jung

Well I hate to say it but this is not likely to work out for Erod. His change is up to about 88 mph and that is where he is throwing that Curve he has broken out. I don't think his cutter has much more velo and he is not throwing his four seam. That is too many pitches at the same velo.

If I didn't know better I would guess that the 1st base ump needs a therapist.

Apparently he has to find his compass first and then if he reads it correctly, he might make it to 1st base.

nibble nibble nibble....Did somebody say this was our BEST starter? Mother of God.

Well I have noticed that guess what.....Erod is now suffering the same fate as Porcello. Erod can't get his Four seam FB up out of the zone any longer either. Couldn't last start and can't today either. Top of the zone is not good enough. Its meat up there unless you have got 96-97 and even then it might be meat.

Cashewnuts has been sent to the bullpen. Geez, don't they have enough problems without being inflicted with that guy.

I was in error in the game thread for the Owings game. I said he was in Detroit and flew back to Boston. NOOOOOOOOO....He was in Toledo! TOLEDO, OH!!!!!!. WTF Cora.

Not pitching inside is not an advantage. Its not the inner 3rd that the pitcher ends up owning if he pitches inside. Its the outer third that he robs away from the hitter if he pitches inside. Now we have hitters diving across the batters box with impunity or simply setting up with their front sides directly over the plate because the pitchers don't pitch inside. They are hitting balls 3-4 inches outside, never mind over the outer half of the plate. Worse, with the Manfred Missile any old doink from a RH hitter reaching across the plate goes into the Sox bullpen. Hitters with middling power now reach Fenway CF bleachers with one handed swings, having expended all of their actual power long before making actual contact with the ball. Worse still, pitchers are hitting batters at a ridiculous and growing rate WHILE NOT TRYING TO PITCH INSIDE. Pitchers used to be good enough to pitch inside with intentions to at least claim the outer 3rd of the plate. Now the only guys that do it are guys like the Angels Heaney who had no idea where his "supposed" two seam FB was going. That is the kind of pitcher now that ends up making hitters leery of diving across the batters box or setting up literally over the plate, pitchers that exhibit no earthly idea where the pitch is going. Like I posted in the GT during the Heaney game we just saw here, Heaney pitched so bad that he was good. Porcello pitched just good enough to be bad.

The DD tax now coming due.

I wasn't "freaking out" at 3.74. Were you? The 1980 season registered a 3.83 collective ERA against a 714 collective OPS. In 1975 it was 3.01 against a 701 collective OPS. Those numbers were not killing MLB. If anything the game survived on its own merits. No carnivals...no sweet caroline. Seats full of actual baseball fans. The inability of the MLB to reach a collective bargaining agreement for the 1994 season is what damn near killed MLB. The owners getting caught in a collusion plot is what damn near killed MLB. MLB management correctly assumes that the steroid era rescued MLB from the strike years because NOBODY and I mean NOBODY was going back to the ballparks. The sentiment was "you idiots could not even reach an agreement between a bunch of rich people that would allow us to have a World Series champion and you want US to come back?" I DON"T THINK SO was a common reply. The issue IMO or at least one of them is that MLB incorrectly assumes it knows WHY the steroid era saved MLB baseball and has in this era entirely pursued turning a multidimensional game into a one dimensional game of power from both mound and batter's box and stick its head the sand to the consequences. More importantly, if MLB wanted to boost offensive numbers, then do it honestly. Don't have Manfred shrug his shoulders and give us the "Sgt Shultz, I know nothing" when asked about baseballs produced by a company that MLB owns! While I would bet some of the "better pitchers from 2014 are still around, the issue for pitching is not "the better pitchers" just as the issue for hitters is not "the better hitters". Are there any hitters challenging the season HR record....NOPE...not even close. So the cream of the crop of HR hitters in baseball are not really benefiting all that much from the Missile. The benefit to hitters in the main from the Manfred Missile has come for the average or below average MLB hitter. The turnover in pitchers is in the pitchers that sit under the top echelon in baseball. It stands to reason that some number of the better pitchers can perform over time, guys like Verlander and Scherzer. It also stands to reason that focusing on velo and spin rate (obviously the current thinking in MLB) is going to burn out more pitchers faster than if velo and spin rate are taken in stride with command. There is no magic bullet of evolution or training techniques that will create more Verlanders and Scherzers.There is no magic to throwing a baseball that hard, that many times. Evolution is not creating arms that are better adapted to throwing baseballs. Baseball players are still a fraction of human beings. Make them throw harder and they will break down sooner and more often and be bounced out of baseball faster. It ain't rocket science. If MLB pitching staffs could be made up of all Verlanders and Scherzers MLB might have a shot at what they are doing. But they can't...there isn't enough of them and there won't be enough of them. The call for robot umps makes me laugh in one sense. We are soon to need robot pitchers before we need robot umps.

