7/22 vs. Blue Jays

[example1]

Newsflash: when you are paying 4 pitchers about 15m a year and have a 5th signed long term, you don't just go and sign other pitchers to longterm contracts.

 

Roy Oswalt has a 5.22 ERA and 1.67 WHIP this year. Nobody was advocating for them to get CJ Wilson. Yes, it would have been nice if they could have upgraded the rotation this year, but sometimes things literally aren't possible. The problem with the rotation isn't the 4-5 pitchers, it's the guys who would have been here anyway. They absolutely suck.

 

I don't know what the on-field answer is, but the off-field answer is that they have to fire the pitching coach and they have to do it yesterday. I'm not even hearing plausible explanations about why these guys are so terrible, just befuddlement.

[User Name]

Not the best game to have dished out a pretty penny and driven up to Boston for.

[a700hitter]

Newsflash: when you are paying 4 pitchers about 15m a year and have a 5th signed long term, you don't just go and sign other pitchers to longterm contracts.

 

Roy Oswalt has a 5.22 ERA and 1.67 WHIP this year. Nobody was advocating for them to get CJ Wilson. Yes, it would have been nice if they could have upgraded the rotation this year, but sometimes things literally aren't possible. The problem with the rotation isn't the 4-5 pitchers, it's the guys who would have been here anyway. They absolutely suck.

 

I don't know what the on-field answer is, but the off-field answer is that they have to fire the pitching coach and they have to do it yesterday. I'm not even hearing plausible explanations about why these guys are so terrible, just befuddlement.

You are making excuses for the FO. Just because they have a budget doesn't mean something is impossible. Sometimes contingencies like an historical collapse or the season ending injury to a $15 million pitcher like Lackey justify blowing the budget to maintain your brand. Gio Gonzalez would have been worth the investment in prospects and at $8.5 million/season for 5 years, the guy is a great value. If they wanted to go shorter duration, there was Edwin Jackson, who is like Cy Young compared to Lester this season and Jackson is having an off year thus far. They decided to go cheap and stay within their own fiscal constraints. That left them little or no room for injury or under performance. Well, that hasn't worked out as they have had tremendous under performance on the pitching staff-- worse than anyone could have imagined. yet they are still at .500 and in the hunt for a wild card. If they had added pitching, it wouldn't be this bad. if they had seen the folly of putting 2 rookies in the rotation, it wouldn't have been this bad. You are making excuses for them. There are always options. To say otherwise is just not reality. They made terrible choices and they have damaged the franchise. They are getting more negative press than I can remember-- ever. It's in print, on the radio and TV. Worse yet, no one gives a s*** about them. Everyone in Boston from the Meter Maids to the executives were up to date on the Red Sox. Everyone in town knew what day Pedro was scheduled to pitch. It was the only large city that I had ever been to where so many of its citizens were so tied to a sports team. That is no true any longer. There is no excitement about the team or any of its players. They have damaged their franchise and they have no one to blame but themselves. This isn't the result of a couple of bad signings. It is the culmination of many, many poor decisions, and this past off season was the straw that broke the camel's back. The one good thing to come from this is that tickets will be much easier to get for a while. The bad news is that they aren't worth watching.

[a700hitter]

This upcoming week should put the Sox soildly below .500 and in sole possession of last place. The rangers have been slumping, but visiting texas without Ortiz and a pitching staff full of pinatas should make for an interesting Home Run Derby for the Rangers. At least being on the road will delay the opposition scoring until the bottom of the first inning. A similar carnage should follow in the Bronx. This is make or break time for the Sox, and they don't have the talent or character to meet the challenge. At some point during the week, expect some of our stars to get a day off for "routine maintenance" or some other ridiculous excuse for gutless selfish players. I don't even know what routine maintenance means. Do they need their oil changed and tires rotated? Is it mani-pedi day? It's time to step and show what they are made of. I'd love this pampered group of selfish spoiled gutless players to prove me wrong, because I am convinced that they don't have what it takes. It is probably the biggest collection of disappointments that i have witnessed in red Sox unis in 45 years.

[jung]

While a agree with you 700, when a business has seen so many of its recent enterprises blow up in its face (in the case of the Sox bad FA signings) the natural inclination is to pause, even when personnel changes directly involved in those decisions are made (like Theo gone and BC in) the natural inclination is still to pause.....try to digest the true value of the assets that you have, recognizing that losing faith in the part of the organization that had been choosing those assets also means in part losing faith in those assets.

 

The pause also puts the burden on the assets that you have which is again a big part of the process of trying to understand what you really have. Having done that though if the Sox remain oblivious to what they really have, then that will be a real disappointment.

 

As for the damage done to things like ticket sales etc, seeing the wave and more Sweet Caroline in the face of what for a real baseball fan should have been a total embarrassment the other night suggests to me that the Sox no longer rely on people like those that post here for their revenue anyway. IMO, very few real baseball fans occupy those seats very often any longer.

