Pablo is no more

[a700hitter]

He provided one memorable moment in his time with the Red Sox -- when the fat load broke his belt on a swing and his belt popped open.

[harmony]

And clearly felt that he owed the organization and his team mates nothing. They weren't worth the effort of winning back his job. Am I supposed to applaud his character?

Perhaps Pablo Sandoval put forth his best effort but simply failed to produce.

 

It happens.

[SoxHop]

And clearly felt that he owed the organization and his team mates nothing. They weren't worth the effort of winning back his job. Am I supposed to applaud his character?

 

Not at all. There is nothing to applaud for his time with Boston. Him showing up that first year way out of shape, he was the antithesis of a player that gives it all to win. Heck. I work with people that don't give a crap about how they do their job, and I have no respect for that.

 

When I say I'm glad he is gone........ I mean, he was just a distraction that made the team worse......... I'm glad to move on from that guy............ kick that s*** to the curb......... I think the Sox are better off just removing him from show, because he was dead weight and draggin the team down.

 

And now you got me fired up...... f*** that dude.....

[SoxHop]

Perhaps Pablo Sandoval put forth his best effort but simply failed to produce.

 

It happens.

 

I would disagree........ the first year he showed up he was way out of shape.... he had a trainer before and he decided it he didn't need one when he signed the deal with the Sox. And I'm guessing, but I think he thought it was too much work and not worth it.

 

It looks like last year he put in the work to get in shape......... but missing a year of playing will stunt you............. and at some point the Sox just decided it wasn't worth the effort........ like I said.......... kick that s*** to the curb....... and move on...

[moonslav59]

I'm glad he's gone, too. We can use the roster spot.

 

I don't have any ill feelings towards Pablito. Yeah, he could have been in better shape year one, but my only possible animosity is directed towards those who decided to sign him in the first place.

 

I don't get the hate spewing.

[harmony]

I'm glad he's gone, too. We can use the roster spot.

 

I don't have any ill feelings towards Pablito. Yeah, he could have been in better shape year one, but my only possible animosity is directed towards those who decided to sign him in the first place.

 

I don't get the hate spewing.

It's a tradition among Red Sox fans (and sometimes the Boston media).

[Fan_since_Boggs]

He will end up with the Yankees and break our balls... Count on it..

 

LOL. They will sign him for 1b and he will hit .360 with 14 HR in the second half.

[Station 13]

Today's events make me appreciate Allen Graig more.

 

Granted he was being paid a bundle. But at least he rode around on buses for two years and showed up to play each day.

 

Craig didn't have a choice, if he walk, he would forfeit the money. Pablo has 5 years+ of service time he gets to walk scott free and take the money.

 

The Sox finally release Craig last month.

[dannycater]

This guy made more money as a Sox than the 1967 Sox made in their entire careers combined....think about that for a while...that should make any person sick.

[dannycater]

David Ortiz's entire career as a Sox and the money he actually was given in salary v. Crawford, Sandoval...disgusting.

[dannycater]

I'd have rather given 95 million to an over-the-hill Nomar just so he could get the money for actually giving a s*** about playing MLB.

[OH FOY]

Seems these Free Agent signings are not working too good, for other teams too. Edited July 15, 2017 by OH FOY!

[cp176]

I'm just glad he is gone. He was a monkey on our back......

 

I can't beleive that guy made so much money and did nothing for it....

 

No self respecting monkey would have allowed himself to get this fat and go out in public. Whoops - Is that fat shaming? sorry

 

King Kong maybe on our backs!

[cp176]

I realize it's my opinion, but the Sox have held pretty steady near the same distance from the luxury tax every year since Henry took over. We never go way over: we never go way under. It looks like a budget, smells like a budget and feels like a budget.

 

I do agree that Henry can spend an almost unlimited amount, if he chooses to do so. He's wasted money left and right, so that does give the impression that he's willing to spend anything and everything. Your position has supporting evidence as well. I'm not claiming to know everything.

 

I can't imagine us losing Lester and not wanting Scherzer. I'm pretty darn certain that after we spent on HRam & Pablo, the "budget" kept us from signing Scherzer. I can't prove it, and I respect your opinion to the contrary.

 

I'm sorry Moon but when I read this concern from posters here about this team going over the "luxury" tax, I just can't help but laugh. I wonder if Henry reads this? Craig, Castillo. Sandoval, ... That is my idea of luxury! Being able to literally throw hundreds of millions of dollars away and still have a fan base that thinks you are trying to stay with any budgetary constraint. It is really funny. Most don't get their wealth by throwing it away. In some respects I actually liken it to Farrell's strict adherance to all things statistically prescribed when putting his team on the field. But, alas, I seem to be outdated.

[Bellhorn04]

I'm glad he's gone, too. We can use the roster spot.

