4/25-4/28 Red Sox @ Blue Jays Series Thread

Any word on who, besides Houck, is not in Toronto?
Did AC make the trip?

Well Pivetta vs. Gausman is an L. I'm glad we're getting Pivetta's start out of the way against a guy we probably can't hit anyway, though. I like the other three matchups - the bats just need to stop being garbage and we could easily win 2 or 3 of them. Easier said than done, but I'm choosing to be optimistic.

DOB mentioned on the broadcast yesterday that the Sox play their last 16 games against the Rays from July onward. If we can avoid the injury bug our pitching staff should be so much better by then. Imagine Sale and Paxton are pitching like low-pitch-limit mid-rotation guys. The rotation could well be Sale, Paxton, Houck, Whitlock, Eovaldi. That would leave Pivetta, Wacha, and Hill as dangerous multi-inning guys in the bullpen who could also start in the event of injuries and who could piggy-back on non-Eovaldi starts... Imagine having a rotation so deep that we could legit line up multiple starters for most days and just leave the bullpen to mop up. It'd also allow all of them to keep pitch counts lower and make higher-effort pitches while they're out there, so effectiveness for everyone should go up while simultaneously reducing the risk of overuse injuries. And this isn't even considering the AA and AAA guys on both sides of the ball who could come up and make a difference... If our bats are even like 50th percentile outcome good we will be in a position to do some real damage in the division.

It's been a frustrating start, but I think this team's best days are still to come.

I refuse ever to prejudge Pivetta. Say he’ll be great, he throws a stinker. But count him out, and he shows his high ceiling and dominates.

So you're saying he's awful and they should cut him, yes?

So all that for 2 guys? Lol ok

Few thoughts on this season start. We're of course dealing with a tiny sample size so drawing conclusions is a futile exercise and I'll stick to things that tend to stabilize quicke:
- Barnes arm seems cooked to me, he's barley reaching 94 mph and it's not the "easy" 94 neither, it's maximum-effort-in-an-attempt-to-generate-velo type of fastball which messes up with his already shaky control, never been a fan of the guy but I've got to respect his effort to reinvent himself by increasing his changeup use. I think he'll hit the IL in the near future. Giving him that extension was a mistake. Reacting to a half season of a reliever performance is bad process.
- For the first time it seems like Whitlock is having both his secondaries working. Remember when he started last year his changeup was filthy and his slider was slurvy with minimal break and the sharper the slider got, the less he threw his Changeup that lost that late fade action and it led to some platoon issues later in the season. In his start vs a lefty heavy TB lineup he seemed like he's putting the complete package together. Taking him out of the rotation would be malpractice unless there's health concerns.

I like the new pic!

Thos would be a great time for the bats to come alive.

Line-upage:

1. CF Kiké Hernández

2. LF Alex Verdugo

3. SS Xander Bogaerts

4. 3B Rafael Devers

5. DH J.D. Martinez

6. RF Jackie Bradley Jr.

7. 1B Bobby Dalbec

8. 2B Christian Arroyo

9. C Kevin Plawecki

We win 8-3 tonight in a much beeded game to set the tone

Every flyball caught at the warning track I'm just going to mentally catalogue as a HR stolen by Rob Manfred

That 50-foot single is what baseball needs more of!