example1

Who did Bonds and Glavine sign with for one year? For one year, with the potential of getting fired whenever the ownership needed someone to throw under the bus. That's the classic "thanks but no thanks" offer. Yes, it is an accomplishment to make the playoffs. Your view is jaded Gom. They SHOULD make the playoffs every year, but it isn't given to them on a platter. If either of these teams has injuries or a weak pitching staff they will be in danger of not making it, year in and year out. Teams like Anaheim, Detroit, Cleveland and the Twins will be around for the next few years making things difficult, and there are always other late-bloomers too. And less than Farnsworth. Again, it's not about the money. Think about it this way: Torre is a free agent. Your team offered him a ONE YEAR contract and he knows he can get more than a ONE YEAR contract elsewhere. That's all there is to it. The "mystique" of the Yankees clearly wasn't enough to keep him around after having been shat upon with a 1 year deal. Nobody is going to blame Schilling or the Sox if he goes someplace for 3 years. Torre wanted to get recognized for doing what was unprecedented.

Yep. It's a valid conversation. It's not like most of us have just started watching the Red Sox and posting--long--comments about them. I imagine most of us who are posting on this page will watch the World Series and care a great deal about who wins. I also imagine most of us on this page care about how they do next year and thereafter. That said, 1. Offer him a 3 year, 33-million deal with a team option for the 4th year, 45m total. 36/37 years old isn't unreasonable for them to expect success from him. 2. mlbtraderumors.com sucks. Most of the stuff from there turns out to be fluff. That's not to say the Lowell thing isn't correct, because it sounds like the Sox. It's just a sketchy site, especially around July 31st. 3. I have probably as much faith in the FO as anyone on this board and I've proven it time and time again. It adds something extra sweet to my smelling-of-the-Roses at this time of year (see above), and I think at this point I feel vindicated, justified, whatever. If they have a metric that says "Mike Lowell is worth 'X' so we're not going much above 'X' to get him" then I understand. That's how it has gone in the past and it has worked. 4. Other options may include moving Brandon Moss to 1B (I know they worked him out there at the end of the year), trying Chris Carter at 1B, acquiring a 1B or 3B somewhere on the trade market, abroad, etc.,

A few things: 1) Why make something like getting to the playoffs an 'incentive' for someone who has been making it regularly for his entire tenure in NY? Shouldn't that be built into his contract at this point? Perhaps you will have a clearer answer to that if the Yankees miss the playoffs and get to watch from home for a few years. 2) Don't you see how Torre necessarily would have had an axe over his head had he accepted the position? They are saying they don't like what he's been able to do with his team, they are offering him less money, and they are only willing to give him a one year deal, at a price that would hardly make the Yankees yawn if they had to fire him mid-season. In his eyes he's worth less and is more of a risk to them than is Kyle Farnsworth. I can completely see how he felt like he was being disrespected, not because of money, but because of the need to attain incentives to make what he made previously and the team's unwillingness to even NEGOTIATE anything beyond 1-year. I think you're wrong to throw Torre under the bus on this one JM. I think a good view is that it was simply time for them to move on. I find it disrespectful that the Yankees even offered him anything for only one year, as it was clear they didn't want him for the long term. It's like trying to distance yourself from a girl who REALLY likes you when the feelings aren't mutual. (don't know if you've experienced it, perhaps you have.) When it's clear that you're not into her and not willing to make a commitment beyond anything very short term and non-commital, her character is lacking if she isn't willing to move on and share her 'talents' elsewhere. Torre would have been a chump to sign for one year with a perpetual decapitation hanging in the air until someone better comes along or the team shits the bed.

You sound like you have honed your defense towards claims of bandwagonism pretty well. At your age you have your whole life to be a Sox fan and 60 years from now nobody will care where you were born. Just thank god your dad didn't grow up under the shadow of the Mick in the Bronx!! That would have been much more frustrating for you for the past 4 years. Welcome to talksox.

