chw42

Cleveland scorched every ball that inning.

Thank god for the shift.

Lopez throwing some of these fastballs right down the middle.

He laid off all the off-speed stuff. That 2-2 pitch they threw him was really good and he managed to lay off.

For a guy hitting .174 Hedges seems to always get hits when I watch.

Is this real life?

Holy crap are we finally hitting Civale?

Friday could be Bieber depending on how his bullpen session goes.

With the way he's pitched since he's come off the IL, I wouldn't even offer him the QO. What's to say his arm won't break down after 90 innings again next year? Are we ready to pay the guy $18 million for maybe 100 innings of work? We need to focus on 2B and RF in free agency. SP is a spot we can afford to lose Rodon and still have it be a strength of the team.

There's no way we keep pace with the team last year over 162. We had no starting pitching depth and the bullpen was probably very fortunate. Over 162, I doubt the team last year wins 90 games.

People keep pointing out that the team was cold in September in 05, but the fact of the matter is, they got hot right before the playoffs. After they clinched, they swept Cleveland in Cleveland to keep them away from a playoff spot. And that was with mostly Sunday lineups out there. Also we weren't even that bad in September of 05, Cleveland was just on a huge hot streak. Even without sweeping the last series, the Sox went 16-12 in September.

Just wait until TLR deploys Carlos Rodon as a high leverage reliever in the playoffs!

There's a difference between being concerned about the team not playing well and worrying how that will translate in the playoffs vs. saying the team has already lost their playoff series 2 weeks before the playoffs even start. You don't know what's going to happen.

What's funny is that the SP ERA increase is probably all Dallas Keuchel.

Imagine being a fan of a team, hoping the team sucks just so you can tell other fans of said team, "I TOLD YOU SO".

He's throwing fastballs for wild pitches too. In fact, I think most of them have been fastballs, not curves.

The results have been bad, but even when he has scoreless outings, the stuff just isn't there. He's not locating his fastball, it's not at the velocity you want it to be, and while his curveball location has been a bit better recently, it's still pretty erratic. We can blame other stuff all we want, but the guy just isn't the same pitcher we traded for. It's one thing if he's gotten unlucky or the umps are screwing him, but he's just not throwing enough strikes and ends up shooting himself in the foot more often than not with wild pitches. I didn't like the trade because I thought we paid way too much. But I got convinced into it because it seemed like the Sox were finally ponying up to go for it and that we got one of the best relievers in the game having one of the best seasons of all time as a reliever. Unfortunately, he's been anything but that and there's no sign of him ever becoming that guy again with the Sox. Now we're stuck with a market-priced reliever whose trade market is probably drying up as we speak and we also gave up 10 years of control on 2 pretty good pieces in the process. It's a mess and I don't think even the most pessimistic posters about the trade saw this coming.

For a guy who was supposed to be elite, we sure are making a lot of excuses for him.

Exactly .500 in the 2nd half. 8-10 in September. We're literally headed for our first losing month of the season, right before the most important games of the year in October. We have a big problem on our hands.

He was up 3-0. I know you want to get the go-ahead run up there, but when you're gonna get a fastball on 3-1, you gotta be prepared to swing. Leury wanted to walk after that AB went 2-0.

Leury clearly looking for a walk there. Gotta go hunting there on 3-1.

Notice how we kept throwing lefties out there when the Tigers put a lineup out to hit lefties? It made no sense.

If Liam needed an inning, he couldn't have pitched to get us out of that jam last inning?

Gotta hit a better pitch than that. The bat went farther than the ball.

Now Bummer not getting the final out looms large.