 

Assuming they could have moved him to a place that he would have accepted and assuming that they could have replaced him, the single best thing the Sox could have done before the season started would have been to move Beckett almost regardless of the financial consequences. I have to commend the folks that made that recommendation at the time. I was not one of them mainly because I did not think he could both be moved without great expense to the Sox and would be difficult to replace because there was not much out there. There were guys though. I just thought they represented as much if not more of a gamble than Beckett was and I was trying to gauge the Sox willingness to eat Beckett salary and thought they would have little willingness. Boy was I wrong! They should have done whatever it took to move Beckett and replace him.

[a700hitter]

While a agree with you 700, when a business has seen so many of its recent enterprises blow up in its face (in the case of the Sox bad FA signings) the natural inclination is to pause, even when personnel changes directly involved in those decisions are made (like Theo gone and BC in) the natural inclination is still to pause.....try to digest the true value of the assets that you have, recognizing that losing faith in the part of the organization that had been choosing those assets also means in part losing faith in those assets.

 

The pause also puts the burden on the assets that you have which is again a big part of the process of trying to understand what you really have. Having done that though if the Sox remain oblivious to what they really have, then that will be a real disappointment.

 

As for the damage done to things like ticket sales etc, seeing the wave and more Sweet Caroline in the face of what for a real baseball fan should have been a total embarrassment the other night suggests to me that the Sox no longer rely on people like those that post here for their revenue anyway. IMO, very few real baseball fans occupy those seats very often any longer.

 

Assuming they could have moved him to a place that he would have accepted and assuming that they could have replaced him, the single best thing the Sox could have done before the season started would have been to move Beckett almost regardless of the financial consequences. I have to commend the folks that made that recommendation at the time. I was not one of them mainly because I did not think he could both be moved without great expense to the Sox and would be difficult to replace because there was not much out there. There were guys though. I just thought they represented as much if not more of a gamble than Beckett was and I was trying to gauge the Sox willingness to eat Beckett salary and thought they would have little willingness. Boy was I wrong! They should have done whatever it took to move Beckett and replace him.

Unfortunately, a team like the Red Sox in their market doesn't have the luxury of waiting and assessing situations like other teams. They have to put a quality product on the field every season or be subject to intense scrutiny. That's just the way it is. That's what comes along with the passion of their fan base. The non-baseball fans that you speak of in the expensive seats will be the first ones to desert the ship. The businesses will no longer buy those seats if its customers decline the free tickets or not happy to receive them. The real fans will have an easier time getting good seats, but we will have to watch a bad team. It will not be my first time.

 

To some extent they have lost some of the real fans during the successful run from the constant catering to the pink hats with Sweet Caroline, loud music all game long preventing any conversation of the game, the wave, the nightly pre-game ceremony celebrating something that no one cares about other than the people being celebrated. Enough is enough. Maybe the team should take some infield practice-- a lost art. Stop the music. The sounds of the game are beautiful. Please, no more 50-50 raffles. No f***ing chowder. If people want chowder, they should go to a restaurant. Stop all the nonsense and distractions and go back to good baseball. We don't need a pre-game manager show or a post-game press conference like he is the President of the United States. He's a f***ing baseball manager. He makes a lineup card and makes a few in-game moves, and often he does a bad job at those things. If you can't follow the game while you are watching it, how much more do you think you will understand after listening to the managers. They don't have a lot of profound thought. Fenway and the Red Sox have a circus and the art of the game has been lost in all the hoopla. I am tired of what this franchise has become. Get back to building a good baseball team that focuses on baseball.

[SoxSport]

What bugs me is the management has done nothing about Lester and Beckett. Absolutely nothing.

They have allowed those two guys to kill the team double-handedly. They know their poor records, but they have made no effort to deal with the problem. In fact, there is no indication they think a problem exists.

 

I've been saying all along this is a complacent organization. Once in a while Henry wakes up and gets rid of somebody. But I don't see a real committment to winning with the higher-ups. And that includes those boys in the front office.

 

The one thing they are committed to is sellouts. I guess they figure they don't have to win to sell the park out. Hell, when I was a kid, they couldn't get a million in the seats for the year even with Ted Williams.

You got to win to fill the seats.Their problem was pitching then too. Surprise.

[a700hitter]

What bugs me is the management has done nothing about Lester and Beckett. Absolutely nothing.

They have allowed those two guys to kill the team double-handedly. They know their poor records, but they have made no effort to deal with the problem. In fact, there is no indication they think a problem exists.

 

I've been saying all along this is a complacent organization. Once in a while Henry wakes up and gets rid of somebody. But I don't see a real committment to winning with the higher-ups. And that includes those boys in the front office.

 

The one thing they are committed to is sellouts. I guess they figure they don't have to win to sell the park out. Hell, when I was a kid, they couldn't get a million in the seats for the year even with Ted Williams.

You got to win to fill the seats.Their problem was pitching then too. Surprise.

It's an old story-- one that I have seen many times.

[kapsis21]

man do i miss the 2004 days. the idiot vibe was freaking amazing. mostly it was the veterans that took the game and carried us over that hunch... we dont have that now. especially on pitching.

We had Pedro/Schilling/Wakefield/Embree/Foulke/Timlin ... absolutely love that team to death.

 

our current team maybe more talented than the 2004 team yet has nothing to show for .. its pretty pathetic.. disgusted with our team right now..