Go ahead and deal Cabrera, Wang and Kennedy for Santana. Good luck with that one. Santana is good but that sounds like trading Soriano for A-Rod. Nice to get the best pitcher in baseball, but at the expense of a high-upside young (cheap) pitcher in Kennedy, a solid CF in Cabrera and the team's current ace, Wang.

Only 5 posts so far? Hmmm. Dice-K will put up or shut up (for most of the offseason) tonight. Time to silence the critics DiceKtor.

Calling a spade a spade. I like it. I don't think that those who did support him did so with much flare. I just figured that the first season of a 5 year deal is too early to judge a guy who can swing like JD can. He's not totally off the s***-list, but I'm willing to wipe the slate clean for this year.

Gom presumably isn't in a job with a renewable contract. Most of us aren't. Look folks, the Yankees appear to be doing exactly what the Red Sox have been doing the past few years with guys like Pedro and Damon. They set a value that is realistic based on managers, and were willing to hold firm if Torre rejected it. He did and they held firm. The biggest problem I see is that the Yankees somehow think there is a formula to winning the World Series, when many knowledgable people in the baseball biz these days agree that it is largely a crapshoot. Getting to the playoffs is the hardest part, the rest requires a ton of luck. It is remarkable to me that they are able to look a Gift Horse in the mouth. As a Red Sox fan this makes me very happy. As someone who has come to appreciate and respect Torre over the years I'm disappointed. I imagine a number of the players are disappointed as well and the fall-out will be interesting.

1. There isn't much beyond the playoffs. 2. He was brought here to do that for 6 years 3. The FO has been VERY up-front about not having unrealistic expectations for this season. I find it hilarious that your mind can conceive of a situation where one player--a pitcher, nonetheless--is blamed for an entire franchise's failure. Seems like some of the blame would have gone to Papi and Manny (who sat out the last month)'s lack of production compared to prior seasons, Drew's non-production, the failures of Eric Gagne to hold ANY leads this team gave him (5 or 6 overall, I believe). But if it makes you feel better to throw the guy who threw 200+ IP with 200+ K's and the 20th lowest BAA against in his ROOKIE season under the bus you can go ahead. It's just a weak and unrealistic point. Of course I see where you're coming from. He has fatigued as the season went on. Clearly, nobody would question that. But to say that it is "way off the mark" to say he is just missing, when his own catcher says it is the case is equally absurd. The reason he is throwing the ball right down the middle is because he is getting into 2-1 and 2-0 counts due to JUST missing on the first few pitches. It doesn't justify it, but it does differentiate between a pitcher who just misses and a pitcher who completely loses sight of the strikezone. Starts #21-27 (7 starts against CLE, TB, SEA, BAL, TB, TB, NYY): 45.2 IP, 3.55 ERA, 43 K, .229 BA/.328 OBP/.386/.714 (notice those are some of the best offenses in baseball) Starts #30-32 (3 starts vs. NYY, TB, MIN): 20.1 IP, 3.98 ERA, .213 BA/.314 OBP/.373/.687 --He outpitched the not-getting-s***-for-his-performance-Andy Pettitte here Starts #28-29 (2 starts against TOR and BAL): 8 IP, 16.88 ERA, 5 K, .410BA/.465/.692/1.157 --He got shelled here. Why do you let these two starts ruin his second half? Was he dominant or Cy Young worthy? No. Was he at least DECENT, holding up the staff at a time when they needed him to? Absolutely. You're naive to think that getting Dice-K and keeping him from the Yankees--even with his mediocre first season--wasn't a victory for the Sox. Average Game Scores in 2007: Andy Pettitte: 49 Chen-Ming Wang: 52 Roger Clemens: 50 Phil Hughes: 50 Beckett: 58 Wake: 48 Dice-K: 53 Schilling: 52 So, spread over the season, Dice-K's starts tended to be 2nd best of all starters on the Yankees and the Sox. I showed above how including just a few stats greatly hurts his overall stats, but I find it ironic that DESPITE those stats he still averaged better starts than Pettitte and Wang, two guys who are NOT on the front page of SI weeping because their team didn't make it and WANG didn't make it out of the 2nd inning (or was it the 3rd) in the most important start of the season. Get over yourself buddy, and stop letting the jealousy cloud your otherwise sound baseball vision. Which, given the numbers I cited and the players I cited above would have been nothing but selective stat-mining, a strong belief in 'clutch performances', and wanting to see a famous person eat s***, from my perspective. Probably a lot more than most people here would. Take out those two starts against TOR and BAL, and Dice-K had a 3.89 ERA this season. That would have put him just behind AJ Burnett and James Shields (two guys who get plenty of credit), and ahead of Andy Pettitte, whom most Yankees fans would be willing to give a casual blow-job if so-asked. So, no, I wouldn't jump off a bridge if Dice-K had to pitch a game 7. Would I rather have Dice-K than Jake Westbrook or Paul Byrd moving forward? Absolutely. So would you.... And I know that 90% of the game is keeping the Yankees from getting players that are 26 year old strike-out pitchers for 6 years when the thing they need most is young pitching. Furthermore, I know that it was important for the Sox to land the best available free-agent pitcher last year and that Dice-K badly out performed pitchers like Jason Schmidt and Barry Zito, both of whom are not drawing NEARLY as much ire for their performances this season as Dice-K is. You may not believe this jacksonian, but, remarkably enough, if the Sox had not made the playoffs this year it would not have been blamed on the pitching staff. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you simply don't throw rookie pitchers under the bus for being near the leaderboard in a number of important categories, especially when there were ELEVEN starts where Dice-K had two or fewer runs of support. Wang had 4 such games.

