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Red Sox vs. Rays 2021 ALDS Gameday Thread
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Post by soxfansince67 on Oct 9, 2021 8:18:45 GMT -5
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Post by worldbfree on Oct 9, 2021 8:23:06 GMT -5
This game was more fun than the prior game. I seriously wasn't sure we'd win one this series based on the first game; baseball is such a funny game. No idea why we couldn't hit a thing Wednesday but the ball looked like a beach ball Thursday Now we have our best pitcher up at home with a great chance to take control of the series. The team did hit pretty well in game one, they just hit several balls at people. I think they are officially over their offensive slump. Unfortunately the starters are getting worse. It is hard to imagine the Sox winning this series if the pitching doesn’t improve.
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cdj
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Post by cdj on Oct 9, 2021 8:37:54 GMT -5
Verdugo now has as many playoff RBI’s in a Sox uniform as Mookie Betts did
He did it in 1/7th of the games
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Post by patford on Oct 9, 2021 8:40:15 GMT -5
This game was more fun than the prior game. I seriously wasn't sure we'd win one this series based on the first game; baseball is such a funny game. No idea why we couldn't hit a thing Wednesday but the ball looked like a beach ball Thursday Now we have our best pitcher up at home with a great chance to take control of the series. The team did hit pretty well in game one, they just hit several balls at people. I think they are officially over their offensive slump. Unfortunately the starters are getting worse. It is hard to imagine the Sox winning this series if the pitching doesn’t improve. The thing there is Rodriguez is such an enigma. Would anyone he shocked if he pitched brilliantly in a game five?
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Post by patford on Oct 9, 2021 8:45:50 GMT -5
During a postseason game, what if Derek Jeter made a catch like Verdugo’s in foul territory? Would it be hailed as the best catch of the year? Of the postseason? In postseason history? In history? If it was Jeter, without a doubt in the conversation for greatest catch of all time.
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Post by aznpopsical on Oct 9, 2021 8:56:50 GMT -5
It’s imperative for the two left handers (mad at them so don’t even wanna say their names) to give us something positive before the series ends if we wanna pull off the upset, let’s see what they’re made of
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Post by Guidas on Oct 9, 2021 9:04:21 GMT -5
Unrelated aside. The US Navy maintains a 5000 acre white oak forest in mid Indiana, specifically for maintenance of the USS Constitution. This is Fantastic!
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cdj
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Posts: 15,697
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Post by cdj on Oct 9, 2021 9:17:30 GMT -5
So what do we make of Doogs saying he wants to be a 2 way player by 2023?
Lol I love the kids confidence but I’m not sure about that one. Used to be a good pitching prospect though
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Post by jbuttah on Oct 9, 2021 9:40:13 GMT -5
whoever refers to verdugo as "the mexican gardner" from now on needs to have his birth certificate taken away Am I crazy to feel more confident in Verdugo in big games than Mookie? Small sample size and all but just the way the dude approaches the situation is impressive. Nowhere near the star Mookie is and doesn't have to be. Verdugo reminds me of that guy on the Yankees, then the Sox for a year or two, who was decent in the regular season, but became a totally different player in the post season. For the life of me, I can't remember his name.
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Post by sarasoxer on Oct 9, 2021 9:41:13 GMT -5
The team did hit pretty well in game one, they just hit several balls at people. I think they are officially over their offensive slump. Unfortunately the starters are getting worse. It is hard to imagine the Sox winning this series if the pitching doesn’t improve. The thing there is Rodriguez is such an enigma. Would anyone he shocked if he pitched brilliantly in a game five? Yes 😊... E-Rod has seemingly had uneven velocity this year which IMO impacts his confidence and effectiveness. Also the Rays do well against lefties. There might be a silver lining to Devers' injury from my standpoint. I have previously remarked how hard he swings...and unnecessarily so. My belief is that kind of max effort increases the chances of swing/miss, bat to ball error. It looks as tho he is throttling back a bit protecting against aggravating the injury. Yet he still cranked a 425 shot last night. Again, my view is that swinging easier may prove to him that less could indeed be more.
