Maxbialystock

Somebody cited a bunch of stats to prove Wong stinks behind the plate. I hate that that stuff because I'm afraid he might be right. And I don't like Jansen at all--and he's probably good at the stuff Wong isn't good at. Of course, I honestly don't care who's behind the plate as long as he is contributing to a win. Tonight is sort of a bullpen game, and the Sox are leading 6-2 and Jansen, behind the plate, is hitless. Fine with me.

You better get your stuff together, and I mean now. We need some wins. The fact that you actually started somewhere in the twilight zone may be why the sox are up 6-2 now.

9 more outs for the win.

Agree, and I'm sure moonslav would too. That said, Rafaela has made some nice infield plays, and of course tonight he made that great throw--as SS--home to nail a Jays runner. Hamilton doesn't make that throw. And the play originator, Duran, made a nice play on the double off the wall and throwing it right to Rafaela. Also, In the first month of the season Casas had a horrible DWAR in just a handful of games. Since he's returned, he's looked terrific, especially on throws to 1b. Hamilton and Gonzalez have been OK/decent at 2b and in fact have also made some good plays. That said, moonslav's right that the infield has not been good on double plays, which are a godsend for every pitcher. Rafaela is probably as much at fault as anyone else, and I blame that on the fact that he keeps bouncing back and forth between CF and SS. Some of the better double plays are an art form and require lots and lots of practice. Great defense is the poetry of baseball. Sox are up 6-1!!!!!! rbi's by Duran, Hamilton Casas, Abreu, and 2 by Yoshida. Speaking of whom, I am literally the only contributor on talksox who defended playing Yoshida--and gave 5 reasons why. However, I didn't do it because I was smart, but only because it was logical. One of the reasons I gave was the Cora was sending out there to hit. Gotta trust Cora. Too bad moonslav missed that, Rafaela had to go in the hole to start that double play. Heckuva play.

Another thing. I vehemently disagree with playing Rafaela in CF this season for the simple reason that he is our best SS--most range and best arm--and Duran is excellent in CF and in fact has the highest DWAR on the Sox. Moving Rafaela to CF puts Duran in LF, where all that range is wasted, especially at Fenway. Red Sox history is filled with leftfielders who were excellent hitters and below average fielders--the most prominent of whom was Ted Williams. In this game O'Neill, who has the worst DWAR of all the Sox outfielders, is in left field. He just ran in and made a nice catch. Not a great catch, but a nice one, and that's all the is usually needed in LF.

We've already seen two terrific plays to get Jays runners trying to score. When moonslav recites all those non-errors that cost runs--like failing to get a double play--he should also include the good plays, but of course he doesn't. This score, 3-1, Sox, would be tied but for those two superb plays. The first was Duran to Rafaela to home and the second was Abreu, after a long run to catch a fly near the RF line, to home. Both plays at home were close.

Defense is vastly over-rated. As I told moonslav, lousy defenders with negative DWAR's have fielding percentages above 95%. And right now not not a single Sox hitter has .300 (30%) batting average. "Good field, no hit" is a reliable description of players stuck in the minors.

Name the 15-20 games "that a bad defensive play or two led to the deciding amount of runs to score against us." I've looked and can't find them. And please do not claim that 90% fielding percentage and 30% hitting percentage are not drastically different. 90% fielding percentage is actually low because good fielding percentages are closer to 97%, 98%, or even 99%. Rafaela leads the Sox in errors and his is 97%. Devers has a negative DWAR and his is 96%. Duran's is 98%. Meanwhile, it turns out that 30% is actually high because no one on the Sox is hitting 30% (.300). Duran, Devers, Yoshida, and Ref are all at 29% (.290). Here are the batting averages of the ten Sox with 82 or more games this season: Duran .293, Rafaela .260, Devers .292, Abreu .267, Wong .283, Hamilton .254, O'Neill .262, Smith .237, Refsnyder .289.

