Maxbialystock

Meh. It made sense to bring out Ottavino for the 8th. After 2 hits, pull him, but you already have men on 2d and 3d and no one out, so the Orioles are a very good bet to tie the game and a decent bet to score the go ahead run no matter what Cora does.

They just got one right, saying Ottavino should throw a slider for the 3d strike, and the threw a fastball for a hard hit single and an rbi.

The WEEI guys started the bottom of the 8th by saying of course Ottavino would get three quick outs so that Barnes could close. When they anticipate, they get nothing right.

Right.

You cannot be serious.

Coventry, maybe, but not Camden. Right before Hernandez got that K, they were demanding that Cora pull him and put a good pitcher in--or so it sounded to me.

I might have missed a couple, but I could 746 good moves so far.

These WEEI guys can't see the plate.

Cora's made a number of good moves this year.

"At least" ????!!!!! You've been listening to those nattering nabobs of negativism too much.

Dinger by Devers!!!!

These WEEI guys are new from a couple of years ago. Very aggressive commentary, which means sometimes they are just wrong. But, heck, I don't care. I'm listening via my hearing aids, and the sound is so clear. Richards has gone 5 giving up 2 runs, but they tell us he was absolutely beyond any doubt horrible. What's wrong with just a smidgen of team loyalty?

Announces say that slider was in the middle of the plate, hence the liner single. But it was on the outer edge of the plate.

What records? I don't count his. And it's a shame because Barry was a great hitter and player without steroids. His dad was pretty good too.

Announcers say Sox are praying Zimmerman stays in the game because "everything is loud right now," meaning the ball is being hit hard on the outs. Same is probably true of Richards and the Orioles.

Announcers are saying it's a heavier ball this year. Hernandez liner would have been a dinger last year. It's not the weather.

Dalbec is a liablity at the plate.

Announcer says Orioles' Zimmerman has thrown a bunch of fastballs down the middle and not paid the price.

Announcers say Richards can't throw curve or slider for a strike, hence all the fast balls.

8 straight outs ain't too shabby.

Not just two outs. Dalbec was on deck.

No what?

Radio announcers say JDM has symptoms, not a positive.

One virtuous dude, right here on talksox.

The best explanation I can think of for these humoungous salaries is some combination of butts in seats and TV ratings. That said, however, the LA Angels, who have been consistently lousy on the field, have regularly drawn 3M+ in attendance, even before Mike Trout arrived in 2011. Less surprising is that the Dodgers have always drawn well and usually lead MLB with 4M annual attendance. They did not need Mookie for attendance purposes. So too the Sox with the 2d smallest ballpark in MLB. In the early years of John Henry's reign, they were always "sold out" and drew 3M a year. Since 2009 or so when the Sox finally admittedly they were padding the attendance numbers. the worst they have done is 2.8M+ and that includes when they were dead last in the AL East. Thus John Henry probably didn't need Mookie to maintain attendance. The Phillies, on the other hand, might have been smart to pick up Bryce Harper because attendance jumped a lot from 2018 to 2019. Without Harper in 2018 it was 2.158M. With Harper it was 2.727M in 2019. And the reverse happened to the Washington Nationals, whose attendance before Bryce Harper's rookie season was 1.9M and thereafter was around 2.4 to 2.5M. After they lost him, their attendance dropped from 2.53 M in 2018 to 2.26M in 2019 even though 2019 was the year they won the World Series. I think the idea of Bryce Harper, especially given his first full season in MLB (2012) was at age 19, is far greater than the actual performance on the field. He's had two good years out of eight (excluding 2020 and 2021): his rookie year, 2012, when his WAR was 5.2, and three years later when he was the NL MVP with a 9.7 WAR. In the other six years his WAR's were 3.7, 1.0, 1.5, 4.8, 1.8, and 4.5. For that 1.8 WAR in 2018 (in which he played 159 games) he was paid $21.6M. As soon as he left (2019), the Nationals won it all, so his "production" wasn't missed, but the idea of him was.