8/25/23 - Los Angeles at Boston
- Thread starter brandonchristensen
- Start date
It shouldn’t require coaching at this level to not run to an occupied base for no reason, or forget the number of outs, or hit a cutoff man, or not play a fly ball halfway when there’s 1 out.
The manager certainly has some responsibility to hold players accountable but if he has to reinforce Emanski-level shit then at a certain point it’s the players. It just is. Nobody can coach or uncoach the level of stupidity. Base coaches can do more maybe but at a certain point they need to be less dumb, period.
The manager certainly has some responsibility to hold players accountable but if he has to reinforce Emanski-level shit then at a certain point it’s the players. It just is. Nobody can coach or uncoach the level of stupidity. Base coaches can do more maybe but at a certain point they need to be less dumb, period.
Red Sox got 14 hits BUT Team RISP 1-for-8. This is an all too common stat these days in the games when we don't score 17 runs.
Mookie had a good game and sparked a rally. Dodgers fans took over the park thanks to cheap tickets. The team made a disastrous mental error that cost them. Kind of a microcosm of the bigger issues with the organization the last few years.
Tip your cap. Better team in every way. They are so much more complete. We are a collection of misfit toys. Some talented, but not a cohesive 9 position team. We have no defined bullpen roles. We can’t platoon. We have to use back up catchers to run, and not even be the lead runner. We do none of the little things. Can’t play defense.
It’s kind of cool they have stayed relevant until almost September, but we are just less than the sum of our parts.
It’s kind of cool they have stayed relevant until almost September, but we are just less than the sum of our parts.
Last thirty days, Yoshida is at 206/220/289. That he is our cleanup hitter seems kind of aspirational. Tough loss, but seems like a lot of key players are just out of gas, struggling, or hurt.
I just think the roster is horribly constructed. No manager is going to turn these guys into fundamentally sound baseball players regardless of how many days they practice base running before the games.
Do teams actually do that mid season at this level?
The two out hit to tie the game by an old friend who hit like .190 for us was the ultimate kick in the nuts.
Hard to feel confident after that happened
Hard to feel confident after that happened
Thing is, Cora could have used Refsnyder there to run for either McGuire or Casas. Not that the result would have been different necessarily, but he wasn't forced to use Wong. He just did so because Wong has shown he can run a bit and is a straight 1-for-1 swap at catcher
I will never forgive ownership for trading Mookie. Having to watch him make us look like clowns, just another nut punch.
The baserunning and yet another RISP bad game hides what I thought was, at best, an eyebrow-raising performance with bullpen usage from Cora.
He's got pretty good speed, and honestly, I don't remember any horrible running plays he made before this one. Of course, this one was somewhat significant. But I don't think running Wong was a bad move at all.
This team doesn't need Mookie's help to look like clowns, they do bang up job on their own.
Sometimes, the right move turns out not to work. Bringing in Pivetta was the right move; he didn't have it tonight. Cora's mistake was leaving him out there too long
So I guess Winck wasn't available either?
View: https://twitter.com/alexspeier/status/1695260909290029274
View: https://twitter.com/alexspeier/status/1695260909290029274
Agreed. I do think that's something that Cora could improve on. He seems to come into the game with a game plan--which is good--but he's not always great at audibling from it.
As has been said often, they're just not a good enough team to overcome player or manager mistakes
Actually yeah, Winck went 20+ pitches back to back didn't he, so that tracks they said no pitching for him for two days straight. Schreiber probably sucks now so that does leave you in a tough spot.
Still, surprised they haven't moved up Bernandino to high-leverage yet, what is there to lose?
Still, surprised they haven't moved up Bernandino to high-leverage yet, what is there to lose?
Not regularly. They've actually overcome both more than they probably should have, but it ultimately catches up with you.
I guess they were potentially hamstrung with Whitlock, who seems to have the most restrictive usage in the league, unavailable, and Jansen, unavailable. Neither Winck nor Martin pitched yesterday, but 29 pitches each two days ago? So probably wanted to stay away from them. Given that, the bullpen usage starts to make a little more sense.
His last outing was on Sunday against the Yankees, and he sucked. It was also his 4th appearance in 6 days. He didn't allow a run in his 7 appearances before that. He may not be Chris Martin, but he probably doesn't suck.
