Standing Room

The Mets are hilarious.

Lester's not a #1 starter at this point in his career. More like a #4.

It's not that Bogaerts would be ready for a call up that I took issue with. It was Dojji thinking that adjusting to AA pitching means he's able to adjust to major league pitching. That's not what Cherington said and it's flat out not true.

Buchholz and Lackey?

One internal bullpen option that hasn't been talked about is Ryan Rowland-Smith. He has a 1.03 ERA, 0.870 WHIP, 2.3 BB/9 and a 7.8 K/9 in 43.2 innings with Pawtucket. He just had an appendectomy, otherwise we probably would have called him up when Miller got hurt.

This panic post seems unnecessary. We're on a west coast trip facing some very difficult pitchers, most people expected us this to be difficult. Ellsbury and Victorino were late scratches, Bradley's not superman. He couldn't travel across the country in a couple of hours and play centerfield. Our starting pitching is fine, it's 6th in the majors in WAR. Our defense is fine, it's 10th in the majors in UZR. A bullpen arm or two and we'll be set for a playoff run.

The bases were loaded, you always need to pitch carefully with the bases loaded. He was making perfect pitches in the strike zone that were being called balls. As a starter, you can't just give in and start throwing pitches down the middle becuase the umpire's taking a nap.

When pitchfx posts the strikes and balls after the game, I'm willing to bet Lester threw Saunders five strikes in that at bat where he walked him with the bases loaded.

Xander's 2-3 tonight, JBJ's out of the lineup. He could be headed to Seattle to play for us tomorrow.

I disagree, we don't have a need for a third baseman right now. Snyder's hitting .273 .273 .500. So it doesn't make sense to call up Bogaerts for a few starts when he's just getting his feet wet and learning new positions in AAA.

No he didn't. Do you not understand the difference between him saying AAA has little developmental value and him saying that if you can hit in AA, you can hit in the majors? I don't see why it really matters. It's not like him being called for 10 days or so is going to make any significant change to our production or his development.

Salty should just start every at bat with two strikes, it would save a lot of time.

Yeah, but Dojji didn't say that there was a minor difference between AA and AAA. He said that hitting in AA showed Bogaerts could handle major league pitching. That's completely different. Machado's the exception to the rule, hitting AA pitching doesn't mean someone is ready for the majors. No one said Bogaerts isn't ready for the majors. It doesn't make sense as part of his development though. We'd essentially just be calling him up for the sake of calling him up. He just started working on playing third base at AAA.

I don't see how trading Iglesias for Bud Norris or a similar pitcher makes the Red Sox a better team. He's not any better than Dempster or Doubront and we'd lose Iglesias.

Huh? Ellsbury was hitting .298/.360/.380 over 400+ PA at AAA. Lowrie had an OPS over .800 over 400+ PA at AAA. It doesn't make sense to call up Bogaerts after he had been at AAA for less than 20 games to fill a need for 10 days.

It would be nice to add a set up man. I'm not too worried about the back end of the bullpen, because Uehara, Tazawa and Breslow are about as solid as it gets. They aren't David Robertson or Mariano Rivera, but they also aren't the reason we're losing games. It would be nice to add someone to get the ball to them.

He must have taken his morning meds.

Interesting revisionist history. There's no difference in Sabathia's velocity or peripherals from 2007 with Cleveland and 2009-2011 with the Yankees. When he started changing as a pitcher was last year. From 2007-2011 (as far back as pitchfx goes on fangraphs), Sabathia averaged 93.82 mph on his fastball, his fastball had a positive win value, and his HR/FB% was always below 9%. In 2012, Sabathia lost 1.5 mph on his fastball, his fastball had the worst win value of his career, and he had a career high HR/FB of 12.5%. Then, this year his fastball lost an additional 1.6 mph on his fastball, his fastball win value has been the second worst of his career, and he's posting a new career worst HR/FB% of 14%. This isn't something that happened overnight. In the last two years, he's lost 3.1 mph on his fastball and posted the two worst HR/FB% of his career. Does that mean his career's over? Of course not. He's still a solid #2 or #3 starter right now. But whether he'll remain a solid #2 or #3 pitcher if he loses another 3 mph on his fastball is yet to be seen. Someone who's posted back to back years of the worst home run rate of their career is not someone who's made the adjustment to pitching with diminished velocity.

That would be shortsighted. His previous high in innings is 110, he needs to stretch out his arm if he's ever going to be used as a starter.

But Middlebrooks is the better prospect because he has power.

The other day you said you still weren't convinced the Sox were for real and today they have a legitimate shot at a World Series? What changed?

You're an idiot. At the time I typed that, his strikeout rate was the lowest since 2005. Now it's the second worst since 2005. Want a cookie? You're also conveniently omitting the fact that Sabathia's on the wrong side of 30 and he's lost 2 mph on his fastball. You're also ignoring this is the second straight year he's had a HR/FB over 12%. At what point does it become a trend, three years in a row? No one's saying his career is over, but he's clearly not the same pitcher he was 2006-2012. The bloom is off the rose.

Feldman and Nolasco were traded for crap because they're crap pitchers. A quality pitcher like Garza will cost more.

The Angels remind me so much of the 2012 Red Sox.

So much for the Blue Jays resurgence. If we win tonight, they'll be right back to being 12 games back. Which is right where they were when they started their winning streak.