Maxbialystock

Tough at bat for Leon. Once the first outside pitch was a called strike, Gausman just kept working the outside .

Weird. Already two almost collisions on pop-ups to the infield, Leon caught the second pop. Good 3d inning for Porcello. Leon and Bradley leading off the 3d--not too shabby for #8 and #9.

Sure does

Two innings, no hits.

All but one of those pitches to Shaw were low in the strike zone or below it--the GIDP was almost a sure thing.

Was that a hanging slider Trumbo hammered?

Nice play by Machado, but Betts did hit it hard, as did Pedroia.

Wieters even dumber than HanRam.

Fourth batter 2 fastballs and a groundout. 21 pitches which looked suspiciously like Porcello's warmup. But it worked.

First batter gets 9 straight fast balls and flies out deep to center. Second batter gets 3 straight changeups and singles to RF. Third batter gets 6 straight fast balls and then K's swinging on slider.

Good laydown in the OP. Porcello may or may not be the ace, but he is the right guy to have going tonight. A win tonight puts the Sox up 3 on both the Orioles and the Jays (who lost 8-1 to the Rays). Against Gausman, a righty, Farrell is going with five righties, including Young in LF.

I think he said MLB is mostly white because "they want it that way." However, those might have been Howard Bryant's words because the wrote the article on Jones and earlier the book about MLB. I relooked the espn article by Bryant, and he's the one who says MLB is white because the owners or whites want it that way. But he seems to imply that Adam Jones agrees with that view.

On the surface Adam Jones is absolutely right. African Americans dominate basketball and football way out of proportion to their percentage (15%?) of the American population. Maybe they are naturally better athletes or have more desire or both, but it's clear they do. It was maybe 50 years ago (or more) when Bill Russell, lining up for the 2d half jump ball of that year's NBA All-Star game, noticed that Jerry West was the only white guy on the court and said, "Jerry, you are the great white hope." Half a century ago. Where I disagree with Jones is in the notion that whites--owners, managers, scouts, etc--are deliberately trying to keep African Americans out of baseball. More likely in my mind is that African Americans are making that choice for themselves First and foremost. the apprenticeship for MLB is really long and demanding. But the longest it takes a youngster to get into the NFL or the NBA is roughly age 22, which means four years of college. Up until a few years ago, high schoolers--some, not a lot--were going straight into the NBA, and today those guys are "one and dones." We go ape when someone that young--22--breaks into MLB. And in the NBA and the NFL they earn good money early on, whereas MLB players often take until age 30 to get their first good contract. On top of all that, basketball courts proliferate all over the place, indoors and outdoors, which makes basketball a far more accessible sport for all kids, but especially inner city kids, than any other sport. Plus it's so much easier to have a pick-up game in basketball than the other two sports. And let's not forget that over half of the American population today--I'm guessing 65%--is classified as white. For whatever reason, that 65% is vastly underrepresented in the NBA and NFL, not because of any prejudice, but because people of color are simply better. So, let's say you're a good all around white athlete as many in high school are, and you think you might be good enough to go pro. Which way will you go? Baseball takes longer, but maybe your chances are better of going pro, and you don't mind the apprenticehip requirement. Your bigger problem is that the internationalization of baseball makes MLB accessible to Latinos. I look at our current team and just don''t see what Adam Jones is sore about. We have two African-Americans starting in the outfield and everyone is nuts about them--to say nothing of the likes of Ortiz, Bogaerts, Young, Price, Ramirez, Leon, Vazquez, etc. I mean, we got white guys too, but I'm darned if I can see any tilt in their direction. Price is our highest paid player (I think the 3d or 4th highest yearly salary in the history of MLB). Ramirez is second. Ortiz is third. I am not saying we don't have racial issues in this country. I'm not even saying it's right or wrong for athletes to stand up for the national anthem. But what I am saying is that the only one keeping Adam Jones from speaking his mind or demonstrating his belief is Adam Jones.

Here we got with straight fastballs again.

Kelly throws four straight fast balls, the 4th one 100 mph, resulting in a clean single to the opposite field. Too many Sox pitchers insist on establishing their authority.

Bogaerts and Ortiz so far have each left 4 men on base.

Hanigan maybe be highly regarded, but not to me. He was zero help for Pomerantz and can't hit spit. How he managed to get that walk in the 2d is one of those mysteries that will never be solved. He is hitting maybe half his weight.

Despite the 5-2 score in the 4th, a pretty good ballgame. The Orioles starter Bundy fought thru the 2d because he actually had a breaking ball, that changeup, he could depend on. Pomerantz ended up over-relying on his fast ball, which is what happened to Buch on Sunday.

Whoever is right about the hottest or 2d hottest, the fact is that Benintendi is not exactly guaranteed to play LF. Nevertheless, he will be an option.

On top of which, the Sox have the 5th best ERA in the AL (and aren't far off the 3d best) and the best run scoring in MLB and the best road record in the AL. Nothing guaranteed, but right now I like our chances.

The Jays have good hitting and good pitching, so I think the Sox and Jays are a good bet for the playoffs. Then it looks like a dogfight among the Orioles, Tigers, and maybe the Yankees. Right now the Sox pitching looks pretty good. Buchholz flubbed his last start Sunday in Toronto, but has been good, and the other four--especially Price and Porcello--have been consistent over the last month or so. The bullpen was very good on the 9 game road trip, but never more so that giving up 2 runs in 6 innings to save that rubber game win at Toronto. I would not say we have shut down bullpen, but right now Farrell has some pretty good options in Kinbrel, Ziegler, Uehara, Kelly, Ross, Abad, et al. He used 8 relievers Sunday in Toronto. Team ERA right now is 4.08, 5th best in the AL. 3d best is Houston at 4.03. Hitting is excellent overall even though sometimes they can be beat. Thus the three losses on the road trip were 3-2, 2-1, and 1-0. All of the above sounds good, but it's also true that any team can get hot.

You're right. I was picking on him. But when I first did it I also pointed out four things that could stymie his development--up too soon, apparently made the instant starting thirdbaseman, all the brouhaha from the press about greatest prospect in MLB, and too much money. All four could have had him believing that this MLB stuff is easy. I also said that the consecutive strikeouts were possibly the best thing that could happen to him--ditto getting picked off first. Now we can add to that not running on the two out pop to RF. I don't think any of that was unfair on my part. Someone else cited a stat, maybe valid, that it takes 1200 at bats to be ready for MLB. My guess is Moncada is well under 600, on top of which he missed 1 1/2 years of playing any kind of baseball at all. About Moncada's mistakes not being revelation. Says who? Go read the early parts of this thread when everyone was drooling over Moncada and dunning Shaw or anyone else who dared play 3B in lieu of the great Moncada. He was going to be the engine driving the Sox train in the playoffs. So you better believe his trouble with the curve was a revelation. Now that we have seen all of those mistakes, it's obvious he came up too soon. We saw how easily Benintendi and Betts and even Bogaerts had adjusted and forgot that Moncada missed a lot of essential repetitions. I would be dishonest if I didn't also say I myself was in favor of bringing him up if only because oaf his speed and the fact that Pawtucket was about to run out of games for him to play in. So I was wrong too. The good news is that this was just a September call-up--in the normal scheme of things, no big deal. Wait until next year.

OK. 4 innings, 52 pitches, 2 runs. Let's get that one back.

His last time out Price threw 75% strikes, and he's doing that again tonight.

damn. he nailed that knuckle curve up in the strike zone.