jung

Only the 2019 Sox who could not put away a team of grandmama's could back into this one. PATHETIC!

I really only have one question relative to the future or current Pres of Baseball Ops. How do they deal with Mookie Betts. Either they are going to hold onto Mookie for his 2020 season and gamble that they can make a 2020 run which seems more difficult to fathom the deeper we get into 2019 thanks to the pitching problems and most specifically the rotation or they trade Mookie before the 2020 season begins. They can make Mookie an offer. Its worth the effort but he won't accept it. They can't possibly be nuts enough to give Mookie the kind of money he is going to be seeking. If its trade him, are the Sox going to let a lame duck Pres of baseball ops handle the Mookie trade? They would have to be out of their minds to do that. Yet, extending DD in order to resolve that problem seems equally absurd.

Barnes has generally not sucked the first stint of back to backs. But has sucked in the second game of back to backs and has absolutely sucked in any instances when he was used back to back to back. All of those stints were high leverage in that he was being used in the Fireman role. If a fire needed to be extinguished, Barnes got it. If we were down to the 7th inning and Barnes had not been used in the Fireman role then Cora was looking at the opposing lineup and stuffing Barnes in against the toughest three hitters the opponent had coming up in the late innings. I think the combination of Fireman assignments and toughest three opponent hitters late assignments killed him. For the period of time Brasier was the closer, Barnes got everything else that qualifies as high stress. So I don't think it was the total quantity of innings as much as Barnes never got a break and in truth he could not cut it under those circumstances. So you could say he sucked. I would say he just could not get it done in circumstances where every assignment was high stress. Actually, neither Barnes nor Brasier held up in the assignments they were given and I frankly don't remember many posters here offering that they thought they would hold up in those assignments. Brasier IMO had no shot. Maybe Cora should have spread Barnes high stress assignments a bit more through the pen. Cora tried to give some of them to Hembree and that didn't last very long. Given how many innings Work ended up with I don't think we could have handed more of them to Work. Heck who knows if Work will hold up. There are still 46 games to go. They might have been better off just bitting the bullet and sink or swim with DHern getting more work. But that surely looked dicey earlier in the season.

The point is Henry will only hire a Pres of Baseball Ops he knows. He might hire from within but it would surprise me if he did. Henry knows Theo. Frankly I don't think it will be Theo because while Henry knows Theo, Theo knows him!

I NEVER thought the comments from the team that they were grooming Nate for the closer role made any sense and I don't even know if they were serious or just panicked. Nate is not going there. Its Work for now.

Just as an aside, as for how the team was constructed, DD himself came out and said more than once this year and most recently just today that "THE TEAM WAS BUILT AROUND ITS ROTATION".

We really only had one guy that Cora was willing to give the fireman role to and that was Barnes. Barnes absolutely got overused because he got so many of the high stress relief assignments as Mr Fireman. Early on Brasier got the other high stress relief innings and he folded like an aluminum lawn chair. IMO, the only guys that were really getting high stress assignments of any sort for the entire season were Barnes...overworked in that role, Hembree....broke down in that role, Brasier....folded like a cheap suit in that role and Workman who turned out to be a workhorse. He is the only guy that survived it.

Probably not, pains me to say it but neither of these two teams is likely to impact standings by season end. They will just end up finishing one game short each.

Like Splinter said....if the Sox were a horse, he would shoot it. We can't put anybody away and I do mean anybody. We would probably be down two going to the bottom of the 10th to Sisters of the Poor, actually make that Sisters of the Poor Senior League team. We are just so pathetic its funny. $240M worth of pure bull crap for a season. Just goes to show you how coming in to a season fat dumb and happy if not utterly bloated can f*** you up for the entirely of a 162 game season.

That is not to suggest that the Sox infield defense has been "crisp" tonight. Their play has been a little soft to be honest.

Just an opinion, but I think Billy outran the play.

Could be Beni if he does not go back to that big stride again. That was obviously the flaw in his swing. But Beni has been here before with a shortened up stride and a more upright posture in the box. The question is will he stay here or will that stride creep out there AGAIN.

This Sox team is not this bad. Our Red Sox have given up.

