jung

If Rick can walk off the mound only giving up one I would consider that a victory at this point.

Rick got a real break there.

Rick's most dangerous starts these days are when he still tries to throw that four seam. Its meat. But you have to admire his guts. Has buckets of that.

1. Max Kepler (L) RF 2. Jorge Polanco (S) SS 3. Nelson Cruz ® DH 4. Luis Arraez (L) 2B 5. Miguel Sano ® 3B 6. Jake Cave (L) CF 7. C.J. Cron ® 1B 8. Jason Castro (L) C 9. LaMonte Wade Jr (L) LF 1. Mookie Betts ® RF 2. Rafael Devers (L) 3B 3. Xander Bogaerts ® SS 4. J.D. Martinez ® DH 5. Andrew Benintendi (L) LF 6. Mitch Moreland (L) 1B 7. Christian Vazquez ® C 8. Brock Holt (L) 2B 9. Jackie Bradley Jr. (L) CF

No lineups yet. I don't know who the hell is pitching at this point either. The way things are going they could roll Wally out there to pitch the 1st for all I know. Whoops...spoke too soon. Radio guys are saying its Ricky-poo for us

Thread title: Let's see if Porky is really worth the money he's getting paid. Geezus, for a second I thought you were implying that Pearce was coming back.

I would suggest that the Sox are as much sending JBJ a message as sending us a message. The message is, we no longer can claim we have any reasonable expectation of a rotation that we can plan around and therefore we no longer need to put a premium defensive CFer that is an unreliable hitter in CF every day. We can go with a "passable" defender in CF that is a more reliable hitter. Beni would not be more than passible in CF and Mookie would not be more than passable in that position either. The problem with moving Mookie there is you move him out of the position he appears to have been born for.....RF and most particularly RF in Fenway Park. So if I had to guess, JBJ is gone. Beni moves to CF and the Sox get themselves a LFer that is a hitter from someplace. Then again, Mookie might not be here in 2020 either.

Keep BJ, don't keep BJ. It hardly matters. We do not have coaching assets that can work with a pitcher like BJ. If they want to do him a favor, make him a throw in on a trade with a team that actually coaches a variety of pitchers. Clev and Tampa come to mind if he is to stay in the AL. St Louis in the NL comes to mind.

He may or may not be. But that particular malady has reached epidemic proportions in MLB whether he is afflicted or not.

There is a wave of junkers making some headway in MLB of late. No matter how much Manfred tries to manipulate this game one aspect of it that remains is that the game itself tries to self-correct. Johnson simply cannot get rolling in a stint and it does not appear to matter whether he is trying to get rolling with an appearance that begins in the 3rd inning or the 1st inning. Once he gets rolling he is good for another 2-3 innings anyway before he starts to struggle again if left out there for a 4th inning. There is some logic to that because if you really cannot throw heat to get through early troubles the crap you are throwing up there is going to get tagged if you can't locate it. As to how a starter gets through a 5th inning, they are all struggling with that these days with exception of the very best of them. That problem is not specific to BJ. So BJ's early issues would appear to be a pretty specific problem for BJ and one that is probably tied up in taking too long to find his release point and arm angle early in stints. Seems to me something that a coach could work on with him.

Get out your construction helmets boys. This is setting up to be another game where a building falls on our heads late.

I actually am beginning to wonder if MLB chastising Verlander at the ASG was as much acknowledgement that MLB does not want their "secret to get out". Verlander should have just told them their pants were already down around their ankles and their asses were already hanging out in the breeze.

And I should acknowledge that whatever sparse "quality" there is in the bulk of MLB pitchers has now been totally destroyed by the Manfred Missile which has been the very definition of the "straw that broke the camel's back".

Would have messed with those two guys something fierce. For one thing there is every chance that as soon as they could not conform to this nonsense they would have been considered "not good enough" and we would never have seen nor heard from them again. In Glavin's case, maybe not at all.

Have to say it....the EEI crew is so much more informative than OB and all his nonsense about what Red Sox player is leading the league in some stat or another for the last three Wednesdays IF there is a full moon that night. Remy has turned irritating as well.

