Ben Cherington

[a700hitter]

I also thought the Sox would win the World Series this season or at least go to the post season. Didn't you, Red Sox Rules?

[SoxSport]

You said a mouthful Gringo. We need a general housecleaning after this year's diastrous failure. We don't need a Epstein-light running the show. I also wonder what kind of power he is going to have anyway if Lucchino finally comes out of hiding and decides to take charge again. Many of us were down on him back in '05 when he apparently forced Epstein into the gorilla suit, but as subsequent events have proved he was probably right all along. As for a manager, we must stay away from anyone on Francona's staff. Most were dull and unispired clones of the departed skipper and a tougher brand is needed for next year.

 

Chicken and beer in the clubhouse during games also must go along with the miserable medical staff that became synonomous with one misdiagnoses after another. It is looking up to be a long winter of discontent for us but a good pick for a manager and ridding ourselves of relics like Varitek and Wakefield would be a step in the right direction, but there is also a lot of o ther dead weight we may not have much success in upchucking.

 

Agree about Lucchino. They had a stronger signing record prior to 07 when Lucchino had input.

Agree, too, that Francona's lack of leadership resulted in the lax team atmosphere.

That's why he was let go.

 

Hard to see anybody on the coaching staff returning. The player relics also have to go.

The medical and conditioning staff --hard to say.

[SoxSport]

I think Fangraphs' WAR captures defense and baserunning decently.

 

In the discussion about GMs, I think the Free Agent signing flops are a very obvious and surface-level way of evaluating a GM. We all know the money involved in signing those guys, and can see pretty easily how those veterans do after compared to how they did before.

 

The much more subtle measure is their ability to develop and discover talent 'on the cheap' or for very good value. A cost-controlled star, particularly pitchers, are the absolute most valuable players there can be. By extension, you have to evaluate the choices about re-signing FAs against the talent acquired from the draft picks gained for letting those players go. People can very easily criticize a move like letting Adrian Beltre go, but until we see how those draft picks turn out it will be hard to know whether the investment in the future (Swihart and Owens) was worth it.

 

It's a much more complicated thing than "did the FA work out".

 

Absolutely. Count em on the Red Sox. Bargains every one. But they won't be able to extend Ells for Pedey money--not with Boras. Boras wants Crawford money. And Pap will be overpaid, too.

[ipot]

But, it's not arbitrary. They puposely assigned replacement level to reflect the type of player that is freely available in either AAA or on the waiver wire after the season has started for a reason. Commonly, that's all you are left with in terms of no cost options when a player goes down to injury. If you want better, you can get better than replacement level through trade, but that comes with a cost of either talent or salary absorbtion.

 

It also allows you bottom out the scale of $/WAR. If you made the baseline average instead of replacement, you'd have to adjust the scale to start at average. For instance, a 6.0 WAR player becomes a 3.2 WAA player (hypothetical). His WAA salary would need a standard adjustment of the average players salary, and then his value would be....

 

Avg Salary + WAA Value ..... which would be about the same as his WAR Value.

 

The current system allows a 0 WAR player to provide 0 WAR Salary value without an adjustment. It's just easier that way.

 

THanks for that, ORS. It does clarify it better for me. I'm not as up to speed on a lot of the fangraph breakdowns as some are. There's a little "old school" in me (though I'm not THAT old) that likes to just sometimes go with the gut on signings. But, in this day and age of big baseball biz, that's not the best way to approach things.

 

What I mean, I guess, is that a lot of the guys we had on the roster this year had the justifiable sabermetrics, but the 'human factor' entered it and we saw the team collapse. You can't measure egos. If I were GM and knew that guys like Beckett would be that disruptive or Lackey would alienate people, I wouldn't do it.

[example1]

For soxsport--

All the reason to think very hard before paying either IMO. Free agents--like veteran free agent closets--are simply too risky in most cases.

 

The flip side is that people can't bitch and moan if they have a lower payroll moving dad, which many did 2 years ago.

[redsoxrules]

I also thought the Sox would win the World Series this season or at least go to the post season. Didn't you' date=' Red Sox Rules?[/quote']

 

Yes, But I wouldn't blame Theo for it .

