jung

$6M is a pile of money to get NOTHING. I am being reasonable. It was a bad deal the day it was signed and it has not aged well. Nate made some sense...but not at $68/4. Pearce made no sense whatsoever. Simply a DD binky deal.

I don't see much adjustment anywhere. MLB pitching sucks now and has been on this sucks spiral for awhile now. Dodger Ryu is the one clear standout with this baseball which makes me wonder about the baseball they use in Korean ball and how similar it might be to this MLB baseball. I do see grips changing....The knuckle curve as opposed to the traditional Curve grip is a good example I think. Dependence on the Change is another good example. I was always a Hitter and never drew a mental picture of myself as a Pitcher. But we all messed around with pitches. I suspect if I tried to throw a knuckle curve to a Catcher standing in front of a building I would have broken twenty panes of glass on said building before hitting the Catcher's mitt even once.

They would not work together....but if you could blend them into one Pres of Baseball ops you would have something. Like I said, it would take a head on collision car wreck to actually get actual body parts form both of those specific guys working as a single Pres of Baseball Ops. But somebody who could deal AND could do it without twitching every time there is a chance to rape the farm system would be a heck of a Pres of Baseball Ops. The Director of Player Personnel builds the farm system. So your Pres of Baseball Ops does not do that job. But to have the Pres of Baseball Ops just frothing out of the corners of his mouth to simply gut the farm is not a particularly attractive situation. There is some discussion in this forum about the quality of the players in our farm system when DD got here. It does not matter. Regardless of whether you are stocked with top picks or middling picks or garbage, anybody not wearing a cast will be gone before DD is done.

Correct on talent. 2018 team much much more talented. The only shot the 2013 team would have had beating the 2018 team was grit and guile which is what they won on in many 2013 games anyway.

Pearce was a huge mistake. Worse than giving Nate $68M/4. We already had Moreland. So there was no new Moreland deal at the start of this year. I really don't like how they handled 1st base at all from a payroll and roster perspective but Pearce was the knife stuck in the gut....fat useless f***...journeyman player has a great WEEK and gets a contract. Wonderful!!! Incidentally Price was the WS MVP not Pearce. But that is water under the bridge. And it does not matter the result with Chavis as much as the organization's willingness to bring him up. So without Pearce and if they crapped out on whomever they brought in to share time with Moreland are we saying they would not simply have brought up Chavis earlier?

It is posted up at this hour and it is BJ.

The 2013 team was a perfect blend of mainly vets with something to prove playing for a future paycheck with a few young guys in the right spots. Shave Victorino, Johny Gomes, Napoli, Drew, Ross were all playing to prove they still had a future in MLB, some coming off injury. That was just the everyday players in that spot...never mind the pitchers in the same spot. Once the vets had proven what they wanted to prove individually in 2013 they were done and so was the 2014 team.

Gotta admit, Cherries seems to have done a decent job with the Jays farm. We need a guy like Cherries and a guy like DD to have a head on collision and have the docs put together a Pres of Baseball Ops out of the remaining usable limbs and various body parts. THATS OUR GUY!!!!

Yup.....they could actually just be waiting for the inflammation to subside and taking a look at that point. But he is done for the year. He is not going to pitch at all for these 6 weeks....zipo....zero....nada. So that is it for this year and well it should be. To be honest, I almost wish they simply looked in 6 weeks and operated at that point. Its the actual only shot Sale has at pitching the same way he has always pitched which I think is uber-important to Chris Sale the person. It would be his first TJ which would also be encouraging. Its not like he would be on to TJ II or TJ III. I would rather give up his 2020 season and get back the Chris Sale we are paying for than nurse along a frustrated pitcher. Just heard that Sale got a PLP injection in the elbow on Monday. That is not the most encouraging thing I have ever heard.

Nola for the Philies. Still no probably pitcher up for the Sox as of 8/20, 9:30AM.

The baseball version of Ron Gronkowski but on a guaranteed contract.

I think the key element to the "other transition pitchers" discussion is that Tanaka had a path to a reasonably effective continuing career. CC not discussed here had one. Timmy didn't. I think Sale has a narrow path to a reasonably effective continuing career depending on how much real damage there is in that elbow. A better Change than the one he features now, the same Slider and FB velo in the 91-94 range and mostly 91-93 could be Sale's path. I have serious doubts Chris can go backwards to where he was. Biggest issue IMO.....Chris is going to fight it. He is IMO going to try to go back to where he was.