Well I would not actually call it babying as much as it is too much focus on only two aspects of pitching to the detriment of everything else. Velo and spin rate preferred to command and and the offshoot is they can't go innings and they break down too early and often. They end up "babied" but they are in the Majors by the time that happens. Before that they are being groomed to be what MLB wants them to be....pitchers that give their Managars all they have for every pitch until they can't go any longer in a stint and that is simply wrongheaded. It is actually much worse than pointing hitters at launch angle because you are not going to physically damage a hitter pointing him at a launch angle swing. Starters used to pace themselves through games and they are no longer taught to do that and hence....no longer do that. They don't even know how any longer.

Since switching to EEI for audio I was checking back in with NESN as Price went out of the game. They are see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil......figures. EEI is justifiably concerned. I did not want to post it earlier just because....but Price did not look comfortable on the mound. Constantly looking at his wrist and shaking it. You folks must have noticed that when Price has a cranky anything he goes through a good many gyrations to show us all that he is "toughing through it". Remember that ridiculous contraption he had in the dugout last year or year before last.

In general I would agree that the quality across MLB is not what it should be. But they have as purposefully aimed pitchers at velo and spin rate at the expense of command and just burned through them like Sherman's march to the sea. What did they think was going to happen? Its not like you can just ratchet up the velo and the spin rate and get either the command or the innings out of these guys. WAS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Result, starters now struggle to go 5, never mind 6 and REALLY never mind consistent 7's or complete games. Worse than that, (if something could be worse) relief pitchers can no longer go multiple innings. 20 pitches and they are done! All of this horse s*** that the players are sooooooo much better now was simply horse s*** used to cover up what was actually happening on the diamond. I will grant you that there is not enough quality to go around. But how much of that is simply burning through these pitchers when they are too young forced to give their Managers "all they can for as long as they can" which is now been so normalized that it is the vocal mantra around MLB. They have been singing that mantra for a good ten years now at least and this is the result. The human body is only designed to do so much. Never mind the spreadsheets and the advanced metrics and fitness training and even drugs. The body can only do so much and can only stand so much.

Who has taught these Angels pitchers how to throw Changeups. In fact, from what I have seen....NOBODY But I digress. I had to switch to EEI for audio as OB is once again puke material and I can't take Remy's all day complaints about strike calls and Sox pitchers. The EEI crew commenting that MLB is beginning to wonder about its posture regarding pitching considering what a train wreck it is in MLB now. They must have gotten wind of some under the surface rumblings. The quality of pitching in MLB is clearly completely out of control BAD. Can't keep pointing at Verlander and saying "well what about Verlander". Verlander is simply the exception that proves the rule. However, they are also acknowledging the same thing I have said for a long time. We did not get here overnight and we are not going to clean up this train wreck overnight either. I have mused that it will take 10 years to clean up this mess. It will certainly take 5 easily and more probably, 10.

I don't get it either RemDog. You got moonshots leaving all over the place and 0-0 in the first, teams pull the infield in with a runner at 3rd. Must be another screwed up spreadsheet thing.

Price going for Sox

Manaea losing the strike zone a bit in the 5th for the A's. But he looks pretty good for a guy in his first game back in a long long time. Holding the Yanks scoreless so far through 5. 0-0 top of the 6th.

A's look like a much tougher team now with Manaea back on the mound and Matt Olson back at 1st base.

Plenty of blame to go around from DD through Cora though some of the players: - DD for simply following his usual pen MO - DD for overpaying for Nate and for signing fat ass Pearce at all - Cora for his ST plan for pitchers that just based on Sale was a FAIL - who knows what the f*** plan LaVangie had. He's a catcher! - Fat Ass Pearce who simply proved himself to be fat ass Pearce - JD and Mookie clearly suffering from early season distractions that should not have been distractions at all Kudos to X, Rafi, Vaz, Work and Erod with special emphasis on X who is now the clubhouse leader of this team. You can have the rest of them top to bottom in this organization at least as it relates to their 2019 "effort"

Oh yea...NFL cares about player health as they careen toward either a revised playoff format or an 18 game regular season. Meanwhile the players will take virtually ANYTHING in a new contract as long as they get Marijuana use out of the deal. I guess as far as the NFL is concerned, never mind that Marijuana is outright legal in many states and will likely be virtually legal in all but the most cockeyed of them soon enough.