Maxbialystock

I think Happ was excellent tonight. Average or not, he was throwing good pitches. Betts and JD are pretty good, experienced hitters and they looked pretty bad tonight. That's good pitching.

Good job by Porcello. Not so good by our lineup. So far.

You haven't. My point is that Happ is the problem, not Beni. If Mookie is having a problem, then the pitcher is probably having a good night.

He ain't no more overrated than JD, who stinks tonight, righty vs. lefty. JD is the one getting the big bucks, not Beni.

That's all right. Great double by Holt and huge single, hard hit, by Hanley Ramirez. 3-1. More than that, hope.

OK. Whoever defended Porcello was right and I was wrong. He had some bad luck and certainly has not been hit hard. Now he is cruising. But will the hitting turn around? In our lifetimes?

So far Happ is doing what Manaea did in his no-no--but for that very fluky single to the 2b. This is now three straight games when the bats have gone to sleep and I mean all of them.

Now JD is putty in Happ's hands. Horrible at bat.

That's twice Beni has K'd on the high inside fastball. He is putty in Happ's hands. A roast to be carved up.

And you think Betts has done better tonight? It ain't Leon that's the problem. It's Happ, at least so far. Plus credit to Porcello for stinking things up.

6 fastballs and he made fool of Betts, easily our best hitter.

Tonight anyway Happ is simply the better pitcher and by a good margin. I'd love to say it's early, but fear that just means the margin will increase.

I don't know whether it's important, but that at bat by Devers showed something no Sox pitcher can do. Happ thru 7 pitches, one on the outside corner waist high and the other 6 low, lower, and lowest and got Devers to ground out. Sox pitchers will go low now and then, but none, repeat, none stay there through an entire at bat. And certainly not Porcello.

An inauspicious 1st. 3 easy outs on 6 pitches by Happ.

That's about where I am. I had an uncle who watched every game religiously and remember thinking he had to be slightly nuts. Now I am. Game threads don't make it any easier.

Fine. Forget the Pom first start game. Just look at the team won-lost record and don't forget to look at the close ones when the manager might have been partly involved in the outcome. That alone should give him the benefit of the doubt. But, fine again, don't consider the won-lost record. Just focus on the April 22 game 8th inning. Price gets an out and gives up 2 singles, at which point you want Carson Smith in there instead of Price. A fresh arm. But I say I want more than a fresh arm in a tie game with 2 men on in the 8th inning. I want a good arm, by which I mean someone who can throw good pitches when it's crunch time. Carson has pitched in 9 games and has the worst ERA and the lowest WAR (-.1) in the Sox bullpen. He has given up 6 walks in 7 innings. This year he has yet to pitch well with the game on the line and with runners on base when he goes into the game. I will grant you he probably would not have given up a dinger, but Oakland didn't need a dinger. All they needed was maybe a walk to move that runner to 3b and then a fly or a grounder with eyes to get thru the drawn in infield with 1 out. Or forget the walk and just get a single to bring the runner on 2b home. Price, on the other hand, has had men on base several times in 5 starts and 27.2 innings and done pretty well up until that April 22 dinger. And up until that fatal pitch he had gone 7.2 innings while giving up 1 run and 1 walk. So I honestly think leaving him in is defensible.

Good lineup. Play Seattle 7 times in June, 4 of them at Seattle. If we had scheduled 4 on this trip, it would have been a lot of consecutive games without a break, at least on the schedule. We were rained/snowed out on April 16. If that had not happened and the Sox played 4 in Seattle before heading east, it would have been like 25 consecutive game days. Whatever, we got back to Seattle in June, then play them at Fenway, and that's it for the season.

I was in a missile unit once, and we called it missile tape, but in fact it was duct tape.

I do and agree with her. I do not intend sarcastic nastiness and do not object to other points of view on managerial decisions. I just enjoy defending them.

Apparently, the A's fans don't much like that arrangement either.

The comparison was in saying in the Pom first start, when he gave up 3 in 3.2 innings, Cora has his stuff together. And you better believe you can make managerial mistakes early in a game as easily as late in a game. A fresh arm is also likely to be an arm that struggles finding the strike zone, which is exactly what happened to Carson Smith in the 8th inning of game 1. He inherited guys on 1st and 2d, walked a guy, got an out, and then gave up a triple. So please don't try to convince me what an ace he is in the 8th inning with his fresh out of the dryer arm. Job one for any pitcher is to hit your spots. As for Price, he just struck out Lowrie, whom he faced for the 4th time. And Lowrie was a righty facing a lefty, which is a compelling argument that Price still had great stuff. And don't forget you didn't want Price to strike out Lowrie, No siree. You wanted Smith to face Lowrie with 1 man out and Davis in the on deck circle.

If Price was "gassed," how do you explain that he had struck out Lowrie, who had been killing us, right before giving up the dinger? You are absolutely, positively entitled to your opinion, but you haven't convinced me you're right, especially when I believe we have already seen several examples of Cora masterfully managing his bullpen. I cite especially Pomeranz's first start when he gave up 2 in the 1st, was in trouble in the 2d, causing Cora himself to go out to the mound, before he got the 3d out with 0 runs scored, was terrific in the 3d, and was pulled in the 4th when he got into trouble again. In came Velazquez, he went 3 (0 runs and the W), then Johnson, then Barnes, and finally Kelly. Plus Pom threw 87 pitches (and gave up 3 runs) in a game the Sox won. I assume the other instance was game 1 when Kelly and Smith both failed in the 8th. I was mad at Cora during the game, but afterward, thought the real fault lay with those two. Plus I did not think it made sense to bring in Kimbrel in the 8th in the first game of the year.

Last year in almost any game into which he was inserted with men on in the 8th inning. This year he has been pretty good (but twice had 2 men on before he got the third out) precisely because every appearance has been in the 9th inning or later. He is not as good in the 8th as he is in the 9th and he prefers to work a "clean" inning.

OK. That's good. Question away in that context. In this particular case, I would have left Price in because he struck out Lowrie swinging for the 2d out and Carson Smith has not exactly been Mr. Reliable with men on 1st and 2d in the 8th inning.

Kimbrel? Kimbrel? In a 1-1 game on the road and in the 8th innings with runners on 1st and 2d? That's exactly the situation in which Kimbrel has struggled in the past.