Maxbialystock

Ominous top of the 1st. A lot of strikes by Sabathia but just 11 pitches. He is mixing his pitches and hitting his spots. At this rate he could go 7 innings easy.

Sabathia is definitely effective when he is hitting his spots and mixing up his pitches. Pearce at cleanup can't be much worse than Moreland at cleanup and allows everyone else to stay in their usual spot. Also limits lefty bats to three: Beni, Devers, and JBJ. Agree with others that tonight the bullpen could be problem, especially because Kimbrel just closed 2 straight and needed at total of 47 pitches. Kelly got smacked around last night, so much so I wondered if he was telegraphing his pitches. So it's probably up to Barnes, Hembree, Workman, and Velazquez. Even without that, I would rate the Yankees bullpen as better. Tough series, no doubt. Getting Pearce was/is just in time. Maybe he can help tonight against Sabathia because the next two are righties--Grey and Severino.

moonslav might have a point about oddsmakers. Ken Pomeroy has his own website with tons of stats on NCAA Basketball teams. Numbers that understandable but also well presented and accessible. Costs $20/year to get. His website predicts the score for every NCAA Div I game all season long and is surprisingly accurate, so much so that very often Vegas odds begin with his and that change as betting goes on. However, Pomeroy himself has written nothing is better at predicting than knowledgeable, experienced, collective opinion, by which he means oddsmakers. Thank goodness, however, Kimmi is more right than wrong. Sports outcomes are often very unpredictable. I mean, who the heck wants to watch a sporting event with a preordained outcome?

Not me, certainly. I would have been ecstatic with .600. I also didn't expect JDM to be this good, for Betts, Beni, and Bogie to bounce back this well, nor for the pitching, especially, the rotation, to be this good.

Porcello has needed a lot of pitches, but you can't complain about the results. 4 innings, 0 runs. Sweet.

He's at 75 after 4. 7th ain't happening.

According to espn's version of pitching WAR's, the top six for the Sox are: Sale 4.3, Porcello 2.3, Price 2.1, ERod 2.0, Kimbrel 1.4, and Velazquez 1.3. who knew Porcello was our 2d best pitcher?

Me too. For all Yankees series prepare for the worst and hope for the best. They are like cancer. Thank goodness for modern medicine which keeps getting better, and thank goodness for John Henry who ended the curse and then won 2 more--with minor assists from GM's, managers, players, et al. Since he bought the Sox, there has been parity between the two franchises.

Still .5 games behind the DY and need to keep the pressure on.

We gotta get rid of that guy. He's making moonslav59 insufferable.

I honestly did not think Price was at his best last night. I did think it was gutsy because he struggled with the changeup and had to throw a lot of fastballs and cut fastballs. If there was a curve or slider, I don't remember seeing it. Don't misunderstand me. When I say subpar, I also recognize that he did 6 innings and gave up 1 run against a team with winning record. It's important for the really good starters to show they can be tough too.

While I did from time to time acknowledge your insistence he would come around, I was one of the naysayers even though I was always fine with whatever Cora decided. I also came to recognize that replacing him with a good bat would not be simple or easy because DD really doesn't have a lot of moves he can make right now. What he has been doing for the last 2 or more games is nothing less than spectacular. He's hitting the ball hard consistently and to all fields.

Good for Price on that last out in the 4th. He doesn't have his best stuff, but he is battling.

A miracle! Right here at Fenway in the top of the 3d. Price threw an effective changeup to get the final out. Let the rejoicing begin. Bring out the duck boats.

The problem is the only pitch he commands is his fastball. I swear the Sox must have a rule barring their lefties from developing a reliable changeup. Price has one, but it ain't working. It's either in the middle or in the dirt. I don't think I've seen a slider or curve. So the Angels are sitting on those fastballs.

I don't disagree with the notion of inclusion, only with the resulting one game playoff. For example, it's possible the Sox or Yankees could end up with the second best record in the AL and have to play a wild card game. That ain't right. Of course, the Sox went to the ALDS--no wild card game--the last two years and got hammered both times. So what's one more game?

Nasty. But funny.

I would argue the other side. Two straight nights of heavy bullpen did no damage to them--and we won the first game because of the bullpen and lost the second because of the starter. Tonight they are coming off a rest day and should be ready. I'm pretty sure none of our guys are overworked.

