S5Dewey

FWIW, I don't think this is a Pixar movie but my (grand)children dragged me to see "A Wrinkle in Time" last weekend. I STRONGLY recommend you avoid this waste of time at all cost. It's two wasted hours of my time I'll never get back.

Thank you. I don't expect it to happen but as I posted earlier, we could do worse!!

Nope. That's why I said between 2-4. I'm not like Moon. I don't see every game, but I probably watch >125/year so I have a pretty good idea of what balls he gets to and what ones he doesn't.

By my own view I saw a minimum of two and a maximum of four balls hit yesterday that weren't played by our OF that IMO would have been played by JBJ and they resulted in at least 3 runs being scored. OTOH, Martinez, the fill-in OF, was 0-4. Bradley wouldn't have done any worse at the plate.

Me too, but I didn't have the courage to go there on this board. Having Iggy at SS would create a serious hole in our offense, but given the way XBo has been hitting, who wouldn't? We could do worse.

Ya. I know. It's friggin noontime now and still no word. The suspense is killing me. Really. Well, not literally killing me, but ... you know.

Hahahahaha

"Defensive metrics" be damned, how many runs did the Rays score yesterday because Bradley wasn't in CF? The Sox may have come back and won that game but I don't want to have to rely on a 6 run 8th inning every day to make it happen.

Yes, but OTOH if we're not hitting don't we want the very best defense we can on the field? IMO laying the blame for the team's only scoring one run/game at JBJ's feet isn't very realistic. It's a team "effort".

Iggy? Really? :D

It's more corroboration than substitution. My ego certainly isn't so big that I have to try to substitute my opinion for the opinion of someone who may be the smartest poster on the board.

There is somewhat of a conflict here though. If we're going to put Nunez into the OF "here and there" it's going to cut into the number of games/innings JDM spends in the OF. (A good thing, BTW). It's a hard call to say when JDM should be in the OF. The argument certainly can be made that if he (JDM) is going to play in the OF it should be in Fenway where LF is smaller rather than on the road where parks have a more spacious outfield. I don't ever want to see him there but if there's some kind of a wink-wink, nod-nod agreement between him and the club I guess we're going to have to live with it. OTOH we need to get JDM's bat into the lineup in the NL parks and the thought of having Hanley and JDM back to back there is enticing. In thinking while I'm typing, possibly the best solution is to put Nunez in LF (and I don't know why I'm saying this when I've never even seen him in the OF) in Fenway when players need a day off, let JDM play in the OF in the NL parks, and hope for the best on those NL park days.

I have to wonder how much weight these "guarantees" carry when it comes down to winning and losing. It appears that he thinks he can still play the OF and wanted the guarantees to prove it. Instead he's proving that he can't play the position, which means that no other team is going to want him in their OF either. He's essentially screwed. He'd do well to accept the fact that he's a full time DH here and embrace it. Then he can wait and exercise his opt-outs if he so chooses - and if he wants to play for considerably less money.

I got up this morning reading about Xbo & his achilles. Is there anything new that I haven't heard yet or is it all worst-case scenario conjecture?

Then my work here is done!

At the end of the day everyone is replaceable. It's just a matter of how much we're willing to give up to replace him. I saw what the outfield looks like without JBJ in it yesterday and I didn't like it one bit. It's not the person who's being replaced - it's the skills. I've always been a big fan of "solid up the middle" defensively and right now JBJ is the best 'up the middle' defensive player on the team. When combined with Mookie I believe we may have the best CF/RF duo in baseball in a park that demands that. Sure, if we could replace JBJ with guys like Pillar or Keirmeyer I'd be willing to do that but those guys aren't available and if they were we couldn't afford to pay them. I tend to look at the JBJ & his offense thing this way: Catchers are notoriously poor hitters - and yes there are exceptions, and these exceptions prove how bad everyone else is - but we currently have a catcher who's a better-than-average hitter (for catchers). That allows us to keep a CF who's below average offensively for his position and do it on the basis of his defense. Besides, it's not like we're asking these guys to fill the #3 hole in the order. They're hitting at the bottom, for Pete's sake.

See, that's the great thing about sarcasm. It overstates a point in order to make another point. Sometimes it's worthwhile to ignore that it's sarcasm in order to point out the ridiculousness of the original point.

And this is your defense every time someone has the temerity to disagree with you. My God.. is there ANYTHING you don't profess to be an expert in???

I hope the hardcore stat geeks pay attention to this.

And Beni is supposedly the best we've got to take his place - unless we move Mookie to C.F. & Beni to RF. Does anyone here want to see that???

There were at least three plays that Beni didn't make today that JBJ would have either made or had a good shot at making and at least two of them led to the Rays scoring runs. I don't want to hear any more of that crap about how moving Beni to CF isn't going to make that much of a difference. Yes, the Sox won today but they're not going to be playing the Rays every day and every run saved against those other teams is going to count. I'm not one to dump on a manger BUT if I see that defensive OF out there again I may change my policy on that. Today's win does not justify having that outfield (read JDM) out there. JDM is shaky in LF and I've seen JBJ play and Beni is no JBJ.

Hey! Don't tell him how it ends. That's the best part!

This thread should be taken down after seeing what this team looked like today without JBJ in that outfield. UgLeeeee.

And when the Yankees come back it's because they're the best, greatest, biggliest team in the world. Perspective is everything.

All of this with two outs!!