Good morning! The Red Sox lineup absolutely rolled one of the best pitchers in the game last night, roughing up Framber Valdez so thoroughly that he got himself intentionally thrown out of the game. But was Valdez mad at his sub-par performance, or was he mad at something else?
Last week, ESPN’s Buster Olney speculated that one reason for the Red Sox’ terrible offensive performance (besides, you know, the players) was the fact that enhanced rule enforcement was making it harder for their first and
third base coaches to identify pitch grips and then relay pitches to the hitters:
This caught the attention of former big leaguer Eric Hosmer, who seems to think that Sox hitters were relaying pitch information from second base last night, and that was the real cause of Valdez’s frustration:
To be clear: nothing untoward is going on here. The Red Sox are not breaking any rules and this is the type of thing that every team engages in. In fact, it’s something that the greatest pitcher of all-time naturally knew how to combat:
So suffice it to say, this is interesting as hell and definitely something I’m going to try to watch for going forward.
Use this space to talk about gamesmanship and anything else you want and, as always, be good to one another.
