8/31 @ A's Blue Moon...I saw you standing alone...

[jung]

New poll: does V survive September?

 

Good question. I am inclined to think he will if only because the replacement will obviously be someone on the current coaching staff. If the team even looks like it is breathing under his stewardship, I am worried that it might encourage folks to want him back. This damned upper management group is so PR driven that they might actually listen to something like that. I want them to make a solid move here. Bring us a manager that is current, has been on the field, not in an announce booth for ten years and give the guy a decent length contract....something that says to the players that this guy is here for awhile.

[DocHolliday]

Francona was fired after a 7-20 finish to the season. The Sox just went 9-20 in August, have lost 9 of the last 12 games, and are lifeless on the field.

 

If they weren't already out of it by the beginning of August, this would have been just as publicized.

[DocHolliday]

Good question. I am inclined to think he will if only because the replacement will obviously be someone on the current coaching staff. If the team even looks like it is breathing under his stewardship, I am worried that it might encourage folks to want him back. This damned upper management group is so PR driven that they might actually listen to something like that. I want them to make a solid move here. Bring us a manager that is current, has been on the field, not in an announce booth for ten years and give the guy a decent length contract....something that says to the players that this guy is here for awhile.

 

If they hire a manger that ISN'T a "PR driven move", it would be the best PR move they have made in a calendar year.

 

When will they figure out that the best baseball driven moves will also the best PR driven. These aren't mutually exclusive.

 

It's simple - if the team wins on the field consistently, they win in the PR department.

 

Name me one successful team right now that got there with the PR moves taking precedent over the baseball moves.

[Brennan]

So what does NESN do after a game like that?

 

Ignore talking to Valentine or the Sox and run to interview Josh Reddick and congratulate him on his first career Grand Slam.

[Brennan]

Sorry folks, I'll get some sleep and calm down. That game was like watching kittens getting sexually molested by gorillas. I need to try to burn the image from my memory.

[jung]

When will they figure out that the best baseball driven moves will also the best PR driven. These aren't mutually exclusive.

 

Sustaining a solid effort on the field is more difficult and takes a longer view than sustaining fannies in seats. You can talk yourself into simply making successive PR driven moves as a means to keep fannies in seats and that gets to be very addictive. Of late at least in my view, they have not been willing to bite the bullet and resist the temptation to simply make one PR driven move after the other.

 

I think Theo tried to give us a view into how Baseball Operations is simply dangling at the end of LL's string when he talked about the "pressure to do something". While he was out of the Red Sox organization by then, I was pretty surprised at how candid he was and how much he pointed us to the whole spin driven, PR focused effort within the senior offices at Fenway. I was actually kinda' surprised that his comments really did not get more play than I thought they would. Maybe we hear what we want to hear.

[Klare]

2-20 loss to the A's! Sorry guysbut you can't do that to us. We're you'refans and want you to try to win. You 're not motivated anymore because the chance for the playoffs are gone? We don't except that.

[Klare]

2-20 loss to the A's!! Sorry guys but you can't do that to us. We're your fans and want you ton ty to win however. Seems like you're not motivated anymore because the chances for the playoffs are gone?! We don't except that.

[Jacoby_Ellsbury]

Is this rock bottom?

I don't think so. If they're out of it, they're out of it.

[RedSoxNC84]

ugh

[Thunder]

Glad I didn't stay up to watch this one. The Moneyballers are pretty good this year.

[Behindenemylines]

Embarrassing!!!!!!!!! Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse.

[Bellhorn04]

13 RBI for ex-Sox players...and the Coliseum isn't even a good hitter's park.

[a700hitter]

13 RBI for ex-Sox players...and the Coliseum isn't even a good hitter's park.

Especially at night. The ball carries well there during the day, but it plays very different at night.