1. Whit Merrifield ® LF 2. Humberto Arteaga ® SS 3. Hunter Dozier ® RF 4. Jorge Soler ® DH 5. Cheslor Cuthbert ® 3B 6. Nicky Lopez (L) 2B 7. Meibrys Viloria (L) C 8. Ryan O'Hearn (L) 1B 9. Billy Hamilton (S) CF 1. Mookie Betts ® RF 2. Rafael Devers (L) 3B 3. Xander Bogaerts ® SS 4. J.D. Martinez ® DH 5. Andrew Benintendi (L) LF 6. Christian Vazquez ® C 7. Mitch Moreland (L) 1B 8. Brock Holt (L) 2B 9. Jackie Bradley Jr. (L) CF

Everybody knew the Pen would be an issue this year. This is particularly true since bullpen arms are a blind spot for DD...always have been. However, the real issue is that while DD is right that the team was built around its rotation being right in this case does not help anything. Therein lies the problem. The rotation has underperformed to expectation to a degree that is just bombastic if not catastrophic. The expectation for this rotation was not that it would putz around at about mid pack or worse to the rest of this league of laughably inept pitchers. The expectation was that the rotation would be either 1 or 2 or 3 in the league. They have been stunningly bad and I don't think that is hyperbole. Yes, the fact that the entire pen has been used early and often means that the weaker arms wear out quickly and the stronger arms wear out eventually because you keep having to come back to guys like Hembree, Barnes, Workman cause that is about all they can do. The entire idea that we might get by with this pen was predicated on having one of the top 3 rotations in the league mated to a monster offensive talent pool and a ho-hum pen. Do we have one of the top 3 rotations even in this league of Keystone Kops pitchers? I happen to think the entire pitching staff has underperformed. But the underperformance of the rotation is the most shocking and the most unexpected underperformance without question and its underperformance to expectation has just rippled through the dugout and the organization. If major overhauls to Management outside of Cora don't occur at year end, I will be much surprised. I suspect some players will be leaving town as well.

Rick had not as yet given up on his Four seam in the second to last start and paid for it early. Last start, just abandoned his four seam completely and did much better against what is albeit an anemic team. Sale will be doing "all he can" when he finally admits what is happening to him. He has not done that yet evidenced by what he throws and how he throws it. Price once again finds a way to make himself unlikeable while pitching like crap. When you consider that he could not even win with dignity at the WS and has now simply found a way to rot even that effort....I have little to no use for him. I could be easily convinced that Price is trying to talk and pitch his way outta' town.

Whaaaaaaaa....now I am butt hurt Vega. Whaaaaaaa.....If the players can do it....so can I by God.

As someone who logged massive miles during a career, I can say from experience that travel days are not off days and they certainly are not rest days no matter how comfy the seat. Plus MLB sucking up travel days with regular season nonsense like trips to Europe don't help. Expansion is what has made travel such a grind now. The Eastern teams never really had to travel past the Central time zone in the past. The Western teams has to make a run to Texas and a run to Seattle and that was about it. Now they all have to go everywhere and that includes stops in all of the time zones. They certainly have not provided enough off days to take that into account especially since a number of them turn out to be travel days (see my earlier comment about what a travel day represents vs an actual off or rest day). It should never happen that a team has to show up at 4:00 AM as best they can do no matter what and then play a game that night just as an example.

And the cliff is reality as it relates to the laughable notion of a 21st century dynasty: - the financial structure of the MLB - including the MLBPA which is really the "team" the players play for now. Don't think we will see an MLBPA on a WS trophy but the reality is that is their TEAM now - the travel schedule which is now brutal and getting worse. Thank you MLB. - MLB's head in the sand attitude toward the travel schedule and the related unrealistic attitude toward the use of some PED's under the direction of a physician - the team crushing or at least dynasty crushing attitude toward pitching approach which is making it impossible to keep pitchers healthy and pitching for very long while paying them millions of $$$$. God help the MLB if it tries a 2 team expansion as half the pitchers filling MLB unis don't belong there now. Where they get another 40-50 from, I have no idea. If any franchise manages a real dynastic run including a back to back WS win somewhere along the way, I will be mightily surprised.