Beckett has seen this situation before. Marlins won the first game at home in 03 and then lost 3 in a row to the Cubbies. Beckett comes in game 5 and goes 9 IP, 2 H, 11 K CG Shutout. Wow!

Win one, get back to the Fens for Schill and Wake/Dice/Kitchen-Sink

Theo has done a great job for the Red Sox. Seriously, those who don't realize that are insane and haven't been following the team for very long. Here's a quote from Theo that can sort of book-end the discussion: Where we're risk-averse is in situations where there are a lot of resources involved. And when I say resources, I really mean a percentage of our payroll. By design, we're risk averse with our payroll. We feel that we have tremendous resources, and the quickest thing that we can do to sacrifice that competitive advantage is to take an ill-advised risk with our payroll and have it backfire on us, eliminating that edge. So we are risk averse, because we want to make every single unit of resource count for us; every single dollar on the payroll really counts for us and translates into wins. So I think it is accurate to say that we're risk-averse and risk takers at the same time. So the point is to have as high a ratio as possible between $ and production. That said, good moves: Millar: solid team player, set the 'tone' for the 03 and 04 team Mueller: same as Millar, with better defense and more difficult to get out. Ortiz: spectacular move, one of the best pick-ups in history Dice-K: spectacular move, will pay out over 6 years and already has, as the Yankees--with Matsuzaka--likely would have won the AL East this year. He is 'just missing' with his pitches for the most part and just needs to work on that little bit of command. It's all okay, as most pitchers have a mediocre year or two in the majors and he is going through his rookie/minor league/first American- year all at the same time and continues to look poised. I see no reason that he can't be as useful to the Sox as Mussina has been to the Yankees during his tenure. Schilling Theo spends thanksgiving with the Schilling's selling the idea of Schill becoming a Red Sox hero. Sold. World Series victory. Bill James: The whole sabermetric movement at the Sox has finally made me feel like there is someone running the ship in Sox nation. Instead of relying on absurd 'gut feelings' or worrying too much about public opinion, they have the most rigorous statistical analysis possible. Hiring the guy who basically invented sabermetrics is a pretty good way to start. Follow through/staying with the organizational philosophy: much more difficult than one would think when that philosophy goes counter to just about everything that most people THINK they know about baseball. Among them: OBP vs. Speed at leadoff: OBP every time Bullpen by Committee: I appreciate thinking outside the box on this one, and appreciate the fact that the Sox are aware of leverage and will use their best pitchers in the highest leverage situations (which happen to mostly fall in the 8th and 9th). Letting Damon Go: I don't know how anyone could see this as a bad move. At the very least it saved them money at a position that Damon wouldn't have helped with. It might feel good to think that Damon would have put the Sox in the playoffs, but anyone who watched that Sox team knew they were dead in the water with or without Damon. Papi in the hospital with heart trouble? All of our pitching out, including Papelbon? I don't think there's WS written on that at all. Nomar Trade: There can be no doubt that this was a huge move for the Sox. Roberts, O-Cab and Dougy M all played a big part in winning the WS. Cabrera's draft picks converted into Lowrie and Ellsbury. Pretty nice move. Kielty: Who can complain about a guy who had a big multi-RBI game against one of the best pitchers in the game? If nothing else he's more versatile than WMP was this year. Tito: The rest of baseball admires Francona and thinks he does a nice job. He is consistent and balanced in his handling of the media. He is optimistic and has managed to handle an enormous job with poise and class. He's not perfect but everyone has their warts. Joe Torre, Tony LaRussa, Mike Socia, they all have strengths and weaknesses and Tito would be up there with any of them. He's done a nice job. For the most part I don't think they have made any BAD moves, given that they have statistics to back up most of their decisions; sometimes those stats aren't enough but neither are gut instincts. It's not a game of chess where there is a "best move", it is much more up in the air than that. Give that: The closest things to bad moves: Cla Meridith/Josh Bard: these guys would have been nice to have on the team the past two years, backup catcher and another nice arm in the pen. JD Drew for 14 million: I root for Drew and want him to do well. I don't mind having him on the team, as earlier this year and when he was hitting well he looked like the perfect RF option for this team. But at 14 million I find this to be the biggest place where they strayed from the quote above. At his BEST Drew is worth 14 million. Usually he's more of a 10-11 million guy. Drew ends up shooting himself in the foot with the big contract, which makes Sox fans yell "what the f***!!??!" when he shits the bed. Nobody is shocked when Crisp does because the FO didn't set the bar as high. Danial Bard drafted before Joba Chamberlain. Again, it's all in retrospect, and Bard has a power arm too, but if they WOULD have drafted Chamberlain then this team would be a dominant force. Bard is probably the most disappointing draft pick under Theo. He's still young and has time to blossom, but so far no good. Overall, there isn't a whole lot I would have done differently. I would have pulled the trigger on the A-Rod deal like Theo did, which would have given this team the top two finishers in this years MVP voting (my speculation) in A-Rod and Ordonez. Oh yeah, they still would have had Ortiz, and theoretically could have STILL traded Hanley Ramirez and Anibel Sanchez for Lowell and Beckett (which Theo didn't do, as he was on hiatus). Anyway, baseball is so much about luck that the only thing a FO can do is to build a team that has the best chance of still playing when that luck MATTERS (i.e., the post-season). they got lucky in 2004 and we all reaped the benefits. We got LUCK in 2004. Dave Roberts gets caught or that ground-rule double doesn't go over the fence, and we're STILL looking for our first WS. Meanwhile, Theo has kept this team on a winning path and continually getting better.

I like the move overall, but any talk of Buchholz not starting next year should be done now. Buchholz could have been an effective playoff starter, they chose to go in another direction and now Buchholz will have the "they left me off the playoff roster" chip on his shoulder... which is good, because a) he doesn't just get to waltz onto a team like this and pitch just because he's good and I think he understands point 'a' and simply wants his shot. It won't be a clubhouse issue, just a motivating factor. You could clean up the sheets.