 

I don't have any ill feelings towards Pablito. Yeah, he could have been in better shape year one, but my only possible animosity is directed towards those who decided to sign him in the first place.

 

I don't get the hate spewing.

 

I have no ill will toward Pablo. I have no ill will about signing him.

 

My main feeling is that it was just a bad move and we're lucky we have a rich franchise that can absorb something like this and move on from it.

[mvp 78]

I'd have rather given 95 million to an over-the-hill Nomar just so he could get the money for actually giving a s*** about playing MLB.

 

Guess you've forgotten how that turd handled himself in 2004?

[mvp 78]

Pout pout pout pout pout pout...

[Spudboy]

Perhaps Pablo Sandoval put forth his best effort but simply failed to produce.

 

It happens.

 

It's fan attitudes like this that makes the Mariners suck.

[Bellhorn04]

I'm sorry Moon but when I read this concern from posters here about this team going over the "luxury" tax, I just can't help but laugh. I wonder if Henry reads this? Craig, Castillo. Sandoval, ... That is my idea of luxury! Being able to literally throw hundreds of millions of dollars away and still have a fan base that thinks you are trying to stay with any budgetary constraint. It is really funny.

 

cp, it's just one of the little games we like to play, trying to figure out and predict what Henry and Dombrowski are going to do.

 

It is a fact that the team has sort of been using the 'luxury tax threshold' as their payroll budget for years now. They've gone over it a few times now but not by a huge amount. Of course they also figured out a way to get Castillo and Craig off the payroll for tax purposes.

 

You're certainly right that Henry does have a ton of money and isn't afraid to throw it around. But sometimes he also disappoints some of us with things like signing Moreland instead of Encarnacion, right?

[SoxHop]

Buckley: Red Sox complicit in Pablo Sandoval debacle

Steve Buckley Saturday, July 15, 2017

 

 

Please allow me to say what the Red Sox won’t say: The decision to sign Pablo Sandoval was shockingly, colossally, galactically stupid.

 

It wasn’t a decision that became stupid over time.

 

It didn’t evolve into being stupid.

 

It’s not as though Pablo Sandoval gave the Red Sox a couple of good seasons and then regressed to the degree that ownership finally had to step in and do something.

 

No. Signing Sandoval was a big box o’ mistake before the ink had dried on his five-year, $95 million contract. This is a player who always has had weight problems, as the San Francisco Giants seemed to know, but the Red Sox went ahead and signed him anyway, ignoring all the warnings, choosing to not believe what their own eyes and scales were telling them.

 

Everyone says Pablo Sandoval is a great guy. But he was out of shape when he debuted with the Red Sox in 2015, and when he showed up for spring training in 2016 he looked even worse. He played in just three games in ’16, including that day at Toronto’s Rogers Centre when his belt buckle comically exploded while its owner was swinging at an R.A. Dickey pitch. Then came the shoulder injury, and that was that for the remainder of the season.

 

He dropped a lot of weight in preparation for 2017. He looked slimmed-down in spring training, and the Red Sox were determined to give him back his old job as their third baseman. But while he may have lost the weight, he also lost his skills. He couldn’t hit, couldn’t field, couldn’t throw. As Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski put it yesterday after it was announced the team was designating Sandoval for assignment, “Pablo just wasn’t playing as well as we had hoped … not only from an offensive perspective, there were some defensive struggles. It really came down to us where we were not a better club if he was on our club at the major league level.”

 

Yet to hear the Red Sox tell it, Pablo Sandoval is The Tough Luck Kid who tried and tried and tried to get back into the lineup this season. He dropped those unwanted pounds. He took the extra BP, fielded the extra grounders, always with a smile, always focused on winning back the respect of the fans, always, always, always.

 

“I commend him in the sense, I think, that he did what he could do in the sense that he got himself in good physical condition,” Dombrowski said. “He’s worked hard to continue to do that. He’s worked nutritionally, he’s worked from the psychological perspective, he’s worked from an offensive perspective, he worked on the defensive perspective. We just didn’t see the skills quite there. But it was not from a work ethic perspective. His work ethic was very good for us.”

 

Dombrowski added that Sandoval “had some issues he was dealing with that really probably didn’t get him into shape, didn’t get him into the shape that we would have liked. But there was more to it that I won’t get into, private-type of issues for him.”

 

Red Sox manager John Farrell also ladled praise upon Sandoval.

 

“To Panda’s credit, he worked his tail off,” said Accountability John. “He got himself into better shape, he went down and played at Pawtucket as much as possible to want to be able to return. Just felt like the objective evaluation was we had other alternatives in-house.”

