Maxbialystock

Yankees pummeling KC again, Orioles down 5-4 in the 6th at Detroit.

Leake takes away the GIDP just in time. Then Pedroia hits a perfect grounder to the SS, but Betts was on 2B.

Sox are playing errorless ball tonight. All runs are earned.

Betts and Bogie stay hot, but now Pedroia will demonstrate his patented GIDP.

No error by Moreland, it turns out. He seems to be terminally stupid thinking he can field a bunt and then throw across the diamond to get a runner coming from 2B who must be tagged. There is some good news, however. Porcello is even worse than the fielding and getting hit hard. No way are the Sox going to score runs off Leake. So this game was lost from the beginning--Morehead just helped to expedite things a little. Best part is I get to bed at a decent hour. Bad news is Benintendi looks a little lost at the plate--he K's on 2 very hittable called strikes, then swings at a pitch well inside.

I love it because it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ortiz doesn't know jack. JD Drew the best? In his five years with the Sox he was never rated better than 3d in MLB in RF. Last year Mookie Betts--you know, Ortiz's teammate-- was not only ranked #1 among all MLB rightfielders, it was by a huge margin. I agree JD Drew was a five tool player--hitting, hitting with power, running the bases, fielding, and throwing--and might even have had a slight edge in fielding. But Mookie has the better arm--more accurate, quicker release, stronger--runs the bases twice as well, really does hit with power, and hits for average. More than that, he plays every day and is the right guy to have at the plate when you need some runs. In five years with the Sox, 2007-11, Drew never drove in more than 68 runs. In his entire career he never drove in more than 100 runs. Last year Mookie drove in 113.

Porcello vs. Leake (the famous anthropologist). Our starter has double the ERA of their guy.

What a great post! How can a Cardinals fan pick up the talksox lingo and perspective so easily and completely? I mean, he is disgusted with his own team for losing to the Yankees and Nationals, two of the hottest teams in MLB right now and even though the Cards are leading the NL Central, which only includes last year's best team, the Cubbies.

All due respect--you did, after all, start a winning thread--I give our guys a lot of credit. Cardinal errors helped, but we still had 5 rbi's and 2 dingers. Plus the Cardinals only rally, 3 runs in the 3d, depended heavily on ERod hitting their pitcher and put him on base instead of getting should have been an easy out. I whined about ERod, but he went 6 while giving up 3, a quality start. The bullpen was great. The defense was very good, especially the great play by Mookie in RF, plus having Marrero at 3B. No errors. The Cardinals are right now leading the NL Central and were playing in their park--thus no DH (probably a blessing in disguise for the Sox) and their starter Lynn had been very good his previous 4 starts. So wasn't it neat when Betts lead off with a dinger and JBJ added one an inning later? I am the world's leading proponent of the thesis that earned and unearned runs are total bs created by the pitchers lobby. To me a run is a run, and an error is not an excuse for a pitcher to say, "OK, whatever happens now ain't on me but on the turkey who just made the error." Our team beat their team 6-3 on their field fair and square.

Great play by Mookie. JBJ does not make that play because he is incapable of a quick release combined with an accurate throw.

To what end? Sale is our best pitcher and rarely shakes off a pitch.

I'm saying he threw inside because that's what Vazquez called for.

?????????

Not all is ERODs fault. The double came on the 7th straight inside fastball to Fowler.

EROD is a choker, pure and simple. Polar opposite of Lynn who pitches quickly and with confidence.

That's true--Ortiz might have been and might be a student of the game. However, I am more confident Williams was because he actually managed for 3 years and one year was voted manager of the year in the AL with the Senators. Plus we know he was smart because he was a pilot in World II and Korea (where he apparently was John Glenn's wingman). He was not an ideal manager, however, because he was impatient, especially with pitchers.

I'm actually kind of partial to the Cardinals. I don't root for them of course. But they are one of the oldest MLB franchises with a lot of history. The guy who really got them going was Branch Rickey, who i think was the first to develop minor league relationships that fed the MLB team. Ever since then, including the 21st century, their overall management has been solid. The St Louis Cardinal fans are not so much fanatics as incredibly loyal because their population is 316K, down from 856K in 1950, but their attendance is regularly near the top in MLB. Right now they are 2d of 30 teams. If you drive across the country or at least as far west as Missouri and Oklahoma, you will hear their games on the radio. ERod vs. Lynn tonight--tough match-up given our struggles at the plate.

I personally like lots of different threads, even short-lived ones. It livens things up. On the other hand, in the brief year I've been on talksox I've grown to accept their methodology. I'm pretty sure I've had more than one thread I started merged with another, and in the end I was fine with that. It is certainly better than the madness we sometimes saw on BDM and I saw on other non-baseball websites I have been to where random thoughts immediately become threads because people want their online voices heard above all others. Moreover, I personally think the idea of Ortiz as manager is just nonsense. He was a great hitter and has a pretty good personality but has in now way prepared himself to manage for the simple reason that he doesn't have to put in the endless hours and days and months of even one season as an MLB manager. Ted Williams was one of the few stars who successfully managed, but most people agree he was always a student of the game, which Ortiz is not.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. There is always at least one in the crowd who believes that good managers simply don't lose games. This was the relentless drumbeat throughout Francona's tenure in Boston--he lost games whereas good managers don't do that. True he won two WS with the Sox and with Cleveland was voted manager of the year one time and last year took them to the WS before losing to the Cubs. But the hard fact is that both the Sox and the Guardians have lost games with Francona at the helm. Fire the bum!

who the hell is EE?

Goodness knows I am no DD fan, but I honestly thought we had a good lineup for this year. HanRam really isn't replacing Ortiz, Moreland is because he is new to the lineup. So how make up that deficit? Benintendi in LF helps. So, I thought, would be the case with Pablo at 3B, but he has been worse than our group last year and on the DL, which brought in a multitude of sins. I'm guessing that last year overall our thirdbasemen were ranked in the bottom third, but this year they are probably dead last. JBJ is way down from last year. Pedroia is down. And where I miscalculated is that Ortiz was both a great rbi guy and great rbi guy when you really need one.

Good to see Dombroski take some hits, which he definitely deserves.

I disagree with almost all criticism of specific decisions by Farrell, but do believe that any manager can be fired if the front office thinks the team is under performing. Of course, with Lovullo now in in Arizona, finding a new manager on, say, June 1 might be tricky if you think managers make a difference. That the Sox are just 4 games out and still 1 game over .500 are in Farrell's favor for now. As bad as the 9th was yesterday, I honestly don't think it cost the Sox the game because they had scored just 2 runs in 8 innings and were 2 for 11 with RISP, a familiar malady in 2017. Our first six hitters were 3 for 22. If these guys could hit, this was a winnable game, and it would be dead wrong to blame the bullpen. Remember, Pomeranz only lasted 3 innings, giving up 2. Then the bullpen went 5, giving up 2 more. Give the Sox a 5-4 lead going into the 9th, and Kimbrel gets another save.

my NOAA map says the bad stuff has moved thru--the same stuff that forced the schedule change to yesterday afternoon vs. last night--and chances are good to get this one in. shout out to my mom julie, mother of six, and my wife joan, ditto.

3d thru 6th hitters--bogie, beni, young, and moreland--were hitless yesterday but the Sox still scored 6. bogie ended his 15 game hitting streak. the big switch is betts getting super hot and replacing beni as the hitting stats leader. mookie now leads the Sox in total bases, dingers, rbi's, OPS (.923!!), and his 2d in runs scored. bogie has the highest BA and OBP.