illinoisredsox

3. Beni and JBJ to lead off the 10th and Pedroia leading off the 11th. More alarming, zero XBH in the game and almost no loud outs.

A loss is on the offense. Pitching has been incredible.

You know, Betts really sucks right now. He has looked terrible for the past 3 weeks.

It's Fister's game from here. No relievers left and you do still have to plan for 2 games tomorrow.

For the Sox? I think just Barnes and he threw 2 innings last night and is likely unavailable (not to mention Kimbrel will probably only be available forone of the games tomorrow).

Abad has been decent this year, but he has seldom been out there with the game on the line. He is what he is, near the back of the pen. It's not helping he hasn't pitched in probably 10 or more days.

This next inning is very scary. Sanchez, Judge and Holiday against Boyer is not a good thing Edit - Boyer hurt, Workman may be a worse matchup.

Guy just threw 17 curveballs in a row, so naturally you should expect a fastball. You do indeed possess 20-20 hindsight.

Tough AB by Judge. Big question is how much did it take out of Kimbrel?

Been stress free overall, leave him in. Edit - watching on a slight delay (DVR just caught up to the Sanchez K). No problem taking him out here.

OCab was supposedly causing some clubhouse issues involving hitting on other players wives (or perhaps more than that).

As the late Hall of Fame announcer for the Pirates, Bob Prince, would have said, "we had 'em all the way".

I think my signature says it all.

So which of Mookie and Bogaerts would you have sat? Those 2 made the biggest outs of the game (and soft outs in those situations at that.

Mookie needs to get out of this. His ABs with RISP really hurt them tonight.

Funny how I didn't see a single post from you about pulling Pomeranz in the span of the 6 pitches the game turned on.

Fenway cost them that inning. Hanley's single is out of most parks and Benintendi's had a shot in many as well.

This was true with Crawford; after he left he was okay in LA for a couple years and then injuries cropped up and his skills diminished in a normal pattern relative to his age. In Sandoval's case, it had nothing to do with the money or wearing the Sox uniform. His skills were gone and it would not have mattered where he landed or for how little money.

Sorry (not really), merely pointing out his he was off to a pretty good start his first year. He never was the same after he broke that bone in his wrist. Whether that was because pitchers figured him out, it never healed properly, he lost confidence, or any combination of those we will never know. But he never got it back.

Yep, my bad. Stiill, as Kimmi said, the Sox were not going to match Texas' 6 year contract.

A few things about Beltre and why he left: 1. Beltre came to the Sox on a one-year deal for the 2011 season to resurrect his career; as I recall, he was coming off an injury and took a substantial pay cut (25-30%) from his previous contract with the Mariners. He had every intent of going free agent after that season. 2. His agent was Scott Boras, so resigning him was not going to be easy. 3. While he performed well here, I'm not sure he liked playing in Boston; he really wanted to play on the west cost and settled on the Rangers. 4. They had Will Middlebrooks ready from the minors, and he (Middlebrooks) performed pretty well for the half season he played (OPS of .835, 15 homers and 54 RBIs in 75 games). Unfortunately, that was the highwater mark of his career, but at the time he represented big power at a very low cost. And the biggest reason of all: 5. The Sox had a money crunch. 2012 was the year Adrian Gonzalez's contract escalated from around $6 million to over $20 million. The Sox also resigned David Ortiz that same season. Lackey and Beckett were in the middle of large contracts and they had a lot of $ tied up in Carl Crawford.

Had to laugh yesterday when he said he's rather lose a game 10-0 than 1-0. That's because in a 10-0 game, he can complain about both the hitting and the pitching. In a 1-0 game, he can only bitch about the hitting (although there was one post about how bad Porcello was when he gve up the one run).

Not in the minds of some here. Got to be perfect from the start and improve from there.

I'm getting a little concerned about Scott. Any pitcher can have a bad outing or 2, but this is several games in a row he has given up runs, and often via the homer.

The dumb play was on Travis' chopper as Hanley should have scored.; Sox were lucky Tulo didn't tag Young out instead of throwing to first to get Sam. The tag out at the plate wasn't a big deal, Jays got a great bounce off the backstop that no one could have foreseen.