I agree. Delcarmen could be a multi-year setup man, a la Scott Shields. It allows him to keep his velocity and utility up with fewer innings. I like Delcarmen where he is, except that perhaps he should be used more often.

Starting Wakefield is not a mistake. This team HAS to have 4 starting pitchers to win a World Series, and Cleveland has had no trouble throwing 4. This team has a weird way of stepping up to support Wakefield, and the crap that he throws--if on--can confound hitters and definitely mess them up for Beckett in game 5. I have to wonder, though, for all of those who wrote earlier this year that the Sox were "just fine" with Wakefield as a SP for as long as he wants to be, that there is "a lot to be said" for a pitcher who can throw 200 ip, etc., THIS is when you wish you had a potentially dominant SP for the start AND you could have Beckett tomorrow. Would anyone complain if Clay Buchholz started tonight? I wouldn't.

If this kid spends any more time in the minors, K'ing 9-11 guys per/9, I might punch myself in the head. Did Cole Hamels need to spend more time in the minors? How about Felix Hernandez? The Sox pitching staff--if they don't resign Schilling--will be weak next year if Buchholz isn't in the back end of the rotation. They weren't worried about a tired arm. They were planning on shutting him down and able to diagnose a tired arm. Buchholz said he was fine and was a little peeved (in that "I want my shot" sort of way) that he isn't on the playoff roster. It is nowhere NEAR a Papelbon situation. If you're going to send him to the minors why not just put him on the shelf, and not pitch him at all? Why have him throw a .90 WHIP against AAA hitters and wear out his arm? It's the bigs or bust and my guess is that the Sox had to use TONS of restraint to not use him at the end of the season this year. This is the year they baby him. Next year he gets a pitch count and innings limit on the MLB team, and the year after that he can go to town (in a controlled way, of course).

