Who’s to blame...

[Bellhorn04]

Now your putting words in my mouth which I don't appreciate. That said its pretty popular around these parts. And from you its actually OK....BUT GET OFF MY LAWN.

 

I did not say any of that crap. You asked me what was different about this circumstance and I told you. I don't give a rats behind what the yankee brass does or does not do. I guess you do. But when the Sox brass pulls their ever PR motivated BS I am usually irritated enough. When they do it and it effects on field performance, now I am REALLY irritated.

 

If they actually cared about the sentiments of the team, they would have done all of that CRAP in private, behind closed doors. But NOOOOOOOOO!!!! This is fenway-world. Lets cart the whole management team including uniformed out there.

 

Heck lets cart out the some of the Fenway carnival crew that performs out front of the park "what do you think Red Sox on stilts Man".

 

"Oh I think the team is really pumped up and ready to drive right for the post season...no excuses".

 

"Thank you Red Sox on Stilts Man....thats the way we feel about it up here in the air conditioning."

 

GIVE.... ME.... A..... BREAK!

 

All they did is end up covered in egg on their faces, deep enough to take the rest of the season just to clean off and they deserve it. Right in the middle of hot, stuffy steamy rotten egg summer to boot.

 

Henry was actually the only shocker to me. I don't know if DD and Kennedy convinced him he should add something or if he did it on his own. The entire bunch of them should have said NOTHING for public consumption.

 

Will they learn from it....doubt it.

 

Now don't get all offended, jung.

 

You also said this in response to my post: 1) Red Sox, 25 players, 25 Limos....true since Yawkey was the owner and it STILL drives the mentality of this club. Frankly, we are as much to blame for that as anybody

 

What that wholesale jab at the franchise had to do with my comment I have no idea.

 

You also called Henry a 'walking cadaver'.

 

So I'm defending his record a little, yes.

[Kimmi]

There is a lot of blame to go around, I'm sure, but IMO, Henry and Dombrowski are not at fault. You really can't ask Henry to do more than he has since he took over ownership. Dombrowski assembled a great team on paper. That's all he can do.

 

This is on the players, mostly the starting rotation, who are simply not performing up to their ability levels. Does Cora have something to do with that? Levangie? Restgate? Strange scheduling, beginning with the 11 game road trip? Possibly, on all counts. But the ultimate responsibility falls on the players.

[jung]

Now don't get all offended, jung.

 

You also said this in response to my post: 1) Red Sox, 25 players, 25 Limos....true since Yawkey was the owner and it STILL drives the mentality of this club. Frankly, we are as much to blame for that as anybody

 

What that wholesale jab at the franchise had to do with my comment I have no idea.

 

You also called Henry a 'walking cadaver'.

 

So I'm defending his record a little, yes.

 

The relevance of "25 players, 25 Limos" is that expecting the Boston Red Sox to respond to the sort of nonsense the Sox Brass pushed out there in anything other than a negative fashion was laughably absurd. I have no idea what Red Sox brass thinks it has down there in that clubhouse. No idea at all. In fact, Sox fans should be sending out crisis counselors to other MLB team fans because actually the rest of MLB is moving toward the 25 players, 25 limos Sox.

 

While professional baseball is a game of individual athletes just barely cohesive enough to be a "team" the Red Sox are an extreme example of the "individual" aspects of the pro game. They have a grand total of two players that play and carry themselves like they are really part of a team, X and Rafi. Shocking revelation, they are also the stars of the 2019 Red Sox.

 

My God I expect the Sox Brass to at least know its own team. Tale an elevator down to the clubhouse for Christ sake.

 

To pull their uniform management into it was also loathsome, similar to making Tito sit there on his last day at Fenway and be part of that clown show for public consumption.

 

As for Henry the cadaver, that refers to his visage which is normally stone like and he is pretty ancient looking for a guy that is only 69. DD is in fact looking pretty stone like lately. Must be rubbing off on him.

