35thstreetswarm

Well in that case, he has a hot girlfriend, a strong jaw and a good "baseball face." HOF here we come!

How was Moncada after 45 games? The real comparison is this thread vs. the early Moncada threads that were marked by similarly relentless negativity based on tiny sample sizes. It's just too early to draw firm conclusions on Madrigal. It's also not all that important, by the way, to put your stake in the ground as early as possible and take a firm position on a message board that you must then defend to the death. We're just fans. Nobody cares.

This thread is fun and healthy

As much as I loved seeing Carlos battle in that followup to the no-no, that was a real head-scratcher. IMO they need to be almost as careful with him as with Kopech. This guy is not Lance Lynn and if we try to ride him like a 200 inning starter we're going to be sorry.

Awesome. Won the road trip!

But he hasn't "earned" it. We should just structure our lineups in decreasing order by age. Or "balls," or maybe "effort percentage" (above 100)

I had fully resigned myself to Mercedes eventually lighting it up for another team. Actually pleasantly surprised that didn't happen, though it took a pretty catastrophic injury to get him a shot.

Not really. He became a pleasant surprise that people were cautiously optimistic about, but nobody was praising the heavens we had Dane f'ing Dunning on our team. Go back and read threads from around the playoffs -- the narrative was "I can't believe we don't have a third starter." Dane Dunning didn't count. Then he got pulled in the first inning of the game he started. That was the final image of Dunning people would have carried into the offseason and beaten him over the head with had he never been traded. Guaranteed.

I don't disagree with any of that. It's just funny to see Dunning regarded as this darling when he would have been dragged mercilessly for the last several months if he had not changed hat colors.

I understand Dunning took on mythical status the moment he left the team, and the trade could very well come back to burn us. But let's be real: this board would have gone absolutely bananas if Dunning was penciled in as a third starter on a team with World Series aspirations. As it is one of the primary knocks on this team is that it didn't get a *fourth* veteran starter during the offseason to bring stability to the rotation. Imagine if we only went into the season with two!

Maybe he hit the Boston bars too hard. On a Sunday night...until like 11 p.m. when bars close in Boston...and I guess only at whichever bars are open during COVID lockdown...dammit

It's got to be something anomolous (hopefully other than injury). He didn't just suddenly become a batting cage pitching machine.

I'm going to go with pitch tipping (even if just for my own sanity). There's not having your best stuff and then there's....that. I know he wasn't hitting his spots, but I wouldn't be surprised if we hear Lucas say he was tipping sometime in the next couple of days.

Really?

Indeed—I thought we went straight to CLE. Well, let’s ride our ace to 3/4!

Nice way to recover from the disappointing opener. Could easily have been a sweep of a red hot team on the road.

So, we won a road series, split the home series, and have now won 2/3 in Fenway against the hottest team in baseball. I’ll take it (though it has been fascinating watching mental illness manifest in real time through the game threads). Let’s ride Gio to a nice streak tomorrow and get these bats going.

Blow it up!

Uh, I bet he does. It’s pretty common knowledge.

He’ll be hated here soon enough.

Jose Ruiz in that situation, really?! That was one of Ricky’s most glaring errors last season that made me turn on him once and for all. Feeling like more of the same

Think he was joking

They’re basically wearing a UCLA hat.

Nope. I think a few people who went with groups figured they'd crush a few beers in their car right before the game and that seemed to be fine. And it wasn't like there was a roving squad making people speed toward the entrances, either; we lingered outside for a few minutes and it was not a problem. I'm sure if you whipped out the bags or grill they would eventually find you and shut it down, though.