This is the bottom line. So much is out of your control. You can’t control the umps. You can’t stop batters from going cold like Yoshida. You can’t know whether a bullpen guy will have it or not. On tough decisions, you try to figure out which is 51/49 and pick the slightly better one, but then it is out of your hands. You do the best you can and try to force the other team in making hard calls too.
But the stuff you can control, you have to control, because all the rest is so margin thin. You can control attention to detail. Whether it is on the coaches or the players, this is the part the Sox have blown all year. Situational play and the little things. I wish they could hire Belichick as a consultant.
In other words it was a pick your poison, with who was actually available in the pen.
These maudlin takes drive me crazy. I get that the result was disappointing but the Dodgers in no way looked like some polished finished product. They had two errors (Muncy makes Raffy look like Brooks Robinson), their lineup beyond Betts and Freddie is riddled with Heywards and sub-Mendoza hitters and their starter has been garbage this season.
Meanwhile the Sox just came off a gritty series against the champs and started the game got with two homers in the first two innings. Their defense was fine, Crawford was great. Giys who have been reliable in the bullpen just crapped out and they had one admittedly horrible brain fart on the base paths. They are still in it, generally fun to watch and not worthy of “why can’t we get guys like that” pity parties. I wouldn’t bet a lot of money the Dodgers would wipe us out in a 7 game series.
They are 31 games above .500 and +160 runs. Can we beat them? Sure, it’s baseball. We beat the Braves. But the Dodgers are a far better team than us by any measure.
The one thing they don’t have, though, is the yellow jerseys, so I fully expect shit to be different tomorrow.
My point wasn’t that “the Dodgers aren’t a better team” – it’s that they really weren’t tonight. Their lineup wasn’t as deep. Their starter wasn’t as good. Their defense was measurably worse. The only measure they had us on tonight was the bullpen. Graterol (who, mind, still gave up a run) was really electric (and yeah, that hurts a little). I was a little disappointed to be honest.
Maybe the next few days will reveal that the Sox are indeed some sad sack outclassed loser bunch of upstarts who are no match for the real pros. But tonight wasn’t that game.
As soon as Murphy was sent down, they needed a long relief guy. Pivetta was overworked clearly. They needed to get Walters or BearClaw up…. Or…. Maybe not sent Murphy down. He would probably have been a little fresher than Pivetta there, no?
Can’t imagine Murphy would have been available yesterday were he still on the roster, given that he threw 80 pitches on Monday.
This is an adult view of the situation. I couldn't see the game, but I have watched Wong on the bases all season, and he is one of the better running catchers. I do think it's striking, when you see the box score for both teams, that the Sox came out the losers. I continue to wonder how much difference coaching makes. We all agree that the players ought to be better, and that the bad defense and base-running are the Achilles' heels of the Sox, but it's not clear that it's lack of talent. Maybe Cora or at least his coaching team needs a shake-up.
By the way, from the YouTube summary, I can't see why people liked the Apple graphics. The score bug (whatever you call it) didn't show either the pitcher or the catcher names, so it was very hard to follow.
I know the team are “professionals” and should show up everyday disciplined ,focused, prepared and ready. I don’t see that with this team. I do see it with other teams and I think that really is on Cora more than Bloom. It is a switch- they’re mostly mental errors. I run a-construction business andmy entire crew other than one poor sap who can’t seem to do anything right…. Are good at building stuff. But when either myself or my site manager aren’t there they slack off, goof around and start to make mistakes…. their focus is off. It’s a tough challenge because I encourage tryingto be as fun as possible since the work is exhausting and it has to be additionally challenging to do it for guys that literally are playing a game for their job, but there’s a balance and it’s on me when it falls too far to the wrong side.
I think Cora encourages the light side but at the cost of losing focus and discipline- mental mistakes build up.
I don’t think the corrective approach is to go 100% disciplinarian bullshit but Cora I think has lost the balance. I think he should be tethered to Bloom over this team, but I think Bloom needs to bring in a new staff and coaches.
They should have kept Dick Williams. He ended up getting rings with the Oakland A's
Thanks for answering that.
My pleasure. To Yaz's credit, he stated in 2017 that if Tony hadn't gotten injured, he would have been a Hall of Famer and was the most talented teammate he ever played with.