caulfield12

Now on pace for 46-116. Improvement!!!

The dreaded four run lead the undoing of many a bullpen...

664 OPS for Vargas...seems to be a season high for him. Second most useful position player after Thaiss.

GETZ is a demi-God now. Vargas the best trade acquisition in the history of deadline deals.

DARK LORD MEIDROTH grinding...well, it works/counts. 93.8 EV on the ground to the right side.

Here comes team co-MVP Matt Thaiss to pinch hit...

There's the Rojas Seattle fans grew disenchanted with last season. Great role player, great defender...but not an RBI guy at crunch time.

Things are going to get REALLY interesting in the bottom of the 10th with this bullpen...

Elko commits the cardinal sin of NOT advancing the runner. Well, not totally surprising, we don't coach our minor league sluggers to play small ball.

82.5 SWEEPER

Sox and situational/RISP hitting not usually a good mix...

Not sure it was a brilliant idea to wake up de la Cruz from his offensive stupor the last couple of weeks. He's due to go on another tear.

Trust me...from watching Wilson for years in SD, he's NOT THE CLOSER WE ARE LOOKING FOR, lol. He's strictly the back end of the bullpen, but his low ERA must have tricked our manager or analytics team.

That was just a REALLY DUMB idea, Venable. Predictable....but still dumb.

Steven Wilson as closer, lol....this should be quite interesting.

Probably incentivized by JR...when not hawking concession items or taking foul balls away from kids in the stands.

Player of Game is Quero/Cannon...has to be split 50/50 for this one.

Benetti's definitely having a lot more fun, more comfortable, not on pins and needles in the DET booth. Not having his eating culinary scrutinized as much, either. Having the best team in the AL (for the moment) to broadcast doesn't hurt, either.

This is what their HoF manager came out of retirement for, lol? Reds are on the verge of going 2-8 and falling further behind the Cubs/Cards/Brewers.

Looks like Booser against de la Cruz, Hays...for some reason they don't have Lux hitting in the middle but the catcher instead, or possibly a PH Looks like Trevino and Wynns, two more catchers, as their best offensive weapons off the bench...so one of them might hit for Stephenson.

Which isn't a great thing, when Venable treats him as option 1B out of the bullpen late/close/high leverage and Booser's apparently now the quasi-closer. So let's just turn Grant Taylor into the closer, simply because we don't want to spend ANY money on quality relievers in FA. Quero and Thaiss have been doing some work defensively in the last week or so.

Here it comes...attack of the former NL West/AL Central guys.

Not a Baldwin fan, lol?

Well, you can't fault the Sox/Venable for this strategy. Cannon pitching the 6th/7th and possibly the 8th eliminates the worst elements of the Sox bullpen. The problem is still going to be those last two innings of the game, though. Also gives the team a much better likelihood of holding down the opposition, preventing them from running out to an early lead. BORING, sure.

Well, the Venable strategy worked for at least one inning. Eisert at 4.67 ERA somehow is a lot better than what I felt about him 2-3 weeks ago...would have been the first reliever off the roster at that point. Now it's probably Shuster. Freeman already got sent packing for Y.Gomez. As a matter of fact, Gomez/Shuster the only ERA's now in the Sox pen with over 5 ERA's. And yet somehow they're still probably the worst bullpen (in terms of overall talent) in all of baseball (still).