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Post by jbuttah on Oct 9, 2021 9:41:33 GMT -5
The Sox need to shut Sale down. Not only is he awful he's getting worse game by game and probably has an arm issue he's not talking about because he's doing his tight lipped cowboy thing. He's coming back from a serious injury and I feel there is hope he can come back next year stronger than he's been since he began having elbow issues back with the White Sox. This should be an easy decision. I seriously thought they were gonna use him as a 1-2 inning relief pitcher this year.
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Post by manfred on Oct 9, 2021 9:44:35 GMT -5
Verdugo now has as many playoff RBI’s in a Sox uniform as Mookie Betts did He did it in 1/7th of the games Ooo ooo! Next do Ruth.
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Post by jbuttah on Oct 9, 2021 9:52:16 GMT -5
A thought more for next season... If they Rays position their defense so well, why don't other teams just copy them?
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nomar
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Post by nomar on Oct 9, 2021 10:07:08 GMT -5
Still can’t get over Houck. What a monster.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Oct 9, 2021 10:12:40 GMT -5
Ahead on both batters and they went with fastball instead of sliders. But but Vazquez is a great game caller! So Sale's failure is all on Vazquez, but Houck's lights out performance is all his doing? Hmmmm...
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cdj
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Post by cdj on Oct 9, 2021 10:44:56 GMT -5
Verdugo now has as many playoff RBI’s in a Sox uniform as Mookie Betts did He did it in 1/7th of the games Ooo ooo! Next do Ruth. More playoff RBI’s in a Sox uniform than The Great Bambino, and he did it in almost half as many games!
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Post by patford on Oct 9, 2021 11:04:03 GMT -5
But but Vazquez is a great game caller! So Sale's failure is all on Vazquez, but Houck's lights out performance is all his doing? Hmmmm... I sure wish Cora, Verdugo and Vazquez had Sale's fan club.
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Post by benzinger on Oct 9, 2021 11:13:36 GMT -5
But but Vazquez is a great game caller! So Sale's failure is all on Vazquez, but Houck's lights out performance is all his doing? Hmmmm... Oh the pretzels some of these folks will twist themselves into just to defend “Big Game” Chris. It’s really unbelievable.
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Post by vokuhila on Oct 9, 2021 11:18:29 GMT -5
Still can’t get over Houck. What a monster. Stroman commented on Houck multiple times now, fan boy confirmed! What's the over under on Stroman wearing a RS jersey next year?
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 9, 2021 11:22:49 GMT -5
Too many Red Sox thoughts, and way too many things to (try to) get done on the off day... irresistible force meets object with, alas, the immovability of Jello.
JDM's go-ahead bomb was my favorite moment of his in a Red Sox uni. Never been happier, both for the outcome and for what it says about his approach.
I just discovered that Kiké's turn-around began not on June 27 but June 19. They moved him down from lead off and back twice (on June 5 and 19), each time giving him two off days after the demotion. He started hitting immediately after the second demotion. His O-Swing shrunk dramatically. I'll run the full numbers later, but Struggling to Become New Kiké was a 72 - 77 wRC+ hitter and Actual New Kiké is 150 - 156. If you exclude the 9 post-COVID days when he had a -23 wRC+ (and obviously you should), Kiké Hernandez has the second best player in MLB (to Juan Soto, by fWAR ) since June 19. It's past 300 PA, now.
Houck's best pitch this year has been his splitter.
It certainly appears that Fox Sports has someone who gathers info to pass on to Smoltz, as they did eventually mention Houck's virtual perfect game. Presumably, there is a pre-series briefing document, with stuff like pitchers' repertoires. (Note that Eck runs it down every time a new opposing pitcher enters the game.) But it's also obvious that Smoltz reads nothing they give him. Calling Houck's splitter a changeup, and then later noting that it had splitter-like action ... he should be embarassed.