Sorry, but you cannot explain away the fact that starting pitchers that regularly went 7 and completed 1/3rd to 1/2 there games no longer can even go 7 regularly and now can't go 6 regularly and are on the way to can't go 5 regularly. That trend is on a much longer time line than the appearance of the first Manfred Missile is on or harder bats or better preparation for hitters. From what I can see the so-called better preparation has done NOTHING across most of baseball. The bulk of the modern hitter thinks the count is always 2-1. That is the way he swings. If he was valuing all this "preparation" then he would not always swing like the count is 2-1. Explain away relief pitchers now utterly incapable of throwing more than 1 inning and in some cases, can't even go an inning? THEY ARE THROWING TOO HARD for their technique and physical characteristics. They are breaking down too often and bounced out of baseball too soon. This has now gone on long enough that MLB ends up backfilling for the wreckage with trash pitchers. As for throwing inside, willy-nilly, pitchers did not throw inside willy-nilly. Check the records. HBP escalated in the 1990's and went clear through the ceiling by 2006. Then it stayed steady state for a few years and is back to going through the ceiling again. HBP, MLB 2006 = 1817 2007 = 1755 2008 = 1672 2013 = 1536 2014 = 1652 2015 = 1602 2016 = 1631 2017 = 1763 2018 = 1922 2019 ytd = 1421 I suspect it is spiking again because the number of hitters that hang out over the plate (Bellenger for example who's elbow is fully covering the inner 1/3rd of the plate just because of where he sets up ) plus the number of hitters that dive across the batter's box (Rafi and X for example). It hardly matters. These changes all effect quality of performance over time. If you want to look at HBP: - either the pitchers are not talented enough to pitch inside effectively or - are afraid to pitch inside If you want to look at nibble, nibble, nibble or pitchers that depend on chase, chase, chase refusing to challenge hitters: - either the pitchers are not talented enough to challenge - are afraid to challenge because of the Manfred Missile Ultimately all of these factors roll up into the same thing, diminished quality of pitching across MLB. As for hitters, if you do not have to work as hard as they should have to in order to achieve a result, increased use of video and other preparation aspects will be meaningless. Why waste the time. If 150 lb soaking wet 2nd basemen are hitting the thing over the Sox bullpens, who needs excessive preparation enhanced by video. Just tick the ball with any part of the barrel and you are in business. I can assure you that any of them have hand eye coordination that make them seem like aliens from another planet when compared to the average human. As for the bat itself, the only kinds of hits that the wood effects is soft liners and bloop hits. Yes there does appear to be an epidemic of those. In other words, pitches that should have shattered a bat previously are now soft liners and bloops to the OF. To me that is the least of MLB's problems. No pitcher fears a soft liner to the OF. At least the hitter had to make some contact. Pitchers should fear HR's and they do now more than ever and they should fear walks which they appear not to fear at all.

You won't know using comparative statistics and neither will the franchise spread sheet geeks. Baseball is going to have to go back to fully manned scouting departments and THEIR opinions are the opinions should count more than some spread sheet geek's spread sheet. Manfred is basically making those statistical orders of merit meaningless. To know how much talent a player has, you have to value how he plays and I don't mean just the stats he produces by playing. How does the pitcher throw the baseball? If he is a flamethrower does he generate his velo from a complete, proper motion or not? Apparently nobody even within the franchises cares any longer. If he hits a number of the gun.....its all good I guess because there are clearly too many guys throwing hard will lousy technique and mismatched physical characteristics. Whether or not he can maintain that velo or can throw velo with command, apparently is out the window. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT! As for the fan's view, I have a tip for those watching MLB on a network as opposed to being at the park. You can watch the baseball off the bat for a much longer period of time when you are at the park than you should be watching it on TV or on some live stream. If you are watching on a network or off a stream, forget the baseball. The baseball is going to go where the baseball is going to go and you will get ample replays anyway. As soon as the producer switches to the general area of the player simply watch the player....how he moves to the ball, how he manipulates his glove and then how he sets up to throw. I pay little to no attention to the baseball itself once it leaves the bat. I will get replays for that. As for the hitter in the box and the pitcher on the mound.....good luck paying enough attention to both at once to be able to determine what is happening. If I want to try to understand the state of a particular pitcher I will watch the pitcher set up on the mound, watch him throw and the pitch itself paying little attention to the batter. Again, I will get s zillion replays that will allow me to see what the hitter did anyway. Fans watching a TV have little concern for pitchers and what they are doing, completely enamored with the majesty of the hitter. If I want to really know what is going on with a hitter, I will pay little attention to the pitcher especially if I already know how he sets up on the mound and how he throws. I will focus almost entirely on the batter in the box, where he is in the box and what he is doing to trigger his swing, whether he widens his stance with two strikes or not and the swing itself and what happens as a result. With the exception of focusing on the pitcher, the ball itself is the last thing I worry about when watching a network broadcast.

