FredLynn

This guy just cannot stand the least bit of pressure. Here come the runs..................

BUMHOLTZ. Deer in the headlights. Again. You cannot walk a guy hitting .175.

NO WALKS BUCKY!

Its called aggressive base running. That throw from Markakis was obviously going through. With Aviles on second all we needed was a single to get another run. I would have liked to see him take second base.

Why is Aviles still on first base?

We cannot waste this opportunity guys.

Its an amazing sight, all those empty seats where Red Sox fans used to sit. Sox fans are voting with their feet in droves.

Wonderful. By Peter Abraham and Nick Cafardo, Globe Staff BALTIMORE — Red Sox outfielder Cody Ross, who fouled a ball off his left foot on Friday, could need a stint on the disabled list because of a fracture. Initial x-rays were negative but a further examination revealed the possibility of a fracture according to baseball sources. Ross is hitting .271 with eight home run and 28 RBI. More on this story as it become available.

I am wondering if he is pacing himself out there. I remember a quote from him when he was a reliever and getting everyone out with a 100mph fastball. He said "I throw every pitch as hard as I can".

The Orioles are also facing our #3-5 SP. I would be very satisfied with winning two games in Baltimore.

Fred, I am going to go out on a line here and predict that Bard pitches well in Baltimore. Why? Because he has to. He is feeling the heat, he is pitching for his job as a SP, and he knows it. He must realize that he is on a short rope now. Gotta win 2/3 then 2/3 vs the Rays.

Its possible that Bard could eventually become a decent or even a good SP. I am not discounting that possibility at all. What I am saying, and what I have said before, is that unless you are ready to put up the white flag for this season, now is not the time for that experiment to continue. We dug ourselves too deep a hole to be engaging in experiments. If the management would like to make a serious run for a possible playoff post then they should sign Oswalt and when he is ready, send Bard back to the bullpen. Next year, after signing a top tier SP to go along with the three #3 SP we already have, Bard can audition for the #5 SP and hopefully we won't have dug ourselves into the kind of hole we managed to dig this year and last year to start the season. This is just not the time for Daniel Bard to keep trying to look like a SP.

Fred, most people here don't realize that you have more practical baseball experience than nearly anyone here. I value your judgement, even when I don't agree with it. In this case, I think you are spot on.

Happy to keep telling you that our FO has sucked for years. Every squirrel occasionally finds a nut; our FO found Aceves recently and got Ortiz, Foulke, Schilling, and Cabrera, all of whom helped win a ring in 04 (though much of the work in building that team had already been done). The FO also managed to find a few nuts along the way in the draft: Bard, Pedroia, and Ellsbury are examples. Youkilis was drafted in 2001; he is not a product of the good work of our current FO (I am referring to Epstein and Cherington, not whoever was there before them). Buchholtz? Are you kidding me? He has yet to prove himself. He has pitched but a single full season in excellence, and even then he tossed only 173 innings; his lifetime ERA with Boston is over 4, as is Beckett's ERA. And to get Beckett and Lowell we had to give up Hanley Ramirez-certainly not a one sided piece of brilliance on the part of Epstein. Do you really expect Salty, owner of a career OPS of .725 to keep a .900+ OPS? Need I remind you that after the ASB last year his OPS plummeted to .682? He will regress; he's just not that good. Doubront? Good start. Unproven as yet. Miller? Please. If you are using Miller to bolster your arguement you know you are in trouble. Now lets just list a few names off the top of my head that our brilliant FO signed whose level of talent was badly misjudged: Byun-Hung-Kim, Matt Clement, Lenny DiNardo, John Halama, Craig Hanson, Edgar Renteria, Julio Lugo, Matt Mantei, Jason Johnson, David Pauley, Rudy Seanez, Willy Mo Pena, Bartolo Colon, Michael Bowden, Paul Byrd, Daisuke Matsusaka, Brad Penny, John Smoltz, and more recently: Aaron Cook, Bobby Jenks, Justin Germano, Carlos Silva, Carl Crawford, John Lackey, Scott Schoeneweis, Ross Ohlendorf........do I really need to go on? There are lots more. Our FO, starting about 5 years ago, lost it. They misjudged talent regularly, handed out absurd long term contracts to players of mediocre talent, and have made a desert out of our minor league system in terms of ML ready pitchers. Thats a recipe for failure; it defines incompetence. Finally, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating". How many playoff games did we play last year? How many did we play the year before that? How many are we likely to play this year? Where are we in the standings this year, and how is our pitching doing relative to the other AL teams? How was it last year? And how was it the year before that? How big is our budget compared to that of the Rays, who are beating us in the standing pretty regularly now? I don't want to hear about injuries either. All teams get them. Its a copout and an excuse to use that. HOW HAS OUR TEAM DONE THE LAST THREE YEARS?? So sure, any time you want me to continue to tell you that our FO doesn't know what they are doing, I would be more than happy to oblige.

How many opportunities have we even had to upgrade the pitching? Every single offseason and then some. The problem is that our FO cannot even distinguish good pitching from bad and has signed too many bums to long term deals: Lackey, Matsusaka, Jenks..and on and on and on. Also, they have allocated too much money to guys like Crawford so that when all is said and done, there is not enough money in the budget to obtain high quality pitching. Finally, their judgement during draft day has resulted in a virtual desert of pitchers ready to help this team any time soon. Even the Yankees have done better; certainly the Rays have. So the problem doesn't end with a lack of focus on pitching, it extends all the way to incompetence in judging talent. Face it: our FO hasn't got a clue how to run a major league team.

I agree with you that the velocity drop is the most concerning aspect of Bard's lack of success as a SP. He no longer trusts his fastball and tries to be too fine. Last time he pitched I commented on the game thread how the first time through the lineup he was tossing soft junk up there and not establishing his fastball, which is too straight to be throwing at 92-93 mph anyway. Personally, I think he still has the capability to throw at 98+, but he paces himself during games. See how Aceves has INCREASED his velocity when he became a closer? He now knows that he is coming in for one inning, usually, and he can afford to just give every single pitch everything he has. My guess is that if Bard returned to the pen his velocity would return, and he would be an effective RP or even an effective closer. As a SP with a straight FB at 93, its not going to cut it, not unless the team is throwing up the white flag for this year and feels that by sacrificing this year Bard may become a good SP next year or the year after that.

You did indeed. The team is on a nice run now; gotta keep it up. Beckett is pitching much better now, after golfgate. Lester and Bard are the weak links right now. They have to step it up.

Very good post. Thats pretty much it in a nutshell. Our FO is too incompetent to realize that pitching pitching pitching is what it takes to win rings. They haven't gotten the message for five years now; its safe to assume that they will never get the message. The fans, however, are getting the message and are finally voting with their feet. Hooray for the intelligent fans of the Boston Red Sox!

Sure you can. And I used Hanson because I think that there are some similarities in the two. Both relied on velocity to get guys out. Hanson flamed out; Bard is on that path too.