moonslav59

Just don't say he might pass Perales in the rankings.

It's not about how good I think the teams we beat are. You've said all along it doesn't matter and you are tired of hearing about it. Now that we are winning, you want to talk about how bad the winning teams we are beating are. You don't see the double standard being used? As to "handing games away," that will always be something subjective, and the half empty glass guys will keep seeing gloom and doom, no matter what. Fact: we are 6-6 in one run games. Game 1: 10-9 loss to BAL. We handed them the early lead on a platter. Our D sucked and sucked many games afterwards. Poor D is often the definition of handing games away, and we are one of the worst. We also WP'd in a run that game. We walked in a run and had so many infield hits allowed that could have been outs, that the earned run stat was put to shame. Game 4: 7-6 loss to PIT: Go back and look at the first inning, where we went down 3-0. It was a joke. One legit hit the whole inning. Game 13: 9-7 loss to TBR: 1st inning: error, walk, HR Game 18: 5-4 loss to LAA: 1st inning: IF hit, HBP, HR, then BB, 1B, SF Game 23: 5-4 loss to MIL: 3rd inning: weak IF hit to SS that should have been an out- later with 2 outs (would have been 3) Tellez hits a 2 run jack. An infield hit led to another run, later. Game 25: 5-4 loss to O's: seeing eye single lets in 5th run. No doubt, we had some luck in some of our wins, and maybe a more than I remember, but we have given up a lot, too. 9 of our wins have been by 3 or more runs. 4 by 2 runs 6 by 1 run Loses: We've only lost 3 games by 3 or more runs The rest have been closer losses. Do the math.

Okay. I view "line-up" as batting.

Wonder who they were.

But was it because Brady put them in a hole with 2 pick-sixes?

You see what you want to see. We've handed as many games away as have been handed to us. We are not as good as these last 5 games have shown. We are not as bad as the .500 team before. To me, we are an 87-90 win team. You blast us for bringing up how strong our opponents and division is, but then fall back on how weak MLB is, now. What's the difference?

Are you counting just fWAR for the everyday players, which includes defense? fangraphs Offense rating has us second: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2023&month=0&season1=2023&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2023-01-01&enddate=2023-12-31&sort=20,d 73.6 TBR 29.2 BOS 29.2 LAD 27.9 ATL 25.7 BAL

Very true, and if you take away every pitchers worst 3 IP, they'd be much better, too. I think Paxton will push Houck back to the pen, where he has always belonged. I had hoped the jerking of Houck from pen to rotation would stop, this year. (Same with Whitlock.)

We have more top quality LH'd platoon types- almost too many. Ref may stick around, because he is one of our few RH'd platoon guys. (Dalbec may never get another look on the Sox. Arroyo is needed in the field.)

Did they ever say "executives?" I thought they said "evaluators and scouts" or "baseball insiders." Maybe they did say execs, too, but yes, name names! Several posters jumped on the story- like it meant something important.

I'm not saying he sucked. I'm just saying the "clutch" tag needs an asterisk.

I'm thinking about 2B only, with the Arroyo comp, but if Story comes back as a 2Bman only, that would change. If Mondesi comes back (at SS), first, Kike is my guy at 2B over Arroyo by a landslide. We may end up seeing a Kike-Duran CF platoon with Kike playing 2B vs RHPs, which would essentially be a Duran-Arroyo platoon. What we do when Duvall returns could change that, unless we bench Casas (Turner to 1B/ Duvall to DH).

Just don't rush him. We need a healthy Whitlock.

Who knows if either will work out for us. It's looking like Binelas (the other part of the renfroe/JBJ-Hamilton trade) will never get out of the minors, but Valdez (the other part of the Vaz/Valdez trade) is looking sharp out of the gate. I'm just going to put it another way: Hamilton and Abreu look better than last year.

The doom and gloomers seem to really "live in the moment," when things are going poorly. They jump to judge over small or tiny sample sizes, but when things go well, they start talking about "regressing to the mean," or focusing on how weak the league must be for this to be happening.