Edited August 4, 2019 by jung

[notin]

1) Red Sox, 25 players, 25 Limos....true since Yawkey was the owner and it STILL drives the mentality of this club. Frankly, we are as much to blame for that as anybody

 

This is pure speculatation on your part, and very likely wrong. We’re they a “25 man 25 limo team one year ago?

 

2) Yankee management also did not take the added step of opening its BIG MOUTH in some insane effort to publicly shame the club or sell late season tickets or I DON"T KNOW WHAT! What was Red Sox Management doing and for what purpose? Worse, they even roped Cora into their nonsense.

 

Nor did Yankee ownership decide it was time to raise up from the morgue and open its BIG MOUTH. They carted DD out there, Kennedy of all people out there, Cora out there and in a separate statement, Henry adds the coup de grace. Nicely done guys....nicely done.

 

It blew up in their faces and they deserved to have it blow up in their faces. They either did not know the sentiments of their OWN TEAM or did not think the players were willing to throw them right under the bus???? Probably both were true. Give me a break Red Sox.

 

Does not let the players off the hook but this season, start to finish is a failure of the entire organization, top to bottom.

 

If you’re going to try to make an argument that loud-mouthed management is detrimental to team performance, several decades of Steinbrenner-owned Yankees might not be the best supporting argument...

[Bellhorn04]

While professional baseball is a game of individual athletes just barely cohesive enough to be a "team" the Red Sox are an extreme example of the "individual" aspects of the pro game. They have a grand total of two players that play and carry themselves like they are really part of a team, X and Rafi. Shocking revelation, they are also the stars of the 2019 Red Sox.

 

So what's wrong with guys like JD Martinez and Christian Vazquez and Brock Holt and Brandon Workman? What do you find wrong with how they're 'carrying' themselves?

[SoxHop]

Sale was a bad bad signing. Me and my friend joked about him being like 150 pounds and throws with his arm and has kind of a violent delivery. There were massive red flags.

 

But dang when he was on was he fun to watch.

[dgalehouse]

I think what sometimes happens is teams get into a " losing mode ." The players would never admit it but , their confidence ebbs and doubt starts to creep in. Confidence and poise are essential to success in anything . That is why you see " hot streaks " and " cold spells " in players and teams . Right now , they are finding ways to lose . If they are trailing late , they don't come back . If they are leading late , they blow it . The bigger , overall problem is that they have not demonstrated all year that they can beat the good teams.

[bosoxmal]

Pitching is (still( 70% of baseball---Connie Mack

 

In this case (the Sox) it seems to an epidemic!

[cp176]

So I think that it is safe to say that in your opinion only the Red Sox have just two players who are actually "team players". Don't think that I can buy that one at all.

Sometimes the best plans based on last year or what the statistics say should happen, just don't happen. This team is sad to watch on that one I definitely agree.

[cp176]

my post was in response to Jung's latest.

[jung]

So what's wrong with guys like JD Martinez and Christian Vazquez and Brock Holt and Brandon Workman? What do you find wrong with how they're 'carrying' themselves?

 

Well I would probably look at a different set of players with the exception of one:

-JD has been far too concerned with his option

- Mookie has been far too concerned with how he can possibly make due on $20M per and how he turns $20M per into $30M+ per and the weight of his MVP

- Beni was on an at least a half season long whaaaaa fest because "everybody is hitting better than I am.....whaaaaaaaa"

- the entire outfield has done NOTHING....repeat NOTHING to support each other. They don't back each other up. In some cases while not backing each other up, they can't stay out of each others way

- fat f*** Pearce could not and did not even show up as I guess his WS MVP and his new contract was too much weight for him to bear up under. Apparently that all went to his waistline because for the nanosecond he did show up in the Spring he was a fat cow

- Price could not help but leap to the opportunity to engage with Eck again....."my twitter feed.....whaaaaaaaa" f*** you and your twitter feed too. You are a pitcher in transition and while I hoped you were a couple years downstream from where Sale is in that regard, you are as it turns out NOT farther downstream and basically caught up in the same sorts of issues Sale is caught up in.