Sorry this is so long, but I will take a700's advice and look at the stats: Unless you're willing to go in and pluck those numbers out based on where he was in recovery and pain, you'll have to settle for his overall stats. Teams on paper tend to win based on how many runs they score and how few they give up, and players tend to follow a statistically predictable career path. If the right person is looking at the paper then that "best team on paper" should win more games than it loses. I'm not saying clutch situations don't exist and that players don't come through in the clutch. The situations do exist and the players come through. But they also fail. They fail regularly. It's a HUGE part of baseball that gets overlooked when talking about clutch. The difference between hitting .265 with a reputation for not coming through when it matters, and being a World Series MVP with the most home runs in post-season history is sometimes only a series or two away. Furthermore, while I acknowledge that those situations exist, it is because you cannot quantify it that you should not use it as a valuation for whether or not to acquire a player. It's all well and good if it is unquantifiable, but unless you can actually talk about and specify how valuable "clutch" is to a player, a players' 'clutchness' shouldn't be a deciding factor on a contract. That was my point 3 pages ago and it has devolved into this!! I have a really hard time believing that. Do you have a source? I mean, late inning 1 run games should have been important to him, if winning was important to him. Also, I imagine his teammates and opponents held him in high esteem, whether in the 1st inning with nobody on, or in the 9th. Your definition of "clutch" is starting to look a lot more like "good". Guys like Yaz can look clutch because they were just good and followed through on their potential. I would describe hot streaks the same way that I would explain my own good days and bad days on a golf course. Like you say, it is largely a matter of mental state. But hot streaks are very different from clutch. Hot streaks don't come whenever a player wants one, and they don't center themselves around anything in particular. Perhaps they can be encouraged or discouraged by numerous factors (like resting for most of September), but they too are not a light switch. They just come and then they disappear. Confidence is definitely a factor, as players who get 'in the zone' sometimes look unworldly, but can go into huge slumps with a weekend off and a plane flight. Over the long haul a player's numbers will end up as they should based on his career average. So if A-Rod has had 147 ABs then it seems perfectly valid to think that if he has 200 more ABs at some point there will be a streak where A-Rod is A-Rod. I've elaborated before on my thoughts about clutch pitching, which I think is more likely than clutch hitting. A clutch hitter has an approach that, in retrospect, ended up being correct for the situation. Whether that means looking for a particular pitch, trying to drive the ball to a particular place, swinging early, or whatever. They are called clutch because the action based on that approach was favorable to their team. The players who are going to be best in the "clutch" are those who have the best approach and mindframe when going to the plate, and those who have the best approach when going to the plate tend to USUALLY have the best approach when going to the plate. I can hit a 300 yard drive sometimes, and Doug Mirabelli can get a "clutch" single. I'm less shocked when Tiger Woods does it in the Masters because he also did it last week, and the week before and the week before that. It's not "clutch" that he scores a 62 at Augusta; he shoots that well regularly. Like Papi said the other day, essentially, "people know Manny and I