jung

Royals pen arrives and the result......Same. At least we are consistent. Once one of these soft tossers gets ahold of us on a particular night I get the impression that it takes about 100 swings in a batting cage for our guys to get their heads screwed on straight again. Does not matter who the opponent brings in to relieve....the damage is already done.

So the radio team musing over the annual hideous "Players Weekend" coming up with the grotesque unis and the player nicknames on their backs. Apparently Hernandez will have Hernandez on his back and Taylor will have .....Taylor on his back. Joey Votto, NL 1st baseman is going to wear "WHO" on his back as in "Who's on First". That might be OK if he could get the second baseman to wear "What" and the third baseman to wear "I don't know".

Geezus H f***ing Christ. I swear to God if I really wanted to bust the Red Sox right in the ass I would just bring up every soft tosser I had for every Red Sox series and we would just be LOST......LOST!!!!!

Cora the evil genius is just giving the Royals enough rope to hang themselves waiting for that Royals pen to show up. This is one time when we might actually have a pen advantage over an opponent....these guys and the O's and that is probably about it.

Really nice pitch Cashewnuts. Just really really nice. Tell me is that one of the pitches that the O's are paying for? Is that why it sucked ass?

Geezus Cashewnuts...what the f*** are you throwing up there.

Arb netted JBJ $9M this year. I would hope for $1.95 and a 2020 Mexican jumping bean....I mean an official MLB baseball for next year's arb number. That would make him worth keeping.

Geez Gordon can still play LF.

Mookie is pressing again.

Unfortunately I have to report that Sean won't have many more games this year. ESPN in some side deal allows Sean to take over his old role and I think he has gotten something like a dozen games this year.....maybe a few more. Don't think he has many left for this year. This is a better booth crew than when its Dale Arnold, Sean and Castig. Dale fancies himself as quick witted enough to keep up with Sean and its not even close. NOBODY changes what Castig does. So Castig is a perfect foil for Sean as is Angry Lou.

Is there a OFer that looks worse at the plate vs an off handed pitcher than JBJ? I just do not think its possible to look worse than he does.

Angry Lou has already started in on MLB calling replay around the bases trying to pick up if a runner comes off the bag for a nanosecond, ticky-tack. I agree...it is ticky-tack no matter who it hurts or helps. THIS is not what replay was supposed to be used to judge sand its just BS baseball, like most things MLB these days.

For those interested in an audio option EEI broadcast crew tonight is Sean McD, Angry Lou and Joe Castig. Probably as good an audio crew as you are ever going to hear these days.

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

Nay...we didn't want him. He's a strike thrower. Who knows, maybe offing Schill was our first step into spread sheet baseball. Some guy using DOS pumping in numbers said, "GET RID OF HIM. We don't want strike throwers".

Well I will roll out my standard response on that one. I don't care how f***ed any other team might be. The Sox really can't control that and really can only effect another team directly inside of a direct transaction where they hose the other team. I just care about how f***ed we are. Actually I should come clean and identify that I am not all that gung ho about the accuracy of those values.

-$44.8M......Mother of God

I really have no idea what Price is doing. His last few starts have not only been awful but all over the map. Second to last start he tried to throw his FB 94-95 again...which is clearly something in his rearview mirror. His FB flattened out and he got clobbered. The last start, began sensibly enough as he looked like he was following in Erod's footsteps with this particular NY team, getting them to chase with two strikes. Then Price appeared to get frustrated with that because while the Yanks were chasing most of his pitches designed for that purpose they were not chasing all of them. Prices comes right back up in the zone, right down main st with NOTHING and gets pulverized. I truly thought Price was ahead of Sale in a transition process and now I don't know where Price is unless he is trying to throw and talk his way outta' town. The two starts before these last two were equally mesmerizing as I failed to be able to determine what the f*** Price was trying to do other than get hit by a line drive on the mound. He is not just getting hit, he is getting poleaxed.

