Beaneater

I just noticed this. Pretty good idea if you ask me. Youk has got to be better than Vasquez at the plate, and (though I don't, as usual, alas, have the stats) I would imagine that he's a step up from Bellhorn, too. As long as Billy is comfortable playing 2B, this seems like a great move. Any thoughts from those more stat-oriented than me?

Yes. It's a no-brainer.

Nice! Wasdin pitching is roughly the equivalent of Wakefield... ...throwing just fastballs.

You're right, SuperManny, that the idea of "homegrown-ness" is a very fuzzy (if not totally undefinable) one in baseball. And I guess my gripe is not about the lack of homegrown talent; it's the "let's sign the current superstar" mentality that defines the Yankees and (maybe I'm hallucinating here) is starting to rub off on us. For instance, (though I have absolutely no stats at my fingertips to back this up) Renteria was not the best SS on the free agent market. That would be Orlando Cabrera. But Renteria is the bigger name and so he gets the nod (or at least that's how it looks to me). But as I said, I don't even have any facts to back that up. The only thing I have is a vague sense of unease when I look at teams like the Rangers who have a lot of guys that aren't MLB's biggest names but who are already studs and will be seriously bad news in a couple of years (Texeira, Young, Blalock, etc.). OK, last thing. You mentioned the Slocumb for DLowe/Tek trade as an example of the deficiency of the term "homegrown". Good point. In that vein, here's a question that I honestly don't know the answer to: do we ever trade for prospects these days? Do we ever pick up guys who aren't Major League material yet but show a lot of promise? I don't keep up at all with the farm teams, so I don't know. But it seems important to look beyond just today's need.

I was at this game. Yes, it was a serious stinker. To say that we got three hits is being quite generous. After Johnny's leadoff hit, the two remaining 'hits' both bounced off the Rangers' right fielder's glove and could just as easily have been scored errors as hits. Well, I guess Millar's triple would have been a pretty spectacular grab, so on the whole it was closer to a hit than an error, but you get the point: we got one hit all night that actually evaded all the fielders' gloves. Pathetic. There was a great Sox fan-base there, though -- at least as much Sox paraphernalia as Rangers stuff. When things were looking good for us (4th-5th inning), there was a nice cheer of "Here we go, Red Sox, here we go!" which is quite heartening when you're playing an away game. Wakefield looked great through 5, but obviously ran into trouble in the 6th. Park was outstanding, though. Our $10 million shortstop didn't impress. He looked clueless at the plate (of course, so did everyone else), and at one point he made a Little League style matador attempt to get a ground ball. It was like he was thinking, "Ooooh, that was hit hard. I don't want to get in front of that. I'll just stick my glove out and hope I get lucky." [Disclaimer: I haven't had many screaming one-hop grounders hit at me in a while, so maybe it's harder than it looks ] That batter came around to score, of course. Is something wrong with Bellhorn, or was he just resting? I'm as tired as everyone else of Bellhorn's monster K totals, but at least he swings the bat. Vasquez struck out looking his last two times up. We may as well have had Punky Brewster up there batting. All in all, a lousy game. The batting was worse than pathetic, the fielding was not great, and the relief pitching was lousy. The only bright spot is that Wakefield was absolutely mowing them down for the first half of the game. He pitched better than his line would indicate. It's probably waaaaay too early to say this, but is anyone else starting to get the feeling that the Sox and the Yankees are dinosaurs? The Rangers, for example, have an outstanding _young_ infield, while we just throw money at the biggest available name in the off-season (cough, Renteria, cough, cough) regardless of whether he's actually worth anything. [End of pessimistic rant.]

Works for me. I give all the credit in the world to Schilling for the Sox' success last year, but I only get to see the Sox play about once every two years on average, and right now Wake gives me a better chance to see a victory than Schill. Chan Ho Park is starting for Texas, and he's having a pretty good year, IIRC. Should be a good pitching matchup. But more of that on the game thread two days from now.

Today's game is going to be a rain-out? Does that mean (with no game Thursday, unless I'm mistaken, which I could very well be) that Wakefield will be on the mound Friday? I have a vested interest since I'm going to Friday's game.

Maybe we can put him on probation or something. And if he tells us tomorrow that he watched 'Gigli' instead of the game, well, we'll know what to do.

No, but I'm accepting applications.

Yeah, sorry about the long absence from posting. I've been busy, uh, performing secret curses on the Yankees, as you can tell from their (snicker, snicker) record.

Sorry, yeszir, you may be called "Administrator" and have seven little boxes under your name, but I'm afraid you're banned now. It's a terrible shame... you seemed like such a nice admin.

Nice pic... but I think there are 1 or 2 guys on the team other than Manny and Papi, right? The other 38+ guys seem a bit underrepresented... For instance, I'd like one of Cabrera knocking Jeter (or was it Cairo -- can't remember) arse over teakettle in the ALCS.

