illinoisredsox

Right now, nothing, because there's not much you can do. Obviously Castillo isn't even a consideration; he's not even hitting well in Pawtucket (Last I looked he was hitting under .250 and slugging around .320). Once Holt gets back, you go back to the platoon. Until then ... I found it very telling on how far Castillo has fallen in the pecking order when they used Rutledge to ph last night instead of Rusney. He is definitely deep in the doghouse.

Like I said, I'm no statistician. I don't even know what sample normalization means (and don't care to). I was going to put in something like your second sentence, but couldn't figure out a way to say it clearly; you phrased the upper and lower boundary issues perfectly.

So what is considered an outlier? Consider the following. Last year's staff allowed 753 runs, which equates to an average of 4.65 runs per game; the standard deviation for this data was 3.43. So a shutout would be within about 1.33 standard deviations. The 5 high games were 18, 14, 14, 13 and 13. or between 2.5 and nearly 4 standard deviations. Going back to the 2013 Sox. That team allowed 4.04 runs per game with a standard deviation of 2.84. A shutout was about 1.4 standard deviations. The 5 high games were 15, 13, 12, 12 and 11, again between about 2.5 and 4 standard deviations. I'm no statistician (the above is about as far as I care to go in that realm), but it seems to me that the true outliers in this case are are the upper end, where the distance from the average is 3 deviations or more. Under 1.5 just doesn't seem that far out to me. (Note, the above uses runs per game because that data was easy to enter into a spreadsheet; I was not going to examine the box scores of each game to determine earned runs, and I doubt it would have changed the overall picture anyway) I now leave it to you and moonslav to discuss.

Have to say this plate umpire has been excellent. A few misses here and there but nothing ridiculous.

It showed. That was a very rusty swing.

Weird inning, the ground ball single was the hardest hit ball.

Amazing stat: the last 5 hits allowed by the Red Sox pitching staff have left the yard.

It wasn't a bad pitch, down and away. Probably could have been a inch further away. The hitter got him is all.

It's not so much that Hanley gets thrown out by 5 feet, it's that he's done it several times and on guys he had no business trying it on. He may have gotten away with it when he was younger and a step faster, but that step is your 5 feet.

It becomes a matter of being able to read plays and knowing the outfielders. Napoli was good at it. Mike Lowell was good at it. Ortiz, when he could still run a little, was good at it. Nava never was. Slow guys who knew how to run the bases. Nava, not a speedster, was terrible. Back in the day, teams didn't run on Dwight Evans. Right now, it makes zero sense to run on Bautista. OTOH, you take every chance you can to run when an Ellsbury or a Damon is out there. Will they occasionally get you? Sure, but it doesn't make it a bad play when they do.

I don't think Swihart was judged by the brass based on the April 10th game. I think the bigger issue was his inability to consistently block balls in the dirt, a lack of confidence by some of the pitchers in him to do that when they bounced a splitter or a curve, and that it had not improved from last season when he allowed 46 wild pitches (plus 16 passed balls, no idea how many PB were Wright related).

Price seems to be coming around. His last 5 starts he's pitched 34 1/3, given up 13 runs (12 earned) for an ERA of 3.14 and a WHIP of 1.08. Sox have gone 4-1 in those games (he has not been the pitcher of record in all of them). His ERA has dropped almost 2 points over those 5 starts. I'd say he's gotten back to being somebody you can rely on. He's have a tough match-up Wednesday against Baumgardner.

Agree 100%. Hanley makes a lot of mistakes for an experienced player; he's lost a step and stuff he got away as a younger player he doesn't anymore. Shaw hopefully will learn. I always thought Mike Napoli to be an excellent baserunner, even though he was slow. He knew the outfielders and he knew when to try for an extra base and when not to. Big Papi was similar and was even moreso when he was younger and could actually run a bit. Even though he was faster than Napoli and Ortiz, Daniel Nava was a horrible baserunner and consistently made all kinds of mistakes. A runner being thrown out does not always mean a mistake and a guy being safe does not always mean he was correct. A runner being thrown out by an eyelash on a perfect play by the defense probably did not make a mistake. Sometimes the defense makes a play and sometimes they don't.

Actually, it should be copied to every thread on the forum until the issue is resolved. I've gotten similar messages on other sites; one thing you can do is a CTRL-ATL-Delete to open the task manager and kill your browser application. That often gets rid of the page short of shutting down your computer.

1) Because he has been terrible in 3 of his 4 outings. He came back strong last year after being sent to the minors, let's hope it happens again. He has to learn control within the strike zone, and actually learning to pitch instead of throw would be nice as well. Estrada was pitching yesterday and showed that Warren Spahn's old adage is true (Hitting is timing, pitching is upsetting timing). 2) That was totally done on his own and he almost certainly got a lecture once he got back to the dugout.

The way Wright's knuckler has been butterflying, catching him must be like catching 2 games. Best if it's Leon.

All these guys seem to struggle with that, probably because they are never asked to now. But there is big difference between coming in with 0 or 1 out and with 2. I remember when the term fireman meant exactly that, the guy who came in and put out the fire. A reliever would go 1-2-3 innings if need be. On the other hand, if you make bad piches to guys who can hit balls a long way ...

This doesn't look like a great matchup, Machado 3-4 off of Tazawa careerwise.

1. Carchers don't normally look like they are saying anything, even when they are. 2. Vazquez is still basically a rookie, and may not have earned the right to say much in the eyes of the umpires 3. The homeplate ump may be one of those guys you can't say anything to, no matter how it is said.

Ortiz bails Bogaerts out.

Bad on Bogaerts there.

True, but the Sox bullpen is not exactly a carbon copy of the one the Royals trotted out there last year.

Actually, catchers (as catchers) disagree all the time. But they do it in facing the pitcher and "discuss" it in such a way that most fans never realize it. The ump isn't being "shown up" and so the discussion is allowed. I'm sure there are a few guys (umps) who don't allow any such discussion, but I imagine those names get passed around the catching fraternity pretty quickly. Conversely, you seldom see catchers (as hitters) say anything to an ump. They simply file the pitch away for discussion when their guy is on the mound.

As I said earlier, there are differences in inaccurate calls. Missing on a pitch that's 1/8 of an inch inside or outside the black may be "wrong", but understandable. Missing calls on pitches 4 inches off the plate or down the middle is an entirely different wrong.