[example1]

Absolutely. Count em on the Red Sox. Bargains every one. But they won't be able to extend Ells for Pedey money--not with Boras. Boras wants Crawford money. And Pap will be overpaid' date=' too.[/quote']

 

Also, it isn't like the well is dry. I think the system has a lot more of that talent than most give it credit for. The younger guys like Coyle and Cecchini and Brentz and Boegarts and Jacobs etc can add in 2-3 years.

[ipot]

I don't know if I'm going to drop Sawxheads intirelly Pumpsie. I've posted here a few years back when I got into a row with some jerks from a now defunct Dodger Board. I still cannot understand how those pollies over on Sawxheads could have been so blind as to not see what we were. We just didn't know how right we were about the rot in the clubhouse. What angers me is that we might be talking about 2012 as a bridge year unless Dame Fortune finally smiles on us and the front office starts doing the right thing like hiring a manager who will not stand for the crap that took place in the dugout and clubhouse this season.

 

I just hope this board has a few more realists than the dreamers we were dealing with on Sawxheads.

 

Hey Fred, I see you've been over here. Much more civil, huh? Some of the poliies were starting to get downright creepy in that brainwashed kind of North Korean sort of way. Disguising blind worship with "reasonable" critique. I could only imagine how their illusory mirror must have been completely shattered in September. Heck, we were ALL just hurt as fans by the collapse, but it must have been electroshock to some. I won't say we saw it coming, but I'll say we weren't surprised one bit that it did.

 

Whatever....they have a new board with "rules" where they can just keep apologizing to each other to death.

 

As for Tek and Wakefield; they will be gone. 100%. I wouldn't worry about it. I think the Sacred Cowism will be the first order of business to clean up.

[example1]

So a migration to talksox from another site? I remember seabeachfred. Glad to have you all here. Just in time for what promises to be an interesting offseason.

[jung]

Not more tickets-- rather, an equal amount of tickets. Does the casual fan care about what the roster looks like at the time? No, they hear about a big signing, a name that they've actually heard of, and it compells them to be more interested in the team. It seems like 90% of big contracts turn to busts these days anyway-- hell, even Cliff Lee got paid 25 million to melt in the postseason this year.

 

Before I get into the quote above relative to the point I was trying to make earlier, while the home game sell out string is a major part of the Sox marketing effort, it is not as clean as you would expect. When I think of a home game sell out string I think of tickets sold to fans intending to attend and that is not really what you have in that Red Sox home game sell out string. The Sox will by the way do anything to maintain it even in its current somewhat misleading state.

 

As for the free agency thing, these deals do not have to go bust to be very disruptive to baseball generally and to teams specifically. In part the reason Selig has stuck his big toe into Chicago's negotiation with Theo is that regardless of the fact that Theo is not a player, the rate at which salaries for stars of all sorts has escalated in baseball has spun out of control.

 

I was using GM's and FA signings generally in the second to last post I made and then since the Yanks were being put forward by one of our more distinguished members as something of a success story in that regard I asked about ARods contract which by the time matures is likely to look pretty ugly.

 

But I am going to go back to the Sox and stay in one club in this post but for argument's sake suggest that we consider the Lackey and Crawford signings as if those two players were performing more like ARod is performing in New York. Further to the point I am going to suggest that ARod's performance is marginally subpar to expectations. Hopefully we would agree that at best that is how we would view ARod's performance. I am trying to give him the benefit of the doubt to avoid quibbling about marginal issues.

 

So if we overlay that performance onto Lackey and Crawford instead of viewing them as wildly underperforming, those contracts are still a big problem and reflect how broken the free agent system is in baseball.

 

The Sox signed Lackey as a 2009-2010 FA signing purported to be the best pitcher in that FA season. They signed him for approximately $14.5M per year. Crawford came to the Sox as part of the 2010-2011 FA season for approximately $20M per year. Certainly he was near or at the top for outfielders in that FA season. In addition, SP's going into the FA market generally are more highly valued than everyday players. However in that short space of time, the going rate for the best at his position (SP) which had been $14-15M and arguably given to the the player you would have expected to extract the most money from that FA season escalated to $20M for an everyday player. These are two players being valued by the same FO team. That is an outrageous level of escalation in that short a space of time.

