Soxsi75

Too short a time span to tell anything. Because actually, he appeared he was turning the corner BEFORE the Detroit game. In that game, he gave away a 7-2 lead, and since that time he's had only 1 clean inning in his 6 appearances since that Detroit game, including allowing the tying hit in the big lead we blew in the TB game.

I'm not putting it all on tonight. He's been total complete garbage all year. As a person, I hope he's alright. As a pitcher, I could care less if he's out all year.

I don't care if we are ahead 16-1. Marshall cannot pitch with ANY lead!! ANY lead!! If he's "out of options" and we insist on not DFA'ing him, then the only time he can pitch is if we hopelessly behind. But NEVER AGAIN with ANY kind of lead.

Another good example. I added to my post to include the following. The 1927 Yankees lost 4 of 5 to the Indians and Washington Senators. Then later in the year lost 4 in a row, with 3 of those losses to the Indians. Guess the couldn't beat the great 27 Indians. I think after this, they should have traded Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. You know, start over. The 1975 Reds lost 6 out of 7 to the Padres, and their closest pursuers the Dodgers, getting swept in a four game series from them. Then a month later lost 6 in row, including getting swept 4 straight in Philadelphia. And their 6th loss was to the last place Expos. I think after that happening, the smart thing to do would have been to trade Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez. Have to admit they would have gotten an awful lot for those guys........The idiocy among some people just blows me away sometimes.

This is the most intelligent post on this board!! Thank you!! ANYONE, who knows ANYTHING about baseball knows that all good/great teams go through bad stretches. Not some great teams. ALL of them!!! Pure and simple fact. If you don't know that, you know nothing about this game. I'll go further than that with your examples. The 1927 Yankees lost 4 of 5 to the Indians and Washington Senators. Then later in the year lost 4 in a row, with 3 of those losses to the Indians. Guess the couldn't beat the great 27 Indians. I think after this, they should have traded Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. You know, start over. The 1975 Reds lost 6 out of 7 to the Padres, and their closest pursuers the Dodgers, getting swept in a four game series from them. Then a month later lost 6 in row, including getting swept 4 straight in Philadelphia. And their 6th loss was to the last place Expos. I think after that happening, the smart thing to do would have been to trade Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez. Have to admit they would have gotten an awful lot for those guys........The idiocy among some people just blows me away sometimes.

I hope you don't take too big of an offense to this, because it's nothing personal, but this is the most ridiculous statement I've ever heard. Please don't respond to my post on this, because I'm not going to justify and explain why this is ridiculous. Do yourself a favor and just delete this post.

OK, maybe I expressed myself poorly. I'm not saying that now that he's beginning baseball activities again that he should now begin his rehab assignment and be back in a week. Not saying that at all, as that would be ridiculous. I imagine that now that he's beginning baseball activities, I imagine he'll be back in about 2 months. Around the middle of August. Which since he got hurt in mid March would be how long they said he would be out back then in the first place. I'm just saying that once he is ready to begin his rehab assignment, that that phase shouldn't last 2 weeks. You are not going to change my mind that a major league hitter needs to face minor league pitching for 2 weeks to get his timing back, when as I've said for the third time now, major league hitters have been quoted as saying they don't need that long to get their timing back.

Yeah......And like I said, I've heard hitters quoted that's it's too long. That they don't need that much time. And Engel kept having set backs, which can happen with hamstring injuries.

"He needs more than a week to get back into the swing of things." Disagree. I've heard many hitters say that the length of spring training is too long and they only really need about a week to get their timing back and they've been away from "baseball activity" for about 5 months with the off season. Not trying to downplay the importance of it. But two weeks? No sir.

"10 or so in AAA." Don't agree with the length of that rehab assignment. I'd say a week. At the most. 5 at bats a game will give him 35 at bats against live pitching to get his timing back. That's fine. If he's already resuming baseball activities, he's already in the cage. Don't agree that he needs to face minor league pitching for 2 weeks.

Yeah, good points.