I suspect the Sox will not keep all their arb players after this year. Not that it will generate a ton of money. Just don't think they will keep all of them. Funny thing is its not really the arb players that are the problem really, unless you want to consider Mookie's arb status a problem. Signing him to a new contract is the problem IMO, not his arb status. JBJ is an actual problem as an arb player. $9M per my butt end. The issues the Sox have at this point are Sale at 5 and $145M, Nate at 4 and $68M, Price who might be trying to pitch and talk his way outta' town at 7 and $217M. As an aside, the pitching on this team is a mess. Their approach to pitching is a mess team wide which more than suggests that its coming from the spread sheets in the baseball ops dept. In fact, one wonders if they chose LaVangie as their pitching coach simply to tamp down any actual pitching experience guiding the pitching assets as opposed to spread sheets. In fact, one now must consider if the reason they did not resign Kimbrel is because he was not a fit to their spread sheets. Kimbrel challenges hitters. We no longer throw strikes on this team....none of them throws strikes. They all nibble or they try to get hitters to chase off the plate which is not quite nibbling. It ain't throwing strikes either. They challenge nobody. They throw more pitches than any other staff in baseball, 700 more pitches to this point than any other MLB staff. The starters leave games early leaving too much to clean up by the pen. Erod is about the only guy one could say was likely to be a nibbler for life. I have no idea what the rest of them are doing. Nate is about the only guy that actually does challenge hitters on a regular basis. But he is clearly not all the way back yet. Porcello challenged hitters last night mainly because he abandoned his four seam FB and threw two seams down in the zone and breaking pitches. Then again, that was the anemic Royals.

Dropped this on the bottom of my earlier post. You might not have seen it before your post. "I think the smart move would have been to bring in a relief pitcher or two. They had money under the next lux tax threshold. It might not have been practically effective. But it would not have left the clubhouse in the "what the f***" mood they have been in since then." What they did is not irrational. The way they did it does not make any sense other than as some sort of effort to send the clubhouse some sort of message. Why so publicly and particularly in what exec management said publicly....I have no idea why that made sense. I cannot think of a scenario where that makes a hill of beans of sense. I would however include all of the uniform personnel in the "send a message" scenario if that was their intention. Might want to be sending Cora a message as well, something like don't get cute again Alex. As for keeping DD, I don't think it makes sense to keep DD as my post more than suggests, not as a lame duck and not with an extension. Where the Sox are going to end up after this year would not appear to make DD an attractive candidate for the job. DD requires LOTS of money and LOTS of farm system as trade chips. The Sox won't have either. Strapped by the lux tax system and without enough on the farm to really do much. The only thing that the Sox have that fits DD's profile is a core of good players. They will have money in 2020 from expiring obligations. They won't have tons. But they will have money. My view, DD should be gone.

Who knows how much Henry himself said NO MAS. But the only way for an owner to keep DD from emptying his bank account is to say NO MAS. DD does not come equipped with his own governor. Never has had one. Heard something last night on the Talkin Baseball show that I think is possible. Henry allows DD to become a lame duck and gives him his 2020 final contract year to right the ship. If he does it, extend him with a new contract, if not, not. I actually do not think it makes sense to make DD a lame duck. It makes no sense to me to keep DD running Baseball Ops. He came in. Did his job. Got us a WS. Enough already. Like I said earlier, DD has never come equipped with a governor. But he always has had an expiration date. As for the trade deadline stuff. I don't have an issue with the FO not spending at the deadline. I can see my way clear to why that was the choice they made. Its not irrational. I have a big problem with the entire Management team shooting their bigs mouths off about it. Suggests that they have utterly no idea who they have down in that clubhouse. I think the smart move would have been to bring in a relief pitcher or two. They had money under the next lux tax threshold. It might not have been practically effective. But it would not have left the clubhouse in the "what the f***" mood they have been in since then.

Porcello abandoned his 4 seam FB up entirely last night. In fact, I don't think he threw one at all. That saved him his usual 2019 process of getting tattooed in the 1st couple innings, reassessing and reinventing a way to get guys out from there. It certainly worked against the anemic Royals and might work against other weak hitting teams that can't hit anything but an outright mistake right down mains st. In fact, it might work against other teams that simply cannot hit off-speed, breaking stuff. Remains to be seen how long Porcello can make this magic act work. But it was a smart move on his part. As for Sale and Price, I no longer know what to say about them. Sale has been awful and is beginning to turn into a whiny punk besides. Price has been awful and is already a whiny, self-agrandizing punk. Anyway its Cashner tonight and ERod on Wednesday according to the probably pitchers listed.

Barnes is a solid reliever if not overused....and turns into a pumpkin if overused. I don't even know why this would be a question.

Well they should sweep the Royals if I am pitching.

Thank God...worried they would have started to post up my early years as a Sox fan to show us the last time they had a losing streak X games long.