moonslav59

I've never been Wow'd by these high velocity pitchers who have no or just a brief history of success. Guys like DHern come to mind. He has 16K/9 over his first 2 seasons but walked almost 8 per 9. He stuck around for 4 years, before we finally gave up on him.

To some extent, the Sox offense always has to be viewed with the Fenway Park influence factored in. It's not Colorado, but the Sox Home and Away splits are always wide apart. Context is always needed. MLB Avg .246, OBP .316 and SLG .405 Sox: .252, .323, .425 However: Sox on the road: .244, .315, .415 (pretty damn close to average) Home: .261/.332/.436 What's interesting is that the differential by the opponents is not as wide: Opponents vs Sox pitchers: Fenway: .246/.320/.365 Away: .240/.312/.384 (actually a higher away OPS)

I got that same sense.

I can see the reason for hoping he can put it all together, and we are just days away from a 14 man staff, so it will be easier to "hide" Hicks in low leverage situations, but I'm not optimistic. I think his 2026 leash will be short. If he and Buehler had swapped years of control, I think we'd have DFA Hicks, not Buehler.

He might have a late career resurgence, but we could not wait for that.

I get that. Dalbec never came close to his first 2 seasons: 33 Hrs in 545 PAs and an .819 OPS Casas did hit 42 HRs over his first 840 PAs of his career, and many players add power as they age. Even if you add in his piss poor 2025 numbers, his career 162 game average is 29 HRs and an .800 OPS (952 PAs) Of course, playing even 140 games has been the problem. He had an .838 OPS from '23-'24 in 745 PAs. His injury might be career threatening. He may never approach those numbers again, but then again, he might.

Bregman had a long slump in 2024, and many here in HOU felt the doubts about his decline were the reason they let him slip away. He ended last year and began this year as hot as ever. The injury seems like an easy excuse, as he hit .938 before and .798 afterwards. (I might add that .798 is a pretty decent "slump.") His slump is actually just 7 games long, since after his injury to AUG 22nd, he has a .925 OPS. A perfect example how one can choose stat samples to support excuses that may not be true. Abreu's injury has hurt our offense. The guy was our HR leader. Story got red hot for a long spell, but he has leveled off around the .730 mark for a while, now. (Most of August) Narvaez ran out of steam, it seems, but Wong has turned it around. Rafaela's slump has been bombarded at us for weeks by a certain poster, but he's had a good stretch since June. While we say Bregman is slumping (7 games) nobody is saying Rafaela is taking off, when he's hit .862 in 7 games. Anthony has been carrying our offense for a few weeks. Duran started slow and has settled into the .740 to .790 range for almost every day since early June. Not great, but not bad,,, and gasp... pretty consistent in a sea of inconsistency.

True, as well as different defense, park quirks and just plain luck- good or bad. When you face a bad pitcher and score one rin, do you suck, or did you have the unfortunate luck of facing a guy pitching the best game of his life? That's just one example. I like the balanced nature of our line-up and think it should lead to more consistency, but it seems to not be true, this year. I do miss the power tandems like Papi and Manny or JD & Betts. I'd like to see improvements made, this winter. I don't mean my constant harping on the need for a solid #2 pitcher (or two) to imply I think our offense is all set. It's not, and we do continue to see the same two positions hurt us, year after year: 1B and 2B. (Story righted the ship at SS, after a few Bogey-less years hurt us, too.) Even when you look at those two positions, you can see why Brez & Co. chose to do little to "fix" the problems. At 1B, Casas has shown he can hit .800 to .850 with maybe 30 HR possibilities. At 2B, almost everyone thinks Mayer could be a plus, if he just stayed healthy. Health is also the major concern with Casas. We also cam off a second half of 2024 with DHam looking poised to be a 2.0+ fWAR 2Bman who plays plus D and can steal 50 bases, if he gets on base enough times. Romy has met the promise some saw, last year as the next Sox lefty killer, once Ref retires. His ability to play 1B and 2B offered the depth and platoon options that helped create the decision to not add at 1B and 2B, last winter. (Campbell was also the rising star that was so "athletic that he just needed time to learn 2B.") I'm not defending Brez & Co. for those choices. 1B & 2B have been failures, once again. The Lowe addition has helped for a bit, but Toro helped for a bit, too, and then he didn't. I'd love to see us add Alonso and keep Casas as a DH hopeful and emergency 1B solution- maybe as a platoon w Romy, although Casas has decent splits v lefties. Mayer remains both the 2B "solution: and the 2B "problem," because he can't stay healthy, and we don't fill the slot as we wait for him to get health. That happened with Casas, too. Before that, we waited too long for Dalbec to regain what he showed over his first 500 career PAs. Yes, every team shows inconsistencies. It's part of the game. Every team has weak or weaker areas, some unforeseen, some that develop out of nowhere and some that are easily predicted.

I'm not saying our offense has been great, and the inconsistency is frustrating, but we've lost many games due to poor defense, poor starting pitchers and poor pen games. I'm not sure one jumps out more than the others. Take a look at Houck, Newcomb, May, Fitts and Buehler's ERAs. All over 4.43 in 50 starts! We've lost no games 1-0. We've lost 3 games 2-1 (none 2-0) We've lost 6 games 3-2 (none 3-1 or 3-0) That's not a ton of great pitching games blown by the offense. (Maybe these 9?) We've lost 12 games when scoring 5 or more runs, including a 10-9 loss. That's on the staff and defense.

I didn't post top 4 or 5. I was referring to the posters who keep begging the Sox for more runs, thinking this offense is capable of that. They are capable- just sporadically. Nobody knows when they can or can't, although one believes he knows.

Yanks and Stros passed us, tonight.

I don't know 1. I think we're about 6-10, and I'm the "optimistic one."

Yup, but we have lost 11-12 games when scoring 5 or more runs.

Mullins, too. Does he ever have a bad game?

Name names. Who here thinks it's top 4-5?

The game looked so promising, early on. Tough loss. Tougher when watching TOR losing big.

The guy is 3 for 4. You are losing the last thread of cred.

Tolle hadn't pitched 80 pitches since June. His pitch counts before tonight: 53 64 64 69 64 72 71 63

I thought they'd take Tolle out after 5. I think he was at 69 or 70 pitches, which is what they were giving him in the minors.

He is our 3rd or 4th best RP'er out of 8. I'd care. You want Hicks?

This will be a big game for ND. MIA is no push-over. An ND win might put them in the top 3.

I like DHam's D at 2B.

I was extremely vocal about my disgust over how little we invested in our pen. Remember, we just lost 2 pretty big pen contracts in Jansen & Martin. I felt like the only hope was that our SP'er depth could be used from the pen. That really hasn't happened. As great as Chapman and Whitlock have been, it's a bit surprising to see that the rest of the pen has a better ERA that our SP'ers as a whole.

Buehler had more chances than he deserved to right his ship. It capsized, leaving us with sunken cost and an SOS signal that Tolle will attempt to answer.

Certainly, one post season should not be used as a template for others, or this year, but let's look at 2018 and the pitching usage: GS: 5 Price, 3 Porcello & Sale, 2 Nate, 1 EROd. This confirms that only 3, maybe 4 starters are needed. Now, IP 26 Price, 22 Nate and 15 by Sale and Porcello totalled 69 IP and 54 by the rest. If you add the two top RP'er IP it's 91 out of 143 IP or 64% of all innings by 6 guys. The 6 for this year might be... Crochet, Bello, Gio & Tolle plus Whitlock & Chapman, Not too bad.