 

Yet both Dombrowski and Farrell miss the point: The Sandoval problem began more than two years ago, when he was out of shape as a newly-minted member of the Red Sox. And he never recovered from that. Farrell put it out there that what happened in 2015 isn’t necessarily connected to Sandoval’s diminished skills in 2017 — “Whether the two years prior we’re referring to was a direct contributor to not regaining the abilities prior to signing here, I don’t know, that’s probably debatable,” said Accountability John — but what is beyond debate is that the Red Sox are giving a 30-year-old player in excess of $48 million to walk away.

 

If Sandoval has some kind of eating disorder, as has been suggested, the Sox should have known that before they signed him. And anyway, it’s possible to have an eating order and be complacent, and the man’s complacency was on full display in 2015.

 

Exactly how and why the Red Sox signed Sandoval in the first place will always be a fascinating topic. Was it all then-GM Ben Cherington and the whiz kids in baseball ops? Was it then-president Larry Lucchino and the whiz kids in marketing, hoping Sox fans would run out and buy up all those cool Panda heads?

 

At this point, it no longer makes any difference. Whatever Sandoval’s popularity in the clubhouse, this is still the worst free agent signing in franchise history — even if the Red Sox don’t want to go there.

[SoxHop]

The belt buckle exploding was fantastic.......

 

but I still think the 17% body fat comment was maybe the most absurd thing I've ever heard from a FO.

[S5Dewey]

In a bizarre sort of way I almost feel sorry for Sandoval. I don't believe he intentionally allowed himself to get into this position. He obviously worked hard to get his weight back under control before this season and I believe DD when he talks about how hard Sandoval worked to get his game back together. He's now just paying for the abuse he heaped on his body in previous years and it's affect on his ageing. In my mind his problems are self-inflicted so it's hard to feel sorry for him.

 

OTOH it has to be frustrating for him to have worked as hard as he has and yet to be suffering the public humiliation of where his career is and why it got there. In the eyes of the public he's always going to be the guy who ate himself out of baseball.

 

But, of course, that $48M and the lifestyle it will afford him will salve a lot of wounds.

[harmony]

Buckley: Red Sox complicit in Pablo Sandoval debacle

Steve Buckley Saturday, July 15, 2017

 

 

Please allow me to say what the Red Sox won’t say: The decision to sign Pablo Sandoval was shockingly, colossally, galactically stupid.

A link to the copyrighted material:

 

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/columnists/steve_buckley/2017/07/buckley_red_sox_complicit_in_pablo_sandoval_debacle

[Kimmi]

Perhaps Pablo Sandoval put forth his best effort but simply failed to produce.

 

It happens.

 

Thank you for this reasonable post.

[Kimmi]

cp, it's just one of the little games we like to play, trying to figure out and predict what Henry and Dombrowski are going to do.

 

It is a fact that the team has sort of been using the 'luxury tax threshold' as their payroll budget for years now. They've gone over it a few times now but not by a huge amount. Of course they also figured out a way to get Castillo and Craig off the payroll for tax purposes.

 

You're certainly right that Henry does have a ton of money and isn't afraid to throw it around. But sometimes he also disappoints some of us with things like signing Moreland instead of Encarnacion, right?

 

Of course there's a limit to how much Henry is going to spend. Just because he's willing to eat Pablo's contract does not mean that he's willing to spend whatever it takes to get players he wants. He might do that for one player, as he did with Price, so long as it keeps his budget at or near the luxury tax limit.

[Kimmi]

There is a lot of unnecessary and unfair vitriol being spewed towards Pablo.

[moonslav59]

Buckley: Red Sox complicit in Pablo Sandoval debacle

Steve Buckley Saturday, July 15, 2017

 

 

Please allow me to say what the Red Sox won’t say: The decision to sign Pablo Sandoval was shockingly, colossally, galactically stupid.

 

It wasn’t a decision that became stupid over time.

 

It didn’t evolve into being stupid.

 

It’s not as though Pablo Sandoval gave the Red Sox a couple of good seasons and then regressed to the degree that ownership finally had to step in and do something.

 

No. Signing Sandoval was a big box o’ mistake before the ink had dried on his five-year, $95 million contract. This is a player who always has had weight problems, as the San Francisco Giants seemed to know, but the Red Sox went ahead and signed him anyway, ignoring all the warnings, choosing to not believe what their own eyes and scales were telling them.

 

Everyone says Pablo Sandoval is a great guy. But he was out of shape when he debuted with the Red Sox in 2015, and when he showed up for spring training in 2016 he looked even worse. He played in just three games in ’16, including that day at Toronto’s Rogers Centre when his belt buckle comically exploded while its owner was swinging at an R.A. Dickey pitch. Then came the shoulder injury, and that was that for the remainder of the season.