What's with holding the camera on a hitter after he's hit an apparent bomb, rather than showing us the flight of the ball? They actually kept the camera on Dugie for his entire pose and his first two steps towards first. On what planet is seeing that more interesting than seeing where the ball is headed, how far it's carrying, and what the fielder is doing? There were a couple of other moments of directorial ineptitude, where they had no clue as to what to show us.
I am as strongly pro-vax as you could imagine, but the next person who raises this issue in the game thread? I'm going to hunt you down and make you watch A-Rod commentary, Clockwork Orange style. I have the gear in my Amazon cart.
Has any post-season team ever gotten homers from five consecutive batting order slots in a game? We had 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
Luplow was 2 for 6 in his career in balls above the zone from LHP (meaning he's not a chaser), but one of the 2 was off of Sale earlier this year. I don't think it was a terrible call in a vacuum -- the apparent problem was that it was predictable. Luplpw can't hit that out unless he's sitting on it.
1 for 4 sounds like an off day to old-school types. I've always regarded 1 for 4 with a walk and a double, which is a very common batting line, as the poster child for modern metrics, as that's a .400 OBP and .500 SA. Devers had two walks and a homer and hence a .500 OBP and 1.000 SA. And one of his outs was a 108.5 mph barrel that went 407' and had an .870 xBA, and was turned into an out by a magician. It should be illegal to note that he was 1 for 4 without noting the rest. It may be the best 1 for 4 in post-season history -- you'd have to walk three times to top it, and I doubt that's happened, and it's unlikely that anyone else with two walks had as hard an out as he did.
Barnes EV's: 77.3 (but .890 xBA), 80.1, 79.1. He stuff seems back to his post-sticky best. The FB command remains frustratingly come-and-go. (What's with missing to his glove side in pitch after pitch, outing after outing?) I'd say he has a 50/50 chance of his recovering it ...
And that's a segue for part 2 or 3, thoughts on the rest of the series. The other is a set of Dugie / Mookie clutch observations.
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Post by benzinger on Oct 9, 2021 11:26:50 GMT -5
If only KFC's chicken sandwich actually looked like that. I’m still laughing from this one....
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Post by ancientsoxfogey on Oct 9, 2021 11:30:33 GMT -5
Maybe I need to re-evaluate these teams, at least on the mound.
Yes, Tampa won 100 games, and was a better team than we were over 6 months. But they are really testing the limits of pitching approach for the cauldron of a playoff series.
In the playoffs, they started a rookie, albeit one with 25 starts, more than any other pitcher on their staff, in game one. They started another rookie WITH 3 GAMES OF MLB EXPERIENCE in game 2. They are starting a guy who made only 10 starts this year in one game in Fenway, along with a collection of relievers in another. Is that really what a 100-win team looks like on the mound now?
If the playoffs are indeed another level of intensity and pressure than the regular season, the Rays are certainly putting the contemporary philosophical approach to pitching to a serious test in trying to make it work in October. Not to say they can't do it, but in my mind, I've got to see them pull it off before I believe that this is a workable approach to multiple rounds of playoff baseball.
That being said, the Sox have had to adopt the contemporary approach so far in this series as well -- because their starters didn't have it. Let's see what happens with Eovaldi in game 3.
