Maxbialystock

I don't like the interruptions. Let's not forget that maybe half of those calls were correct in the first place so those interruptions were a complete waste of time. Plus some of them are very, very close, so close that I would not object to a wrong call. Tonight for example, the Sox got the call on that attempted steal because Bogaerts actually made the tag barely before the Orioles runner's foot hit the bag. I would have been just fine with no challenge and that guy on 2B.

That great play by Pedroia reminds me that one advantage of being a short infielder is that you are quicker getting back up on your feet. Sometimes when Shaw dives for a ball, he needs to call time out to be allowed to regain his footing. Otherwise, his best move is not to throw to first.

Actually, I don't like the interruptions, but tolerate them because overall they save time by preventing managers from going ape at every call they don't like. Now they only get mad on balls and strikes, which is good for them because sometimes you just have to vent. Also, the umpires make all the calls in the field, and managers only get so many challenges, especially if they challenge and the call is upheld. The pure strike zone advocates don't want umpires calling balls and strikes, period. They want a robot or a computer hooked to a camera or whatever.

That Orioles pitcher sort of reminds me of Beckett in 2006, his first year in Boston, when his ERA was 5.00 and he loved his fastball, but not as much as opposing hitters did. Boy is it great to see those bats, especially HanRam's, come alive against the Orioles, whom I dislike even more than the Yankees.

So, if attendance is so great in the 21st century and every game has not one but four umpires in uniform, including one guy behind the plate only getting 87% of the balls and strikes right, it looks to me like the dumbest thing MLB could do is send the robots out. But maybe not. Maybe MLB fans, the ones who go to games, are just stupid and need to be force fed those robots, computers, cameras, whatever. But instead of robots, let's call them clowns so we can all shout with glee, "bring on the clowns."

Down since when? Last year was the 7th highest total attendance in the history of MLB according to a Forbes article that also says that, given every team has 81 home games (vs., what, 8 home games in the NFL), given that going to ball games of any kind is more and more expensive, and given that the overall team average is around 30,000 per game, MLB attendance is very impressive. MLB is, simply stated, flourishing. I don't know where you get your number from, but that ain't right. I'll go with Forbes, thank you. Oh, the six seasons that had better attendance than last year were, wait for it: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2012, 2013. Looks like MLB is the sport of choice in the 21st century attendance wise. Last year the average team attendance for the season was 2.459M, which dwarfs the attendance of any NFL, NHL, NBA, or soccer team in the world.

That was a great at bat by Shaw. Maybe a sign he is going to come out of his slump. You know he has to have been working hard, no doubt with guidance from Chili Davis.

I love it because I gotcha. You can check this yourself by googling mlb attendance records and finding the wikipedia article. In it says that 10 of the 30 teams have had their highest ever single season attendance from 2008 to the present. And remember that's just 8 seasons out of an average per team of, say, 50 seasons. Umpires are a problem only for people who demand perfection in what is a quintessentially human endeavor that should stay that way. I agree, by the way, that a new stadium only has a temporary effect on attendance unless the old one was really crappy. You know, like Fenway Park, which I love on the TV screen but don't like at all in person--terrible sight lines, almost punitive.

Actually, I provided some evidence that my characterization was not, in your words, "false." My evidence is that no one on this thread or, for that matter, on any of the game threads, complains that the umpire is calling balls and strikes in our favor. I am also a big basketball fan and cannot tell you how many game threads and separate threads I have read about how the referees screwed my team. I mean it gets vicious. It is human nature to complain about officiating, but that doesn't mean should marginalize officials because they are an essential part of the game.

Who cares about WS ratings? That's a max of 7 games and often depends on which teams are playing and how competitive the games are. I looked at a wikipedia chart on team attendances and found out that 16 of 30 MLB teams have had their best attendance for a single season in one of the seasons from 2006 to the present. The other 14 had better single season attendance before 2006. It therefore seems to me that attendance is not going down. Then of course there are those players salaries that keep going up. How is that possible if teams' ratings and attendance down and MLB is about to collapse? FWIW, I think it is possible MLB will become less popular, but I can think of a bunch other reasons more pertinent than the so-called error-rate by home plate umpires.

