Bellhorn04

That's why I'm saying Mortensen did at least pitch better than anyone else against the A's.

The time for the youth movement has arrived. Sometime in the near future they need to trade Salty, maybe Youk as well, bring up Lavarnway and bring Varitek in to work with him.

Yeah, Oakland can't score runs at all, except for the 15 they managed to put up against our other pitchers in 2.7 games.

Mortensen had a very nice outing. Maybe he will bolster the pen a bit.

It'd also be nice if they could hire Varitek in some capacity and have him work with Lavarnway.

I think they have to trade Salty and bring up Lavarnway and see what happens. They should be able to get a reliever or something for Salty. He's a decent hitter and he would make a functional backup but he's not a starter. This might not be the best time to trade him as far as matching up with another team, I don't know.

Is Saltalamacchia the real problem with the team? We have an ongoing habit of losing games when he starts. Going into tonight's game the team is 53-62 in his starts. That's 0-5 in 2010, 47-49 in 2011 and 6-8 in 2012. Is he the unluckiest player in baseball?

What's really bothering me is that numbers-wise, and game score-wise, this team is much too reminiscent of the team we saw last September. The team ERA was over 5.5 in September and now again in April. We're scoring 5+ runs a game on average, but so much of that is coming in blowouts. It's weird, really. I was expecting this team to play a different style of baseball or something.

Yes he was.

This offense is so freaking sporadic.

I had to look at this a few times before I could believe it, but the Orioles have a group of 4 relievers-Johnson, O'Day, Ayala and Lindstrom, who have combined to give up 1 (one) earned run in 43 innings.

V has been doing his homework then, studying the Cagy Hedging manual that was left behind by Tito.

I know that the 5 or less is an arbitrary number. I think that as the season goes on and the sample gets bigger these numbers will be more meaningful. And other people will probably come up with other ways to analyze things. I would point out though, that the Rays and Orioles each have 5 wins in games where they have scored 3 runs or less.

I haven't seen a thread for general discussion of the 2012 season but I thought it might be useful to have one to talk about the big picture - roster construction, overall performance, trends and developments etc. For starters, I did a quick analysis of some numbers that I think are pretty revealing about where our problems have been so far. I don't think of any of this is shocking news because anyone who's following the games has a sense of it. But when you see the hard cold numbers sometimes it really clarifies things. Red Sox W-L 11-12 Runs scored 130 5.65 per game Times scoring 10 or more runs 7 Record in games scoring 5 runs or less 2-10 Rays W-L 16-8 Runs scored 109 4.54 per game Times scoring 10 or more runs 1 Record in games scoring 5 runs or less 10-8 Orioles W-L 15-9 Runs scored 103 4.29 per game Times scoring 10 or more runs 2 Record in games scoring 5 runs or less 9-9 It's not even 1/6 of the schedule yet and obviously things could improve, but so far the trend is ominous. We're scoring a pile of runs, but many of the runs are coming in blowouts. We have a lot of trouble winning if we don't score more than 5 runs. The Rays and Orioles, meanwhile, are getting it done while putting considerably fewer total runs on the board.

According to Rob Bradford of WEEI, Cook is going to be called up. http://www.weei.com/sports/boston/this-just-in/21196376/source-red-sox-promote-aaron-cook

Yes, and players with a lower OPS than Gonzo include Teixeira and Cano. Darnell's OPS went up 190 points last night. Early days and small sample sizes = some wacky-looking numbers.

Youk to the DL?

Hopefully Cook is, that is.

Dojji, you're fighting a losing battle on Eckersley. The man ended up with 390 saves and a .998 WHIP as a reliever. The A's converted him to a reliever in 1987 and in the next 6 years they went to 3 World Series and 4 ALCS.

Aviles hit over .300 for KC in two seasons of 100+ games. He's hitting well over .300 in about 60 games for the Sox. His stroke looks great. Maybe he's just a good hitter?

McDonald and Byrd, a lethal duo tonight. Gotta love this game.

He's got Valentine believin' in him just as much as he did Tito.

The 7-run rule is everywhere.