Closest thing to a dynasty in this century to date is the Boston Red Sox and we are not a dynasty. If two WS wins in three years now counts as a dynasty that is a new definition of dynasty. Dodgers have not won it even once in their run. Houston has won it once. They have a very good shot at winning it twice in three years. Nice but not a dynasty. Closest thing to the Sox are the Giants and they were not a dynasty either. I don't even thing the Giants could repeat their run as the new financial restrictions have kicked in. You have to at least be able to repeat WS win during your run to make the grade as a dynasty. Nobody has even had a repeat WS win in decades. Division wins don't count when considering dynasties either. They are just markers in the road to a possible WS win, nothing more. Nice to have, but not indicative of a dynasty. We are all in the same boat. Just make sure to hang your head over the railing before you barf.

But we have 4, 21st century WS wins, the last in 2018. There will be no more dynasties in this version of MLB. So we are all in the same boat. Welcome to the railing. Just make sure to keep your head on the other side of it while you barf.

History does not repeat. But it does rhyme. Part of the reason why I suggest this "formula" we have now would likely yield a championship caliber team every 5-7 years, about what you get if you are the KC Royals is because at least in DD's vision it requires signing big name, established star caliber starting pitchers and they want 5-7 year contracts. If you can get star caliber at times without the big name, somewhere between ages 23-28...fine. If you have to sign them to 5-7 year deals ages 28+ you are going to suck on those contracts to the bitter end and trade them paying out half their cost on the way out the door just to free yourself of them. Oddly, just as much younger head Cherries left us with Fat Panda and Hanley to pay out for, DD has left us with final daggers in the heart, Sale and Nate plus Price to wrangle with and wiggle out from under. Could have managed it if he had not signed WS binkie, Nate for $17 per (too much) and then the final coup de grace, Sale at 5 and $145 (did not need to be done when it was done). It remains to be seen whether Porcello has any real future as a front line starter in MLB at this point. In his current state of upheaval with no four seam FB, his value on the market is quite limited. We won't be trying to extend him but might resign him at a bargain price. We likely keep ERod if only because he is worth more to us than he would return in trade. In all likelihood, we have no choice now but to trade Mookie in the off season, possibly JBJ, possibly Chavis just to salvage a bridge to 2021. We build around X and Rafi, the only two untouchables in the entire litter. So much for the superstar rotation and the killer B's plus Rafi. That window closes more because of the demise of the superstar rotation than because of any failing of the killer B's. The choice for Pres of Baseball Ops of future significance will be built around the question of: Do we bring in somebody to build back our farm and then rehire a DD type a few years later to build us to a championship run or do we find somebody that is some of each. "Come back Theo, come back. Won't you come home". Whatever we do, pink hat world will struggle with it. But they don't really care as for them a visit to Fenway is a trip to the carnival and a chance to sing Sweet Caroline and do the wave, GOD HELP US! The diehard Sox fan will likely be OK with it because we now have four championships, all in this century to hold up. Good luck to the rest of you stains not the SF Giants catching up to that one in MLB as it is currently configured before we get to number 5.

Pathetic

Hernandez wants to be a strike thrower and challenge hitters. He will be traded.

I actually think its the f***ing spread sheet geeks in baseball ops. Our pitching staff no longer throws strikes. We challenge NOBODY. To this point in the season our staff has thrown 700+ more pitches than every other MLB team. The rest of them are all clustered in the 17,000 pitch range and we stick out like a sore thumb at over 18.000 pitches. Now I think command and challenging hitters has gone clear down the toilet bowl all over MLB. But that dif in total pitches is ridiculous. We now have a whole rotation of pitchers that challenges nobody. The only potential starter we have who challenges is Nate who is clearly not up to speed yet. Our starters exit early leaving too much on the table for the pen. The starters either nibble (EROD and now Price) or try to get hitters to chase (Sale and Cashewnuts).We don't know what the f*** category Porcello is in at this point and neither does he. How did that happen? We hardly have any relief pitchers that challenge hitters. So, food for thought: - did they hire a former catcher to be the pitching coach to tamp down any resistance to this spread sheet nonsense from a pitching coach with actual pitching experience? - did they decide not to bring back Kimbrel because he challenges hitters and they simply no longer want pitchers that challenge hitters?