are good hitters, we have an approach and we are professionals". He wasn't saying "the situation really got me going" he was saying "I do what I do, whether in the clutch or not". Ultimately, though, the big hits come on a pitcher's mistake or a correct guess. If a hitter gets 10 pitches per at bat and takes balls 1/2 inch off the plate, then he increases his chances of hitting the ball well relative to the guy who swings at the first pitch 40% of the time. If he does that each and every at bat his numbers are better and he conditions himself for playoff and clutch type situations. They don't turn it on and off, they have a solid approach. At times that approach meets with a particular mental state, a lack of a perfect pitcher, and the "zone", and players do absurd things. Kobe scores 81 points, Manny hits bombs and battles back from 0-2 to drive in walk-runs, Ortiz looks for a cutter on the hands and fists it over the outstretch glove of the barely-ill-placed 2nd baseman, and the season continues... etc.,. 67: .417/.504/.760/1.264 !! 72: .300/.381/.558/.939 74: .232/.422/.366/.788 77: .306/.348/.529/.877 78: .207/.303/.414/.717 79: .269/.329/.313/.642 Let's pretend those are all weighted equally (i.e., same number of PA) each year. Here's his avg during the important stretch drives you listed (NOT counting his injury plagued 75 season). 67, 72, 74, 77, 78, 79 overall: .289/.381/.490/.871 career: .285/.379/.462/.841 Unsurprisingly, Carl Yastrzemski's career numbers and his numbers leading down the stretch are very similar. Some years, Yaz was fantastic, particularly the two years where he made the playoffs. Some years, Yaz was less than fantastic. Overall, the numbers work out to about his career average. Clutch? Not necessarily. Un-Clutch? Definitely not. Able to have a game plan most of the times he approaches the plate and able to make it happen at a high level? Certainly, indicated by his ability to get on base one way or the other. Perhaps more likely to execute his gameplan than the pitcher was to execute his? Possibly; maybe he intimidated pitchers into losing their minds. That wouldn't shock me at all. 14 Career All-Star Games: .294/.368/.441/.809 (again) Career: .285/.379/.462/.841 Nice numbers, but worse in all categories than his career numbers. There are leverage situations, for instance, when the winner of a game hangs in the balance which SHOULD get many people excited. Most of those are what are accounted for by the traditional clutch stats, but you can get as creative as you want with it--and people have--the conclusion is that "clutch" does not exist. What matters, in this discussion, is that the front office is most likely to look at performance in high leverage situations throughout one's career if they are looking for a clutch factor at all. Their reasoning is likely that an AB against Papelbon as the winning run in August is perhaps only SLIGHTLY less stressful than that same AB in October. Both of them are high leverage situations where the fate of the game is in the balance. Players don't put heightened importance on random events--they watch the game like we do. If Yaz were up as the winning run he will want to win the game. Every player is that way. I don't think being clutch matters. I don't need to tell my kids that Manny Ramirez was a great player because he came through in the clutch. He would have been a great player had he signed with Texas and not gone back to the playoffs after his first 250 playoff ABs, and I would have wanted him to get another AB as soon as the opportunity affords it. Good hitters are good hitters for the most part. Some get more leeway than others, and the guy who is likely to hold the all-time HR record and who has won multiple MVPs should get more leeway rather than less instead of jumping into the unfounded clutch argument.