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Post by manfred on Oct 9, 2021 11:40:55 GMT -5
Maybe I need to re-evaluate these teams, at least on the mound. Yes, Tampa won 100 games, and was a better team than we were over 6 months. But they are really testing the limits of pitching approach for the cauldron of a playoff series. In the playoffs, they started a rookie, albeit one with 25 starts, more than any other pitcher on their staff, in game one. They started another rookie WITH 3 GAMES OF MLB EXPERIENCE in game 2. They are starting a guy who made only 10 starts this year in one game in Fenway, along with a collection of relievers in another. Is that really what a 100-win team looks like on the mound now? If the playoffs are indeed another level of intensity and pressure than the regular season, the Rays are certainly putting the contemporary philosophical approach to pitching to a serious test in trying to make it work in October. Not to say they can't do it, but in my mind, I've got to see them pull it off before I believe that this is a workable approach to multiple rounds of playoff baseball. That being said, the Sox have had to adopt the contemporary approach so far in this series as well -- because their starters didn't have it. Let's see what happens with Eovaldi in game 3. I wonder if Rays ball is already a playoff plan? 162 games of all-hands-on-deck… which is a big advantage in the dog days when you face, say a Sox team hoping to get 5-6 out of Martin Perez. BUT… there is no next gear. With a more traditional staff like the Sox, come playoff time you suddenly find backend starters like Houck and Pivetta becoming ace relievers. So whatever the regular season matchup might look like, the Sox staff plays up in a way the Rays stuff does not. Now, they were excellent and stay excellent… not diminishing them. But the Sox (and other staffs) get a lot better in a short series.
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Post by FenwayFanatic on Oct 9, 2021 12:23:01 GMT -5
Wonder if the Rays are still eating popcorn I kinda wish we had thought of that and that after we went up 6-1 vs the MFYs. That would’ve been awesome. I could see Vázquez doing it.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Oct 9, 2021 12:49:27 GMT -5
Maybe I need to re-evaluate these teams, at least on the mound. Yes, Tampa won 100 games, and was a better team than we were over 6 months. But they are really testing the limits of pitching approach for the cauldron of a playoff series. In the playoffs, they started a rookie, albeit one with 25 starts, more than any other pitcher on their staff, in game one. They started another rookie WITH 3 GAMES OF MLB EXPERIENCE in game 2. They are starting a guy who made only 10 starts this year in one game in Fenway, along with a collection of relievers in another. Is that really what a 100-win team looks like on the mound now? If the playoffs are indeed another level of intensity and pressure than the regular season, the Rays are certainly putting the contemporary philosophical approach to pitching to a serious test in trying to make it work in October. Not to say they can't do it, but in my mind, I've got to see them pull it off before I believe that this is a workable approach to multiple rounds of playoff baseball. That being said, the Sox have had to adopt the contemporary approach so far in this series as well -- because their starters didn't have it. Let's see what happens with Eovaldi in game 3. I wonder if Rays ball is already a playoff plan? 162 games of all-hands-on-deck… which is a big advantage in the dog days when you face, say a Sox team hoping to get 5-6 out of Martin Perez. BUT… there is no next gear. With a more traditional staff like the Sox, come playoff time you suddenly find backend starters like Houck and Pivetta becoming ace relievers. So whatever the regular season matchup might look like, the Sox staff plays up in a way the Rays stuff does not. Now, they were excellent and stay excellent… not diminishing them. But the Sox (and other staffs) get a lot better in a short series. I think (or hope) what we'll see is that it's more important to have a good top 7 or 8 pitchers -- especially if most of them are starters -- in the playoffs than it is to have the best depth of 20-25 pitchers. The Rays cycled through so many guys in the regular season to get matchups and pick the guys who were as close to peak performance at any given time and you can't do that in the post-season.
The Rays acquire guys who have options (and they also seem to play fast and loose with the IL), so in the regular season it's like they have a taxi squad of 8 or 10 pitchers, in addition to the big league roster. It also doesn't hurt that they're really good at finding and developing useful arms, figuring out what their strengths are, and only using them when those strengths will shine.
But again, you can't do that in the playoffs. You can only choose one roster per series. You can't burn a reliever for a week by having him go 3-4 innings and just swap him out for another guy from AAA who's been primed to give you quality innings the next day. If I'm right, this is liable to catch up with TB as the series goes on. I like where the Sox are with a core of good pitchers who will be asked to both start and relieve.
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