Your delight in baiting continues to ignore what was said. Fact one: even with Vazquez weak hitting, the Sox offense right now is the absolute best in MLB. They don't need a good-hitting catcher to ensure they can score runs. Fact two: the Sox pitching is weak and would benefit from a good defensive catcher, which Vazquez certainly is. This does not mean that, with him behind the plate, the team ERA will suddenly lop of a run or two. Maybe half a run, which I think is what happened after Swihart went back to Pawtucket. I am not, as I said earlier, a big Vazquez fan, nor would I claim he is now suddenly a great MLB catcher. But the evidence says he is the best choice right now if Hannigan and Swihart were both healthy. Heck, he even did a better job catching Wright than Hannigan had been doing.

Really? You know that for a fact? I would argue, for starters, that boomers are not the key demographic right now that keeps MLB flourishing. And by flourishing I mean that salaries are out of sight, attendance continues to be very good, and the TV ratings (and mlb.com ratings) are solid as well. If you look at the history of baseball, the key factor for keeping attendance up is scoring runs although making the stadiums nice with good sightlines also helps. For individual teams, of course, winning makes a difference, as does losing. I would be astounded if a survey were done of fans who go and who don't go to MLB games in person, and the finding was, "I just can't stand those umpires any more. Too many missed calls on balls and strikes. That's why I stopped going to games. It's downright criminal that the owners don't fix this problem." TV might be another matter, but I doubt it. I think you are on record saying you will stop watching a game if the balls and strikes are called badly, but I think you don't have much company when you do. If bad calls were provably affecting TV ratings, MLB would fix it. The one thing I might agree on is the possibility that MLB would purify the strike zone--use computers or robots to call balls and strikes-- in order to be able to quickly contract it (make it smaller) if the pitching gets too dominant, which has happened before.

Tagging onto moonslav's points above, I would say the following. The Sox offense is clearly the best in MLB right now. They score more runs than anyone else and have the highest OPS by a good margin. If there is any team in MLB than can afford to have a weak-hitting catcher, it's the Sox. At the same time, we have a weak pitching staff that could use a good defensive catcher. Vazquez appears to be that guy. Heck, he's even the only guy who seems to be able to catch our best pitcher, Wright, because Hannigan sure can't. I am not a huge Vazquez fan, but to me keeping him as our primary catcher right now is a no-brainer. He is the polar opposite of Saltalamacchia.

No matter what the advocates for a pure strike zone--enforced by technology, not humans--say, what they really want is more calls going our way for both pitchers and hitters. We are now on page 39 of this thread, and one would be hard pressed to find a specific complaint about a call that went our way. I am of the firm belief that, were all those balls and strikes called perfectly, it would help neither our pitchers nor our hitters.

Whoa, Nellie. Just what do you think Swihart can do? Catch? Vazquez doesn't hit so well, but he is worlds better behind the plate. Left field? Young is doing fine out there on defense and his OPS is over .900. Pinch hit? Doubtful. Besides, any baseball team that relies on its bench must have a weak lineup, which the Sox do not have, not when they are leading MLB in runs scored and OPS. The simple fact is that Tillman was terrific last night, especially with RISP, and that fireballer who got the 5 out save wasn't half bad either.

Pathetic 9th, but should not have been a surprise. That rbi single by HanRam was pretty darn good after Ortiz, our rbi leader, K'd on pitches even this ump would have called balls.

Shaw beats out a slow roller!

Hey, turkey. Bradley just made it a one run game.

Heart of the order--Pedroia, Bogaerts, Ortiz--K looking, weak ground out, K swinging. And this is the third time through the lineup. But it's the 6th inning and Tillman has 104 pitches, so maybe there is hope. How good is the Orioles bullpen?

Pedroia K looking. Tillman is tough.

Shaw has been awful lately, granted. I'm down on him too. But he's also batting 8th. I can live with Vazquez at bat because he is good defensively.

Hey, Max. Quit your whining. Our guys are still playing for 1st place. And Tillman is a good pitcher, especially against the Sox.

3 at bats and 3 easy outs by Betts.

I saw that pitch and completely agree it could have been called a ball. But it was just one pitch. Bogaerts hit the next pitch hard, but right to Machado for the GIDP. The simple fact is that Tillman has been really tough with men on base. I wish our guys would be so tough.

We have 3 hits, the Orioles two hits. That changeup was made to order for Shaw, who these days couldn't get a hit on an outside pitch to save his life.