 

Holt is IMO a consumate professional baseball player. But he is not one of the team leaders in spite of his cheerleading. He just does not play enough to be a team leader. He simply is not near talented enough and you have to be one of the guys at the top of the talent totem pole to be one of the team leaders and/or have some hardware that suggests you should expect to be considered a team leader. Nobody is going to follow Brock or his example. His ASG appearance under specious circumstances since who the f*** else were the Sox going to send that year recedes into the background.

 

Pitchers and Catchers pretty much stay to themselves and pitchers particularly are in better shape if they are seen and not heard. The idea that Sale is the team leader seems pretty absurd to me. Pitching really requires dedication to the entire art of pitching and the craft of pitching. There are too many moving parts. Too many things can go wrong. Most of these guys now start out wrong because there is too much emphasis on velo and spin rate and they are throwing too hard for either their technique or their physical characteristics and as hard as it is to recover a swing that has gone wrong, I don't even want to think about a pitching motion that goes wrong and a pitching approach that needs modification. That is an entirely different animal. Notice that the Sale as team leader thing has pretty much receded into the background now that pitching is not coming as easily to Chris as it has in the past. You can be the leader of the staff but this notion that pitchers or a pitcher is suddenly the leader of an actual full team of baseball players is pretty much some media fantasy that has nothing to do with anything as do most things media related. Sale can scream from the dugout all he wants and the media can notice all it wants to. He is not the team leader and he won't be.

 

So I would point to JD, Mookie, Beni, the entire OF for that matter plus Pearce plus Price as being culpable as guys that were/are much too focused on their own gigs to have really been helpful as it relates to team cohesiveness. Price won't take much flak for it because again he is a pitcher and in spite of the media attention to pitchers nobody really expects a pitcher to be a team leader. The younger guys admire Price's aloofness.....not a good sign for any of them frankly. That is substantively other than X who I include here not at all and Price because he is a pitcher, the bulk of the guys that would be expected to define "team cohesiveness".

 

Then in contrast, the two guys that have clearly performed beyond expectation are the two guys that perform and carry themselves most like teammates on the field, X and Rafi....always talking to each other, X always coaching Rafi on the field, they have without question excelled. At 22, Rafi has clearly struggled with the ramifications of the trade deadline mess and the team's inability to get out of its own way this year. He does not understand it and at 22, well he should not. After last night's second game I thought he was going to pull his own head off his own shoulders he was so beside himself, confused and almost grief stricken. He looked too confused and angry to cry but actually close to crying from the dugout. It has clearly effected his hitting at least and will probably get to his fielding if it has not already. Not his fault. He is 22 for God sake.

 

Remember also that English is Rafi's second language. Christ Americans don't speak good English anymore. So he is probably trying to learn book English grammar which is about as far from what we now speak in this country as it gets.

Edited August 4, 2019 by jung

[a700hitter]

The super ball plays a part in all of this. The Red Sox roster was one that was built for speed and defense just as much as it was built for bashing. This season in MLB speed and defense seem to have no role. It's pure bashing.

[notin]

The super ball plays a part in all of this. The Red Sox roster was one that was built for speed and defense just as much as it was built for bashing. This season in MLB speed and defense seem to have no role. It's pure bashing.

 

Well, this team has been built on starting pitching. And the Sox paid premium prices to add Price and retain Sale. But the Manfred Missile has helped weaken a dependency on starting pitching. Most teams, through economics largely, gravitated towards bullpen games. This did somewhat combat the effects of the ball, since starters rarely saw hitters a third time on other teams...

[jacksonianmarch]

There is a lot of blame to go around, I'm sure, but IMO, Henry and Dombrowski are not at fault. You really can't ask Henry to do more than he has since he took over ownership. Dombrowski assembled a great team on paper. That's all he can do.