Very sensible. But we already know that stuff can happen in any game to cause the starter to leave early, only one of which is ineffectiveness. That's why some managers--like Farrell and Francona--normally use the "7-run rule" to gauge when to pull a starter. It seems a lot, but it saves the bullpen. But in this instance, it wasn't 7, but 10 runs. In this instance Cora had 8 relievers, not the usual 7, and 2 of them are experienced long relievers who in fact started earlier in the season. In this instance the game was winnable because, before those 4 runs in the 4th inning, the score was 6-5 Seattle. In this instance leaving Wright in did not save anything. The bullpen still had to pitch 5.2 innings. In this instance, they also had to pitch 5 innings the next night when ERod was pulled. But in this instance there was an off day yesterday which helped the bullpen recover and which Cora knew about. I'm very pro-Cora and have been all season long and defended him incessantly. But for me there are too many reasons why Wright should have been pulled sooner.

Exactly. I would also agree that we are the better team by a fair margin, but the point is that a one game wild card playoff can go either way. By adding that 5th team to the playoffs in each league, MLB now has 1/3 of their 30 teams making it to the POSTSEASON which presumably increases fan interest and attendance in August and September. To make it work, however, they have greatly elevated the importance of winning a division--even a weak division--and not having to play a single game playoff. To me 4 teams (1 wild card) in each league made more sense.

Wright was fantastic this season and in 3 starts--1 run in 20.2 innings--before this one. No other Sox starter has come close to that in three consecutive starts. So moonslav was right to insist this guy can help. He still can if that knuckler comes back because it is better than any pitch Sale or Price or ERod or Porcello has. It makes Wright our ace when it is working because it allows Wright to have an incredibly low ERA and to pitch a lot of innings in every start. The problem with the knuckle ball, however, is that it is very hittable when it doesn't jump. Up until last Friday, that only happened infrequently to Wright's knuckler. The bigger risk was that it wouldn't be a strike or that Vazquez couldn't catch it, but those risk proved to be minor. Back to that 1 run in the previous 20.2 innings Wright had pitched. That disastrous 1st inning with 4 runs and 2 dingers was a huge red flag that something was very wrong with the erstwhile reliable knuckler. Two more runs in the 2d inning were only confirmatory. Somehow Wright got thru the 3d clean, but Cora should have been doubly alert going into the 4th: his starter had already given up 6 earned runs; his lineup had scored 5 runs and the game was still very winnable. Thus to me his inaction until Wright had given up 10 runs was a huge mistake for which there is no justification. He had an extra reliever in the bullpen and two long relievers. Oh, and 3 days later, Monday, was going to be an rest day for the entire team.

It's still June, so Nick is jumping the gun, true, but we are just 4 games ahead of Seattle in the wild card and Seattle is 7 games ahead of LA. The larger point is being a wild card team, period. It's dangerous because getting to the ALDS requires a one game playoff, and meanwhile the ALDS opponent is busily lining up its rotation.

Gray gets 2 outs in the 7th--the 2d on three straight cut fastballs (93mph) for a K--but also give up a run, and Boone calls for a new arm with a man on 1b. Wow. Remember how Giradi had a rep for overusing his bullpen? Well Boone appears to think the same way. Oh, and Betances struck out the first batter on 4 pitches, easy-peasy.

A perfectly fair comment. However, those weren't the only hanging knuckleballs Wright threw Friday night, and that's my issue with leaving him in. Apropos of nothing, I've been watching the Phillies--NYY game, and in the bottom of the 6th inning the Yankees starter, who had been fantastic, gave up a single and a walk and a soft grounder to 2b that advanced both runners--to 2b and 3b with 1 out and the score 2-0 with the Yankees on top. NYY Yankees manager immediately brings in Robertson, who gets a K and a grounder to 2b to end the threat. Robertson is 33 and has a fantastic knuckle curve that breaks sharply down and a 95 mph fast ball. I would use him in the 8th in a heart beat, but the NYY got Betances, et all for the the 8th and later. I like our bullpen. I think they are good, but I don't think they are as good or as deep as the Yankees bullpen. And bullpens can make the manager's job oh so much easier.

No doubt in my mind about that whatsoever. Sox badly needed someone like Sale and he has more than filled the bill, plus he is a real professional ballplayer. I can't remember another Sox pitcher better at covering 1B on grounders to the right side, and last night he dove for that bunt because he knew it was a hit if he didn't get it. That's why I wonder how Pomeranz and ERod, to cite two examples, can watch Sale cover 1B and then do the exact opposite. The Fenway cops need to give both of them tickets for loitering around the mound. Sale is just a pleasure to watch because he takes the game seriously--every aspect of of it.