The look on the pitcher's face was great. But I see it as a look of relief: "That is the longest home run that will ever, ever be hit off me. No man can do that to me again. Having survived the worst, I can now look fearlessly to the future." I mean, I assume he survived -- it's possible that he might have died of shame shortly after leaving the mound. And surely if he were in a samurai movie, he'd be carving himself open after experiencing such a resounding public defeat. But I don't think they do that in Japan anymore, so his life is probably not in danger.

Noah and Yeszir-- There are some effective weight-loss plans available for large people such as yourselves.

I've posted this elsewhere, but I agree with schillingouttheks' assessment that the Cards' offensive woes had more to do with our pitching than their bats. As I review the games in my mind, I see tough pitch after tough pitch coming at Walker, Pujols, Rolen, Edmonds, and Sanders. Sometimes the Cards could do something with the tough pitches -- Walker's (meaningless) HR in Game 3 came off a good Foulke changeup down out of the strike zone, as I recall. Just a good solid piece of hitting, making something good come out of a pitcher's pitch. But more often than not, our tough pitching meant pop-ups, weak grounders, etc. Oh, we got lucky, too, as quite a few balls were hammered but directly at a fielder. But here's an example of what I'm talking about -- you know the NLCS Game 6 walk off HR by Edmonds? Where was that pitch? It was a gigantic meatball, a not-so-fast fastball between the belt and the letters right over the heart of the plate. How many meatballs did their big guns see in the WS? Not very many. We saw some, though. Manny's Game 3 HR -- meatball. Trot's Game 4 RBI double -- meatball (not that the pitcher had any choice given the situation, but, hey, it was his fault for getting into that situation). But their boys got a steady diet of high-and-tight heat, low and away junk, back door breaking stuff, etc. (as well as occasionally being blown away by Schill, Pedro, Embree, and even sometimes Lowe). Just beautiful. In conclusion, yes, the Cards had cold bats in that they were unable (for the most part) to overcome good pitching with opposite field hits or Texas leaguers or Beltran-style "I-don't-care-where-the-ball-is-I'm-going-to-hammer-it" hitting. But in the same way that every team went cold when facing Bob Gibson, this was more about pitching than hitting.

Do it. Doesn't even have to be free of charge.

I think that if Bellhorn had mashed one or driven in some runs in either Game 3 or 4, he would have been the choice (not saying whether or not I think that's right, just what would have happened). As it is, I would have voted Foulke, but then again he really wasn't in that many very tight save situations (just Game 1, right?), so you could say that he just mopped up. Mueller batted .400+, as did Manny, so I think either one would have been appropriate. I guess Manny had more RBIs, plus the HR, so that's that. Now that I think about it, the MVP should have gone to... the Sox pitching staff. They just throttled the NL's best offense. Absolutely made them look like schoolchildren. It was a thing beautiful and astounding to behold.

Just to clarify, I think it's safe to re-commence beer consumption now. If you're over 21, of course, and in moderation. But I the the metaphysical danger is over.

You're right -- that is shockingly effective. Nice work! :thumbsup:

I don't believe in superstition or curses or whatever, but it might be fun to catalog the things that we "did" to "help" the Red Sox win the World Series, knowing all the while that nothing we did actually made a Fig Newton's difference to how the Sox played on the field. The Sox needed no supernatural help to win the ALDS, but when we were in an 0-3 hole in the ALCS, it seemed appropriate to take drastic action. So in the spirit of a true witch doctor, I examined my behavior to see how I might have contributed to the 3 losses. What had I done in common for all three games? The answer was simple. I had had a beer during each game. So I decided to ax the beer. Final results? ALCS and WS games when Beaneater had a beer: Sox were 0-3. ALCS and WS games when Beaneater had no beer: Sox were 8-0. The results are clear, indisputable, and convincing . So what did you do to spur the Sox to victory?

Yes, scraping your herpes sores will be an eternal reminder of this special moment. If you think hard you can find a better way to celebrate. Not that I'm trying to poop on your moment or anything...

Yeszir--- Time to change the header from "27 outs away" to... well, I'd suggest something understated, along the lines of "Boston Red Sox - 2004 World Champions". Or "'...best Red Sox team ever assembled. --Curt Schilling'" Whatever you like.

Oh, and as I mentioned earlier, that is one sweeeeeet birthday present for Mrs. Beaneater.

Yes, it does feel a bit dreamy. I called my brother in CO and he confirms that the Sox won on his TV, too. That's one independent confirmation. This board seems to indicate that the Sox won, but maybe it's been hijacked by people who are trying to deceive me and ruin my life. On the whole, though, I'm cautiously optimistic that the Red Sox did indeed just become the 2004 World Champions. 2004 World Champions. Mmmmmmmmmm... tasty. I think I'll type that one more time: 2004 World Champions. Stat of the Series: not that you don't know this, but the Sox starters in Games 2-4 pitched 20 innings with an ERA of 0.00. There has been a lot of talk about how cold Edmonds and Rolen (and to a lesser extent Pujols) were, and that is partially true. But think back -- how many good pitches did these guys see over the course of the WS? I'd say it was roughly zero. The Sox pitchers threw filthy filthy stuff at these guys every stinking time they got to the plate. Every time. The Boston Red Sox are the 2004 World Champions.