[jung]

There is no good place to post this but there is a post in this thread that talks about the O's as a part of a discussion about the AL East generally and it points out that in order to win as many 1 run games as the O's have won this year, you have to have a high degree of luck play into the result. I agree with that. However, team building is not about the result being a sure thing. There is no such thing as a sure thing in ML baseball. Look at that powerhouse Angels team which does have pitching as well. If the season ends today, they are going nowhere. We only have to go back to last season and the much discussed dead lock cinch to go to the WS of the Red Sox for a recent local example.

 

The point is not that the number of 1 run games the O's have won involved some luck. I would contend that every successful team sports effort involves some degree of luck. The point is that the O's team was built as a team that would be competitive in 1 run games. The point is, it is a team that does have a cohesive approach to the game. The pieces fit. They may not be the most expensive pieces but they blend into a competitive, reasonable, cohesive approach. Then, they put themselves in real position to contend by making some reasoned bets on pitchers. That is where the effort was really made as it should have been. They have all worked out for the most part. But they were reasoned bets in the first place as opposed to a bunch of reject, has been, retreads or guys that had not proved that they could do a thing at any level of pro baseball within the purview of starting pitching or in the case of Beckett a guy going through one of the most difficult transitions in all of baseball while TELLING YOU that baseball no longer holds the place for him that it once did.

 

The O's are a brilliant case for how you build a team that has a chance to win just as much as the Red Sox are an excellent case for how to build a team that really has little chance of winning. Virtually every move from the Beckett extension up through Carl Crawford was a mistake. Some of them monster mistakes.

 

I always thought it was something of a shame that Dan D was so distant and held himself so aloof when he was GM here. He left himself open to criticism in the sense that a player being paid a ton of money and then underperforming is open to criticism. If you leave people lying in the weeds for you, at some point they are bound to get the opportunity to pop up out of those weeds and nail you.

 

I seriously doubt we would be in the mess we are in today if Dan had remained a key piece to the Red Sox Baseball Operations effort and Theo had gone on his merry way to do whatever for whomever. That said, maybe Dan would have had as little success holding off Larry L as anybody else has had.

 

Dan always had an instinct about baseball personnel but I suspect he may have been late to the party with regarding to using more contemporary tools in conjunction with his instincts because I cannot think of other reasons why he alienated so many people just as those contemporary measures for baseball talent were becoming very popular. That is just a hunch on my part but I remember that time and Dan seemed easy to dislodge at a point when you might not have expected it to be so and then he could not get back into baseball in a similar role. I suspect he has had to have a "come to Jesus" regarding contemporary talent measurement tools but we should also recognize that there is more to this team building thing than deep pockets, success in other business ventures and a computer software package. Recent Red Sox teams have looked good on a computer screen but have sucked on the field where the game is actually played. They may have been unbeatable in a fantasy baseball league but have not been able to win a thing for real.

[a700hitter]

There is no good place to post this but there is a post in this thread that talks about the O's as a part of a discussion about the AL East generally and it points out that in order to win as many 1 run games as the O's have won this year, you have to have a high degree of luck play into the result. I agree with that. However, team building is not about the result being a sure thing. There is no such thing as a sure thing in ML baseball. Look at that powerhouse Angels team which does have pitching as well. If the season ends today, they are going nowhere. We only have to go back to last season and the much discussed dead lock cinch to go to the WS of the Red Sox for a recent local example.

 

The point is not that the number of 1 run games the O's have won involved some luck. I would contend that every successful team sports effort involves some degree of luck. The point is that the O's team was built as a team that would be competitive in 1 run games. The point is, it is a team that does have a cohesive approach to the game. The pieces fit. They may not be the most expensive pieces but they blend into a competitive, reasonable, cohesive approach. Then, they put themselves in real position to contend by making some reasoned bets on pitchers. That is where the effort was really made as it should have been. They have all worked out for the most part. But they were reasoned bets in the first place as opposed to a bunch of reject, has been, retreads or guys that had not proved that they could do a thing at any level of pro baseball within the purview of starting pitching or in the case of Beckett a guy going through one of the most difficult transitions in all of baseball while TELLING YOU that baseball no longer holds the place for him that it once did.