 

This is on the players, mostly the starting rotation, who are simply not performing up to their ability levels. Does Cora have something to do with that? Levangie? Restgate? Strange scheduling, beginning with the 11 game road trip? Possibly, on all counts. But the ultimate responsibility falls on the players.

 

Henry isn't at fault. He's willing to spend $240 mil annually on a winner. DD is ABSOLUTELY at fault. By allowing Cora to f*** with the prep time in ST and by leaving his BP flapping in the breeze, he set his team up for failure. Great teams in the post analytics era have great pens. He ignored a critical part of a team and got burned by it. I wonder how much the pen being awful played into the rotation being awful.

[Bellhorn04]

Henry isn't at fault. He's willing to spend $240 mil annually on a winner. DD is ABSOLUTELY at fault. By allowing Cora to f*** with the prep time in ST and by leaving his BP flapping in the breeze, he set his team up for failure. Great teams in the post analytics era have great pens. He ignored a critical part of a team and got burned by it. I wonder how much the pen being awful played into the rotation being awful.

 

The pen should not have affected the rotation at all. What affect could the pen have had on Sale and Porcello this year?

 

I think that's just grabbing at straws.

[dgalehouse]

The pen should not have affected the rotation at all. What affect could the pen have had on Sale and Porcello this year?

 

I think that's just grabbing at straws.

 

And so is the reverse of that . Blaming the rotation for the pen's failures is a cop out .

[notin]

I don’t think Dombrowski is at fault for the poor performances of the players. But I do think he is absolutely culpable for his complete inactivity this offseason and especially during this season. He has been and still is the proverbial Nero fiddling as Rome burns...

[illinoisredsox]

I don’t think Dombrowski is at fault for the poor performances of the players. But I do think he is absolutely culpable for his complete inactivity this offseason and especially during this season. He has been and still is the proverbial Nero fiddling as Rome burns...

 

This I agree with. It's been an organizational thing from top to bottom.

 

Check that - I'll absolve the batboys and ballgirls from any blame.

[fxkatt]

Only two differences from me and DD. And both of these I said BEFORE their occurrences and not after.

 

1) I'd sign one good solid reliever or at least wd have traded for one at the deadline.

 

2) I'd have extended Sale with a 3 year 75 million contract as opposed to 4 years at 116 million. May I turn out to be wrong on this account. But Sale has always pitched best, it seems, in the shadows, and underpaid, so this contract makes me nervous on a few accounts.

 

Beyond these two things, the season itself is a mystery to me, but I have no insight into how the players fit with one another.

[moonslav59]

Well I would probably look at a different set of players with the exception of one:

-JD has been far too concerned with his option

- Mookie has been far too concerned with how he can possibly make due on $20M per and how he turns $20M per into $30M+ per and the weight of his MVP

- Beni was on an at least a half season long whaaaaa fest because "everybody is hitting better than I am.....whaaaaaaaa"

- the entire outfield has done NOTHING....repeat NOTHING to support each other. They don't back each other up. In some cases while not backing each other up, they can't stay out of each others way

- fat f*** Pearce could not and did not even show up as I guess his WS MVP and his new contract was too much weight for him to bear up under. Apparently that all went to his waistline because for the nanosecond he did show up in the Spring he was a fat cow

- Price could not help but leap to the opportunity to engage with Eck again....."my twitter feed.....whaaaaaaaa" f*** you and your twitter feed too. You are a pitcher in transition and while I hoped you were a couple years downstream from where Sale is in that regard, you are as it turns out NOT farther downstream and basically caught up in the same sorts of issues Sale is caught up in.

 

Holt is IMO a consumate professional baseball player. But he is not one of the team leaders in spite of his cheerleading. He just does not play enough to be a team leader. He simply is not near talented enough and you have to be one of the guys at the top of the talent totem pole to be one of the team leaders and/or have some hardware that suggests you should expect to be considered a team leader. Nobody is going to follow Brock or his example. His ASG appearance under specious circumstances since who the f*** else were the Sox going to send that year recedes into the background.

