Maxbialystock

Fine. The soxprospects write-up says he's great at SS defensively. Someone else can play 3b if Cora decides to move Devers to, day, 1b.

Good of you to defend Sale, but in game 5 of the 2018 WS Price was the starter. Sale started game 1 of the ALDS and beat the Yankees, pitching 5.1 innings and giving up 2 runs.

Also, please, please start the next game thread.

Seriously? Why? That's an honest question because I just assumed that the green monster favors righty bats.

Perfect timing. In this series the Sox are facing the Royals 3 best starters.

Some nights, the bear gets you. The Royals simply outplayed our guys--better pitching, better hitting, better fielding.

Agree. Early in the game he did throw some fat pitches, which the Sox did nothing with. Then he got sharper--and he has a good repertoire.

He's arguably the best manager in MLB and he would like to see a full house rooting for the Sox. I don't think the crowd has much effect, and this year it seems pretty obvious that the Sox have weak righty bats in a home ballpark that favors righty bats.

This is Wong's 4th game catching in 4 days.

Followed immediately by Abreu, Duran, and O'Neill all striking out. Some lineup we have. This could be a Royals sweep.

2 on, no outs, bottom of the 8th.

I agree he did not "pitch well," but he showed a ton of heart. Like a bunch of other guys on this team, Criswell is minimum wage. And you know as well as everybody else, even me, that Criswell is not middle of the order. The first four right now are Houck, Caldwell, Pivetta, and Bello. This was Criswell's 12th start. 5 games ago it was Winck, who gave up 3 in 3.2 IP to the Yankees--after which, the deluge. The Yankees scored 14.

Right, got it. The Sox are losing tonight because we have a dumb manager.

"This bum" threw a quality start tonight: 6 IP, 2 ER. The other 3 Royals runs were from Gonzalez's error and all unearned.

After 6 innings we have reconfirmed that the Sox can't hit lefty starters. Duran and Devers, both all-stars this year, looked worse against Ragans in their third at bats than in their first two. And we have been reminded that a fatal error is almost normal with this team.

Now Devers does what Duran did, only this pitch was in the middle of the righty batter's box.

In his third at bat vs. Ragans in this game, Duran struck out on a pitch way, way outside and in the dirt. In hit/bounced on the line of the righty batter's box. This is an all-star player?

What makes this game too typical is that the lineup--and not the freaking pitching!!!!--has been flat on their butts. Thanks to Gonzalez, the Sox lineup has given up 2 more runs than they have scored.

Criswell, having thrown 102 pitches already, is out there trying to eat one more inning for his team. Whoa, nellie. Criswell has now officially thrown/pitched/survived a quality freaking start--2 ER in 6 IP!!!! The fault, dear talksox fans, is not in the pitching staff, but in the lineup, that they are underlings.

Wow. Are you serious? Grissom isn't pitching this season? What happened? This is just terrible news. Meanwhile, without Grissom and without Sale, this is the best Sox pitching staff in a long time--better even--so far--than the 2018 WS champion Sox.

Ahem. The box score says that Criswell pitched 5 innings and gave up 2 ER. That's not too shabby. Too bad the lineup (Gonzalez) made the error that led to the 3 unearned runs in the 2d inning. Meanwhile, the woebegone "righty" Sox lineup has, in addition to making the big error, scored 1 run also in 5 innings. Sad to say, despite Criswell being a weak starter, the problems have been with the lineup, who so far tonight can't field and can't hit.

Royals are going with their 3 best starters--Ragans, Lugo, and Singer--in this series, so I have to give them the edge even though the Sox are 8-2 in their last 10 and the Royals 5-5. However, if the Sox win tonight with Criswell going against lefty Ragans, I would favor the Sox to win the series. So, make no mistake, I will be rooting like crazy for the Sox tonight.

Against lefty Ragans, 5-6, ERA 3.38, 138K, the Sox are again going with 6 righties. In parentheses are OPS's vs lefties: Ref RF (.934) Duran LF (.628) O'Neill DH (1.108) Devers 3b (.702) Wong C (.920) Gonzalez 1b (.796) Westbrook 2b (.782) Rafaela CF (.775) Hamilton SS (.431)

Go ahead and count 2020 if you want to. It still has no effect on the simple fact that the 2021 season was better than 2016 or 2017. 2022 and 2023 were not good, agreed, but the 2012 season was much much worse and still average 36K+ attendance. As for the last three seasons, 2022-2024, I think the attendance of 32K+ has mostly been affected by the lack of stars, especially expensive ones. Americans have enormous respect for rich people even when it's unearned. That's why I keep calling the 2024 Sox the "no-names." Who wants to go see Duran, who only makes $760K? Or Houck, $770K? Or Crawford, $760K? Or Wong, Abreu, Slaten, Hamilton, Bernardino, Winck? Heck, Rafaela, even with his longer contract, is only getting $1.25M this year--and Bello $1.166.

Ahem. The "downward spiral" began in 2019 when the Sox had the biggest payroll in MLB and did not make the postseason. If you check, you will see the 2019 Sox had almost all of the lineup and pitching talent they had in 2018 when they won 108 games and the WS. If we skip 2020, the covid season, the 2021 season--without Mookie Betts and Price and Sale--was pretty successful, which you and others always ignore. The Sox won 92 in the regular season, beat Cole and the Yankees in the wild card, beat the 100 win Rays in the ALDS, and finally lost to the Astros, 4 games to 2, in the ALCS. That was in fact a better season than 2016 and 2017 when the Sox lost 3 straight in the ALDS both seasons. The actual downward spiral appears to have lasted two seasons, 2022 and 2023. Not coincidentally, the payroll has gone steadily down, in part because JH refuses to shell out big and long-term for great starting pitchers. Plus Mookie of course. However, the 2024 Sox appear to be on par with the 2021 Sox and better than the 2019 Sox who still had almost all of the great talent the 2018 Sox had--and certainly the massive payroll. Moreover, the 2024 Sox are missing Sale (given away), Giolito (hired to replace Sale), Story, and Whitlock. Nevertheless--despite the massive wailing in this game thread--the Sox pitching, over halfway through this season, is the best it's been in a long time with a team ERA, 3.65, ranked 5th in MLB. For reference, the 2018 Sox team ERA was 3.75, ranked 8th, and one of the most expensive pitching staffs in MLB with Price, Sale, Kimbrel, Porcello, Pomeranz, et al.