moonslav59

They can see something in other team's pitchers they know they can fix. Often it's just having them throw more of a certain pitch. They know just when a pitcher is about to lose it, and they trade him away. It makes me think, can't Snell just remember what they told him to do while in Tampa? He sucks, now. They aren't the master of the draft, like some think. They are good at it, but not great. Some of their best draft picks were late rounders. They seem to be very good at evaluating other teams' farm systems and when they make the big trades, which they do often, they often find gems. It's not just pitching, either. Look at their 1B position over the years. They have picked up journeymen after journeymen who go on to have career years with them, then leave and suck, again. It's hard to pinpoint how they do it, and many of the players they acquire would be ridiculed, if the Sox signed them, because their OPS is .710. This board, myself included, would be going nutty over all the "black holes" they have in their line-up, yet they win and win. They make the plays. Not just the routine ones, either, which we can't even do that. Poor D kills a pitcher's heart. They try not to show it, but you know it does. Anybody who has played the game at any sort of serious level knows it's true. Poor D kills a team's spirit more than anything else, except maybe a gaming losing HR. There is no solution to fixing the 2021 team's D. When Kike and Arroyo return, it improves a good bit, but it still sucks. We can kid ourselves that we have all these .850-.900 hitters and should be winning more, but we all know how that philosophy worked for the decades before 2004. Pitching and defense. We don't need to be the best at either or both, but being the worst at D is killing us, and it ain't helping the pen's woes, either.

Cora can't pitch Whitlock 4 innings everyday. At some point, he has to put the other RP'ers out there, and not just one or two of the others, either. He has to use just about all of them, and it seems like every pen inning pitched has been high leverage over the last month. Cora needs 20 pen IP every 5 games. He's lucky, if he can get... 4 from Whitlock 3 from Ottavino (no cake walk- note the irony of the word "walk") 3 from Barnes (a hot mess, right now) That leaves 10 IP or about 2 IP per game from the scrubs. No matter who he picks it's gasoline on the fire. He has to use the worst of the scrubs at some point, and when they fail, he's balmed for using the worst scrub instead of the second worst scrub. With a 3 or 4 run lead, he tries to "save" Whitlock and Ottavino for the 1-2 run situations. Is this wrong? Then, he ends up needing them because the scrub fails, and he's blamed again and again. Our pen is sucking and the defense is giving the opps 4 outs in many late innings. Cora has only lose-lose choices. Blame Bloom, if you want to blame anyone, but nobody can "manage" this pen to do well. It has sucked for weeks- as has the D. Blame Barnes for having the very worst stretch of his whole career, now. (Amazingly, right after his best stretch.) Blame Ottavino for walking the first batter every outing. Blame Whitlock for not being able to pitch 2-3 innings every day. Blame the commish for banning sticky stuff. Go ahead and blame Cora, too. It's everyone's fault the team has achieved way more than 99.9% of Sox fans expected. They chose the wrong time to suck. Had they sucked liek this in April and May, then did well, nobody would be blinking an eye.

It's more than that. Pitchers they trade away turn to pumpkins.

Not at all. Bloom missed. I'm not saying he should get no blame. I'm just trying to say that even some of the best RP'ers out there on the market would have cost much more and have not come through. Of course the chances Kimbrel does better than Robles are great, and he still may be a big help going forward. I'm not happy Bloom failed to get us a decent RP'er. Personally, I had hoped he'd get us a starter, so Houck could be used in the pen, but without knowing what teams wanted in return, I'm not going to bash Bloom. Overall, he's done a fantastic job getting this team competitive way faster and better than I expected. I didn't expect every single choice and move to work like a charm, and many have not. Many more have, so that's why I cut him some slack. Expecting perfection from anyone is expecting disappointment. I'm thrilled with the direction Bloom has set us on. That's good enough for me.

Hit or miss to the extreme. Kinda like guessing on which RPer to trade for.

I don’t disagree, but I think Bloom tried to get the most for a guy who was not going to be rule 5 protected. He missed. It happens. He’s struck gold a few times, too.

He obviously did not want to trade valuable prospects for a crap shoot. Had he decided to give more, he could easily have struck out. I’m not equating Robles to Kimbrell.

Let's not talk. It's pointless.

It's a repeatable skill by every GM.

So many "fans" jumping ship. Sad.

So, Ryas became the 90's Yankess under Bloom, but it was a bad hire. Makes total sense from a ghost.

I was speaking to his point about calling up AA and AAA hands as a better option than Robles and Perez.

Espinal the guy you had in mind?

Robles for CLOSER! Wow! That was the best Sox relief effort I've seen by anyone not named Whitlock in weeks! Cora walks on water, again!

So's this thread.

I bet we have double the next team in non-error bad defensive plays.

Robles vs B Lowe. Fun, fun, FUN!

I'm not a believer in the payoffs are a crap shoot, but Cora walks on wine!

They all died right before Spring Training.

It's a near total crap shoot. Bloom guessed wrongly.

Umm, the inning should be over. Asking Pivetta to get 4 outs an inning is too much.

10-6 nyy 3-1 atl 2-0 nym 10-9 tor 3-3 oak 2-2 cws 2-2 sea 5-7 tbr 2-5 hou

We can't blame the umps on these.

Gotta love the leadoff walks. We have to lead the league in them.

When Bobby Dee started going the other way, instead of trying to pull everything, it opened up a whole new world. The way he's going, he may pass Verdugo, then Renfroe and Kike on the OPS leader list, and down the homestretch at that!