 

Free Agency in baseball is broken because it is supported by the current CBA which provided that Basketball cleans up hits house is the most lopsided, poorly constructed CBA in professional team sports. I do by the way think Basketball Ownership will go to the mats over this one as they literally do not have a choice.

 

It has gotten so out of control in Baseball that we are turning guys into fully vested, completely set for life millionaires several times over in the space of one contract with no ability to exert any pressure to perform on those players with contract in hand. Nobody can control their conditioning, there are no consequences for poor performance other than missing additional revenue that the player could generate for himself by meeting certain milestones and there is no penalty for poor behavior other than if a direct line could be drawn from poor behavior to a financial impact on the team and good luck going into court in an effort to fight that battle. A team might have a good chance to win if the guy turned out to be an ax murderer but short of that you would be talking about a very difficult case to prove in civil court. Even that one would be tough to win unless the guy wore his baseball uniform to perform his ax murders and targeted the team's fans.

 

To a man, Baseball ownership wishes they had not agreed to the terms of the current CBA, realized it was a giant mistake, realizes they panicked and were badly outmaneuvered and will very likely be keen to institute a means to eliminate guaranteed contracts giving them the means to exert more control over players. However in truth MLB owners have rarely been tough negotiators and their ability to pull that off is surely in question.

[a700hitter]

Yes' date=' But I wouldn't blame Theo for it .[/quote']Well, who should get the blame for Crawford and Lackey? Who do you think gets held accountable?

[FredLynn]

So a migration to talksox from another site? I remember seabeachfred. Glad to have you all here. Just in time for what promises to be an interesting offseason.

 

From Sawxheads.

Right now I think there are about a half dozen of us here: IPOT, ELKTONNIC, BRENNAN, FRED, MUGGAH, and me. More are on the way. That forum was never as large as this one. A significant portion of like-minded individuals who really could see little wrong with the club got tired of the debate and formed their own forum which will have "very strict rules" according to the person running it. To me, that means censorship. I prefer an exchange of viewpoints, so I am here.

Appreciate the welcome.

[Meh]

I don't know if I'm going to drop Sawxheads intirelly Pumpsie. I've posted here a few years back when I got into a row with some jerks from a now defunct Dodger Board. I still cannot understand how those pollies over on Sawxheads could have been so blind as to not see what we were. We just didn't know how right we were about the rot in the clubhouse. What angers me is that we might be talking about 2012 as a bridge year unless Dame Fortune finally smiles on us and the front office starts doing the right thing like hiring a manager who will not stand for the crap that took place in the dugout and clubhouse this season.

 

I just hope this board has a few more realists than the dreamers we were dealing with on Sawxheads.

 

Did you use to post at an all team baseball forum a few years back?

[redsoxrules]

Well' date=' who should get the blame for Crawford and Lackey? Who do you think gets held accountable?[/quote']

 

The team was on a roll until September hit .

 

How was Theo supposed to know that half of the team was going to go on a major slump ?

 

what happened was like a 2 % chance of happening .

 

everything that could of possibly went wrong for the sox did and everything that could of went right for Tampa did.

[a700hitter]

The team was on a roll until September hit .

 

How was Theo supposed to know that half of the team was going to go on a major slump ?

 

what happened was like a 2 % chance of happening .

 

everything that could of possibly went wrong for the sox did and everything that could of went right for Tampa did.

Fate? Bad luck? One guy got fired and the other guy they no longer wanted. The owners are blaming some people. JH today said that he didn't support the Crawford signing. I guess he blames Theo.

[seabeachfred]

So a migration to talksox from another site? I remember seabeachfred. Glad to have you all here. Just in time for what promises to be an interesting offseason.

 

Example1, you had to be on that board to see for yourself. There was one camp that would brook no criticism whatsoever directed at Francona or Epstein---no matter what. Even when things were coming apart they stubbornly stuck to their guns and feeble retorts. Many of us left Dirt Dogs when the moderator of Sawxheads promised a new and interesting board, but that came to mean we all go along to get along, and that meant no criticism leveled at the demonic duo. The guys who came here are baseball people and we have minds of our own and right now we are in a real lather over what happened this season to ruin it for all of us.

