Just a quick note: a few nights ago, NESN asked Adrian Gonzalez if he studies catchers a whole lot, compared to the amount he studies pitchers. He said he actually does think about who the catcher is. Specifically, he said that Latin American catchers are far more likely to call for off-speed and breaking pitches early in the count than American-born catchers. He said American-born catchers value getting ahead in the count, and using the fastball to set up other pitches, while Latin catchers tend to believe in using non-fastball pitches to set up the fastball. He said it was a fact, you can count on it.

1) Is this true? Has this ever been studied?

2) Why would this be true? (The old axiom about Dominican players is that you "can't walk your way off the island", if applied to this discussion, would suggest Latin catchers are used to facing hitters more likely to be swinging early in the count.)

3) If this is measurably true, wouldn't Gonzalez not want to be talking about this to NESN? Wouldn't this be a pretty nice piece of information to have in your pocket?

Can Ellsbury win the MVP? If he continues this torrid 2nd half he could catch up to Bautista with his edge in base running, defense, and position...

1. I've never seen such a study but it would be interesting.

2. I would guess the lack of supervision might account for it. My understanding is that the Latin kids play a LOT more unstructured baseball than American born kids who are little leaguers almost from the womb. Once kids learn to throw breaking stuff they WANT to throw breaking stuff (it's just cooler) so the catchers probably get a bit more in tune with calling junk.

3. My sense is that MLB players often share things publicly that seem like they would be better served keeping it quiet. In reality I think they think that it is just common knowledge and in fact it may be. It's possible that Gonzalez is ahead of the curve on this stuff but it's more likely that this is something of an open secret.

Really was hoping to at least score Ells from third there.

Just looking at the WAR leaders I wonder if Miguel Cabrera might be set up for a nice run to the MVP. I think any Red Sox player is going to have a tough time because they are shaping up as having a bunch of guys with similar quality seasons. I can see a lot of articles in the vein "how valuable could Ellsbury be? Even without him they still had Gonzalez, Pedroia, etc..." At the same time we could have a rash of "it's an MVP, not player of the year" stuff regarding Bautista.

Cabrera could have a late season push where his numbers wind up what we expect AND he gets credit for leading the Tigers to a division title.

So what starter would you guys like to see the Sox target? What starter do you think they WILL target? Who (if anyone) do you think they end up acquiring?

Ugh. Beckett looked great in the first 3 innings, and now he's all of a sudden complete ####.

What the ####, Sutton?

I'm not a big fan of any of the starters on the market. I think Jimenez is a guy who looks a lot better when seen infrequently and that watching him on a regular basis will evoke memories of Daisuke with lots of bases on balls and long frustrating outings. He won't be bad but I don't think he's a star.

The rest of the guys are just....eh. It's not that they're bad but I just think the asking price for guys like Bedard, Harden, Guthrie is going to be high enough to be frustrating.

Frankly, if forced to pick I feel like Guthrie is the guy. He is not great but he is perfectly serviceable and durable. My fear with guys like Bedard and Harden is that they will show up, throw 11 pitches and go on the DL.

What'd Sutton do?

And what the hell is Beckett doing? Did he forget how to pitch?

I like Bedard. A second quality lefty in the rotation would be really nice.

Sutton dropped a line drive in LF from Francoeur, leading to a run.

Wow. A bunt against a guy struggling like this? Sometimes the Royals show you why they are as bad as they are.

Thank god for that bunt. That changed the inning.

This would be a nice time to show us that you can still hit homers, Adrian.

Damn, Escobar has some nice range. Did not think he'd get to that with where he started.

It would be nice if Varitek didn't suck at blocking pitches in the dirt.

Nice outing for Beckett outside of the one inning where he completely lost it.

Harden starting against the Rays. Maybe Sox are going after him. I'm watching the game, so we'll see how he looks.

Pinch hit for Varitek please.

So, this is going to be one of "those" games. Off Navarro's bat, I thought that'd be at least high off the wall.

19: Same here. In fact I yelled really loudly when Gordon caught it. #### the guy who operates the camera behind the plate for NESN too. He's been awful all year.

Stop walking Francoeur!

Streak alive

And then there's Pedroia, who hits what I think is a shallow pop-up... I guess that's what I get for watching in a tiny corner of my laptop screen.

The difference in this game is currently the run that scored after Sutton dropped the line drive from Frenchy.

I thought it was a pop up as well , plink.

Glad you like 'David Comes to Life' - my wife can't stand it either - my almost 4 year old twins love it - they call it the 'angry songs'

Sutton looks terrible out there. If Crawford is healthy, we won't see any more of that, right?

Need to have Reddick go yard to tie this up now!

In all seriousness I don't love the matchup with Soria for Reddick if he hasn't seen him before. I love Reddick, but Soria's curve is really tough and it can't help to not have seen it before.

That's the game. Sutton and Tek aren't going to do sh!t.

Why the #### is Sutton hitting against Soria?

Here comes Crawford to wave at three curves in the dirt.

oh great it's Crawford

oh great it's Crawford

That fastball was literally down the middle, and all he could do was foul it off.

no way - thats a homer everywhere else

Nice hit by Crawford, but it's that kind of game.

Tease.

oh well

Gameday had Crawford's "out" a few feet into the stands. Weird.

Why didn't Salty bat for Navarro there?

Because it was out anywhere but Fenway? That sucks, especially for Crawford who totally needed that.

Gameday had Crawford's "out" a few feet into the stands. Weird.

GD always seems to have the initial dot they put up deeper than it shows up later on. Dunno why.

Harden is no-hitting the Rays through 4 innings.

Let's trade for Harden!

From Joe McDonald's twitter: Per ESPN stats dept.: Crawford's ball traveled 371 feet and would have been a home run and every MLB ballpark except for Fenway.