Which would make sense if MLB was not turning off the only mass fan base it really has. Check the demographic breakdown for MLB telecasts. Never mind the crowd that shows up for the Fenway Carnival and the other carnivals around baseball. The only mass of people watching are MY AGE or older! Total numbers are down even with the 54+ and 65+ demos. Ain't workin' Manfred....ain't workin'.

If Sale doesn't fight it he can succeed. He still has a great Slider. His Change could be better. But that could be one of the things he works on. He will need to keep enough difference in velo between his FB and his Slider to make the Slider effective. That does not require that he throw 97. I knew he was in trouble when he tried to go back to heavy velo because he was over-thowing to get there putting excessive pressure on his arm. His throws are all arm and he is skin and bones. If he did not have such a long, lanky body, he would never be able to generate the velo he generates. Its that long arm that creates the fulcrum he uses to throw hard. But with no lower body driving toward home plate and being 180 lbs soaking wet, his throw is all arm. He was never going to be able to throw heavy velo deep into a career. He has to resolve this for himself in his own head. Its his head that will be the issue now. So much of his pride on the mound has been based on serious gas and the ability to throw any pitch at any time. Can he generate the same sort of mental attitude toward his pitching by "fooling" hitters instead of overpowering them with massive FB velo and ridiculous Slider movement. We won't know until Sale actually confronts it and works it out, or doesn't. Tim Lincicum couldn't do it. He just threw himself into the turf, ground his arm to dust because his whole makeup on the mound was based on serious gas and serious movement using a skin and bones body, a long arm and a big fulcrum just like Sale. If anything Timmy put more lower body into his pitch than Sale. There just was not much body there to work with...again just like Sale. Timmy was hard to watch at the end because you could see that he was just unwilling or unable to give up his old pitching self but just could not do it any longer. At the end he would deteriorate and fall apart within two innings....arm just completely spent.

Tanaka is not trying to throw 97. Said it weeks ago. First Sale must dissuade himself of the notion that he can throw again as he did earlier in his career. Sale should have known where this was going. If he has learned it with limited damage to the elbow that is fine. If he insists on pressing the issue he will only come to grief. He is about 175 lbs, He generates no momentum toward the plate from his lower body. In fact he generates less lower body momentum in his motion than Price does with his recoil follow-through. Sale with no follow-through to speak of is trying to throw as hard as guys that outweigh him by 40 lbs. That effort was always going to have a shorter shelf life. Tanaka really did not have to go through the kind of transformation that faces Sale. Tanaks pretty much knew where he was and did not really press the issue. Sale has already tried to press the issue once. Hate to think it but this could start looking like Tim Lincecum II. Not sure there really is the same path forward for Sale that Tanaka took.

So now the question is what do they do for the remainder of 2019. I would monitor him and see if he can get back to pitching pain free. If he can do that I would let him pitch just to continue what is clearly a transition to a 30+ year old pitcher that can't depend on Gas anywhere near the degree he has in the past. If he can't pitch pain free, then it will have to wait till 2020.

And I wonder how much of that came out of HAVING TO SQUEEZE IN TWO GAMES END OF JUNE IN LONDON. More f***ing ridiculous Manfred nonsense, plus Henry trying to promote Fenway Group as both the Liverpool FC and Boston Red Sox owner.

I think the rest days are likely the one thing that is NOT coming from the spread sheet geeks. I do think the match up lineup changes are coming from the spread sheet geeks, but not the rest days that are pure rest days. The spread from one player to the next is just too great to be generated from spread sheets. Cora's eyes are telling him that a guy should get a day and Cora appears unwilling to fight that regardless of other inputs like "hey we really need to win this game". Its Cora's eyes in most cases or eventually the number of games between a break comes into play. I think the match up lineup changes are almost all the spread sheet geeks. It looks like they have total control in Tampa for example and likely have a good deal of control up here as well. All you need do to justify Cora's rest day regimen regardless of how frustrating it might be for fans is look at the injury record for everyday players on this team the last two years compared to what it is for other teams.

