illinoisredsox

Can’t, he has to face 3 hitters or finish the inning.

Taylor’s numbers in May going into today, 10 games, 7 innings, 1 hit, 3 walks, 6 Ks. 3 really weak hits and 2 Ks today in an inning. He’d have been better off with harder contact today. The dribblers would have gone for outs and the ground rule double goes foul. It’s baseball.

Venable. Cora’s attending his daughter’s high school graduation in Puerto Rico.

I pretty sure that the umps are required to wait a certain amount of time before they can call it: I want to say it's 75 minutes but don't quote me on that.

Workman's on a minor league deal; he's not on the 40 man roster.

Unless they've changed the rules, you can't trade recent draft picks for one year. It's one of the reasons you sometimes see PTBNL take a long time to actually be named; the player can't actually be officially traded for a period of time.

Any word on who is coming up?

For those who went to bed early: Taylor started the 7th; hit the first batter (Acuna, well the umps said he got hit), got Freeman on a deep fly to left and then induced Albies to tap a soft grounder to second base that the Sox just missed turning into a DP; Cora brought in Ottavino, who got a foul pop by Riley to end the inning and then set the Braves down in order in the 8th. Sox scored 2 unearned runs in the bottom of the 8th on a walk to Bogaerts, a ground rule double by Renfroe, an error and a SF by Vazquez. With the 5 run lead, Andriese started the 9th, got one out and then surrendered a bomb to Contreras. After a single by Acuna, Cora brought in Barnes who got Freeman to hit into a game ending DP. Final 9-5

That depends on what type of first strike thrower said pitcher is. If he tends to throw the same pitch in the same spot most of the time, sure, have at it. If he throws a lot of first strikes but the location and type of pitch vary, then you have to be disciplined enough to look for a particular pitch in a particular spot. If it's not there, let it go.

Catcher doesn’t get the putout if there’s a throw to first; catcher gets an assist with the first baseman getting the putout. And Bellhorn is right about it being something no one cares about.

Au contraire, I saw a pitcher (Ryu) who kept our hitters off balance all night. Up, down, in, out, changing speeds and putting the ball exactly where he wanted it. Every pitch had a purpose and he executed extremely well. He’s a very good pitcher and you saw it on display tonight. He’s now pitched 12 innings against Boston this season and the Sox have scored in exactly 1 of them; they got 4 off him in one inning back in April at Fenway but they did little else; the other innings were pretty much a carbon copy of tonight.

He was at 94 a couple times early, which is higher than it’s been. It went down as the pitch count mounted, but with men on constantly, every pitch seemed to be a stress pitch.

Watching Ryu tonight showed what a good pitcher can do. Every pitch he threw was with a purpose; one set up another and he had pinpoint control. He knew exactly what he wanted to do and did it. It would not have mattered how well ERod pitched tonight; Ryu was masterful.

Nope. Border’s closed. Moose out front shoulda told you.

Was it Mussina who something like “you’ll start 32 games. 8 of them you’ll have everything working, 8 you’ll have nothing working and the others you’ll make do with something working.” The only saving grace at least 3 of the hits ERod has allowed have been grounders. We aren’t as concerned if those are at somebody.

He’s been known to do that to a lot of teams, especially the past few years. His ERA+ the past few seasons is really good (198, 179, 162 and is at 144 this year). He’s a damn good pitcher.

He’s slumping at the plate right now (lot of K’s lately) and it’s carrying over to the field; seems to be an ongoing theme with him. The better he’s hitting, the better his fielding.

ERod is a number 2 type starter. He’s almost always going to give up 3 runs and give you 6 innings. Most of the time he’s going to keep you in a game and give the team a decent chance at winning, but he’s not the type of guy who can win a game by himself. Over the course of his career, he really hasn’t shown himself to have #1 stuff, either in the way of overpowering pitches (like we think of most aces) or in terms of pinpoint control (ala Greg Maddox). I haven’t seen the bulldog mentality that goes along with a #1 either. He’s a good pitcher (maybe our best one) but he’s not a true #1; he has the role by default. Now coming off of the heart issue last year, I’m willing to cut him some slack this year.

What game were you watching? Devers hit tonight was a hit and run chopper over the first baseman's head that he hustled into a double. That Verdugo sequence was last night. Tonight's run was leadoff walks to Gonzalez and Verdugo followed by a solid JD single that they held Gonzalez at 3rd out of respect for Laureano's arm. After Bogie struck out and Devers popped out, Vazquez walked on four pitches, forcing in the only run. I will grant you the last 3 games have been an awful lot alike, so forgetting which offensive juggernaut showed up on a given night in understandable. Right now, this team is zoned out. Two big baserunning gaffes tonight. One was with Gonzalez on 3rd and Verdugo on 1st, when JD hit that weak grounder. Gonzalez went on contact (which wasn't a disaster and may have been the way the coaches wanted to play it) and got caught in a run down, but even when he was doing that, he was motioning Verdugo to get to 3rd, so at worst it would remain 1st and 3rd: Verdugo just stood at 2nd base. The second was Bogaerts trying to score in the 8th with what would have been a meaningless run at that point.

That’s not luck, that’s the sign of a team that’s pressing. Another mental mistake. That run didn’t mean that much.

It’s the mental mistakes; ERod’s balk. Verdugo has to get to 3rd on JD’s tapper. Too many of those lately.

ERod lucky with that strike 3 call. Afterwards, the ump did the right thing by walking away. Edit - trying to walk away. Once Laureano threw the bat it was automatic.

I like ham and pineapple too. However, on a pizza it’s an abomination.

It’s a really laborious process. Open the post you want to delete, hit the Edit button at the bottom, then when the next window opens, check the Delete Post box and hit the Delete button.

I'm assuming Ghost wants to DFA both of them. Wonder what he'd say about this guy?: 54 games, slash line of .197/.291/.289/.580 No doubt, he'd have wanted him DFA'd. Or maybe this player, who over his first 2 years: 147 games, slash line of .197/.323/.365/.688 with 151 K's (and his first 54 games were worse than that) The first player ended up playing 1512 games over 14 years, his career slash line was .299/.365/.439/.805 The second played 2404 games over 18 years, ending up at .267/.380/.527/.908 The former won a Rookie of the Year Award, an MVP and has 3 World Series rings, Dustin Pedroia. The latter won 3 MVPs, a World Series ring, has a plaque at Cooperstown and is the conversation for the best 3rd baseman ever to play, Mike Schmidt. It is extremely unlikely that either Cordero or Dalbec is going to be that successful; writing them completely off after 50 games or so is stupid.