oldtimer

Porcello is getting bombed tonight and Pomeranz wasn't effective in his last. Outside of Sale, E-Rod and Kimbrel our rotation and relief has looked sick indeed. My view of Price is that at this point in his career he is not much better than and 3rd or 4th starter. We haven't seen him in action as yet so it is hard to know he will return to acceptable form or not. I think you are being optimistic.

Maybe the best is for David Ortiz

Price is doing a rehab start in the minors so he should be back soon. Are we the only team where the salary in the minors and rehab is greater that that on our major league team. Price, Sandoval, Craig, Castillo, Thornburg, Smith all get the bucks. I wonder if Price will ever return to decent form let alone the expectations for an Ace. Giving a pitcher with a lot of mileage a 7 year contract is just nuts.

Perhaps there should be a separate thread on base running. The Sox have had a ton of outright mistakes this year and today was no different. First we had a lack of movement on a ball hit to second and dropped. The runner then came back to first, not seeing or being coached about the dropped ball and to make mattters worse, Moreland was doubled up not able to get up the line in time. It was a tough play but we looked bad. Much worse was Pedroia. You have to criticize a guy who has just hit a double, but then he could have easily gone to 3rd on a ball that got away from the catcher but didn't appear to be paying attention. That cost us a run as there was a single by Bogaerts. Might have cost us the game but fortuneately not. That gaff was later compounded by Pedroia trying to stretch a single into a double. Somebody tell him, he isn't that fast. I didn't see the game the previous night but understand he also ran the bases poorly then as well. Today is just one of many incidents this year. You wouldn't expect one of your most experienced players to be so careless. Thanks to good pitching and Betts, we won and we needed to.

If you look at who we picked up in the last few years and their value to the team vs money or trade value paid I would list them as follows: Sale (5 stars) Porcello (5 stars) Kimbrel (5 stars) Price (2 stars) Pomeranz (2 stars) Thornburg (0 stars) Smith (0 stars) Moreland (3 stars) Young (3 stars) Leon (2 stars) Sandoval (-3 stars) Craig (- 3 stars) Castillo (- 3 stars) Some very good acquisitions here but also a lot of misses for big money and a depletion of our farm system. Still we haven't solved our 3rd base situation and I really didn't try to list all the secondary players that have come through but there were a few others. Still having a problem with JBJ. Would a trade finding him getting his mojo back? If so that might put a bad light on our coaching. I am bothered as how we pick up pitchers only to have them on the DL for extended periods. Is our pitching program that grueling or our we dumbly taking on guys with known issues? Also how is it we trade an infielder and another team can work magic on him (Travis Shaw) when we have been unable? Is there a coaching problem here?

As are the Red Sox.

The two position players who would be totally off limits in trade talks are Betts and Beni. Both are foundation players. Bogaerts is close to that status as well. I hope to live long enough to see another team that can compete for the world series and expect both Betts and Beni to be on that team.

In August, if he is still hitting under .200 guys will still be postulating that one good month for September. What he needs is to go down and work on his hitting for a week or two. I still think he can be a hitter again but he needs to change his approach. We do need his defense and he is a great young guy so coaches, please help him get his mojo back.

Hembree has looked bad the last couple of times out as has Barnes. We need the relievers that we expected to have actually pitch in the majors. Smith and Thornburg where are you?

Sounds like the Sox might improve their regimen for pitchers. We sure have a sorry mess right now.

There has been a long time to form that opinion. JBJ has not lived up to his own expectations offensively. I do grant, as was said on BB Tonight, there are many proven ML players that are off to very slow starts offensively this year. They didn't have an explanation for it but noted a number of unexpected last place teams had guys who had good careers now hitting 220 or less. Could it be the pitching is that much better? The Cubs also have several that are way off. Still, there are guys like Beni, who have hit very well so go figure.

Robbie Ross came in and tried to give the game away. Hembree has looked bad recently.

You coach him properly and then have patience.

Sounds like an excuse for poor performance to me. JBJ has to get his head together and needs help from Chili Davis to get back to be an acceptable offensive threat. It's getting to a point where his career is on the line. He has shown the capability in the past so it is a matter of him finding himself.

Today, the bullpen tried to give the game away and thankfully Kimbrel was brought in to stop the bleeding. Having Thornburg and Smith not able to help this team has left us weakened in the pen. This sitation appears to be bad luck or back reading of the medical reports.

I agree the coaching staff bears some responsibility in the gaffs we see. What we don't know is whether the coaches did all he should have done and still the playing screwed up or not.

