S5Dewey

I'm DVR'ing it from DirecTV. If someone knows how to get it off my DVR and onto something else that that will allow me to send it to Dustcover I'm willing to listen.

Thanks for all of this, Moon. I have to wonder how much of that Team UZR is due to our outfield. This is why we're currently in first place in the ALE and it's also why I'm against trading anyone decent for a 3b.

That subpar defense is going to cost a team a lot of runs that don't show up in the box score. I would never advocate for nine .600 OPS guys just as I'd never advocate for nine players with outstanding defense. (It's too bad we can't easily quantify defense like we can offense so we could compare apples to apples instead of apples to.... ahhh... whatever). However, if a team has 4-5 hitters with an OPS >800 then can afford a couple of .600's - as long as those .600's play solid defense.

You noticed, huh?

Welcome, Larry. Good posts, both of them thus far. Keep 'em coming. It's good to have some new blood here.

I don't want to be accused of nit-picking because you've thrown up some really good posts lately, but I wouldn't want to go into the playoffs depending on a 2.00 ERA from my pitching staff. I can remember when DD & the Tigers (Shouldn't that have been a rock group from the 80's?) had the CY winners from the past three years on their staff entering the playoffs and that didn't turn out all that well. Baseball is a funny game. OTOH, I do think that our pitching staff & defense should be able to post a combined ERA of

I agree that we need a bat. I also agree that the offensive production at 3b is abhorrent. But that's where my agreement ends. Prado's fielding is nothing special and IMO we'd be trading the defense Marrero (and Lin!) are giving us for that "massive upgrade". In fact, Marrero is currently sporting a .615 OPS and Lin .805. Sure, SSS's and unproven, but I wouldn't be willing to take the downgrade in defense for that uptick in offense. But that's just me, and I like defense.

This is the most important thing to me. How has he done RECENTLY? Some pitchers find their stride later in the season than others as they learn more about their pitches and how/when to use them. Over the past 5 games he's looked more like a #3 in a #5 spot and like some other situations on this team, I'm willing to ride this horse until he drops.. if he does.

Brock Holt 'lite'?

I'm not giving up Devers for an all-star. JH's budget for the upcoming years wouldn't allow that. It would be going too "All-In" this year for my liking. The ONLY way I'd consider trading Devers would be for a young - and underpaid - promising 3B.... and we've already got one of those! And I'm not at all certain that we could get upgrades for 'nothing but cash'. Other GM's know the situation the Sox are in and they're not going to give up quality players for cash. They're going to want promising prospects or full time players. They're not in business to do favors for the Boston Red Sox.

That's a very interesting thought. I remember that when bats were breaking at a record pace there was a lot of talk about them being made of maple, with a shorter fiber length than the traditional ash bats. IDK if fewer players are using maple bats now but it doesn't seem like there are as many broken bats as in the past. Of course going to a shorter fiber length would increase the hardness of the bat, but at the same time it would decrease the 'whip' in the bat and possibly even the compressability of the bat at the contact point with the ball. I'm not sold on the idea of the change in bats being a part of the issue, but I wouldn't rule it out ether.

I hear where you're coming from and if making the playoffs assured a WSC I'd be agreeing with you. However, that 3-4 year window is exactly that, 3-4 years, and I don't want to jeopardize years 2-4 by putting too many eggs in the 2017 basket with 2018-2020 still ahead of us. I don't totally disagree with your saying that the team shouldn't stand pat with its weaknesses, but something every team should have learned by now is that there are no sure things in the playoffs. We're going to be in 1st place at the ASB in spite of those weaknesses and IMO there's no rush to make a trade. If we could win the AL East with what we've got I'll take my chances then rather than trade away Devers, etc.

If I live to be 100 I will never understand why JBJ wasn't swinging a bat in the ninth inning. I know they wanted to give the guy the day off and I understand about how sometimes a manager sometimes looks at the longer view and doesn't try to win every game but really.. now much does one AB detract from a player's rest?

When the count on Hanely went to two strikes I said to my friends, "Watch this. Splitter down and away. Hanley swings at it and strikes out." -- and that was the next pitch and the result. And it's not that I'm a genius. It's that it was so predictable. Predictable that the pitcher would throw it (why not? It worked on the previous pitch) and predictable that Hanley would swing and miss. I sometimes get the feeling that Hanley isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer nor the sharpest hoe in the shed. He strikes me as someone who has tremendous baseball talent and no idea about the mental part of the game. It's what we used to call a 99 cent body and a 1 cent brain. Compare that to Mookie Betts, who studies every pitch and play and asks questions about them, and then ask yourself who's the better player, and why they are.

No kidding! I'm wondering if he has money on the Rays.

That's why Marrero is at 3B and Sandoval isn't.

Some of that is that he's getting squeezed badly, especially on pitches down in the zone. I remarked on it in the 1st inning and it hasn't changed.

It seems like those 4 runs only took about 5 minutes.

Jerry Neal is tough tonight. He's giving nothing on borderline pitches.

The guy who caught that HR ball had the ball in one hand and a cowbell in the other. There awutta be a law... :-(

That sounds fair. Respect goes both ways.

You're taking this far too personally. Back on the old BDC thread I had a tag line of "We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are", and that applies here. There are several of us here who have had a lot of experience in playing and coaching and we are all about intangibles - hunches and experience, if you will - because sometimes the intangibles work. OTOH you are all about the numbers and what they prove. What you hear from us is no less disrespectful and condescending than what we hear from you when we are "corrected' by being told that 'statistics show...'. I'd guess that there are over 200 years of collective experience here and we expect to be respected for the knowledge we have, and that's something we don't seem to be getting. As I've said before, if baseball were all about statistics we wouldn't have to have playoffs. We could just plug each player and situation into a computer and the computer would give us the winner of each game, right up through the WS. It's possible that the Sox with their offense would have won the WS last year if we'd gone that route, but we didn't and look where that got us! :-(

Oh, c'mon.. .don't they all?? LOL

As compared to his playing salary, yes. But since then he's done (doing?) some gigs as color man during broadcasts. I know they don't pay those guys like players but it keeps him in the game and keeps a little dough flowing in. His attitude struck me as one of a person who's had his s*** together. I saw an interview with him during the ST of 2014 when he said [roughly quoted] 'I've been in professional baseball for 15 years and treated like a king. Now I have to learn how to live like a normal person'. I found it refreshing that a player actually recognizes that.

That's cool. Thanks! So my memory isn't abandoning me... thus far anyway!!