About the defense. Yes, it's horrible this year--the very worst in MLB in terms of errors and unearned runs--and what moonslav calls runs caused by non-errors which were, however, bad plays. That said, however, almost every MLB roster breaks down into 13 pitchers and 13 lineup players. The pitchers contribute exactly nothing to the offense. Moreover, only one of them is on the mound at a time. So, if you want a good defense, it makes sense to develop good pitching. And, funny thing about defense which is consistently ignored on talksox and by moonslav himself, is that the worst fielders have fielding percentages above 90 %. On the other hand, those same fielders rarely can get a hit 30% of the time they come to bat--and, at the same time those fielders are the only players on the team who can get hits, sac flies, etc and score runs. Hitting is so important these days there are a zillion stats related to how well and how often that round bat hits a round ball squarely. FWIW I love great defense. It's the real poetry of baseball. I hated it when the Sox dumped Jose Iglesias in the 2013 season to pick up another starter, Peavy. But that actually paved the way for Xander Bogaerts--solid hitter, so-so defensive SS--to become the Sox starting SS for 9 freaking seasons.

A fair point. However, what makes the budget really dire this year is the Sox paying Sale $17M as the ace for the Braves and signing Giolito for $19M/year while he recovers from elbow surgery. Breslow made those deals, presumably with the support of the head shed. And let's not forget that the Sox budget/payroll (now $189M for 2024), is larger than Arizona's $175M--that's the team the NESN announcers raved about last weekend--the Twins $130M, KC's $119M, Cleveland's $107M, and Baltimore's $108M. John Henry, the presumptive cheapskate villain in this sad little tale is also the Sox owner who kept the payroll in the top three in MLB for close to 20 years, during which the Sox won 4 freaking WS titles when, with three rounds of playoffs (ALDS, ALCS, and WS), it was especially hard to win the World Series. He even went out and hired the biggest freespender CBO in MLB, David Dombrowski, who put together the best Sox team ever for the 2018 season--108 wins in the regular season, then beating the Yankees 3-1 in the ALDS, the Astros 4-1 in the ALCS, and the Dodgers 4-1 in the WS. However, that 2018 greatest ever Sox team became the also-ran 2019 Sox despite still having the biggest payroll in MLB. On top of that, DD needed a whole bunch more cash, over and above the biggest payroll in MLB, to outbid the Dodgers for Mookie Betts and find a couple more starters to replace Price and Sale--while still paying their big salaries. Don't get me wrong, I agree completely that the Sox need to spend more, especially on pitchers. But wouldn't it be nice if those additional funds were spent intelligently?

moonslav does do that. In fact, I did not know about the girl. I didn't like Clemens for breaking the rules, but this is much worse. He is slime.

There's a lovely symmetry to it all, especially tonight's game with lousy hitting, lousy defense, and lousy pitching to make it 5 straight losses. If that isn't enough, the talksox name is gone, along with the talksox format. But, heck, like a bunch of others I had to leave boston.com--and talksox has proven to be a better site.

You're right, of course. But I'm in a crappy mood, and I don't much like Jansen.

I'm sorry, but saying "enshrined in baseball history' is just stupid. It's an accident and completely meaningless. Nothing is achieved.

When the game started, it looked like a sparse "crowd."

Indeed. The Diamondbacks do not have a good pitching staff, and they owned the Sox lineup. And now the Jays own them. Duran just hit a solo dinger for the Sox only run, and the NESN team acted like it was a game winner.

We are in trouble without you.

There are games this season when our lefty batters act as though they've read the "book" that says they can't hit lefty pitchers and act as though they believe it.

Duran and especially Hammond could hardly have looked worse in their first at bats.

Thanks for the reminder about the Sox announcers. I don't listen to them, but did read about what they said. And I thank you and others for telling me what jerks they were/are. My guess is it was there asinine way of defending the Sox. I root for the Sox relentlessly, but I try not to excuse them when they don't measure up.

Good points. I have jibed constantly at Story because of his absences/injuries, but I do think letting Bogaerts go was the right move and that theoretically a good defensive SS who can also hit (but not as well) made sense. Overall, the lineup half of the roster is in pretty good shape right now. But the pitching is a mess, largely because the Sox brain trust don't know the first thing about developing or evaluating pitching talent.

Hard enough to find talksox.com. Having found it, navigating the site is also a chore. On top of that, the Sox are in a tailspin after abasing themselves before the visiting Diamondbacks. They were/are, in a word, snakebitten. How bad was it? The Sox pitching gave up 23 runs in 3 games, which actually wasn't that surprising given how bad they are and how good the Diamondbacks hitting is (best in MLB by a big margin). The surprise was the Sox hitting, just 8 runs in 3 games against a pitching staff ranked 25th in MLB.

Today is a good day to talk about the booth and not the game.

You were saying?

I don't listen any more, so I really shouldn't be commenting.