ground-ball pitchers, pandas, victorino's rickety spine and the hope of mookie betts: your 2015 Boston Red Sox

i give up trying to predict a goddamn thing with this rotation

a's 0-for-14 with risp, basically

jesus christ

The Boston Globe ‏@BostonGlobe 2m2 minutes ago
The @RedSox made Allen Craig available to the 29 other teams and there were no takers http://trib.al/KLIdU76

not that im surprised by that really, just, oooof.

i'm sure there are teams that would give him a shot, but not when he's owed $20m over the next two seasons

that whole trade is looking truly awful

wang.xls

panda whomped on the knee by a pitch, helped off the field :[

no serious injury, just sore false alarm

napoli is fuckin cooked

^^^naturally I say that and he gets one homer in an otherwise humiliating 12-5 beating by the angels one day and gets two homers the next

and another 2-run homer just now lol

he's streaky as heck.

BROCK HOLT ladies and gentlemen!!

jesus fucking christ kelly couldn't make it through 2 innings today

napoli is fuckin cooked

AL player of the week

well we can't all be right all the time now can we

in the meantime, wade miley is currently the best red sox pitcher, nothing makes any sense

so b-ref has hanle y at +0.6 WAR and fangraphs has him at -0.7

it seems that quantifying his defense is proving problematic

it bad

^^^^ that is me quantifying it

bringing him back early from that injury was a mistake

eduardo rodriguez's pitching line in his MLB debut: 7.2 IP, 3H, 0 runs earned or otherwise, 2 walks, 7 strikeouts

hanle y homered for the first time since late april

@DavidLaurilaQA
Wade Miley and Joe Kelly are playing whiffle ball in concourse outside Red Sox clubhouse at Fenway. Miley's got good stuff.

practicing for their future

that start by rodriguez practically the only bright spot in a fucking abysmal may

it was a really bright spot though. and the fact that he was throwing heat makes me think maybe batters won't "figure him out" right away?

i hope you're right. i'm having rubby de la rosa flashback vibes - rubby had a phenomenal opening start and then became thoroughly ordinary and/or bad depending on the start - but tbf rodriguez shut out a much better offense than the rays offense that got 1 run off of rubby in the start to which i'm referring.

there are more worrisome examples of young sox flameouts (rubby wouldve been a respectable #4/5) but we will not speak of d-n--l b-rd now or ever its too sad

overall i will be more positive than negative about eduardo until further notice

eight hits in his last 2.5 games for xavier bogartes

eduardo sure looked like the real deal today

ladies and gentlemen your scrappin', scrapin', small-ball red sox!

did farrell literally tell everyone to choke up an inch? some satisfyingly slappy singles today, ty cobb would have approved

it was good stuff, hopefully they're not worn out for the night game

double steal with hanle y as the lead runner btw! (in the first game)

What is up with Betts though

mookieproofing

cruel

swihart just got his first dinger, outta the park

nightmarish

the way this team plays is brutal

they didn't pay for every mistake they made, but they paid for enough of them. there were coaching errors too, they should count as Es

if i was farrell i would be going full postal on these guys

fucking nightmare, allowing the game to be tied sucks but is understandable, allowing 4 more runs in the last second is a slaughter

hanley had no idea where that ball in the 9th was going

yeah i want to see the statcast on that

he is currently -37 defensive runs saved :[

@GordonEdes
Farrell responds yes when asked if Hanley lost track of the number of outs in seventh. Admits in so many words he has no real options in LF

maybe this is the end of the road for ortiz and hanley becomes DH

"I thought we might be able to steal one there," Butterfield said. "Didn't work. You don't have an eraser and you don't have a DVR where you can redo it. I made my decision and I stuck with it. They executed."

"they executed"? uh yeah they're pro ballplayers, that's what they tend to do. you fucked up. and i didn't see what happened with the coaching on the embarrassing hanle y rundown, but surely that's also your job to give him the red light there. fuck's sake!

sorry, for context, butterfield's talking about the play when he waved mike "bad wheels" napoli around third, leading to napoli being thrown out by approximately 30 miles

yea idk what he's trying to play that off as, it was fuckin stupid

wade fuckin miley

is brock holt a victim of his own flexibility? i.e. he's so good, in every aspect of his game, he can play every position - so he's too valuable to lock into a consistent starting place? starting to wonder. there is less and less justification not to start him imo.

he's def a flexibility victim, also a victim of streakiness. he's a predictably decent-to-good infielder with a bat as hot and cold as napoli's albeit less dramatically so

I'm totally on board with benching ortiz and letting hanley DH against lefties btw

no updates on the woman w life threatening injuries who was hit with brett lawrie's bat shard - hope all goes well with her. scary shit.