 

I'm hoping that we will be exchanging some useful insights and can learn from each other. It becomes rather sad when the most rabid fans in baseball have to look forward to seeing other teams competing in the playoffs while we sit by and eat our hearts out. Next year has to be different.

[redsoxrules]

Fate? Bad luck? One guy got fired and the other guy they no longer wanted. The owners are blaming some people. JH today said that he didn't support the Crawford signing. I guess he blames Theo.

 

Support it or not, it was not the reason of the collapse.

 

Players go trough slumps all the time , its just so happened that the pitching staff lost it in September.

[a700hitter]

Support it or not, it was not the reason of the collapse.

 

Players go trough slumps all the time , its just so happened that the pitching staff lost it in September.

If you owned the team, what would you have done after the season ended?

[redsoxrules]

If you owned the team' date=' what would you have done after the season ended?[/quote']

 

Fired Tito but kept Theo .

[jung]

I agree that all of that stuff about chicken and drinkin' would have all fallen off the radar screen if the team had been winning. Nobody would have cared. It has gotten the attention that it has gotten because they were losing and most of them had grown out of condition to boot. The chicken and drinking and the video games became indicative of the lack of effort to turn it around even with a post season appearance still within their grasp. I should point out that even one post season game can be worth a good deal of money to a franchise.

 

Writing this off as a bunch of players slumping is a mistake. They did not slump. They stopped playing. I am going to use an example from plate appearances because as regards the pitchers, their mechanics really did fall apart which is indicative of poor conditioning and lack of focus. But looking at and seeing a pitcher's mechanics suffering can be tough to point out with the exception maybe of Lackey who's slider becomes very hittable when he drops down especially now, weeks later.

 

If you guys remember from watching the games, issues at the plate were not gradual in coming at all. One day they were relatively patient as they had been for most of the year and within no more than a couple of games, they were swinging at everything. They were swinging at balls two feet off the plate, batter after batter, one after the other after the other! With few exceptions like Peddey, Ells and Scuts, they could not get back to the dugout fast enough from a plate appearance. It got to the point where I began to wonder when they would ask the ump to just give them two strikes to begin with to save them the trouble. When that sort of change is so widespread and happens as suddenly as it happened here, that is not slumping. They gave up. They stopped playing. If they could have still been paid I suspect some of them would not have shown up at all.

 

As I recall it became really obvious right around the doubleheader that has been pointed out as being the straw that broke the camel's back for the players. They had their big clubhouse explosion about having to play 14 road games out of 17 and the doubleheader and while they won the doubleheader, that was the end of the season for this team. We or at least I had no information about the clubhouse blow up at that time and I don't think there was any news about it when it happened. But I do remember the time period in question well and I do remember thinking that I could not understand how or why so many of them had become so impatient at the plate all at once. Right from that period to the end of the season the only sprinting I saw was from the on deck circle to the plate and back to the dugout. The low point was one of the games at the end against Baltimore, I believe, when they had a 6 pitch half inning against....6 pitches for 3 outs in a game that they were still in at the time. That is until that inning! Baltimore came to the plate in their half and effectively ended the game.

[example1]

Example1, you had to be on that board to see for yourself. There was one camp that would brook no criticism whatsoever directed at Francona or Epstein---no matter what. Even when things were coming apart they stubbornly stuck to their guns and feeble retorts. Many of us left Dirt Dogs when the moderator of Sawxheads promised a new and interesting board, but that came to mean we all go along to get along, and that meant no criticism leveled at the demonic duo. The guys who came here are baseball people and we have minds of our own and right now we are in a real lather over what happened this season to ruin it for all of us.

 

I'm hoping that we will be exchanging some useful insights and can learn from each other. It becomes rather sad when the most rabid fans in baseball have to look forward to seeing other teams competing in the playoffs while we sit by and eat our hearts out. Next year has to be different.

 

Glad to have you all here. It's not like this is a site without rules. I hope folks know that. Of course there is plenty of room for criticism too.

[a700hitter]

Fired Tito but kept Theo .

So you blame Tito? I guess you don't think it was all bad luck.

