the 2019 Boston Red Sox have lost four in a row

Sale with the first qual start of the year

unfortunately with a fastball that barely cracked 90mph

Cora et al are fond of saying they'd prefer having the velocity in September than now, but Morbs as u know, 1-4 in April is just as harmful to one's playoff chances as it is at any other time, so i don't know what they're smoking

I predict at least two more 4-game losing streaks

Boston starters collectively throwing a 9.60 ERA, worst in the majors and a full two runs higher than the next worst team

Cooler heads did not prevail. pic.twitter.com/eIeSwI9Lo1

— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) April 6, 2019

Very unlike him.

hell of a game last night. incredibly satisfying. i was of course out of the room for the homer.

stitching on the sox caps looks very... yellow? it's not the white balance; their uniforms look fine.

Sale looks... shitty? Maybe not totally hurt but feel sorry for people who drafted him in the 1st round in fantasy (and also Red Sox fans to a much lesser degree).

extremely ordinary

Sale looks... shitty?

...

Asked if anything was wrong with Sale’s shoulder, Cora said, “No, sick.”

Did it affect his velocity?

“I mean when you can’t work in between it’s tough,” Cora said. “He spent a lot of time in the bathroom.”

Bradford Doolittle, ESPN:

"So far, the 10 pitchers who appeared in the World Series for the Red Sox last season have combined to go 2-10 with a 8.09 ERA and a 1.77 WHIP. This includes Ryan Brasier and Matt Barnes, who have only allowed a combined one run in 10 innings. Craig Kimbrel, of course, has not appeared in a big-league game so far because he doesn't have a team."

Bragging about Barnes there, reminded me how uh... mediocre he looked today fwiw:

HBP on first pitch about 2 feet out of the zone
Wild pitch to the second batter, who then hit a double to score HBP runner
K looking
Stolen base (3rd) allowed
K

taken out of game

every time i see Ryan Brasier i feel like I'm looking at, like, a long-lost album cover from Scott Seward's secret stash. like a Stealers Wheel side project. like a pub quiz answer to who the most short-lived member of The Band was.

This team is just a wreck... surprised there's not more panic pieces yet.

tune in this week for a yanks vs. sox wreck-off

don'y look at the standings til 50 games in

second-worst run differential in the majors

They’ve got the World Series hangover gang over

blake swihart dfa

i guess he's really that bad at calling games? amazing

feels weird because he's been the catcher of the future for so long, and the red sox seem to have jerked him around a lot, but . . . he's been pretty bad

according to cora it's "one of those baseball decisions"

ouch

dombrowski says "we're absolutely not putting this all on Blake"

translation: RIP Blake

can you imagine how sandy leon feels? put on waivers, no one claims him, goes to pawtucket to start the season.. now he's catching sale at yankee stadium

Eovaldi, snip

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/26582000/red-sox-eovaldi-elbow-surgery

luv 2 love jbj but I'm not sure how long you can hold onto a CF with a .390 OPS

cmon make me eat my words Jackie

😞

David Price, who’s starting tonight, just made a point to say that Fortnite is not banned in the clubhouse, and that banning it has not been discussed. And that he’s about to go play some Fortnite.
Carry on.

— Michael Silverman (@MikeSilvermanBB) May 2, 2019

I don’t like Price personally but that he should say this opens the door on that clubhouse, doesn’t it? pic.twitter.com/f9JiC9YKRB

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) May 6, 2019

oh YIKES

^

on the bright side i guess porcello's available tomorrow

nuney dfa'd

ffffuck what??

he was having an absolutely brutal season, but i'm not sure sam travis is really an upgrade

indeed. plus y'know speed. sometimes you need a dave roberts on the bench. (though maybe i am overestimating nunez's wheels?)

lol price is complaining about the two-year-old incident with eckersley again

one-hit by the orioles, whose starter began the day with a 6.49 ERA in 34 career games

After his huge game last night, Mookie's July: .395/.465/.709.

Fangraphs playoff odds down to 24.1%

Mets are at 21.5%

still slightly confused about this 'players only meeting' - is that shade on cora? surely not

Chris Sale caught wind of Mitch Moreland’s kid being banned from the locker room

doesn’t seem to have helped

this is really something!

now at 15.9%

Rename thread: The 2019 red sox have now lost eight in a row

man i like darwinzon hernández

he might even be a starter?? sox got lucky with workman this year imo. the bullpen is 90% trash. keep walden & i guess workman. porcello is cooked. cashner's a joke. price is past his prime. e-rod's my man. position players seem fine. marco hernández looks GREAT.

god i love hernández

‪"Comfortable kind of breezy afternoon in San Diego," remarks the Red Sox play-by-play broadcaster Dave O'Brien.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81TGXWueHzL.jpg

i like speier and i know he's not really responsible for the marketing, but give me a fucking break

'homegrown' = mookie, bogaerts and benintendi. jbj was all defense. devers was replacement-level. none of the pitchers were 'homegrown'

they led the majors in payroll and spent almost $100m on simply price/jd/hanley/porcello -- and that's before we get to sale and kimbrel

how about we call it a really rich team that spent its money well instead

ta

so i guess they'll be scoring nine runs every game this year? is that the plan? not a bad plan if they can continue to execute on it!

the plan will fall apart if the opposing teams catch on and plan to score 10 runs

The starting pitching though 🫣

well the last two games they only came to bat eight times so they're scoring even more than 9 a game 🤓

Pitching help is coming. Bello and Whitlock will be ready in 2-3 weeks. Kelly and Ort get sent down, Houck and Cutter become long guys.. This will be a pretty deep pen. But.... yeah. A lot hangs on the fragile appendages of two former aces now in their mid-30s. If this team hangs in there, and management really want to make a run, they have to deal for an elite starter imo

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/72/a7/9c/72a79c02418c6125656901c11861c860.gif

Yeah not great!