 

The O's are a brilliant case for how you build a team that has a chance to win just as much as the Red Sox are an excellent case for how to build a team that really has little chance of winning. Virtually every move from the Beckett extension up through Carl Crawford was a mistake. Some of them monster mistakes.

 

I always thought it was something of a shame that Dan D was so distant and held himself so aloof when he was GM here. He left himself open to criticism in the sense that a player being paid a ton of money and then underperforming is open to criticism. If you leave people lying in the weeds for you, at some point they are bound to get the opportunity to pop up out of those weeds and nail you.

 

I seriously doubt we would be in the mess we are in today if Dan had remained a key piece to the Red Sox Baseball Operations effort and Theo had gone on his merry way to do whatever for whomever. That said, maybe Dan would have had as little success holding off Larry L as anybody else has had.

 

Dan always had an instinct about baseball personnel but I suspect he may have been late to the party with regarding to using more contemporary tools in conjunction with his instincts because I cannot think of other reasons why he alienated so many people just as those contemporary measures for baseball talent were becoming very popular. That is just a hunch on my part but I remember that time and Dan seemed easy to dislodge at a point when you might not have expected it to be so and then he could not get back into baseball in a similar role. I suspect he has had to have a "come to Jesus" regarding contemporary talent measurement tools but we should also recognize that there is more to this team building thing than deep pockets, success in other business ventures and a computer software package. Recent Red Sox teams have looked good on a computer screen but have sucked on the field where the game is actually played. They may have been unbeatable in a fantasy baseball league but have not been able to win a thing for real.

Luck is the residue of design. The O's are not luckier than the Red Sox. They are a better team than the Red Sox. Attributing the outcome of a 162 game season to luck makes us look like the whiny wusses that Yankee fans have been mocking for my entire life.

[BornToRun]

Luck is the residue of design. The O's are not luckier than the Red Sox. They are a better team than the Red Sox. Attributing the outcome of a 162 game season to luck makes us look like the whiny wusses that Yankee fans have been mocking for my entire life.

 

You're right that Baltimore is better than us but 2 things:

 

1. Screw Baltimore anyways

 

2. To hell with Yankees fans and anything those entitled nazi bastards have to say about us

[DocHolliday]

Luck is the residue of design. The O's are not luckier than the Red Sox. They are a better team than the Red Sox. Attributing the outcome of a 162 game season to luck makes us look like the whiny wusses that Yankee fans have been mocking for my entire life.

 

When I made the original comment about the O's record in 1 run games this season, it wasn't to say that they are where they are do to luck. Clearly, they have been a better team this year than the Red Sox. As I write this post, they dropped a 1 run game to the Yankees.

 

Instead, the point I was making was that they were fortunate to have such a higher record than any other team in close contests. I tried to use the analogy of a hot shooter at the craps table to say that they were in the midst of a good run of 1 game outcomes.

 

In the long run, teams tend to play around .500 in 1 run games. Teams with good bullpens and good pitching in general can have an edge in close contests, but their 24-6 pace was unsustainable, for any team. There are so many other elements that can affect the outcome of a close game that are outside of the team's control.

 

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if next year they returned the same pitchers and their record in 1 run games was below .500 because of the variance in the game that is random and uncontrollable.

[jung]

Where the rubber will likely meet the road is in the post season and not this silly one game thing either...the real post season. If they even get in to the play in and get through it, the O's may simply not be good enough to win in a short series against what I guess today would be the Rangers.

 

I would not deny though that it takes some amount of good fortune or luck if you will regardless of how good you are. I just don't think you can ever do better than give your team the best chance to win. You could certainly do much worse than giving your team the best chance to win but I don't think you can do better than that. The rest is in the hands of the players themselves and the Baseball Gods.