 

Pitchers and Catchers pretty much stay to themselves and pitchers particularly are in better shape if they are seen and not heard. The idea that Sale is the team leader seems pretty absurd to me. Pitching really requires dedication to the entire art of pitching and the craft of pitching. There are too many moving parts. Too many things can go wrong. Most of these guys now start out wrong because there is too much emphasis on velo and spin rate and they are throwing too hard for either their technique or their physical characteristics and as hard as it is to recover a swing that has gone wrong, I don't even want to think about a pitching motion that goes wrong and a pitching approach that needs modification. That is an entirely different animal. Notice that the Sale as team leader thing has pretty much receded into the background now that pitching is not coming as easily to Chris as it has in the past. You can be the leader of the staff but this notion that pitchers or a pitcher is suddenly the leader of an actual full team of baseball players is pretty much some media fantasy that has nothing to do with anything as do most things media related. Sale can scream from the dugout all he wants and the media can notice all it wants to. He is not the team leader and he won't be.

 

So I would point to JD, Mookie, Beni, the entire OF for that matter plus Pearce plus Price as being culpable as guys that were/are much too focused on their own gigs to have really been helpful as it relates to team cohesiveness. Price won't take much flak for it because again he is a pitcher and in spite of the media attention to pitchers nobody really expects a pitcher to be a team leader. The younger guys admire Price's aloofness.....not a good sign for any of them frankly. That is substantively other than X who I include here not at all and Price because he is a pitcher, the bulk of the guys that would be expected to define "team cohesiveness".

 

Then in contrast, the two guys that have clearly performed beyond expectation are the two guys that perform and carry themselves most like teammates on the field, X and Rafi....always talking to each other, X always coaching Rafi on the field, they have without question excelled. At 22, Rafi has clearly struggled with the ramifications of the trade deadline mess and the team's inability to get out of its own way this year. He does not understand it and at 22, well he should not. After last night's second game I thought he was going to pull his own head off his own shoulders he was so beside himself, confused and almost grief stricken. He looked too confused and angry to cry but actually close to crying from the dugout. It has clearly effected his hitting at least and will probably get to his fielding if it has not already. Not his fault. He is 22 for God sake.

 

Remember also that English is Rafi's second language. Christ Americans don't speak good English anymore. So he is probably trying to learn book English grammar which is about as far from what we now speak in this country as it gets.

 

I don't think I've seen a post I disagree with more than this one. Your assignment of player motivations and thoughts is total speculation and seems to me, to be way off base. 100% wrong, IMO.

[dannycater]

This I agree with. It's been an organizational thing from top to bottom.

 

Check that - I'll absolve the batboys and ballgirls from any blame.

 

oh no, you don't, ill-I-ni, the batboys and ballgirls are damn sure part of the problem. Do you see them diving for balls lately? How bout the complacency when a ball is hit on a bounce? Notice how the 1st base girl doesn't hand out foul balls to young kids anymore? Bunch of entitled brats, those bat/ballgirl/boys. Punks!!!

[dannycater]

I think what sometimes happens is teams get into a " losing mode ." The players would never admit it but , their confidence ebbs and doubt starts to creep in. Confidence and poise are essential to success in anything . That is why you see " hot streaks " and " cold spells " in players and teams . Right now , they are finding ways to lose . If they are trailing late , they don't come back . If they are leading late , they blow it . The bigger , overall problem is that they have not demonstrated all year that they can beat the good teams.

