Maxbialystock

Hembree gets a lot of negativity on talksox, but, when he is right he can be effective.

Betts CF Beni LF Moreland 1b JDM RF Bogey SS Devers 3b Nunez 2b Leon C Porcello P

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Before WAR, JDM would have been a shoo-in. He will still get some votes, but will not get MVP because he is, in the end, a DH. As big a difference as I think JDM has made and even considering he is willing to play in the outfield, I think no DH should be MVP. To me part of winning the MVP has to be not sitting in the dugout when your team takes the field.

I watched this game at the beach, but also the PGA, so no time to contribute to the thread. I was really mad when Cora replaced Sale after 5 innings and just 68 pitches because the score was just 2-0 and our bullpen was/is suspect. But they came thru and Cora is now being congratulated for his wisdom in not letting Sale throw too many innings/pitches. Plus, and I do give him credit here, he probably figured our lineup would get to their bullpen, which they did in the 9th.

This might not be so bad. Today the Sox are headed for a doubleheader having used six relievers last night: Workman, Pom, Hembree, Brasier, Barnes, and Kelly. Workman threw 24 pitches, Pom 20, Hembree 27, Brasier 8, Barnes 14, and Kelly 16. To make matters more interesting, the night before last Porcello only went 4 innings while giving up 8 runs. Then Workman threw 10 pitches, Velazquez 25, and Thornburg 24. The bullpen could use a rainy day in August.

Last night was a pretty wild game proving once again that baseball is unpredictable. I was so sure Bogaerts put the game in the bag with the 1st inning dinger, then later was just as sure the Orioles were in the driver's seat. Porcello and Eovaldi were horrible in back to back starts after both coming off fantastic back to back starts. Scary. And what the heck is going on with that CF near the bottom of the order? Down there is the well of despair, but in this case it's opposing pitchers who are now despairing. JBJ is hitting the ball hard and going to the opposite field when appropriate. My goodness gracious. Sox now have the biggest MLB margin between runs scored and runs given up, are well in front of the Yankees in total runs scored, appear to be able to hit the long ball down and then, and have a team OPS of .804. Unfortunately, sometimes they need all of that to pull one out.

I honestly enjoy listening to good radio broadcasts of games and almost never have the sound on when watching a game on TV. When the Sox are at Baltimore and I am enroute, I enjoy the Orioles announcers. The WEEI (I think) crew are fine when the Sox are in boston or elsewhere and I am enroute and can pick them up via mlb.com audio.

OK. I've seen enough. Holt needs to get tested. This is not our Brock Holt.

Well done, Pom. Not clean, but we absolutely will take it.

Would have been nice.

I'll chip in.

Road game. So no. Delicate psyches in our rotation.

Huge triple by JBJ. That passed ball was actually strike well inside the strike zone. He still would have gotten home of Betts ran to 1B and beat the throw.

Good stuff. Credible.

The worst team in baseball has won 6 of their last 12 games. Last night the Sox looked just as bad against the Jays. Porcello and Eovaldi both apparently decided to mail it in. Or they are terrified of pitching on the road.

Could not agree more. None of this is Eovaldi's fault because he is an innocent bystander. I think one of the announcers said he heard that Cora also forgot to tell Eovaldi he should try to pitch well tonight. Just a little bit of encouragement from the manager makes all the difference.

Right. It's never, ever the pitcher's fault. If only the manager would throw the right switch--here in the 3d inning--all will be well. If you truly believe that, you are wrong. Believe it or not, you win because the players play the game well and not because the manager makes some magical move.

This looks like two straight games in which our starters looked at their press clipping too long an forgot you got to go out there and earn it each and every time. The danger is that this lackadaisical approach can infect the whole team. If the starters don't give a s*** to prepare properly, why should the hitters? I hope the above is entirely inaccurate, but I was listening to the Orioles announcers on the radio, and they said Workman was warming up. In the 2d inning. Whoops, there goes another rubber tree plant. The great Eovaldi, much like the great Porcello, has now given up 5 runs in 2.1 innings.

All due respect--and I mean that--but nothing is leveling the playing field any more than it already is. Good pitchers already prosper and bad ones get beat up. Good hitters already hit and bad ones don't. None of that, I assure you, will change when robot umps take over. I'm serious when I say you are confusing that superimposed strike zone with some kind of transcendent truth. And in the process of attaining it you are advocating sidelining the umpires who will in fact become more and more marginalized because what's really important about baseball is what we see on that screen and the endless replays that allow us to achieve the nirvana on knowing who really was out or safe and which pitch really did nick the strike zone in exactly the right way.

Know anything about basketball? Ever heard of the 3 second violation inside the paint? Basketball did that because it opened up the court. Ditto the three pointer. The MLB rule book was created to make sense of the game and to keep it interesting. Thus have mounds been lowered, DH's added in the AL, etc. Still not much of a breakthrough on speeding up the game because pitchers and hitters and even managers resist it because so much hangs on every pitch and situation.

All due respect, but just how, exactly, is "standardized ball and strike calling" going to bring baseball back to a presumed golden age before all these shifts, focus on dingers, relievers coming in early, etc? I'm with cp176 in wanting to keep baseball a human endeavor, which means fallible human umpires. Those superimposed strike zones, which I look at right along with everyone else, are not the reality the robot ump advocates think they are. Reality is standing at that plate--or behind it or looking at it from the mound--and trying to be ready for a wide variety of angles, speeds, etc which will be coming at your or which you are trying to cause happen. Reality is seeing basically the same strike zone be Porcello's friend one night against the vaunted Yankees lineup one night and his enemy five nights later against the Jays. I firmly believe that standardized calls on balls and strikes will not make baseball one iota better. By taking umpires out of the central act of all baseball games, it will render whatever else they do increasingly irrelevant. I am already sick and tired of seeing, several times a game, the umpires all huddled around someone with a phone to experts in NYC who are reviewing replays and making decisions on calls. One recent trend I like is that these days they are less likely to reverse a call that was really close, which will discourage managers from gratuitous challenges.

Pretty good game thread for a loss. Well done. everyone.

Of just one thing I feel certain but can never prove. If Butler had started behind the plate, every single run would have been blamed on him. In other words, there is only so much a good catcher can do to keep (or get) his pitcher in a groove. Tonight Porcello proved just how important command of your pitches is and how narrow the gap between brilliant and just plain awful.

Really good point because it's the hitting that is broken tonight. Porcello pitched another brilliant game and was just unlucky with the lack of run support.