Maxbialystock

Good start again by May, especially when he battled in the 4th and only gave up 1 run. Quality start. We can complain all we want to about the hitting, but right now they cannot score enough runs that the bullpen can't give back.

Tonight the Orioles starter is better than Crochet with about half his ERA. I'm irritated too, but it's not unexpected. Meanwhile to bullpen continues to stink.

Maybe it's not challengeable.

Lousy, stinking, worthless Eaton singles. THE GREATEST Anthony K's in 4 pitches and our best hitter Bregman pulls a GIDP. Rogers needed 9 pitches, May 21.

Love the way you put that. Agree!

Sure looks like good May tonight.

My goodness is it easy for this professional athletes to get injured. In their (MLB) defense they play a lot of games in a season.

Agree. That could easily have gone the other way although I agree with the principle. Terrific K by May.

Shame on Gonzalez. May is trying to hit corners, and that muffed throw cost a really helpful GIDP.

With Ref out, I would start Abreu in RF and move Anthony to DH.

For reasons which make no sense to me, my location means all Braves, Orioles, Nationals games are blacked out. However my cable includes MASN, which carries all Orioles and Nationals games, so I'll be watching this one despite MLB's best efforts. I also get Braves games on Fan Duel

When Devers arrived in San Francisco, the Giants were 41-31. Now they are 60-64, largely because of their recent 7 game losing streak vs the Nationals, Padres, and Rays--all home games for the Giants. They're now 30-33 at home. Devers Game Log shows his OPS in August is .890, but the Giants are 6-9 in August.

Our favorite place, often visited by our players. In terms of salaries, ours is pretty small.

Rogers' shutdown of the Sox was on March 24 and does not count in the regular season.

Eaton leading off as DH is to me ridiculous. Ref a far better choice. Rest of the lineup looks OK to me.

Two more first basemen, exactly what the Sox need. and really good ones too.

My mistake. Thanks for the correction. I sure hope you're right about the bullpen. Right now the Sox have exactly one consistent hitter, Bregman. Everyone else, Anthony included, is up and down like a yo-yo. Yesterday Anthony twice left 2 men on base with groundouts. That said, I think the Sox hitting and scoring have persevered because in every game a few of them are hitting. Story with his so-so .725 OPS has 79 rbi's and a good shot at 100. He is also 2d in runs scored and 2d in total bases. Plus you gotta like these other OPS's 3/4 into the season: Gonzalez .856, Anthony .832, Ref .827, Abreu .811, and Duran .791. Including Bregman and Story, that's 7 pretty good bats. Rafaela has nosedived in August, OPS .559, but he was terrific in June and July--.870 and .852. And how do we know what Rafaela's norm is when last year was his first freaking season.

Get off Rafaela. I mean it. His WAR is 3.8 and Mookie Betts is 2.7 and we are 3/4 into this season. Career norms do not mean that a given player will have exactly that OPS, WAR, DWAR, or whatever every season. What's normal is going above or below those norms. Jacoby Ellsbury hit 32 dingers in 2011 and less than 10 in every other season (he played 11) except one, 2014, when he hit 16. Bregman's OPS of .933 is well above his "norm" of .854. What's abnormal also is that missed a bunch of games which he only did--same injury--in one other season of the 9 he's played.

Are you serious? The Sox are 11 games above .500. They were 7 above .500 right after the ASG, and on June 3d they were 5 games under. 500. The best they've been is 13 games over .500. I completely agree the San Diego and Houston series were disappointing (2-4), but both are competitive teams and were at their home parks. The loss yesterday to Baltimore was just horrible no question. That was on the bullpen which also stunk Saturday. The bullpen might in fact be the Sox achilles heel, but that remains to be seen.

Cora started the season with Campbell at 2b and Casas at 1b. Both had WAR's of -0.9. Campbell lasted 67 games and Casas 29. Since Casas, Sogard, Gonzalez, and Toro have played 1b with better WAR's than Casas. Since Campbell, Gonzalez, Hamilton, Mayer, Rafaela, and maybe Toro have played 2b with better WAR's than Campbell. With Mayer at 2b and Gonzalez at 1b, I think the Sox would be fine even though Mayer had not yet figured out how to hit lefties. On the other hand, Bregman and Story have both been terrific at 3b and SS. Season to date, these are key Sox OPS's: Bregman 3.9, Duran 3.9, Rafaela 3.8, Abreu 3.2, Story 3.1, Narvaez 2.7, Anthony 2.1, Gonzalez 1.3, Refsnyder 1.2.

😀

Rogers shut the Sox down for 6.1 IP way back in March. This month he's had 3 starts and was tough against the Mariners, Phillies, and Cubs--giving up 3 ER in 21 IP for an August ERA of 1.29. May could pitch another gem--or bomb. Based on the last two games, the Sox bullpen could still be in disarray. One upside is that the Sox hit lefties better than righties with these OPS's against lefties: Gonzalez 1.070, Bregman .985, Ref .905, Anthony .791, Narvaez .784, Story .751, Rafaela .738, Abreu .721, Toro .684, Duran .595. If Wong starts, his is .353. Narvaez has started 7 of 15 August games so far. Were I Cora, I would rest him today and let Wong catch May in a game the Sox are not likely to win. Narvaez OPS in August is .428 and Wong's is .466. I would also not start Duran and go with an outfield of Anthony, Rafaela, and Abreu. Ref at DH, Gonzalez at 2b, and Toro at 1b. If Duran and Narvaez sit, Cora might bat Gonzalez 3d, Story 4th, Ref 5th, Abreu 6th, Toro 7th, Rafaela 8th, and Wong 9th.

The bullpen blew it. When the Sox win, nobody ever says, "wow, that was great managing by Cora." Crochet went 7 IP and gave up 1 run. Three different freaking relievers gave up 5 runs in 2 innings. Between them Whitlock and Weissert have 33 holds and 4 saves and you claim Cora sent in a bunch of bums? Give me a break.

Some truth in that.

After today, it would be hard to trust him. But let's not forget that Whitlock also stunk today.