jung

Oh well I guess it was hit hard for Coco

I am sure Aviles is a good hitter....he makes his money with his bat. I just think the overall impact will not be as good as he has shown so far. He does have defensive deficiencies that have already shown up a bit so far this season and we will see more of those. Some of them will show at points when they cost us dearly at times. SS is not a position where you can hide. It would really help if he had Middlebrooks next to him instead of Youk. He will be a very good hitter all year I suspect maybe just not at the peak level he is at right now.

Oh I think they will trade Iggy regardless of what Aviles is doing. Iggy is simply not the prototypical Red Sox SS and he was never going to be. I love Iggy but I had predicted he would not see any meaningful time as a Red Sox SS but will be traded and will be a ML SS for somebody else. That said, I would hold off the HOF enshrinement for Aviies just yet. He will come back down to earth a bit at some point.

Man imagine what it must be like to be one of the two A's fans! I have said it a few times this year but the more games played the more I believe it....I think some of the records at the bottom of the standings by year end are going to be embarrassing this year....so much so that Uncle Bud might get a few letters. I wonder if the steroid era was something of a leveler even for teams. Don't have a rational for why some of these teams are now just falling right off a cliff. Maybe there is just a bigger difference now between the teams that are even small market but have marketed themselves well and have some money to spend and the true bottom of the league.

Weeks actually caught one!

d-mac must have paid Inge for that one.

Every week I keep asking if we have ever seen somebody start out the year this hot before and Ortiz keeps doing it...unreal!!!

Now that is going to be on the highlight films all week...Papi goes yard and takes Reddick DEEP

What! how dare they copy Shoppach's hitting style...right in front of him no less.

Three walks in five innings against the putrid A's yuk

Well that curve was hung big time. Any kind of hitter at all and that sucker is in the bull pen.

Buch has found that biting curve that he had a few years ago. FB is still not much to write home about but I have not seen that curve from him in so long I almost forgot it was there.....somewhere......hidden from view...... Funny the way the year is going for Buch even with the working recovery. At no time in the previous starts did he show that curve.

d-mac has got this thing down pat. Knows how to be handy as the injuries pile up...gets just enough offense going to give you hope that it is more than his annual streak....He has a future as an employment consultant at the end of his baseball career.

I am tellin' ya, d-mac..he started closing his eyes at the plate in Chicago and has been lights out since then:D:D:D:D

Aviles has always had decent range going left. It is his range going right that has always been an issue. This year it will likely be something more of an issue because there is no help to Avlies' right side either. Then again......there is Middlebrooks.

Encouraging to see the Sox hitting this guy. He is a mean average to good left hander, finesse pitcher. The Sox have to be able to generate offense against these kinds of pitchers or their goose is cooked. Not an impressive showing so far by Buch though regardless of the lack of runs. The A's are putrid.

Well that was a lousy inning. Buch gives up two hits another walk to these bums and the A's get a run home off a base path mistake we did not make them pay for....outstanding. Buch may be pitching himself into a trip to Pawtucket.

Interesting that Milone is trying to pound Agons inside. Agons laid off the first pitch of the night tonight which was also inside. Agons first pitch swings are often at pitches on the outside part of the plate or just outside as he seems quite focused on going the other way even when not at Fenway.

Punto probably needs to take lessons from Shoppach "ya just stand there Nick....that is all there is to it...just stand there."

NESN talking heads discussing this as a watershed game for Buch with the Cook decision right in front of them and Buch maybe needed to get the work he needs some other place besides the 3 hole. They may for once be onto something.

Well OK but that is a different kettle of fish. We were saying that Buch would have to return to the Buch of old before injuries to Ells and longer term disability to CC were even twinkles in jacko's eyes. If you want to express the thought that when push comes to shove, this is a team designed to win with offense, not pitching or defense anyway and that we may just not have enough offense to overcome our pitching and defense to pull that off...I am with you there. I really wanted Youk to be in this game tonight, not scratched. I really wanted to be able to get a read on this offense against left hand pitchers against tonight's A's pitcher, Milone. I tend to think he is representative of a decent not great but not terrible LH pitcher. I would like us to win this game but I am at least as interested in seeing how we do against Milone. I a bit concerned with the way we can get shut down by pitchers that are good pitchers but not exactly headed for the HOF. As I said earlier all you can do this time of year is look at match ups that you think might mean something and make judgements off of that for now.

Youk has been scratched from this game with the back. Here we go with Youk and injury, never mind his performance to date. At this rate he is not even going to make my estimate for games played this year.

