Maxbialystock

Please remove my Umps Thread from the top of the game threads, with my apology for sheer boneheadness.

Darn. Well said. 82 PA's ain't that small.

A head nod to stevencurry30 for some creative and clever thread titles. If anyone deserves a third straight win, he does.

Agree with spudboy. Insightful and succinct.

Absolutely. A win tonight is not inevitable both because of Sale's last start against the Guardians and his last start, period. The good news is that these Sox are looking more and more like a complete team, granted, with imperfections, but with a terrific overall effort. I defend Farrell a lot, but in this case the lion's share goes to the players, a tad to Dombrowski, and a tad to Farrell.

They do make mistakes, but I have to say I am very pro-ump and anti-technology which is slowly but surely taking over the game at the expense, in my opinion, of significantly reducing the human element which is the essence of baseball. The upside of the replays, I freely acknowledge, is avoidance of managerial tirades. This probably saves time, but I'm not so sure because overall games keep getting longer. Plus I am probably one of the very few who enjoys the adroitness of good umpires moving quickly to be in the right position to make a call. So, me, I don't mind a slight miscall on a very close play--it's part of the game. And I resent the sometimes lengthy time it takes NYC to finally decide a really close play was right or wrong. I also think those superimposed strike zones to be pernicious even though I look at them often to see where a pitch went. Because of them, we assume that most umpires are just plain lousy on balls and strikes when they really are not. I myself use them to determine whether our pitchers are getting more or fewer calls than the opposition when in fact the differences between balls and strikes can be quite small. I am, on the other hand, fine with MLB allowing replays to improve umpire performance after the the game is over. That includes videos of all balls and strikes. Teams use videos endlessly to spot weaknesses. Meanwhile umpires have virtually no authority to speed up games, mostly because MLB rules and accepted norms tolerate an enormous amount of dawdling by pitchers and batters, visits to the mound by catchers, coaches, managers and sometimes infielders. Now here's the grabber. I disagree that somehow umpires should be invisible so the focus can be solely on the talents and skills of the players. In fact, they are more efficient, focused and professional than most players and their active presence is ubiquitous. They call maybe 300 pitches a game. 1st and 3D base umps call checked swings. They call fouls, hits, catches, tags (by fielders and base runners). They do not dawdle endlessly. They try to stop fights. They take a lot of abuse from fans, managers, hitters, and, less often, from pitchers. They all have to get behind the plate every fourth game and make a ton of calls, including important plays, and risk getting hit by a foul ball or errant pitch with less protective gear than catchers. The other night the home plate umpire conscientiously stood behind the plate for Kelly's warm up pitches and got hit in the mask by an errant 100 mph fastball. he almost had to be taken from the game, but stuck around as a base umpire. That is professionalism of a pretty high order. Players, it has to be said, are terrific athletes. But their entertainment value is what makes MLB profitable despite their enormous salaries. We think of movies stars as enormously wealthy, but no one on talksox can name a single movie star being paid $31M a year for seven years regardless of their performance or even availability. You want to see professionalism on the baseball field? Watch the umpires. They make the game better and are an essential--including their human fallibility--part of it. My bad, especially with curry30 doing so well. I'm happy if Youk moves this to the regular forum, which was obviously my intent, or even kills it.

To be fair, the first HBP was by the Detroit starter, who hit Sanchez, a hot bat. But this loaded the bases, bringing up Judge. It worked because Judge struck out. So the Tigers aren't completely blameless in my view.

I apologize for all the Yankees game commentary, and I do realize tonight is another big game for the Sox. I notice that the lineup is exactly the same as last night's except for Leon catching and batting 8th. No Davis yet, but he could be a terrific pitch runner. Nunez. 2b Betts. RF Benintendi. CF Ramirez. DH Devers. 3b Bogaerts. SS Moreland 1b Leon. C Holt. LF

OK. Pitcher and and Yankees bench coach now ejected. Next Yankees pitcher threw inside for an HBP on the hands. No ejection, probably fair. 3 run double by Iglesias! No way MLB can't take action against Girardi and maybe the Yankees as a whole.

Girardi is now controlling this game. Not only did throwing at Cabrera get him thrown out, but the resulting fracas and long. Long delay of game basicallly took out the Tigers starter who lost his command. After the game was tied, the Yankees reliever hit the first Tigers player in the head and no one was ejected. Girardi and the Yankees are scum.

Great call by lthe home plate ump in the Detroit half of the 6th. With 2 outs and no one on the Yankees pitcher decided to nail Cabrera, but ended up throwing behind him for a ball. The ump did not hesitate to eject the pitcher--absolutely the right call. But Girardi came charging out anyway. Then words between Cabrera and the catcher led to a shove by Cabrera who was ejected when a small brawl erupted. Yankees catcher Romine also ejected. No way, no how Girardi did not instigate this with the Yankees down 6-3. I am not a Yankee hater, but that was completely bush league and that whole team is bush league. Chapman is now pitching in the 6th with the Yankees down 6-3. Goodness me.

That's a thought.

Why start our two worst hitters, Davis and Holt? Do you really think Holt is a bigger offensive threat than HanRam? I sure don't. We need Davis for his fielding, but with an OBP of .280 against righties he should bat 9th, where JBJ was. I would go with last night's lineup which preservered against an ace righty, Kluber, but with Leon catching and Davis batting 9th in CF. Maybe shift HanRam lower in the order, but maybe not.

All very sensible. Vintage moonslav.

Gomes the catcher don't catch so good.

Maybe Kimbrel won't get to pitch the 9th after all. Wow.

Whoops. There goes worthless Holt with an rbi and an insurance run off a double. Plus he scored the second run of the game. Why does Farrell even let him on the field, let alone start a game? Oh, I remember. They want to give him enough rope to prove he's a candidate for DFA, which makes perfect sense in the middle of August in a tough pennant race.

Great single by Devers!

Interesting. Reed gave up the dinger on a 2-0 count, which was a deep hole against a hitter like Encarcion. He threw three straight sliders and the 3d one was up too much. Probably not a good pitch choice.

If the bullpen can hang on, this will be a great win--on the road against a bonafide contender for the Cy Young this year who actually pitched a very good game.

Are you serious? This is the guy everyone wanted to see in Monday's game. Now he's a dirtbag? I believe that Farrell thought he could get 4 outs from Kelly and 4 from Reed especially after that hard liner to CF for Kelly's 4th out. You guys have a very low threshhold for calling Farrell a dunce. I mean, even when things go right, he's an idiot.

Come on Devers, make me wrong.

I honestly want to disagree with you, but the simple fact is that Mookie is a sucker for a slider or even a curve, so he must swing at fastballs in the zone, especially on the first pitch. Of course, in his second at bat Kluber threw a cut fastball on the outside corner. Interestingly, Beni did swing at the first pitch, and it was a fastball low and below the strike zone.

I can't say yet how good Kluber's pitches are, but he has a good mix and can really hit the outside parts of the strike zone.

Not a four game reaction. I said at the outset his OPS batting 5th is .769 for I think 11 games. His OPS for the season is 1.007 and at those other 3 positions, where he has batted I think 10 games, 1.225. Indeed, his season to date is a small sample size, but that hasn't stopped virtually this entire board (including me) from saying he can hit anything anytime. All I'm suggesting is the conservative approach for a 20 year old, no matter how good, isn't necessarily bad.