The defence... yikes

1 - Casas botched the bunt; he should either have just charged it or headed for the bag, instead he got hung up in no man's land, waiting for it to come to him

2 - In the seventh, Casas' very risky throw to third which put runners on the corners, rather than just taking the out at first

3 - Devers inexplicably not cutting off Yoshida's off-line throw home, allowing Bryan Reynolds to take THIRD

That said even though they were losses it's good to see some low-scoring games. Quality starts from Klubes and Pivetta

I think one high quality starter will be needed this season, and a catcher upgrade. Otherwise.. I'm not so doom and gloom as the chicken little Globe commenters

pirates have been waiting like six years for a dominant mitch keller start, and i guess this was it, if only because that game-tying three-run homer went just foul

at this point there may be little difference -- they both got rocked in their first starts -- but why did kluber get the opener last week and sale the second game?

xxp wasn’t there a three run homer that got ruled out as well

apparently Cora thought the bright lights of Opening Day would mess with Sale's head

which, if you think about it, probably messed with his head

Duvall like the new Steve Pearce over here

Raffy’s slam to the opposite field a beaut, did not think it was going out

Houck back with the nasty stuff, let’s see how long he lasts

What is Brasier’s problem

My wrist feels good. https://t.co/bO93by7DPg

— Adam Duvall (@AdamDuvall) April 10, 2023

(That is another person named Adam Duvall I am sad to say)

More to come, but the initial story on Adam Duvall being diagnosed with a broken wrist:https://t.co/DG1pk5tCaU

— Chris Cotillo (@ChrisCotillo) April 10, 2023

Sounds like he'll be out til July. The way I'm looking at it, we got his best games.

Early yet but Pivetta is looking sharp against the mighty Rays.

Looks like the book on Casas is for lefties to bust him in and down with breaking stuff. Hard for those long arms to pull in enough and come around on it.

Well that was tough, but a real grown-up baseball game. Some sensational defensive plays, fantastic pitching, what can you do. (Swing at anything near the zone if you're Rafael Devers, maybe, just a tip for next time, just sayin)

Probably also worth saying, though it doesn't show up in the box score, Boston absolutely roped a good number of pitches but they just happened to go right at somebody. Many days those fall. But TB did a great job of keeping walks down - I think they only issued one. Just a real tight game, felt like the playoffs. Fun stuff.

The Red Sox today reinstated RHP Garrett Whitlock from the 15-Day Injured List.

To make room for Whitlock on the active roster, the club optioned RHP Kutter Crawford to Triple-A Worcester following last night’s game.

— Red Sox (@RedSox) April 11, 2023

WOW!!! 😳😳😳

— Ryan Brasier (@ryanbrasier) April 4, 2021

Who calls their kid Kutter anyway? Grow up

Partially retract my Kutter slander, he pitched a gem today.

Partially retract my Kutter slander, he pitched a gem today.

this team is fun

Since I posted that, Brasier seems to have evolved into a semi-decent closer?!

don’t believe his lies

Houck has a 1.00 ERA through the first three innings this year. In innings four through six, however, Houck’s ERA stands at 10.38.

makes you think…. maybe this guy’s a reliever

then I saw his FIP
Now he’s a reliever

I thought Houck was only good in fairy tales
Meant for someteam else but not for me
Choke was out to get me
That's the way it seemed
Disappointment haunted all of my dreams

I thought Houck was more or less a short-term thing
Seems the more he played the less he got
What's the use in five innings
All you get is pain?
When I needed shutouts, I got slain

from the associated press story on sunday's win over the guardians:

Sale... got an out in the seventh inning for the first time since Aug. 8, 2019.

what’s the use in startin
all you get is pain
when i needed strikeouts i got raked

xpost yowza

the fifth was out to get me
or that’s the way it seemed
hanging sliders, feeling loose at the seams

Cheer up, weeping team
Oh, what can it mean
To a leaky reliever
And an ERA of fifteen?

from the associated press story on sunday's win over the guardians:

_Sale... got an out in the seventh inning for the first time since Aug. 8, 2019._

The Red Sox are #3 in runs behind only the Rays and Rangers, and #2 in extra base hits

And #1 in swag

Boston's much-maligned (by me) catching tandem of Connor Wong and Reese McGuire have more hits than any other team's catchers do

I really like Gausman but he is getting absolutely mauled by this lineup rn

Boston's much-maligned (by me) catching tandem of Connor Wong and Reese McGuire have more hits than any other team's catchers do

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, May 4, 2023 3:51 PM (six minutes ago)

Maybe in the AL? The Red Sox Cs have 35 hits, and I know Atlanta's Cs have 39.

I was just blithely repeating the NESN commentators, I should know better I guess!

Atlanta Cs are on 29 I think? the gloriously named Chadwick Tromp with 2, Sean Murphy with 27

Wong and McGuire have 37 between them

d'Arnaud has 11 but I don't know how that breaks down between C/DH.

9 at DH and 2 at catcher.

Damn the race is on

ty gyac!