But dice is not a depth guy and while I would not have believed it until now...he does appear to be making it back on a more optimistic schedule than I would have thought possible. The way some of the other Sox pitchers returning from TJ have faired also suggests that we are going to get innings out of dice after all. Cook is a depth guy. But he is there. When you combine what the Sox have this year and compare that to what they got from Wake and Lackey last year, I can't come to terms with the idea that the rotation is weaker. I can see where the pen is weaker but not the rotation even if Buch does not improve from where he is now. Plus I just don't buy the idea that 150 is an absolute innings limit for Doubront and Bard. 200 may be a stretch but frankly I think 150 is a pretty arbitrary number. I think the farther we get into the season the less Buch becomes some linchpin to the entire rotation because we have options this year. We had no options last year when Buch went down especially when you consider that Lackey was pitching with about half an arm. Under other circumstances he likely would have and should have been shut down. If Buch has to shut it down completely this year that leaves a hole, easier to fill I think than it was last year but a hole none the less. However we were claiming that all three of them 1,2, 3 in the rotation had to pitch to form. We were basically claiming that Buch had to return to Buch of old in order for the Sox to succeed this year. I simply no longer think that is the case.

Well I do think one change we can make to our early spring posts with regard to 1,2 3 in the Sox rotation is that most of us contended that the success of those three was a critical component to any chances that the Sox had. Those comments including my own were made in the complete vacuum of data with regard to Doubront and Bard. We had hopes for those two and I had high hopes for them expressed here several times. Buch looks kinda' vulnerable at the moment but I no longer think that is the total disaster it was once considered to be. Buch has some issues to work out but Doubront and Bard are already pitching better than Buch is pitching at the moment. We have Cook and dice coming. So I do think some of the pressure is off Buch as a component of the 1,2 3 rotation argument. While the league has not really had one shuffle through even within divisions yet, I am still somewhat concerned with the ease with which fairly middling pitchers, some midway through recoveries can shut down the current offense. Granted the current offense does not have Ells and CC. However CC is not a carbon copy of Ells though people like to project him as such and Ells recovery will be slow this year. The A's offense is truly pitiful. So, I will be looking less at what we do with the A's offense (unless they torch us in which case I might jump to the head of that Tobin Bridge line) and more at how our offense performs the next couple of games. This is the bottom end of the A's rotation and other than Buch I have been touting my opinion here that our 4 and 5 will best most 4's and 5's that they face. We get to put that to the test again in the next few games. I would like to see us beat up on these guys at the bottom end of the A's rotation but will be most interested to see how they handle Milone tonight. All you can really do this time of the year is try to find key match ups and see how players perform in those instances. For example, While Lester had a great outing his last time out, he failed pretty badly when he had a shot as the Sox #1 starter to play the traditional role of stopper in the start before that and in fact has not filled that role adequately in the entire period from the start of 2011 when it has been expected of him. That is a fairly long period of time making it hard to just ignore it. So I still have questions about Lester as a 1 and don't see him as a plus there yet. Getting sort of stomped by the metal of the AL at the start of the season was not particularly encouraging either but it was early and we were unable to put our best foot forward in most instances. Beckett has done enough for me to see him as a solid 2, not more not less. Buch is a question mark as a 3 and Doubront and Bard are pluses as the 4 and the 5. The offense has been great at times against pretty crummy pitching and has been stifled at times by pitchers that you would not think would dominate them to such a degree. I still don't see this as a pitching and defense oriented team so the offense must score. Frankly I am glad it is Milone tonight as this might be another of those early season match up games that gives us the means for some early benchmarking of this year's Sox especially as it relates to left handers. He is not great, he is not terrible. He should not show signs of dominance even over a Sox offense that lacks Ells and CC. If anything Ells and CC would not be as critical against a left hander anyway. After tonight most of my interest will likely be focused on the 4 and 5 rotation comparison questions. If we can continue to put our guys in the plus column over the guys they face, that has got to be a very good thing for us.

I suspect that what we might see is Cook come up into a relief role to begin with. The likely candidate at this point is likely our buddy Fat Albers. Albers is inconsistent. I don't like the way they used Atch last night as I still don't think he can reliably come in and get the Sox out of jams but used the right way Atch is a reliable relief pitcher. I would like to see Cook against ML hitters before suggesting he can move into some rotation role. The number of guys going down that have just been creamed up here but have had marvelous success down there makes me really wonder how much of a challenge they are getting down there in AAA. If Cook proves out, maybe Buch will need to continue his "working" recovery in Pawtucket for a bit. When dice gets back, maybe Bard will go back to the bullpen at that point. I think that has been the likely plan all along but it really does depend on who is getting the job done at that point. Right now, on a consistent basis, the 2, 4 and 5 are the guys getting the job done. Really hard in my view to shoehorn successful starters out of their roles. I know, I know about the Bard to the closer question but I keep reminding people that while he was being groomed as a closer, the Sox flipped all of that on its ear. I simply don't buy the argument that they did it because Bard "wanted" to start. I do think that Bard's desires played into the decision but were far from critical to it. Aceves wanted to start as well.....see him starting? I think the question of whether the Sox ultimately decided that closing was not in his blood, will likely be resolved when dice comes back.