[FredLynn]

Glad to have you all here. It's not like this is a site without rules. I hope folks know that. Of course there is plenty of room for criticism too.

 

I started a thread in the "Off Topic" area so that we don't come here and inadvertently behave badly by these rules. The forums are different. No politics here, I see. People have been banned for discussing politics; and no political threads. Here profanity seems tolerated; on Sawxheads it was an issue with this year's moderator. Last year's moderator didn't care, but he was an a-hole

[FredLynn]

The team was on a roll until September hit .

 

How was Theo supposed to know that half of the team was going to go on a major slump ?

 

what happened was like a 2 % chance of happening .

 

everything that could of possibly went wrong for the sox did and everything that could of went right for Tampa did.

 

We should have made the playoffs once it was Sept 3. But we were going nowhere once we got into the playoffs because we had no pitching. We finished NINTH in overall ERA in the AL. Frankly, I am glad it turned out this way with the Rays in instead of us. If we made the playoffs none of this would have happened and we would have been at least one more year away from a ring.

[seabeachfred]

Cherington is a Duquette guy. He was hired by Duquette.

I think I posted this elsewhere.

I hope he has better luck with the media than Duquette did.

Dan's sin was he didn't give Gammons the Manny Ramirez' signing story.

That killed him at the Globe.

 

Cherington has some brains--Amherst grad like Duquette.

Also played baseball there. Knows his cyberstats and player development.

 

He has to play ball with the media (that's important to the Sox management),

get a manager who can straighten out Crawford and get rid of the deadwood.

 

He also has to control his tempation to play the Yankee moneyball game

with that big supply of cash this fan-spoiled franchise generates every year.

They need better player development and lower ticket prices.

 

SoxSport----Cherrington is a done deal and whether we like it or not we have to accept it. He was not one of Epstein's clones so that part is good news. Whether he succeeds or not remains to be seen but we all better root for him to do so because failure means many more years of miserable Red Sox seasons. A new manager who demands accountability, stresses fundamentals, and is willing to play both big inning and small ball when appropriate is what we need badly now, not to mention cutting ties with Varitek and Wakefield. As for Ortiz, I keep going around in circles about him. One day it's yes, resign him, the next day let him walk. Either way, with his dismal finish last month I would offer him just a one year contract--no option. Take it or leave it .

[FredLynn]

SoxSport----Cherrington is a done deal and whether we like it or not we have to accept it. He was not one of Epstein's clones so that part is good news. Whether he succeeds or not remains to be seen but we all better root for him to do so because failure means many more years of miserable Red Sox seasons. A new manager who demands accountability' date=' stresses fundamentals, and is willing to play both big inning and small ball when appropriate is what we need badly now, not to mention cutting ties with Varitek and Wakefield. As for Ortiz, I keep going around in circles about him. One day it's yes, resign him, the next day let him walk. Either way, with his dismal finish last month I would offer him just a one year contract--no option. Take it or leave it .[/quote']

 

I am willing to cut Cherington some slack and give him a chance, but I admit that IMO he takes that job with a one strike count. He has a lot to prove.

[a700hitter]

I am willing to cut Cherington some slack and give him a chance' date=' but I admit that IMO he takes that job with a one strike count. He has a lot to prove.[/quote']When Theo was out on his Hissy fit in 2005, I went to a function attended by Hoyer and Cherington. I thought they were a couple if lightweights that no one took very seriously. I am hoping that the intervening experience has been very helpful.

[sleepyhollow]

Those familiar with Cherington claim that he's his own man. Let's hope so. He is different from Theo in that he's more serious than .....that could be a good thing. Cherington has learned the ropes on his way up so that may prove helpful.

sleepyhollow

[FredLynn]

When Theo was out on his Hissy fit in 2005' date=' I went to a function attended by Hoyer and Cherington. I thought they were a couple if lightweights that no one took very seriously. I am hoping that the intervening experience has been very helpful.[/quote']

 

That was six years ago. I hope he has learned something since then.

[Brennan]

Pumps, should we start a "survivors of SAWXHEADS" thread just to keep track of us all? Kind of like Vic did when his ship crashed there?

 

It would be cool if we did that and some of these guys here would post on it too, very diverse opinions here but they all seem to mesh.