavarnway to truly settle in. So in my view Shoppach has to stay and Salty has to go. Salty is dropping balls, not able to keep balls in front of him, now he is dropping pop flies. I can go on forever but why. There is not a single aspect of catching where Salty is even adequate. He is terrible in every single aspect of catching, so much so that he is now a risk factor for other team members.... literally. I meant what I said earlier during the game. At every other level of baseball than MLB they literally would have pulled the catching gear off of Salty today and put somebody else in...they would have put anybody else in. He is that bad and it is high time we stopped looking the other way and hoping something is going to change with Salty because there is no reason for it to get better. Now I have to admit to having a bias here. I have never liked taking critical defensive positions like SS and Catcher and tossing guys that are defensive liabilities there or so called adequate defenders there just because they can hit. I am OK with doing that everywhere but Catcher and SS, the two places that the Sox stubbornly continue to do it. However call it good luck or bad, whatever. The Sox have a great opportunity here to change the profile of the team without taking to many hits from anywhere because Youk is injured and is not hitting and d-mac is not hitting. So we have a tailor made opportunity to keep Aviles in the lineup, still get Iggy in the lineup and get d-mac out of the lineup. If by the way I could get pitching for some sort of package that included Youk and or Salty, I would do it. I would probably explore Youk but would likely not find any takers that returned me anything that would interest me. However, because Salty can at least get into a crouch without falling over (just barely) he will have trade value and packaged with somebody or somebodies, we could get somebody for Salty. Catchers are really still in short supply at all levels of pro ball. Besides, keeping Youk gives me some protection in the case that when Ells and CC come back, if Youk can hit, I may just want to go back primarily to the way this team was designed to play before all this s*** happened. Youk becomes somebody that actually with the other players involved in the changes I would like to see gives you the chance to field two teams with completely different profiles by just changing back and forth between the opening day lineup version (without Salty but with Lavs) or this version with WMB, Iggy and with Aviles in the outfield. That might be a hell of a lotta' fun to watch. If both versions were playing well it would sure be fun to watch other teams try to figure out what to do with that two headed monster. I will grant you that you could argue that the better pitching teams might still have us over a barrel. Maybe not though. We would have one offense that would be better at scratching out runs and one that would be better at pounding out runs with both featuring some aspects of pounding and scratching out runs.

I would really like to see the roster changes we have been discussing today happen. It would surely be a different way to play the game. I don't like the way they are performing and I don't like the way they play baseball. Probably not going to get what I want though. I just don't think they will win enough games waiting for Ells and CC to come back playing like this. Maybe if they shake things up they will even learn a different way to win ballgames that will make for a whole new dynamic to this team even when Ells and CC do come back.

Geez I almost forgot these guys leave town after tomorrows game. They surely seem to do better on the road. Another sort of "el choko'" aspect of this team I think. I know we are a tough media crowd and a tough audience but Geez Luez

Well that is something we have tossed around alot' here. If the guys pulling the puppet strings are still the same, maybe you don't get a different result.

Well this is coming to a merciful close. Would love to be a fly on the wall in that Sox clubhouse after this one.

I guess what I was thinkin' and did not express well enough in that post is that while you could just spend it all on one guy maybe spending it on three guys or four really "good" ballplayers spreads the risk...doesn't have the marketing juice of doing the one big signing but look at where the Angles are now. Albert is being booed. So, so much for the marketing sizzle and they are not playing good baseball either.

I couldn't bring myself to admit to buying a Punto jersey. Wasn't that Denny Doyle's number..yea that's it...go Denny Doyle...Christ I must be desperate.

I think we are going to see a shake up either after this game or after this series...I really do. I don't see the Sox just glibly going about there business. I could be wrong. It is not an issue of the season being a bust either...to early for that. I think they have to change the way they are playing. They certainly don't appear to me to be a team that can hit some singles, hit some doubles hit a few home runs and win games. Gonna' have to change to some extent the way this team generates runs and probably need to play better defense, I think. Not sure where better pitching can come from part way through a season like this so I think they will try to do something about other elements of the game.

I really wonder about what is going to happen with Beckett. Not telling the coaching staff that he was hurting before going out there has gone over like a warm bucket of piss on a team that is just getting clobbered these days. Josh always has to have things his way

This guy is going to be tough for Byrd to do anything with. We will see.