Personally, I think it has. It seems to me that umpires are almost using replay as a crutch in case they miss a call, even if it is done subconsciously, and therefore missing more calls. Take the plays at first base. I always thought that umpires always did a fantastic job of getting the safe/out call correct before replay. But since replay, they seem to miss many that I don't think they used to. Like that play last night at first on the wild pitch third strike in the 8th inning. It was painfully obvious the runner was out and I knew we'd get that call. ( However, I was quite confident we'd get that call at the plate in the Toronto game last week. Replay couldn't get that one right though. One of the worst calls I've ever seen. So I won't get started on that.) Anyway, it seems to me umpires are missing calls they didn't used to before replay. What does everyone else think?

You're definitely right about 1919. No question about it. My bad for overlooking that. In 1967 they were in a good position to win it, but I'm not sure they were better than their competition that year. That was a sensational race between 4 teams. We certainly had the best pitching. But by far the weakest lineup. But it can be debated. Good calls.

In theory, on how to handle this, I agree with you. Everything you say makes complete sense. The problem I have, and why maybe I'm not "relaxed" is this. I'm going to lay this right on the line. If we would have had our full team, for the year, we are the best team in the AL. Pure and simple. And there is no debating. We very easily could have ended up leading the league in runs scored and in pitching. But now, because of Robert and Jimenez, two high impact players both being out and now Madrigal for maybe the rest of the year, you're saying, again correctly I might add, that "we CAN win the division, or at worst a wild card spot." We have to think of hoping to win a WILD CARD SPOT?? With our full team, and with Minnesota having fallen apart, we should/would have won this division by 15 games. That's what's frustrating about our situation. If we don't win the division, this will become the biggest "what if" team in franchise history, replacing the 1994 strike team that never got the chance to win the World Series. I challenge anyone to come up with a bigger one.

This can't keep happening though. We really are testing the "how much is too much to overcome" question.

Damn straight and well put!!!

Exactly. In this case, we've heard absolutely nothing.

Actually, the bad news on Jimenez and Robert was announced earlier in the day than this......Just trying to hold out for some optimism.

Jimenez and Robert would have helped solve that. And yahoo sports is saying it's a hamstring injury for Madrigal.

It depends completely on the ERA. Before my time, in the 50's and 60's, it was the Yankees. Starting in the 70's, when I first started following them, it was the Royals and the A's mostly until it became the Indians in the 90's and then the Twins in the early 2000's. So the real answer is we really don't have one historically. We don't have a Red Sox/Yankees, Dodgers/Giants, Cubs/Cardinals situation.

Hope you're right......What you say at least makes sense.......but I'm not sure I agree. Because shortening a game many times favors the inferior team because it levels the playing field. Because if Baltimore can get a few runs and get ahead, they have less time to have to hold that lead. The longer the game, the more time the superior team has to do something about it. You're right, our starting pitching has been outstanding. But with this 7 inning bu%%^&#@, they BETTER be!!!

Why does a DH favor us?

This is correct. They don't play Saturday night home games anymore. Every time, and I mean EVERY time they are home on the weekends, they play Saturday at Noon CT. And their game is televised by MLB Network. Can't tell me this isn't planned.

What's everyone's opinion on Mercedes swinging at and hitting that homer on a 3-0 pitch?

"And also the league hitters are sitting on it and have adjusted." Thank you for mentioning that. That's one of two things I've noticed. It seems like he's fallen in love a bit too much with his change and teams are sitting on it, and the other thing is his velocity IS down. Now my concern is, is he hurt and just not saying anything? Many pitchers have done that before. Or, like mentioned here by many people, is it mechanical? I'm hoping it's the latter. Because that can be fixed. If he's hurt......Or can it be this? Like I said, I think it looks like he's fallen in love a bit too much with his change. And sometimes when a pitcher who over uses an off speed pitch, he loses velocity. I can think of two examples of this. Anyone on here remember Ron Darling? He threw hard when he came up with the Mets, but then he fell in love with his off speed split finger and after a few years, that's all he could throw. Or what about Mike MacDougal? He threw 100 mph while with KC, we get him and all he ever threw was his slider and never came anywhere close to throwing that hard for us.