The pitching was getting worse Waaaaaaaaaaaay before the first Manfred Missile. The Manfred Missiles (now plural) just exacerbated an already existing condition. The pitching was certainly better in the 1990's and before, better in at least the first 5 to maybe 10 years of this century. Baseball prides itself on its statistical records that go back a long long way. Going back 10 years, even 15 years is just dodging the issue. The pitching sucks and much like any frame of reference you want to talk about realistically, once a performance standard falls to a very low level it cascades from there. It will hockey stick at some point. No performance standard remains steady state either in advance or decline forever. Eventually it will cascade either way whether it a business performance standard or anything else you want to measure over time. There is no question but that the Manfred Missile has exacerbated that cascade even further but that is all it has done. The "Missile" is the coup de grace and not more than that.

Worse, the 2019 Yankmees have not even won anything yet and their obnoxious, clueless fans are already gloating. In the first place, anybody who has read my posts here knows how I feel about MLB Division Crowns. You want to use them as barometers of whether your team is improving or declining, fine. Treating them as some sort of accomplishment is absurd. If I were running things at these MLB franchises I would NEVER put a pennant up for a Division Crown. All you are proclaiming proudly to the world is that somebody in your league BEAT YOU that year! So Yankmee fans are gloating over an accomplishment that is not even an accomplishment. Keep your crap on Yankmee boards Yankmee fans. Circle jerk yourselves about "possible" Division Crowns until you don't have any spunk left for all i care....JUST DO IT OVER THERE!

Its not really Cora. He is stuck dealing with the sludge that passes for MLB quality pitching these days and that is really all it is. As fans we simply have not come to terms with how bad pitching is generally across MLB. We keep comparing these clowns to each other without realizing that its a formula that does not work any longer because they are basically with few exceptions all a buncha' double AA quality pitchers at best. Who cares anymore that this guy's ERA is X and this other guy's ERA is Y. We are comparing a bum to a hobo and somehow trying to build an argument for the bum vs the hobo. The final coup de grace for the whole bunch of them impersonating MLB pitchers is the new 2019 Manfred Missile. The 2016 version was not good enough for our boy Rob. Noooooooo....and the 2018 version was not good enough for him either. Whatever low level of actual pitching talent they have has been scared right out of them by a baseball that any two bit punk could knock over the wall just by barely touching it. So welcome to Manfred League Baseball. Hope you like it. Anybody with an eye for baseball talent not completely attached to a spread sheet should have seen this coming years ago.

So Owings was in Detroit with the PawSox. They brought in back to Boston to lead off in this game so they could fly him to Cleveland for the next one????? What the f*** was that? Oh wait, I need to conform to the forum glossary, what the f***, WTF Cora?

And of course the answer to the question, Which of these two teams looks like it has a chance at the post season is........neither one. A split at home with the hapless Angels just says it all.

Well that was predictable. Still think the Sox win this either in the bottom of this inning or in the 9th.

Albert really can't extend his arms any longer. I don't know what they did to get him back onto the field after his back injuries. Maybe spinal fusion because he sure swings like a guy with spinal fusion surgery.

Well nice to see this is still the same Angels team even without Mike Scioscia at the helm. They never seem to change and they never bring in players that would allow them to change. They can hit and in some years they could pitch a little. But the rest of their game is just awful. They just blow games left and right. If I had to guess, the Angels will come back and tie this again, only to lose in the 8th or 9th to the Sox. It won't get to extras IMO. Only dif is that you could see the steam coming out of Scioscia's ears and Brad is not really that sort of Manager.

Yea I know...but the truth is Cashewnuts does not deserve to have meatballs missed. He is pure trash.

I have no idea how Goodwin missed that meatball.

DD should have Cashewnuts carry his resignation up to Henry's office. Problem is Cashewnuts will probably miss Henry's desk with the envelop.

This is one of the things I was afraid of...a complete and total collapse with 40-50 games remaining. Then again it might be just what some of us need to shake ourselves from the idea that they have not been a buncha' mutts the whole year. I have seen 15 year old bull mastiffs in 100 degree heat show more life than these guys.

Boy they look enthusiastic today....don't they? I am probably going to have a hard time containing myself I think.