I think JBJ is one of the best defensive players in the league and his offensive showing when hot indicates he could hit. I long ago identified what I thought was his hitting issues and noted earlier this year that despite his statement to the contrary, he really did not change his hitting mechanics. Should he go with someone who would get his attention and have him try a shorter and more compact swing, he might hit very well indeed. In my opinion, the Sox should talk seriously with him about his career and get Chili Davis to do a swing makeover. The time to have done that was the off season, so now he is in a position where he is hurting the team and his trade value is minimal.

Thornberg has been placed on the 60 day disabled list. The curse continues.

Hanley has heated up. He has been irratic and he shows little emotion. I had thought maybe having Ortiz around to talk to might help him but he has found something else and is going off in the last few games. We have solid core hitting although jbj just hasn't got it going much at all. Even when he does make good contact the balls are being caught. Other than hiim, we are somewhat weak at 3rd, depending on who plays and also somewhat weak at catcher with Leon not hitting much and Vazquez while hitting, a bit of a question mark. The only thing I see coming along is a potential for improvement at 3rd base during the season. We still need to generate more runs.

Actually, it was 4 guys, as the first base coach should have been screaming directions as well.

Yes, thed lead runners were in a pickle though. If they run and the ball is caught, they can be caught off base. If they don't run, then Moreland is out if tagged first and then second base is tagged to put Pedroia out. If they play it half way,then probably only one of them is an easy out if the ball is dropped with the other likely advancing. If the ball is caught then probably one of them gets back safel. JBJ definitely should have run to first and if the ball is dropped take the bag. He and the first base coach were guilty of not thinking.

Things went our way tonight. Hanley may be heating up to give us a power threat. Hernandez appeared to make every play and looked determined not to make an error. All went very well with Sale having another very strong outing and he got a well deserved win. It all looked like the team would get in an entire game without some mix-up but in the bottom of the eighth we hit into one of the most bizarre triple plays imagineable. Moreland on second, Pedroia on first and JBJ hits a pop up into short left that the wind blew enough so that the ball was dropped. Moreland on second didn't try to advance on the play as he probably would have been out at third had he, but for some reason (confusion on his part) he didn't get back on 2nd and was tagged out when the ball was thrown in. Pedroia who also hadn't advanced was on first but he was called forced out at second and JBJ who hit the ball in the first place never even touched 1st base but instead was walking back to the dugout and was out at first on the throw over. I am an older man now and never have seen anything like it. It was unusual but wouldn't you think Moreland, Pedroia, Bradley and the first base coach would have handled it better? Glad it didn't cost us the game.

Players at my age lose the snap needed to power the ball over the 300 foot fence and are slowed by cranky or replaced joints and a little of Pablo's former weight problem. There is also a noticeable loss of mentality in some players, so they make mental errors, but there are those that have kept a lot of ability and still play competitively while over 80 and even some up to 85. Our Red Sox players don't have the age and physical issues and should maintain the quickness and strength to compete. The loss of awareness of some of them such as with Hembre and Rameriz seems to be their difficulty of staying focussed. In Hernandez issue I see a lack of confidence rather than lack of the fundamental tools. Whatever is bothering them individually, this is the second recent game where we committed 4 errors. Too many to be a winning program.

Many of the guys who contribute to this forum have been or still are playing either baseball or softball at some level. I play in 2 over 75 year old softball leagues year round. I'll bet most of you have a similar thought about defense. Before each play is made all the defenders need to ask themselves what the situation is on the field and how they need to react in different scenarios that might develop. If its hit to me what base do I go to and will I have to hurry. On offense it is similar, know how many outs and where defenders are playing and the strength of arms when running the bases. Last night we saw Hernandez hurry trying to make a double play and he botched it rather than taking a sure out. He also made a bad throw to first. That play wasn't particularly pressured but he seemed to feel pressure from somewhere. Hembree's throw in the direction of Pedroia indicated he really hadn't thought through the opportunity for a double play in advance and had no idea of what to do. Throws from the outfield have been poor of late when we had good opportunites to register an out but our players didn't look sound throwing the ball. Hanley's base running was another example of a guy not really being aware of the game situation. These players are pros getting paid big bucks to do their job. Errors are inevitable in any game but mental errors and not learning fundamentals, like pitchers covering 1st base on a ball hit to the right side of the first baseman have been evident on this team. This is not to cast the negative thoughts to apply to all our guys. We have a solid core that play the game well. Whose fault is it that we have such poor fundamentals at times. The players certainly are front and center and it also has to fall on the coaching staff as well. Hope we see better tonight. Sale needs run support and solid defense. The guy deserves to win with his exceptional performances to date. We can't afford to blow games at Fenway against division rivals. Losing is one thing but totally blowing a game is quite another.