5GoldGlovesOF,75

For any fan with wild card dreams, this better be Chang's career year. Yu is your shortstop. Kike didn't work there, Story isn't moving there, and Mondesi is in Margaritaville with Paxton, courtesy of Flying Dutchman Cruise Lines.

He's on the hunt, then after's Yu...

Right now if you're a Twins fan, it must be hard to have faith in this Pagan.

I'm not sure if you're 6'7, 150, so I vote for Houck. A thought: young stud cruising on a sunny day game, after a fading oldster couldn't hit his spots on a cold night. Wouldn't it be in the team's best interests if they flipflopped Kluber and Houck in the rotation, depending on the temps? It would definitely help the old man, while Houck's stuff may be even more lethal to batters whose hands and bats would sting with bad night vibrations.

Please stay f***ing leadoff...

A Red Sox starter with an actual 1-2-3 first inning!

I never said he was good. I said he looked like a professional second baseman, made the routine plays (from that position) and his arm turned two from the second base bag. I swear he took grounders at other spots around the infield, like other guys like Ryan Fernandez or Mookie Betts, but it may have been pregame. Is it possible the guy was slightly nervous in the field in his major league debut in front of 30,000 fans, possibly the biggest crowd he's ever played for? In Spring Training, a big league announcer -- not a poster -- said Valdez' swing was a carbon copy of Juan Soto's... a pitch or two before he hit a home run.

Post all the stats you want. We've seen every Kluber start. He throws slower than most pulses on the forum. Wacha blanked the Braves.

Read my entire post or look it up. Had a few Kluber starts and also shut out the best team in the NL with 10 Ks in 6 IP. Wacha is 31. Kluber turned 37.

We'll get plenty of chances to see guys like Duran develop as the Sox shuffle one-step forward, two-steps back this season. It may be the only thing worth watching by mid-summer -- and already on April 20 we had a bottom three of Casas-Duran-Valdez. Fans are understandably really down on Casas right now, but would it surprise if (like Duran) it took another season, until next April of 2024, before he makes adjustments and breaks out?

This winter some posters hailed Kluber as a better pitcher than Wacha, and used specific stats to show how a .500 pitcher cut by a playoff team was preferable over a guy who won 11 of 13 decisions for a last-place club. But we all know Bloom chose not to pay "the years" wanted by Wacha (who's been hot and cold in San Diego, with two wins for a loaded team). The difference between Sale and Kluber is that Chris still throws 95+, so can still beat big leaguers when he's not throwing BP down the middle. Kluber throws in the high-80s... his control has to be perfect on the perimeter of the strike zone in every at bat to even be competitive. It's not and he's not.

Football is the enemy. But I'm a little old to even watch LL; night games in New England are too cold.

We outlawed throwing to third base in Little League, because it's almost a guaranteed run for the offense... every time...

I always assumed Florida as a retiring (and thus expiring) state could never build a steady fanbase that would overlap generations like traditional regions in Boston, NY, Chicago, etc. But there's plenty of underrated star power in Tampa that Red Sox fans would love to root for if the uniforms of the two rosters were reversed. And you can bet Yankee fans would also be chanting the names of Franco, Arozarena, Lowe, Diaz and McClanahan if they were in pinstripes, too.

He's definitely going to crack a vertebrae or rib jumping onto someone else's shoulders, locking arms and legs around them. But it might be the bottom man's...

Thanks, but we're apparently all set with one non-platoon righty bat in the daily line-up.

But... the new distance between first and second, and second and third, is only 89 feet, 7 1/2 inches!

We shall overcome (someone on the Fire Bloom thread had to say it).

Bloom's analytics produced a scatterplot of the absolute values of the 7-8-9 slots in batting orders vs. entrance velocities of starting pictographs juxtaposed over relief pictographs, producing a BABIM (batting average bats in mitts) of 0.00... since CIs don't count as ABs, even though they're Es, but increase OBP, thus OPS, the true metric of a hitter. However, as catchers have not yet retaliated with getting smacked with wooden clubs, it's still unclear whether this will result in more WAR.

With respect to this position, we finally have a poster admit he's Wong.

Lost in this sea of finger-pointing is the credit due to our never-rebuilding CBO Classics major... Imagine how tempting it must have been for Bloom to just sign heroic power hitters named Homer? Instead, thinking outside the batter's box, we have sly rally-starter Kike Hernandez -- he who waits with two strikes for a dirtball to bounce past the catcher... then fakes a swing and Ks on purpose, while sprinting safely to first base. What's next, batters going up there looking to just make good contact... with the catcher's mitt?

If the Sox don't become consistently respectable -- s00n -- not only does Bloom and his staff need to go, but the axe needs to fall on anyone and everyone in management -- including those in uniform, in board rooms, and roving the planet in search of talent. It's bad enough an entire system can't develop more than one good homegrown starting pitcher per decade, but for as far as I can remember, they can't even teach pitchers how to throw accurately to a freaking base. It's uncanny, since anyone who has ever played since childhood knows that the best Little Leaguers are always pitchers; they're also the best hitters and fielders... and athletes. So why does Boston draft, sign or taint only the ones who gag, once they wear Red Sox uniforms?

Ballclubs that don't stress run-prevention will ultimately cause fan-prevention. Think about all the Red Sox suckitude we've experienced since Bloom took over, and which areas elicit the most uproar? Batters striking out, or pitchers serving dingers? Nope, modern fans are used to those... I'd say it's close between bullpens blowing leads (by-product of not throwing strikes), and fielders making egregious errors. The first usually comes at the end of games, so at least the TV is still on. The second can cause channel-changing whenever there's a game-changing miscue by a Franchy-type playing out of position.

Bloom's shortstop debacle may be the defining issue of his ultimate failure as CBO in Boston. When it comes to the most important non-battery position on the diamond, there can be no plans A-B-C-D when they all turn out to be Fs. If he originally signed Story as an intended half-price replacement for Bogaerts, management must have known the elbow was in doubt. Maybe this was acknowledged by not trading X at the deadline, and then calling him the club's priority last fall. Also, second base looked more suitable for Story's future. But once the Sox lost both Bogie and Story -- many options of actual Major League shortstops were still available, from high-priced stars to inexpensive gloves. Instead, Bloom acquired more damaged goods in Mondesi, and now we have Kike on pace to commit 80 errors at short. Enough with getting guys who aren't ready to help (it only worked with Schwarber because his best position was in the batter's box; we're still waiting on Paxton, two years later.) As Boston fades into summer with this suspect defense, maybe the only way for Bloom to save his job will be to promote Marcelo Mayer and let him Volpe (or Casas) his way through the bigs...

Yoshida's approach in ST and the WBC seemed to include more of a line-drive all-fields swing, depending on count and pitch location. He's pressing right now and needs to revert to the hitter he can be. Masa didn't win batting titles spinning around in the box trying to launch anything close to the zone... especially in situations where just a single can turn a game around.