S5Dewey

So Pedey's out with knee pain and Mookie is out for the fourth straight game with "slight pain in his side". I can't decide if our "crack medical team" is incompetent or if they're continuing to treat us like mushrooms by keeping us in the dark and feeding us ********.

I agree, and that's why that's his role. I feel comfortable putting him nearly anywhere in the field for a short period of time. If he were good enough to have a position of his own on this team he'd be filling it. Instead he's almost good enough to play any position as a regular. IMO having a player like him is a luxury.

With JBJ heating up how long will it be before we see the first post saying "Trade him NOW while he has value." ?

LOL (again!) SoxHop isn't the only one who comes up with some goodies.

Bleacher Bar.

If you ever have occasion to be around the park while a game is in progress stop by that outside bar that's almost under the stadium. I forget the name of it now. It's almost surreal to hear the roar of the crowd and then look up at the tv's to see what's happened when the game is only a couple of hundred feet away.

They showed a replay of one of JBJ's hits last night on a pitch near the center of the plate and I liked the arm/wrist action in his swing. The thing that concerned me was his shoulders. They don't appear to be stable, making a good hitting "platform". There are still a few more moving parts in the swing than I like due to the shoulder motion but I'm seeing improvement.

It's hard to tell given the fact that we don't get all camera angles. My take on it is between what Moon and Elk said. IMO his swing is now shorter on the inside pitches but it still gets a little loopy on pitches on the outside part of the plate. Last night he even had a good swing or three on pitches on the outside. That's called progress and I like it.

You need to be more careful about who you hang out with.

So the Jays are down 5 runs in the top fo the 9th and they get someone warming up. THAT, my friends, is optimism!!

That was what I thought too. I'm just glad nobody got hurt. AND.. K throws another K!!

lol

I'm glad someone got charged with an error. Porcillo didn't deserve to have his ERA inflated over that crazy play.

The first time I was there was probably about 1955. I'm not sure I'd even seen it in B&W at that time!

It was, because I'm OLD, ok? LOL

Great observation by Jerry... that everything looked so green his first time there because the only time he'd seen it was in black and white.

make baseball great again!!

I agree. The stumbling block is that he's Hanley Ramirez, he has a lot of seniority in the league, and he has a huge contract. Those things give him special consideration.

This doesn't boil down to whether the Sox were right or wrong in terms of Hanley's production. It's all about the interpretation of the contract and whether his PA's being on pace to get to 475 overrides his lack of production. There's no doubt in my mind that Hanley should have been DFA'd for TWO reasons but whether it will stand up to the scrutiny of the contract is another story. FWIW, I think the Sox will be held harmless, but what do I know?

The shift may not have anything to do with the unbalancing of the league but I do believe it's changed the game. IMO it's what's responsible for the uppercut swings and the number of K's now. The power (and pull) hitters learned that the opposing team is going to overload to the strong side lessening the chances of getting a hit that's not a HR. The hitters solution is to alter their swing to hit more HR's even if it means they K more.

I don't think that's the way it works. Even though we've DFA'd Hanley he's still going to get all of this year's salary. The best way we can get salary relief is if the Sox trade him. In that case the team that takes him in the trade is responsible for all of his remaining salary. That's why nobody is going to trade for him. OTOH, the Sox have a week to trade him and after that week Hanley becomes a Free Agent and able to sign with any team without the Sox being involved. The Sox are then responsible for Hanley's entire 2018 salary minus whatever agreement Hanley might work out with another team. In that situation Hanley has no incentive to drive up his price because he's going to get the same pay whether it comes from his new team or the Sox. Also the receiving team has no incentive to pay him more than the ML minimum because the Sox are going to pay whatever portion of Hanley's salary the receiving team pays. So he most likely will end up with the new team paying him the ML minimum and the Sox making up the difference. The best case scenario for the Sox (other than a trade - which most likely won't happen) is for two or more teams to get into a bidding war for him, drive his price up and thereby drive the Sox commitment down. But don't hold your breath for anything meaningful. The savings come when/(if?) the Sox don't have to pay him for 2019. BTW, how's your softball team doing?

Are you aware that every time someone reads one of your posts their IQ goes down 2 points? Please stop. I can't stand much more loss.

Please don't confuse the fact that Hanley was hitting second or third in the lineup with your statement that he was playing well enough for the option to vest. He wasn't, and that was the problem. If he'd been playing well enough for the option to vest he wouldn't have been DFA'd.

I hear you, but at the same time we also have to be thinking about what we'd do if someone who wasn't the weakest link goes down. Suppose for instance that DD went out and acquired someone else to play CF (A HUGE mistake IMO, but work with me here...) and Beni or Devers went down with a long term injury. We'd have depleted our resources even more and it would be more difficult to replace either of them with quality. This team is on pace to win ~110 games. I'm going to start to worry about replacing people when that number gets down to around 100.

Part of the problem is that the umpires are trained to set up over the catcher's inside shoulder. That gives them a great view of the inside of the plate. However, they're guessing at where the outside of the plate is and, to a lesser degree, how high or low the ball is when it crosses the plate. They simply don't have enough eyes or enough angles to see both sides of the plate and the elevation of the pitch - and they never will have. On the whole I think umpire do a pretty good job calling balls and strikes but it's frustrating to see what looks like an obviously bad call.