Maxbialystock

Sale out for the 8th. A little scary to be honest.

7 innings, 2 runs, and a 2 run lead.

My mistake. Leon should have got down on his knees or, better still, laid down flat so Sale would Know not to throw the changeup in the middle of the zone. He set up exactly the same way he set up for all the other changeups by Sale tonight.

It was a changeup in the middle of the strike zone. No catcher would call for that.

Plus he just doubled down on that call.

That 3 run dinger is starting to look pretty big. Sox have that and 3 singles in 5 innings. Everybody except Mookie, JD, and JBJ is hitless. Ranger lead Yankees 4-0.

You're blaming that dinger on the catcher? Seriously?

2 for 2 for JBJ. Both well hit. I would not have played him tonight. Chalk up another solid decision by Cora.

Nice break for Sale. 40 pitches in 3 innings: more like it.

Can't make that up. Great story. Small world.

Yep. One more MLB team we can pronounce incapable of baserunning as well as a good little league team.

Offense so so at best last year and dead last in dingers. And you see no improvement? That's not all JD of course, but he is the only new guy. I'm not so sure they are the fools.

Bottom third started that rally.

Rotten top of 1st.

Nice. A would be manager with some flair. Not sure Cora will do it, however. I am so used to him batting 2d, but think that would be a little bold right now, plus Betts and Beni are pretty close to the best 1-2 combo in MLB.

Baloney. this is my story and we have to go by what I remember. Great catch, thanks. I did in fact forget about those errors. And I forgot that Drew was a more than adequate defensive SS. Bogie played 3B.

Maybe not brilliant, but pretty darn good.

Won just 69 games in 2012, the year after the Sox won 90 in 2011. The Sox won 95 and the WS in 2013, but with the same manager lost 71 games in 2014. Henry as owner has fired four managers in 15 years.

If you enjoy watching ball games, especially in person, the eye test is everything, and that especially applies to defense, which is the poetry of baseball. Home runs win ball games a whole lot more often than great defensive plays, but the latter are usually more exciting to watch. I personally have strong memories of the brilliant defense Iglesias played in 2013. Whether keeping him was the best move or not for the team, I wanted him to stay to enjoy watching his glove, footwork, etc. Instead, we have Bogaerts, who is a far cry from brilliant. And yet. He does bust his butt on defense, which he takes very seriously. He is also a much better hitter than Iglesias and this year one of our key guys in the lineup in a year when our offense is doing pretty darn good despite the weak bottom third of the order. So I fall back on that dirty, rotten, stinking no good stat/approximation called WAR which says that over the past three years Iglesias has averaged 1.6 and Bogaerts 3.5 in the WAR department (pun intended). And I remember something else. Iglesias started at SS for the Tigers in the 2013 ALCS when they played the Sox. He was brilliant, of course, but the Sox won that series, 4 games to 2, and they won it with a combination of solid pitching and timely (not not great--the Tigers had a good pitching staff that included Scherzer and Verlander) hitting. The announcers, as I recall, waxed rhapsodic over at least one and maybe more than one play Iglesias made. But that year Lester and Lackey were both excellent in the postseason, and the bullpen was first rate. The postseason team ERA in 2013 was 2.59 even though Peavy wasn't so hot. My point is that the defense was fine without Iglesias because the pitching was more than fine. And guess who played in 12 of the 16 games in that postseason with an OPS of .893? Xander Bogaerts, that's who. He had the third best OPS and the third most runs scored.

Really? You don't think in 2004 Francona inherited a team that hit like crazy and had decent pitching? I sure do. The hitting was still good in 2007 because the Sox still had Ortiz and Ramirez and a pretty good supporting cast. Plus Beckett had a great year and Lester was pretty good too. Then a decline for 4 years, including the collapse in 2011 which cost Francona his job. Yet 2 years and 2 managers later the Sox win another WS. Then 2 bad years and 2 decent years under the guy, Farrell, who won in 2013. Now Cora is looking pretty good 1/4 way into his first season. You can make a fair argument that in the John Henry era the managers are just along for the ride.

Meh. These days we complain about a missed call that is maybe an inch or two off. The vast majority of calls are correct, and that doesn't include the bad pitches that are swung on. Speaking of which, the first and third base umps have the additional duty of determining whether a batter swung or not. My impression of watching endless pitch counts is that the calls are remarkably consistent. On the other hand, I consider reliable comparisons of defensive plays to be borderline impossible.

Then I'm a pessimist. But of course I always have been although right now I am not pessimistic about the team as a whole. But give me time. The best case for JBJ is that Cora appears to think what you think.

What's to discuss? It works.

Agree completely He needed a whole lot of pitches to get those 17 outs, but he more than did his job--and the lineup did theirs, ditto the bullpen. Since this thread is about Cora, I also think he managed this game beautifully. I would never have started JBJ, but the little sucker came through in part because his manager gave him another shot. He also left ERod in just long enough and brought in Hembree--again, not my choice-- got 4 outs and preserved that goose egg for ERod. Then Poyner and Barnes to finish off the shut out.