S5Dewey

Great! Thanks. Now I have to go back and delete that second site. LOL

Well, that's cool! I'd never used reddit. Now I've bookmarked it in case I need it in the future. One question though.. does that same link work for all Sox games, or is there a new link for each game?

Wanna know how good our outfield is? That ball would be in no-man's land against some teams but the Sox had two guys there who could have caught it.

Ya. My thought was that he's a good bunter but even if it didn't work he'd have put it in their minds for later in the game.

Unfortunately no. We lost contact with one another when BDC folded. I think I've got Jete's email address somewhere though. Hmmm... I should look for that sometime.

C'mon JBJ. Nobody on base and two outs - the perfect time to lay down a bunt. Even if you're not successful you show the defense that it's in your repitoir (Sp?). And what was Devers thinking? He left way early once and got away with it. Did he think they wouldn't notice??

Then we're respectfully (I hope) going to disagree on most of your post. While I agree that a non-baseball related issue (like a sick child) is not choking I see the others as choking. IMO when a player alters his normal physical motion due to a fear of failure...that's choking. In the case of David Price I think he has all the ability in the world. He shows it repeatedly against weaker teams but when asked to face a top echelon team it's in his head and that manifests itself by his making small changes in his delivery. IMO a baseball psychiatrist might work wonders for him. As I said about his relieving, I dunno. It was just a theory. But IMO there's something going on. Interestingly, when I think of players who've played through having a sick child I also think of players who've "played through" their family issues with no loss of effectiveness. Think: Dwight Evans and Craig Kimbrel. Of course I freely admit that there may be others whose family issues have affected their performance but we didn't hear about them

Is that what it's suppose to do? Because I was under the impression it was a tool to rank one player against another. I suppose that does translate into a player's worth in $$$ when one player's worth is used as a benchmark and then other player's WAR is applied to the $$$ figure. Of course, I think they're all overpaid, so.... .

I sometimes think Cora 'judges the opposition' before deciding who to sit on any particular day. Then on another day he does something completely off the wall and it works. So I dunno.

"Sometimes you can observe a lot by watching". One of the things I enjoy about coming here is that I get to learn about the other posters, their interests and their lives and I'm always taken by how different we are, but with that common thread running through all of us of loving the Red Sox. Max, I am humbled by your knowledge of history. Happy 4th to everyone. It's supposed to be hot all over the country today so don't forget to rehydrate freely.

I think it's natural to be concerned about the pitching staff, but OTOH who's top 3 is any better? I agree about pitching and defense in the post season but OTOH the post season can be a crap shoot too. It wasn't that long ago that the Tigers had the last three season's CY winners in their rotation... and the Tigers didn't win the WS. I like this team. I like the balance of offense and pitching. The thing that concerns me is the infield defense.

I appreciate the effort that's been put into constructing WAR but the thing it wants to quantify - the defensive side of the ball - is just too touchy-feely for me. I keep hearing about having "trained observers" acting like robots to rank every defensive play a defender makes the same way and I don't buy it. I've had some experience with "standardized testing" as it relates to testing methods and I'm sure that these observers still are unconsciously putting their own bent into their rankings. IMO dWAR is even more nebulous when it comes to ranking outfielders defensively. Would Betts Range Factor be as high as it is if he were playing LF where there's a lot less field to cover? Would Beni's Range Factor be higher if he were playing Right Field, for the same reason? And yet Range Factor is one of the biggest factors in dWAR. As I said, I appreciate the effort that goes into it but I don't think it's the be-all, end-all by itself when we come to ranking players, nor do I think it should be the stat that ends an argument like it often is here. It should be taken along with observing the player. Sometimes I trust my own lyin' eyes more than I trust someone else's numbers.

Maybe this is all wishful thinking on my part because I'm a defense-oriented person but I'm going to be very surprised if Dombrowski breaks up that outfield, even in the off season. Dombrowski is an old style GM who believes in defense and the value of 'solid up the middle'. After all, he traded for Iglesias! IMO DD is pretty happy with this team as he well should be. Were it not for the MFY the Sox would be running away with their division. They've got solid catching, there was no way to predict that Pedey wouldn't come back, and he has Bradley in CF. The concession he's made is having XBo at SS because of his offense. The OF as it stands is one of the best in baseball with three CF'ers roaming around out there. That's got to have a positive affect on the pitcher when he knows that if he can just get a batter to keep the ball in the park there's a good chance one of those three guys is going to catch it. As long as we have one of the best offenses in baseball I don't see JBJ going anyplace.

Well put, every word of it. The only problem I'm having in my retirement is that while in the past I didn't have time to do my job + everything I wanted to do, now I don't have time to do all the things I want to do! It seems like my bucket list gets bigger every year. I've now decided that I need to live to be 150 to fit it all in.

I hope you're right. I know this topic has been beaten to death here and it's not my intention to start it up again, but I don't think he got a fair shake with the Sox. Once the Sox acquired Sandy Leon they treated Swihart as if he was expendable....but they decided to keep him around in case one of the catchers got injured. That along with the fact that he has no options left has kept him from having a chance to rebuild his career with another team. I hope they cut him loose - soon.

That's one of the things I don't understand about this team. WTF happened to Blake Swihart? In 2015 he was good enough to contend for a catching spot with the Sox and now he's toast. What happened?

90 degrees and humid here today and into the near future. It's all a matter of comparison. We're not used to this s***! Many of us don't even OWN an AC!

It's all good, my man. I'm a little unnecessarily cranky myself with this hot weather.

Agree. A seven run lead and he needs one out to get the W. Did Johnson shoot Cora's dog .. or something?

What he has done recently has more bearing on what he is now than is what he did in April. I don't know what you're all bent out of shape about. My original point was that this outfield is better with JBJ in it than it is with him on the bench, and not just because he's in CF.

JBJ last 15 games: 48 AB, .271 Ave JBJ last 7 games: 22 AB, 318 Ave. JBJ is the opposite of JDM. They didn't pick up JBJ for his offense.

IMO Mookie would have had that ball & it cost us a couple of runs. We need to remember that there are benefits to having JBJ in the OF that aren't always immediately apparent.

There are two factors in a player's performance - the physical factor and the mental factor. When the mental factor affects a player's physical performance negatively it's called "choking" (or "chocking" ) and when the mental factor affects the physical performance positively it's called being clutch.

I wish you believed in choke so you'd have a definition for it. What you posted there - that a player's physical performance is affected by his mental state - sounds like a definition of choke to me. I "explain" his good performance out of the pen by his not having time to think about it. He doesn't get to stew about the media and fan scrutiny before the game. He's just told, "You're up. Go out there and pitch" and it's easier for him if he hasn't thought about it. But that's just MO.

As I said in another thread, I watched the ESPN feed for the first few innings last night. During that time the guys in the booth were talking about the time when David Price and Scherzer were with the Tigers. One day Price went out to watch one of Scherzer's BP sessions and Scherzer required a non-disclosure agreement before he'd let Price watch. -Told as a true story.