 

He dropped a lot of weight in preparation for 2017. He looked slimmed-down in spring training, and the Red Sox were determined to give him back his old job as their third baseman. But while he may have lost the weight, he also lost his skills. He couldn’t hit, couldn’t field, couldn’t throw. As Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski put it yesterday after it was announced the team was designating Sandoval for assignment, “Pablo just wasn’t playing as well as we had hoped … not only from an offensive perspective, there were some defensive struggles. It really came down to us where we were not a better club if he was on our club at the major league level.”

 

Yet to hear the Red Sox tell it, Pablo Sandoval is The Tough Luck Kid who tried and tried and tried to get back into the lineup this season. He dropped those unwanted pounds. He took the extra BP, fielded the extra grounders, always with a smile, always focused on winning back the respect of the fans, always, always, always.

 

“I commend him in the sense, I think, that he did what he could do in the sense that he got himself in good physical condition,” Dombrowski said. “He’s worked hard to continue to do that. He’s worked nutritionally, he’s worked from the psychological perspective, he’s worked from an offensive perspective, he worked on the defensive perspective. We just didn’t see the skills quite there. But it was not from a work ethic perspective. His work ethic was very good for us.”

 

Dombrowski added that Sandoval “had some issues he was dealing with that really probably didn’t get him into shape, didn’t get him into the shape that we would have liked. But there was more to it that I won’t get into, private-type of issues for him.”

 

Red Sox manager John Farrell also ladled praise upon Sandoval.

 

“To Panda’s credit, he worked his tail off,” said Accountability John. “He got himself into better shape, he went down and played at Pawtucket as much as possible to want to be able to return. Just felt like the objective evaluation was we had other alternatives in-house.”

 

Yet both Dombrowski and Farrell miss the point: The Sandoval problem began more than two years ago, when he was out of shape as a newly-minted member of the Red Sox. And he never recovered from that. Farrell put it out there that what happened in 2015 isn’t necessarily connected to Sandoval’s diminished skills in 2017 — “Whether the two years prior we’re referring to was a direct contributor to not regaining the abilities prior to signing here, I don’t know, that’s probably debatable,” said Accountability John — but what is beyond debate is that the Red Sox are giving a 30-year-old player in excess of $48 million to walk away.

 

If Sandoval has some kind of eating disorder, as has been suggested, the Sox should have known that before they signed him. And anyway, it’s possible to have an eating order and be complacent, and the man’s complacency was on full display in 2015.

 

Exactly how and why the Red Sox signed Sandoval in the first place will always be a fascinating topic. Was it all then-GM Ben Cherington and the whiz kids in baseball ops? Was it then-president Larry Lucchino and the whiz kids in marketing, hoping Sox fans would run out and buy up all those cool Panda heads?

 

At this point, it no longer makes any difference. Whatever Sandoval’s popularity in the clubhouse, this is still the worst free agent signing in franchise history — even if the Red Sox don’t want to go there.

 

I could be wrong, but I don't remember this or many other writers saying Pablo's signing was "stupid".

[moonslav59]

In a bizarre sort of way I almost feel sorry for Sandoval. I don't believe he intentionally allowed himself to get into this position. He obviously worked hard to get his weight back under control before this season and I believe DD when he talks about how hard Sandoval worked to get his game back together. He's now just paying for the abuse he heaped on his body in previous years and it's affect on his ageing. In my mind his problems are self-inflicted so it's hard to feel sorry for him.

 

OTOH it has to be frustrating for him to have worked as hard as he has and yet to be suffering the public humiliation of where his career is and why it got there. In the eyes of the public he's always going to be the guy who ate himself out of baseball.

 

But, of course, that $48M and the lifestyle it will afford him will salve a lot of wounds.

 

Well said.

[moonslav59]

cp, it's just one of the little games we like to play, trying to figure out and predict what Henry and Dombrowski are going to do.

 

It is a fact that the team has sort of been using the 'luxury tax threshold' as their payroll budget for years now. They've gone over it a few times now but not by a huge amount. Of course they also figured out a way to get Castillo and Craig off the payroll for tax purposes.

 

You're certainly right that Henry does have a ton of money and isn't afraid to throw it around. But sometimes he also disappoints some of us with things like signing Moreland instead of Encarnacion, right?

 

I think there may also be a sort of pride involved in spending decisions. We all remember how the rest of the league all felt the Yankees were "buying championships". In some way, people were viewing the Dodgers as trying to buy championships, although even they are looking to cut budget going forward.

 

I'm sure Henry could let the budget be $400M, if he wanted. You'd think we'd have a much better chance at winning had we signed Scherzer, Cueto, Encarnacion, Beltre, Chapman and Miller. If it was all about winning and nothing about spending, (most of) these guys would be on our team right now.

[Spudboy]

I could be wrong, but I don't remember this or many other writers saying Pablo's signing was "stupid".

 

Me either.