moonslav59

He heated up, last May, too. 2021 .485 April .938 May .884 June .650 July 1.037 August .794 Sept. .576 Playoffs 2022 .794 April .852 May, so far

Seasons usually have extended periods of ups and downs. Let's hope this one has more ups than downs. We can't afford another long down period like that one.

Wong and Arauz with 3 hits each in a Woo loss. Downs left the game early. Sea Dogs won 4-0. Spacke went 4, and German, Wallace and others did fine in relief.Granberg got half of the team's 6 hits. Greenville lost again, in another high scoring game. Lugo went 3-4 and was a HR short of a cycle. McDonough went 2-5, while Binelas went 1-2 w 4 rbi. Northcut continued his HR parade, hitting his 15th. Salem is up 9-5 in the 8th. Gonzalez went 3 without an ER (3H, 1BB, 6K)

Winning stretches are always exciting to me. Getting to .500 would mean more wins, so I'm all in.

Just 3 teams between us and Toronto. That's a lot better than just a few days ago. It doesn't take long to jump over several teams, sometimes. We're only 1.5 games away from being the 7th best AL team. Cue someone pointing out we are just 4 games from b eing the worst, too.

fWAR Leaders 2.0 Devers (including a plus on defense) 1.5 Bogey (despite a minus on D) 1.3 JD (not easy to do as a DH) 1.0 Story (what a difference 2 days can make) 0.2 Refsnyder (maybe he needs t be given another look) 0.1 JBJ (the power of D) 0.1 Duran (the power of O) 0.0 Vaz (a complete zero) 0.0 Cordero (seemingly going nowhere fast) -0.1 Wong (next year's back-up?) -0.1 Arauz (this year's next DFA candidate?) -0.1 Kike (what happened?) -0.4 Dalbec (get hot or be demoted) -0.4 Plawecki (last year here) -0.4 Arroyo (he's healthy, now) -0.6 T Shaw (bye-bye) Pitching (Big shake up from bWAR) 0.7 Pivetta 0.5 Hill, Whitlock & Strahm 0.4 Schreiber 0.3 Wacha & Houck 0.1 Davis & Sawamura 0.0 Valdez & Barnes -0.1 Crawford -0.2 Danish & Robles -0.3 Diekman -0.4 Brasier & Eovaldi -0.7 Dugo (Oh-NO!)

Our bWAR Leaders: 1.9 Devers 1.1 Bogey 1.1 JD 0.7 Story 0.6 JBJ 0.3 Vaz 0.2 Refsnyder 0.2 J Davis (gone) 0.1 Duran 0.0 Wong -0.1 Kike -0,2 Arauz -0.3 Cordero, Arroyo -0.6 Dalbec. Verdugo, Plawecki -0.7 Shaw (gone) Pitchers 1.4 Wacha 1.0 Whitlock 0.5 Pivetta 0.5 Schreiber, Strahm & Davis 0.4 Diekman 0.2 Hill 0.1 Sawamura, Houck, Robles 0.0 Eovaldi -0.1 Valdez -0.2 Danish -0.5 Crawford & Brasier -0.8 Branes

Very typical, too.

I doubt he will end up over .600, too, but I still think there is a glimmer of hope he can string together a longer hot streak, like he has as recently as 2020. Hitting the ball to LF has always been the key for him, and that homer could be a sign he's found that groove, again. I have serious doubts, and I have from day one.

Woo won 6-2 as Pannone had a nice start (5IP, 6H, 2ER, 0BB, 5K) and Politi looked good in relief, again. Duran went 1-4, Fitzy 1-3 w a 3B and Wong went 2-4 w a 2B. POR got swept. Santos let up 4 ER in 5.1 IP. Koss (w 3B) and Sogard went 2-3. Walter looked good, again (7.0 IP, 4H, 1ER, 0BB, 11K)- keeping his K:BB rate off-the-charts! Kos went 2-3 in this one, too. Greenville lost, again. Yorke, Binelas and Rafaela with 2 hits, each. Jimenez went 1-4 w a 2B. Salem lost, again. Jordan continued his hot streak, going 3-5 w a 2B. Hickey went 2-4 w an HR.

JBJ now has a higher OPS (.576) than Verdugo (.571). Also, Kike, Arroyo & Dalbec.

How about Johny Gomes catching the granny?

As Bruce would say, "You can't start a fire without a spark."

Maybe benching JBJ lit a fire under him.

Let's get to the closer, first,

I was not one of the guys saying we gave up nothing. I like Moncada, Kopech & Margot. I was just saying several posters have said things like, "None of these guys would be playing for us, now."

From what I've been hearing, none of the guys DD traded were any good anyway. That's the scuttlebutt, I hear, here.

They haven't been in that mode, yet. The closest they came was trading A Ramirez for 2 months of Schwarber.

Nobody should count on anyone, but the theory is build it up with as many good players as you can to increase the odds you produce guys like Betts, Bogey & Devers plus some role decent players every half decade. Or, you use them to trade for players you hope lead you to a ring- like pre-2018. Adding Binelas and Hamilton may or may not end up being meaningful, but the more guys we add like them, the b etter our odds. To me, that what it's all about, in terms of trying to build your farm beyond drafting and IFAs. It seems like Sox brass did not want Renfroe back- my guess is over his defense, and maybe a little over thinking he peaked on offense. The financial cost of JBJ is what really shook me, because, even though we went over the tax line, there appears to be some pretty set limits on spending. The Beni trade barely saved us enough to sign Renfroe and keep him for a year, and only Winckowski has any hope of helping, unless you think Cordero will come to life. I think Bloom was told to build the farm up as quickly as possible and as well as possible without making the fanbase believe we are planning on any downtime beyond the 2020 season. Never give the impression this is a complete rebuild. Make it as slow and painless as possible. I'm not sure how well Bloom has done in that area, so far. The 2021 season brought Sox Nation to life, rather unexpectedly for some of us, but it might have hurt his plans on doing a deeper rebuild without scaring fans away.

Better yet, instead of JBJ (I do like what I see in Binelas & Hamilton, but I know you don't really want to hear about that, until they prove themselves..)

Me, neither, but I don't like JBJ in the line-up, even if we were facing a righty.

Oh. I thought someone said it was in the 90's, or was that the day before?

Was Strahm penciled in at 6 or 7?

I'm not saying buy cheap, but we may have to go cheap at Catcher or one OF slot, or count on someone in the system to fill a slot. Not all our slots are all stars needed a replacement in kind. Bogey, JD and maybe Wacha/Hill. With $100-110M, we should be able to spend big- maybe just Story like big- on 3 or maybe even 4 positions. $25M SP $20M 2B $18M DH $17M OF That's not going cheap, and it still leaves $20-30M for the other 4-5 slots that aren't doing all that great, now. Maybe we dare trade a prospect or two to fill one big slot, and that would add $4-5M to each of the other 3 slots, like trade for SP and spend: $25M 2B $25M OF $20M DH $15M Closer There are a lot of encouraging ways to look at how to spend the money, but who knows what Bloom will do. Maybe he spends the $100M on 10 guys between $8-20M, and we look like we decline at 2B, SP and DH, but we could improve at C, CF, RF, SP3, SP4, RP2 andRP4.

Of course, we could end up worse. I'm hopeful the Price money added into the pool helps us get better. I also think we can improve at 3-4 slots without spending much. We could also fail by bringing Bogey, JD and Wacha back at team friendly rates. Nothing is guaranteed.