S5Dewey

What a pitcher needs to be doing in that situation is telling himself to throw the pitch that he KNOWS he can throw for a strike. If a pitcher doesn't have a pitch he knows that he can throw for a strike he won't last long as a pitcher at any level. He shouldn't be dicking around with it - most likely nothing good is going to happen if he throws a pitch that's off the plate.

Kimbrel had little command of his curve ball and occasionally has no command over his fast ball.

THIS ^^ I've never understood walking in a run, especially in that situation. There are a lot of things that can go wrong on every pitch but throwing a ball that's off the plate in that situation removes almost any chance of anything going right. THROW A FREAKIN' STRIKE!!

Are we going to be able to field a team today? At the risk of being accused of finding an excuse for what Kelly did yesterday, it may be that he didn't pitch well because he had this 'coming on'. IIRC he pitched better than this at ST. Oh well.. time will tell.

I was completely with Kimmie until recently. As I said in another thread, I love those "big arms". I like seeing a catcher throw out a base stealer by 10' with a perfect throw and that makes Vaz fun for me to watch. Plus I like the way Vaz frames pitches as opposed to Leon. However, when I now look at our two current catchers I see them as being about equal. What Vaz lacks in offense he makes up for in defense and vice versa with Leon. Momentum being what it is I see the starting catching position as being what it is until Leon somehow proves he can't do the job. Then Vaz will get a shot. I'm not qualified to get into the discussion of whether the pitchers like one catcher better than the other or into the aspect of game calling. I'll leave that to the people in the clubhouse. From what I see, looking at the bigger picture, the Sox are fortunate to have two very good catchers who are essentially interchangeable. We can throw either of them out there and not worry about whether they'll cost the team the game. I'll go with that for now.

Ahhh.... that makes sense now! Thank you.

..Which is why we had to go pitcher shopping during this off season. Ugh. We were very fortunate that Sale was available and that we had the players to get him.

Maybe I'm allowing my bias to cloud my vision but I thought the error he made on Thursday was the result of his not bending over far enough (which is a nice way of saying that I thought maybe his gut got in the way). In fairness... I've softened on him a lot. I no longer refer to him as The Fat Man - he's now Sandoval. But he's got to play better than he has been playing before I'll refer to him as "Panda". Panda is a term of endearment and he's got a ways to go before he endears himself to me. My goal for him now is for him to be average and overpaid. And BTW... what in F--k was he doing hitting right handed in Thursday night's game??? He has a horrible right handed swing.. It's too long and has a big hole in it.

I'm giving my head a good hard shake. Please clarify this. Are you saying that a runner has reached 2nd base in every extra inning game the Sox have played in for the past 100 years? If so our bullpen has been worse than I thought! (and I don't believe it)

What are the chances of having two guys out on bereavement at the same time?? Gad!! And on a more personal note... I'm not being critical. It's not all about baseball or the fans. Players have lives too and I wish both of them the best.

There seems to be an epidemic of that stuff going around. Tom Caron said today that it was going through the clubhouse during the last week of ST. I'm surprised to hear that Ross has been DL'd for it though. I got the impression from what TC was saying today that everyone else was being treated as day-to-day.

You 'n' me, Slash. And it was pretty lonesome at times!!

No. It has everything to do with the topic at hand. Those two things have something in common. They're both emotion-driven and they're both unable to prove mathematically. The only "debate" here, which we've beaten to death, is whether or not we believe something can happen that can't be proven mathematically. You don't. I do. I'm good with that.

Hmmm.. I wonder who the SS is going to be today. I guess we'll know in a couple of hours. :-)

Thank you. You may remember that I was one who was BEGGING for JBJ to be the regular CF'er even when the doubters were wanting to send him down or trade him for a bag of balls because "he can't hit and never will be able to hit". I'm not right all that often but when I am I try to make the best of it.

Swung at Ball 4 :-(

At least we don't have to worry about Sandoval hitting into the DP now

Why is Sandoval being allowed to hit Right handed?

I don't understand how he made the 25 man roster to begin with!

So 86% of the time (or in 86 games out of 100) a person should expect to see five consecutive hits in a game. But aren't you the same poster who said this: "Which is what you would expect. It is EXTREMELY rare to see exactly 4 or 5 consecutive hits." ...back at post #612?

My first thought when I saw this thread was that Mal would be chiming on on this. How ya doing, ol' friend?

Getting back to the Brock Holt discussion, I'm one of those guys who didn't want to trade him back when Moon wanted to and now I'd be willing to make that trade in the right situation. Why? Because we now have someone who could take Holt's place in Hernandez. I don't want to see this team make a trade for the sake of making a trade - or even because they can get good value back - and in the process leave a gaping hole on the team. Holt is a Zobrist kinda guy - able to play any position. Picking up a pitching prospect two years ago in exchange for Holt would have left us shorthanded at UIF and taken away OF depth. Now we could trade Holt and still be covered at those positions. Situations change.

Ya know all those times when you've looked at your kids or your family members and been so happy with them or proud of them that you could just burst? Well, guess what. Those feelings don't exist.

Hmm... I see someone has "drunk the kool-aid". Someone seems to believe that all that adrenaline that we see manifesting itself among hitters when they forcefully "high -5", do the chest bumping, and yelling at one another has no effect on their performance. In short, that adrenaline allows them to do all those things to make an outsider like like they're 'fired up' has no effect on their ability to perform. Uh-huh. It's all random and statistics. BTW.. how are your taxes coming?

Also, I was at a D1 game on Saturday (Jacksonville vs. FGCU) and J'ville strung together 5 hits in a row with a walk in there someplace as Jacksonville scored 5 runs in the 9th inning to clinch a win. That's twice in one weekend. I wonder how rare it really is that a team has 5 or six hits in a row.