 

Great post, denny galhouse rocks. This is exactly what has occurred about the confidence and the losing mode. It's contagious as much as it is when you win, and win. Your confidence level sky rockets and everyone can't wait to grab a bat, can't wait to come into pitch in a big situation, SPs ready to start big games. All of it starts with confidence. But if you go into these losing spells, everything starts to come out. Guys are questioning themselves. You look at Bradley or Beni or even Mookie, and you get this impression that when they get out, they shake their heads or wonder why aren't they hitting on the screws. On the mound, to me, Sale and Porcello in particular just are almost afraid to fail. They really don't know why they are getting knocked around, and then it's like they can't stop it. They are gasoline on the fire. Look at the Yankees, everything is about confidence for them. They know they are going to get a big hit, they get the big HRs the same way the '18 Sox would generate the big rallies, big innings. On the mound, German looks like an ace with no worries. It's bizarro world between the confidence of the '18 Sox and the lack thereof of the '19 Sox. Include Cora as manager also in that mode of what the hell are we doing? How do I stop the losing? Answer, you can't until something good happens, really good, or in this case one trip around the rotation where Sale and Porcello go 7 and are lights out. That would change things nearly immediately. If you have guys who are leaders questioning themselves, then everyone does.

[jacksonianmarch]

Only two differences from me and DD. And both of these I said BEFORE their occurrences and not after.

 

1) I'd sign one good solid reliever or at least wd have traded for one at the deadline.

 

2) I'd have extended Sale with a 3 year 75 million contract as opposed to 4 years at 116 million. May I turn out to be wrong on this account. But Sale has always pitched best, it seems, in the shadows, and underpaid, so this contract makes me nervous on a few accounts.

 

Beyond these two things, the season itself is a mystery to me, but I have no insight into how the players fit with one another.

 

Sale got 5 yrs and $145 mil which starts next year

[moonslav59]

Sale got 5 yrs and $145 mil which starts next year

 

I think most baseball people felt he'd get 6+ years at over $30M per year. I remember hearing some say $35M x 7 was possible.

[Bellhorn04]

I think most baseball people felt he'd get 6+ years at over $30M per year. I remember hearing some say $35M x 7 was possible.

 

When exactly did they say that though? Chris ended 2018 as a question mark in the health department.

[Kimmi]

Henry isn't at fault. He's willing to spend $240 mil annually on a winner. DD is ABSOLUTELY at fault. By allowing Cora to f*** with the prep time in ST and by leaving his BP flapping in the breeze, he set his team up for failure. Great teams in the post analytics era have great pens. He ignored a critical part of a team and got burned by it. I wonder how much the pen being awful played into the rotation being awful.

 

A GM has to let give the manager the autonomy to manage the way he wants to for the most part. Everything Cora did last year worked like a charm? Why would Dombrowski suddenly tell Cora how to manage?

 

Your last sentence makes no sense at all.

[Kimmi]

And so is the reverse of that . Blaming the rotation for the pen's failures is a cop out .

 

So, you don't think that having your starters regularly get deeper into games helps the pen's effectiveness?

[dgalehouse]

So, you don't think that having your starters regularly get deeper into games helps the pen's effectiveness?

 

Not really , except that they would have fewer chances to fail .

[moonslav59]

Not really , except that they would have fewer chances to fail .

 

That, alone, is very significant.

 

Also, one less inning for the pen means your worst RP'er never comes in.

 

Our 7th and 8th best pen guys have sucked way more than the sucky 4-6th best RP'ers.

 

Here's our pen numbers in order of IP'd:

 

ERA RP'er WHIP

 

3.56 Walden 1.096

2.03 Workman 1.027

4.31 Brewer 1.750

4.36 Barnes 1.338

(Had we only needed these 4 guys plus maybe Taylor, in close games, we'd have been better off.)

 

4.46 Brasier 1.215

4.06 Hembree 1.381

3.95 JTaylor 1.390

 

 

4.50 Velazquez 1.333

7.71 Thornburg 1.661

 

[jacksonianmarch]

I think most baseball people felt he'd get 6+ years at over $30M per year. I remember hearing some say $35M x 7 was possible.

 

When I made my window post, I thought a Greinke AAV at longer years was possible. Once concerns about the shoulder crept in, I was shocked he ended up with what he got. DD has to be kicking himself