Maxbialystock

Come off it. Yes, of course, there's going to be political actions by some of the athletes, but they are also the best athletes in the world competing in a venue that means a lot to them.

Duran leads off with a single, and Devers, Bogaerts, and JDM all strike out. This team is in big trouble.

All things considered, a good 4th inning by Richards. Two infield singles, then an 9 pitch walk because Candelario fouled off a bunch of pitches. Then the K, then the sac fly, and finally a ground out with a good defensive play by Cordero.

5 straight fastballs by Richards: single, ball, ball, strike, fly out.

Finally, in the bottom of the 3d, the WEEI guys notice that all 4 of Richards' pitches are working. Then of course he throws his very popular fastball right down the middle--producing a sharp single to RF.

The mystery to me is how much Vazquez and Richards seem to love his fastball, which is the exact same pitch opposing hitters want to see. I get his concern about his curveball, now that he can't doctor it up, but even it is a better pitch than that fastball. Tonight he looks like he has four no-baloney pitches: fastball, curve, slider, and changeup, so no reason for half of them to be fast balls.

Good job by Richards on Haase. Fastball out of the zone, fouled off. K with the slider plus curve and changeups. He needs to mix his pitches to be effective.

Richards throws too many fastballs, period. Dinger by Cabrera, age 38, opposite field. WEEI guys say Richards is on a "have a dinger" streak.

The rotation is a fright, top to bottom--even Eovaldi. The hitting isn't--Sunday night the Rays closer threw nothing but sliders and still kept that 1 run lead. But the optimists have a point. Still plenty of baseball yet, and this team has bounced back before.

I like our chances tonight, even with Richards.

Sometimes you want to go Where everybody knows your name, And they're always glad you came, You want to be where you can see, Our troubles are all the same;

Remembering the OP, I guess it's time to remind ourselves that even after 4 losses in a row and realizing our rotation top to bottom is suspect, it's still worth it to root, root, root for the home team. They've brought us a lot of great moments and could still bring us more.

All this talk of Schwarber surprises me because right now he seems like a bad fit: he can't play even though the Sox badly need his bat right now; he's an outfielder on a team that needs a first baseman who can hit; he's not a starting pitcher, which is far and away the Sox biggest need right now. Indeed, the one thing he seems best suited for is representational. He represents an intent to kind of, sort of, maybe improve the 2021 Sox.

I'm inclined to agree with this for one simple reason: much depends on the pitcher on the mound and how well he is pitching in that game and against whichever hitters are at bat in clutch situations.

Berrios, now a Jays starter, went 6 today vs. KC and gave up 0 runs. The Sox have a 3 game lead over the A's for the top wild card slot, 5.5 over the Yankees for the second slot and 6.5 over the Jays for the second slot.

Can there be any doubt that the Rays are better than the Sox?

Sox have now lost 5 of 6 (and 4 straight). The one win was the game Houck started (and went just 4 innings). Houck is back in Worcester so Cora can keep some really great guys like Duran, Dalbec, Richards, Perez, ERod, etc on the Boston 26 man roster.

Three pitches in the geometric center of the strike zone, and Duran looked at one and swung and missed at the other two. He is not ready for MLB pitching. Sadly, sending him back to Worcester is unlikely to make him better.

Can't argue with that.

Plawecki, Dalbec, and Hernandez due up in the 9th.

Another difference between the Sox and Rays. The Rays flat believe that righty vs. righty and lefty vs. lefty favors the pitcher. So they consistently, especially in a close game, bring in a righty to face a righty or a lefty to fact a lefty, and it just worked perfectly vs the three Sox hitters (two righties and a lefty) who batted after Bogaerts walked to lead off the inning. Conversely, righty vs. lefty usually favors the hitters, so tonight the Rays started five lefty bats, which made Pivetta's job a little tougher. The Sox have never had five lefty hitters in a game this year and often only have 2 or 3. Ironically, and this is almost laughable, the Sox righty hitters stink against lefty starters, as we have seen in this series.

Completely agree it's a small sampling. But it's also the only one available. Dalbec has a full month (or was it more?) with the Sox last year and big chunks of 4 months this year, and he doesn't seem to be improving, but he statistically better than Duran.

I've kind of felt the same way and said so awhile back. But now I think: 1. Eovaldi got killed last night, and he was the one really good (not great) starter we thought the Sox had. We think Sale will be great, but he hasn't pitched to MLB hitting in two years, so there is no guarantee he will be great. 2. In other words, to have a good rotation, the Sox needed two Max Scherzer types, and those would have been prohibitively expensive in terms of salaries and prospects. 3. The hitting has also fallen off, and whether Schlarber can help or even play every day--preferably at 1b--definitely remains to be seen. He has been out a month already and has never played 1b. 4. The Sox defense remains the worst in MLB. 5. The bullpen has been excellent this season, but it too seems to be falling off lately. If you doubt me, ask the Rays.

Duran's OPS is under .500 and Dalbec's is over .600.

One thing I have noticed about almost all Sox pitchers over the years. Few of them like to work the lower part of the strike zone. This strikes me as dumb when the infielders have the advantage of those computer programs that position them to do well against ground balls. The Rays and some other pitching staffs seem to love working the lower part of the zone, which is why it seems--I have no hard data on this--the Sox hit a lot of grounders. Also, for big parts of this season there has been an incessant clamor on talksox to bring up the youngsters, so much so that one had the impression that Dalbec and Duran were almost guaranteed to be instant stars. Now we are in August and it sure seems that talksoxers who clamored for the rookies were wrong. Perhaps Bloom and Cora were wrong too, but at least their defense can be that, even though Dalbec and Duran have looked awful, they have at least gained some experience about what they need to work on. Plus, in defense of those clamoring for the rookies, it can also be fairly said that the veterans all got the first shots to show what they can do.