I'm still holding out hope that Stanton returns in time to play in at least a week of games before the postseason. If not, I guess we can plug Frazier into LF and hope nobody hits the ball at him? Or replace him in the 6th inning like we did with Andujar. Or maybe Ellsbury will be ready for the postseason, who knows!
I remember earlier in the season a lot of people thought Porcello was struggling because he looked to be short-arming his pitches. Is that still the case, or is it just general suckiness?
Could be worse. The Mets (of course) blew a 6 run lead in the 9th inning tonight. Teams entering the 9th inning with a 6 run lead were 274-0 coming into today.
The Red Sox odds at reaching the WC game on 8/21 were 1.8%. As of today those odds are 7.1%. It's not likely that they make it, but as a fan who has burned before by s*** that has never happened before in baseball history, I won't discount them until that number drops to 0%.
I think the magic number is now 19 for the division. With only 6 games on this homestand (before 9 straight on the road) there's a decent chance they won't get to celebrate in front of the home crowd. But I get your sentiment.
Runs in baseball are up by 9% this year (is it due to worse pitching or the juiced ball?) so you may have to handicap this year's ERAs when comparing to last year.
Well if making the WC game comes down to the final couple of games of the season, you may have already burned E-Rod/Price just trying to advance. So you could be forced to go with Porcello or a bullpen type game with Nate/Cashner/everyone else. But if available, I'd assume E-Rod & Price are the top two starters for you guys.
I'll be surprised if Garcia isn't added to the 40 man roster by 8/31 (the deadline for postseason eligibility). As mentioned he needs to be added this offseason anyway otherwise he'll be lost to the Rule 5 Draft, so why let some fodder like Dull/Hernandez/Rosa/Valera get in the way of a potential contributor to this year's team?
Although your pitching is the big culprit for this season's troubles, I think it should be noted that runs scored/allowed this season are way up compared to last season. For reference the average MLB team scored 4.45 runs per game last year. This year that average is 4.86 runs per game. That's a 9% increase in just one year which is pretty significant. Juiced ball is the likely reason.
75% of today's pitchers likely won't be on our playoff roster. But sure, we'll get crushed by Cleveland in the postseason based on today's game. I think Boston put up like 18 runs on us one game too, high point of their season