Josh Bard is a catcher.

The Sox are pounding Edwin Jackson now. 73 pitches, 5 runs and he's out after 4.2 IP.

Ellsbury and Pedroia both look locked in and ready to go.

####. Buchholz, 3 run jack. Ugh.

Are we really kvetching about spring training outcomes? Does he look good or bad?

Buchholz looks great. The Ramos homer was one of about 3 hard hit balls in 5 innings. Bunch of ground balls, and 4 Ks against 0 walks.

Okay, Ian Desmond just hit a homer to left too.

Just gave up another jack. He's playing a lot with a cutter.

Ramos's was a down and in fastball, knee high. This last one I didn't see the pitch or replay.

By playing w/ the cutter, do you mean he seems to be working on it in situations where he might not use it so much in the regular season?

Yeah, Ramos hit a decent pitch. I also didn't really note the pitch Desmond hit.

67 pitches and he's done?

By playing w/ the cutter, do you mean he seems to be working on it in situations where he might not use it so much in the regular season?

He was using it a lot early, but really mixing up the pitches. No one batter was seeing the same stuff. Threw some nice curves. The fastball was a bit slow at times, 91 or so. I'll have to go back and watch the homer at-bats when the game is over. Stupid nexdef died again.

Uninstall nexdef. MLB.tv looks fine without it now IMO. And NexDef is a complete pile of ####.

As an added bonus, helpful for chatting about games, without NexDef the delay on the video feeds is much smaller.

Uninstall nexdef. MLB.tv looks fine without it now IMO. And NexDef is a complete pile of ####.

The thing that irks me about it more than anything is it will run in the background. It's clearly some memory leak but I know if my laptop is running hot with the fan running constantly I need to check to kill the NexDef process. Some kind of memory leak. It jacks the processor usage to 100% sometimes hours after I've watched a game. I'll give it a few more weeks to see if they can sort it out because sometimes I like to hook the computer up to the TV and I like to watch it in HD, but you're right it generally looks fine without NexDef and I can watch it over wifi. If I watch it in HD, I need to use an ethernet cable.

Just buy an Apple TV or a Roku if you want to stream games to your TV. I use my PS3 for watching MLB.tv on my HDTV. I think that Xbox360 is able to do it now too.

Easy for you to say. I'm a graduate student with a wife and two kids. MLB.tv is my extravagant purchase for the year.

Valentine's testing out some bullpen options. It's not going terribly well.

Bowden's crapping the bed. 2 walks. Came in on relief, walked 1 batter to load the bases, then walked in a run.

Gotcha. Roku is surprisingly affordable though, so you might be able to fit that into your budget at some point.

Bowden was less than impressive, but he got it together after McClure came out to the mound.

Wow. That is cheap. Do you have to buy a service?

It doesn't have any specific service tied to it. It's just a streaming box to stream other companies' products like Netflix, Hulu+, MLB.tv, etc.

The big issue with Bowden isn't that he missed the zone, it's that he still hasn't shown an out pitch. There's no bite on that splitter, and the fastball is just ok.

Aceves, on the other hand, looks damn good. The fastball has movement and pop, and his curve is a nice second pitch.

Pitch F/X had Aceves averaging 95.11 MPH on his 4-seamer in that inning, and topping out at 96.4 MPH. He's throwing gas now. If he's really going to throw that hard, his K rate might go up a tick to offset the likely regression in his BABIP.

Honestly Aceces/Melancon in the 8th/9th (in one order or the other) could be pretty good.

Repko made a good case today for the 25th spot on the roster.

Bailey out for 3-4 months; surgery to reconstruct the UCL in his thumb.

This will look great when Reddick puts up a 3-4 WAR season playing RF for Oakland.

Bailey will have surgery Wednesday, will miss "as much as three months."

Anyone want information about the type of injury and typical course of treatment? Alex Speier's got it:

A UCL tear is commonly referred to as a "Skier's Thumb," as the injury can be incurred if a pole catches in snow and forces a thumb backwards away from the other fingers. The injury results from a physical trauma, in this case, likely a collision that Bailey had in an exhibition game on March 21.