Most of us knew our hitting would not be the problem. Few thought it would be this good, and it could easily "regress" some. On the pitching, I had wished we'd have focused more resources on the rotation, and not just this past winter, either. My expectations were not high, but I think they were higher or much higher than several posters, here. I knew we were light at the top, but I liked the idea of having 6 promising starters (Sale, Whitlock, Kluber, Bello, Pivetta, Paxton) and other promising depth (Houck, Crawford, Wink, Mata, Walter and Murphy.) I figured it might take a while to settle on the right 5 and hoped we wouldn't be 10 games behind before that happened, but I did expect us to be around the 10th to 15th best rotation in MLB- not so much out of glowing expectations, but out of knowing other teams are like us or worse but with less depth. I'm not pessimistic about the gloom and doomers: they are what they are. They will always find something to complain about. (I guess one could say I'm finding them to complain about and am no different.)

Maybe because he believes their "mean" is pretty low. I think it is obvious that several Sox fans had very low expectations, this year, based on their beliefs about the quality of players we have and acquired. When we talk about "regressing to the mean," in all fairness, it is pretty hard (and subjective) to determine just what was/is the "mean" for Sale, Kluber, Duvall, Turner, Duran, Yoshida. So much was hard to project, often due to injuries, age and inconsistent pasts. It is possible our rotation does not improve. God, I hope I'm wrong about seeing a light at the end of that tunnel, but it would be entirely possible they keep sucking or just barely improve.

One could be a big key in this team's success, going forward. Picking the right one to play could be an important choice. I know who Cora will choose "every day of the week," except on Kike's scheduled day off during a hot streak, of course.

You'd think bring the IP down for SP'ers from 280-310 to 180-210 would be a beneficial change, but they just throw harder, now. No more "pacing yourself."

Not at all. I never fell for the Elway hype- long before that Packer beat down.

Just as I cautioned fellow posters to not get so gloom and doomy over such a small sample size, this 5 game stretch is even smaller. We still have some major weaknesses that will be exposed, again and again, namely defense and still the rotation. While I do still think the rotation will improve to middle of the pack (or better), it's not there yet. Other teams have major weaknesses, too, as we just saw with TOR. I'm certainly more optimistic than I was 5 days ago, but this is not going to be easy.

19-14 is the 8th best record in MLB and tied for 7th with MIL at 18-13. We are 1/2 game from being tied with TEX and LAD for the 5th best record. We are 1.5 GB PIT for the 4th best record in MLB. We are 3GB BAL for second in the mighty ALE and the 3rd best record in MLB. What a difference 5 games makes. It just goes to show you how quickly things can change (for good and bad.)

That will be a test, for sure. It's not the typical west coast trip. This next road trip could tell even more... 3 @ PHI 2 @ ATL Then home for... 3 v STL 3 v SEA Followed by... 3 @ SDP 3 @LAA 3 @ AZ 14 of 20 on the road. I keep looking for an easy stretch to our schedule. Maybe these are them: 10 v KCR, DET, WSH mid August 9 v OAK, CHC, OAK mid July 9 v LAA, AZ, CIN end of May 6 v CWS/ MIA end of June 6 v STL/SEA mid May

OPS by Position (not counting tonight's game) 1.083 CF (.671 in '22) .878 RF (.661) .829 C (.694) .825 LF (.694) .813 DH (.763) .790 3B (.856) .677 SS (.815) .642 1B (.683) .617 2B (.724) No batting slot is under .692: .961 5th .885 8th .859 2nd .829 1st (.366 OBP) .785 6th .762 4th .713 7th .704 9th .692 3rd .845 1-2 .801 3-6 .766 7-9 2022: .753 1-2 .769 3-6 .656 7-9 2021: .771 1-2 .830 3-6 .713 7-9

"I'd never belong to a club that had me as one of its members." I guess that does not include the DFA Brasier Club.