Manfred has turned MLB into a farce and with all due respect to many fans, one would have to be a clown to genuflect to his nonsense. So many of these HR's are simply a consequence of the Manfred Missile baseball and hideous pitching and not much else. Plus, MLB does not enforce the rules it has and is entirely wrongheaded about its addresses to pace of play. GET the hitters in the box and keep them there. There is already a rule that keeps them there. Is it enforced...NOPE. Mookie is the only every day first stringer we have that actually STAYS IN THE BOX only taking one foot out and that only on occasion. Mookie got buzzed in this game and never left the box. Hitters regularly did it the way Mookie does it years ago. You rarely had hitters spending all this time outside the box. Some would come in and prepare their footing in the box before the first pitch of the AB. But that was it. Once they had the box and their footing done....DONE...none of this nonsense between every pitch. Vaz strolls entirely around home plate after some pitches like he is picnicking at the Public Garden. JD takes a deep breadth, consults with the cosmos or his deceased ancestors or ponders or what the f*** ever before he even begins to step in....every single pitch, ball, strike, swing, no swing, contact, no contact....every single pitch. Travis steps out of the box entirely after an uncontested called ball in this game. He didn't swing, didn't move, simply watched a ball that neither pitcher nor catcher contested go by and yet can't stay in the box for the next pitch...has to get entirely out of the box TO WHAT....PONDER? Watch in the next game how many of this current crop of MLB goons step entirely out of the batter's box after doing NOTHING and go through the whole damn ritual again or step entirely out after PARISH THE THOUGHT....oh the horror.....a swing and miss. "My God I must rearrange and start all over again. I swung and missed!!!" Villar, an utter embarrassment of a baseball player literally meandered around the batters box for what seemed like a full half minute or more yammering about a strike call that was in fact A STRIKE and then spent another half minute thinking about it! In the meantime the pitchers do NOTHING. They do not go through their pre-pitch regimen's while these goon hitters are performing their antics barely within the same zip code as home plate.The last pitcher that toed the rubber, glove up, ball in hand and stoically waited for the contemporary hitter to get in the damn box was a guy we don't like much around here, Andy Pettitte. Heck at the point when said goon hitter finally got in the box even Andy still had to wait for a sign from the Catcher who surely was not going to go through signs with the hitter dancing around out of the batter's box. That one thing , seeing Andy stone still, toeing the rubber, glove up, ball in hand, ready to go, I truly appreciated about Andy. Andy threw his last ML pitch in 2013, 6 YEARS AGO. The last bunch of ML pitchers that did that or did close to that was the bunch that retired around when Curt Schilling retired. He threw his last MLB pitch in 2007, 12 YEARS AGO. I don't know where Manfred thinks he is going with this nonsense and I don't know what the contemporary fan mostly oblivious to the whole thing thinks he is watching. But I will guarantee you this. The same oblivious fan that does not see any of this as nonsense, the Manfred Missile, the demise of MLB quality pitching, all this nonsense outside the batter's box, REPLAY will be the first fan to abandon this thing called MLB entirely when while he can't seem to fathom why, suddenly the whole thing bores him to tears.

Cleveland won today along with the Rays. Guardians earn a split with the Yankmees. Twins up on Rangers. But its early in that game.

The mental state of some of these O's must be terrible. If you think about it, the middle infield fell apart right after Villar's two little back to back tiffs, one at home plate and one on the bath paths. After that, he was smack in the middle of every screw up that followed in the bottom half of that inning. He botched so many plays that he took the wind completely out of Alberto's sails and he was at that point crap at 2nd while Villar was being a complete ******* at SS. I don't think I have ever seen one player utterly whaaaaaa his way through a half inning in the field so completely. I have seen worse half innings by a defender but not from lack of effort. Villar just pouted his way through the entire half inning and took every other fielder he came in contact with down with him.

Rafi is not even arb eligible till 2021 and not a FA till 2024. I don't know who represents him though. Still, he is the guy you empty the bank account for unless something really stupid happens to him. Given the way his fielding has come along, he stands a chance of being an every year MVP candidate, All Star and possible GG candidate.

Stunning to think that with all of his excellence at the plate and with much better hitters around him, Rafi is still behind Trout in OPS, Slugging, HR's and OBP.

Mookie does not even get out of the box after being buzzed.

7 HR's by the Nats SO FAR in their game with the Brewers today. MLB hitting about 50 HR's day....285 HR's a week on the season. RIDICULOUS!!!