According to Dr. Bruce Leslie of Newton Wellesley Orthopediac Associates, there are three grades for a UCL injury. A Grade 1 does not need surgery and includes three weeks of immobility. A Grade 2 sometimes does not require surgery, but often ends up needing a procedure after the initial treatment isn't effective. A Grade 3, which does include surgery, has the patient coming back anywhere from 2-3 months, with a cast needed between 4-6 weeks.

Bailey will have surgery Wednesday, will miss "as much as three months."

So, is that "will be back in Boston in as much as 3 months" or "in as much as 3 months can begin rehab"? The former puts him back in June, the latter sometime in late July or early August.

I'd just assume the medical staff will #### up Bailey's recovery process enough that we'd be lucky to see him by September.

I full expect Reddick to have a breakout season now.

So, is that "will be back in Boston in as much as 3 months" or "in as much as 3 months can begin rehab"? The former puts him back in June, the latter sometime in late July or early August.

The first reports were pretty unclear, but it looks like - who did you expect? - Alex Speier has the best information on Bailey's recovery. Four months. Three months before he can resume baseball activities, one month to get his arm and hand into game shape.

I'd just assume the medical staff will #### up Bailey's recovery process enough that we'd be lucky to see him by September.

Don't you think we should cut them a bit of slack until the new medical staff proves itself incompetent? I think this was a pretty quick turnaround. He probably injured his thumb on March 21, and on April 5 he'll have surgery. That's two weeks. It was an in-game injury too. Not sure how we can blame the medical staff for this one, and I'm impressed that they diagnosed it and sent him off for confirmation to the Cleveland Clinic in a couple of days and a couple of days later they're doing the surgery.

The gap between Alex Speier and the rest of major media outlet Red Sox coverage is massive.

Didn't see an announcement yet, but it looks like Bowden is the final man on the roster, according to ESPN's and MLB.com's 25 man roster.

Rewatched Bowden's performance from yesterday.

First batter: Ian Desmond, batting right, runners on 2nd and 3rd, infield playing in on the grass

pitch 0 (timeout called) looked like a split fingered pitch or off speed
pitch 1: fastball inside, 93MPH, 1-0
pitch 2: changeup?, 85MPH, in dirt, 2-0
pitch 3: fastball high and inside, 92MPH, 3-0
pitch 4: fastball high, 91MPH, 4-0, BB

He was using a slide step here. There was very little movement on pitches 2, 3, 4. Pitch 1 was the best pitch of the at-bat. He looks very agitated.

Second batter: Danny Espinosa, batting left, bases loaded, infield at DP depth

pitch 1: fastball inside, 92MPH, 1-0, catcher out to talk to the pitcher
pitch 2: fastball outside corner, 92MPH, called strike, 1-1
pitch 3: changeup, down and away (heavy sink), 85MPH, swinging strike, 1-2
pitch 4: changeup, outside in the dirt, 85MPH, 2-2
pitch 5: fastball, at the knees, 94MPH, 3-2 (should have been a strike, great pitch)
pitch 6: fastball, outside, 92MPH, 4-2, BB, run scores

Coaching visit to mound.

Batter 3: Lombardozi, batting left, bases loaded, infield at DP depth

pitch 1: cutter fouled off (down and away), 91MPH, 0-1
pitch 2: slider, 84MPH, fly to left (out), run scores

Batter 4: Tracy, batting left, runners at 1st & 2nd, infield back

pitch 1: slider, grounder to 2B (out), 83MPH, 0-1

All in all, better than it looked in real time yesterday. If he gets the strike 3 call (and he should have, it was clearly in the zone), he doesn't walk in a run. Then it's 2 outs with the bases loaded. After the conference at the mound, he threw all 3 pitches in the strike zone and got good results. One of the splitters did have excellent bite, but he had a very inconsistent release point so that some looked like fastballs thrown into the ground about 3 feet in front of the catcher, and one was high. Maybe he was working on it or didn't have the feel for it.