Maxbialystock

I'll settle for getting thru the 5th with a lead.

A one hitter thru 4 innings and 7 K's, but also 80 pitches. Might go 6 innings, might not.

Getting a little scary. that was a very expensive BB--11 pitches. Plus Sale does not trust his slider or changeup.

That's twice now Beni has denied Oakland a GIDP by getting to 2B way early. That DP should have been duck soup. What a dummy he is not playing it safe.

Definitely an off night for Sale and he still has three scoreless innings. He's leaning heavily on the heater, but he really wants to help win this one.

Ahem. Mookie can do no wrong even when he does. He is more of a five tool player than any Red Sox player I can think of. My only concern when he steals or attempts to is a possible injury.

No corners from this ump. Wow. 4 pretty good pitches.

12 strikes and 13 balls in 25 pitches so far for Sale. Off night.

Absolutely. He gives it his all every time out. A real pro. Pom can't even be bothered to cover 1B on grounders to the right.

Nice move by Beni to take off on the 3-2 pitch and prevent the GIDP. Saved a run, as it turned out.

Protecting JBJ????? A manager's job these days is to protect his weak hitters from making outs or, worse, striking out (except when men are on first and second with less than two outs when you want him strike out to prevent the GIDP)? Moreland's bat is twice as good as JBJ's and Cora would like to support Sale with a better hitter in the lineup and will risk having Beni play CF.

Four pages about an inconsequential topic. I like Swihart but agree there is no good position for him on these Sox.

Cahill ® vs. Sale (L) Time to right the ship with Chris Sale at the helm. Betts RF Beni CF Hanley DH JDM LF Bogie SS Moreland 1B Nunez 2B Devers 3B Vazquez C Just 3 lefty bats vs. righty Cahill. I might have played Holt over Nunez at 2B, but what the heck. My NOAA map says the rain is south of Boston, but right on top of DC where it seems the Yankees and Nats are rained out. Bottom third continues to be a drag on the economy. Last night same 3 guys had no hits. A new thread on Mookie says the Sox go as he goes, and last night he was 0 for 5 in a 5-3 loss.

By the same token you seem to be dead certain Beni peaked two years ago, that Dever will never improve, that Vaz and JBJ will stay mired in the mud, etc. I go by what moonslav said before this season started. Several guys under performed last year and moonslav said they would improve. They have. In addition, there can be no question JDM has not only added a very good bat, but one that helps others just as Ortiz's bat did in 2016 when the Sox led MLB in scoring. The Yankees are likely to continue leading MLB in runs scored in 2018, but the Sox shouldn't be too far behind. The key for us is the rotation living up to its promise. Early in the season, they did and more. Now, not so much.

I frankly don't think JBJ is key to anything and am fine with whatever Cora does with him--plays him or doesn't play him. To me right now it's all about the pitching and by that I mostly mean the rotation. Pom has been lousy his last two starts after a great Mar-April. ERod is up and down. Pom is up and down. Price is up and down.

Of course the pitcher doesn't control 80% of the at bats because none of them get 80% of their outs via K's. But good pitchers only have to ensure that the hitter does not hit a round ball with a round bat squarely. Good sinker ball pitchers can induce grounders which are good for the defense more often than not. And there are no pitchers anywhere that don't love to see popups. Most grounders and most popups are routine plays and not a challenge for the defense.

It absolutely is not a fact. More of an hypothesis. I do think pitching is crucial to the defense as evidence by the expenditure of huge amounts of money for that one position and the 12 guys who fill it. Our highest paid player is a pitcher. Our closer makes more than Betts or Beni or JBJ or Devers or Bogie or Nunez or Vaz or Moreland. And they have all played many, many more innings than Kimbrel has. So 80% could be wrong, but I don't think by much. Plus I have a big caveat in there when I point out that in fact JBJ has played in a lot of games this year despite the execrable OPS. Clearly Cora values his defense. But he has also "rested" JBJ because his weak bat exacerbates the weak hitting in the bottom of the order.

Just so we know what we are arguing about, here again is what I wrote earlier. I think 80% of defense is the guy on the mound. This might explain why every MLB team without exception carries 12 pitchers on their 25 man rosters. That leaves 20% for the 9 guys, including the pitcher, defending against various flies, grounders, liners, bunts, etc. Divide 20% by 9 and you get a little over 2% of the defense depends on any given defender. The offense depends on the 9 guys in the lineup--100%. Divide that by 9 and you get something over 10% for each guy in the lineup. So a lineup player contributes 10% to the offense and 2% to the defense, so his bat is 5 times as important as his glove. You can probably make a case that some fielders, especially very good ones, are contributing more than 2%. In JBJ's case, maybe it's 3%, but I doubt seriously it's more than 4% because outfielders don't have as many total chances as infielders and catchers have more than anyone else. So best case for JBJ is that his bat is 2.5 times as important as his glove. This could explain why, season to date, he has played in the second most games of anyone on the team. Cora likes him in CF (occasionally RF, but not often).

Hmmm. I thought I was the only one indulging in irony.

I only know what I see, and I certainly don't see a closeup of Vazquez on every pitch. Far from it. So you could be right.

From what I've seen, he hasn't thrown that many bad pitches, but they have hit some pretty good ones low in the zone. Vazquez gets the pitches from the bench, and there is always the possibility that the other team is reading those signs.

I always have the sound off. Unfortunately, they are also putting him on camera.

Can't disagree with that. Of course, it didn't lead to a run. Nope, the missed catch by Betts did--two of them. Fortunately for him, most people agree he's pretty good in RF.

When will Cora learn? If JBJ had been in RF, he catches that one easy.

I apologize for the bulletins, but what the heck. Gonzalez escaped with 1 run, score now tie 3-3, despite bases loaded and no outs. I am less than 20 miles from the stadium and we are getting a lot of thunder and rain.