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove. If you're trying to prove that Manny Ramirez has had more than twice the playoff ABs as A-Rod I guess you did it. Bravo. At the same point in their career, here are what their numbers looked like: 147 ABs in. This was Manny's 1998 season with Cleveland. Payrod- 147 AB, 7HR, 17RBI, .279/.361/.473/.844 Manny- 147 AB, 11HR, 21 RBI, .231/.321/.490/.821 -career totals after the next 102 Manny ABs after the first 147: -.232/.332/.473/.805 In the same number of ABs their numbers were similar. Manny's NEXT 100+ ABs (probably a sufficient sample size for you in and of itself, right?) actually LOWERED that total. A-Rod has a higher average, OBP and OPS through the same number of ABs. He didn't produce as many HR or RBI, but in terms of at-bat to at-bat performance I would say they are pretty similar. Care to disagree? I'm pretty sure that if this were 1998 (or 2003) you would be claiming that Manny was a choker, a douche, a huge loser and a horrible clutch baseball player, given his horrible numbers. You can just read above... basically, Manny was given another 100+ ABs in his career before he started putting up anything CLOSE to his regular season stats. Unclutch or statistical anomoly? Or, you could just make character judgments about someone you don't know, based on your small observation and sample size, and belittle those who try to have discussions about how the ACTUAL discussion will be made. I don't imagine Theo saying "A-Rod can't hit in the clutch" or "he's a douche so we shouldn't get him". The guy can hit the freaking ball, the question is who has him when he gets there hot (again, like he did with the Mariners for a season). Here's a link to a list of common logical fallacies: http://www.nobeliefs.com/fallacies.htm Among them, the claim to prove non-existence (emphasis added by ME): when an arguer cannot provide the evidence for his claims, he may challenge his opponent to prove it doesn't exist (e.g., prove God doesn't exist; prove UFO's haven't visited earth, prove that clutch hitting doesn't exist etc.,). Although one may prove non-existence in special limitations, such as showing that a box does not contain certain items, one cannot prove universal or absolute non-existence, or non-existence out of ignorance. One cannot prove something that does not exist. The proof of existence must come from those who make the claims." You claim clutch hitting exists. YOU have the burden of proof, and can sulk in the corner when/if the Sox make a move on A-Rod and your all-time least favorite player is suddenly putting up Ruthian (or at least Manny-ian) numbers on your hometown club.

Look at all the statistics you provided YAZMAN!! Bravo. It's like we're discussing a 16 game football season, not a 162 game baseball season. Where you made claims about your playing skill was when you accused someone else of being uninformed by saying they obviously "haven't spent time on a ballfield". Your argument is ridiculous man. "A choker is a choker and you can find them in all walks of life". Again, I would say that since A-Rod got beyond the level of play that you ever did by NOT choking at the levels that you did you--and everyone else who DOESN'T play professional baseball--are much, MUCH bigger chokers than A-Rod. WHy didn't you bat .700 in high school and get a free ride to USC for baseball? Choker. How come you weren't drafted at the age of 18 and in the majors at 19? Choker. And if you say that you didn't choke it was your team, then welcome to the world of baseball and vicarious accusations of sucking thanks to your crappy pitching staff or the inability for the rest of your team to hit as well. You didn't point to a single fact to back up your argument, you just made blanket "sports radio" statements that are more suitable for the short-sighted football fan than the well-informed baseball fan. David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez really choked last night when they didn't hit home runs in every at bat. Please, for the love of God, let's move this baseball discussion into the 21st century and not just remain in the "a high average is good" "good players come through in the clutch" mentality. If you can't prove that hitting-clutch exists, then just be quiet.