example1

I really don't think Clement is a lost cause. Even a so called first half pitcher could be useful, perhaps only pitching in the SECOND half of the season. If Clement comes out and can play Bronson Arroyo (long relief/spot starts) in the second half then I could see this team being in a good place. If he sucks or never comes back then oh well, he can join the rest of us as a fan.

I don't think Pedroia and Bellhorn are a good comparison. The most strike-outs Pedroia has had in one season at any level after highschool was 27. He does swing from his heels, which apparently is how he drives the ball. Why do you guys complain that nobody has taught him not to do that? That seems to me like a perfectly reasonable tweak for a 23 year old first year major leaguer to be working on. Obviously it hasn't kept him from succeeding at every minor league level and throughout an illusturious college career. A guy who is as smart and talented as Dustin must be will certainly make adjustments and be a different player at 26 than he is at 23. Give him a break.

Ichiro: sick speed, tremendous average, tremendous arm, great consistency Vladdy: Power, Average and a cannon Beltran: usually he's one of the top 20 players in baseball, at times he gets hot and is better than anyone for extended periods. Tremendous athlete.

I just don't see this as a possible deal really. Helton costs nearly as much as Manny per year, isn't nearly as good, and still has a number of years left. A deal of Manny without getting Helton back makes more sense, I think. But unless Colorado pays all of Manny's contract, plus half of Helton's it doesn't make much sense unless we also get Jason Hirsh or one of the top specs in their system.

Everyone acknowledges that he's a great hitter. That's not the issue. The issue, to me, is that for whatever reason Manny indicates that he hates playing in Boston. He treats it like a job that he is hoping to get fired from, which sets up an interesting dynamic for the poor saps (us) who would all give our left and right nuts to play on that team or even have regular access to that world. To me he shows such a lack of self-awareness that it is actually humorous. I don't believe he does it out of spite. I think he's a little lazy and very aloof to pull some of the s*** he pulls. He KNOWS people will say 'Manny being Manny' and he plans on putting up the same crazy numbers that he always does to repay fans, owners and teammates for being tolerant of that crap. If he has a really s***** year this year I would hope he would be in camp on time next season. I wouldn't mind Helton on this team, but not without Manny. If you can have a lineup with WMP (when he's playing) hitting 7th or 8th then you're in really good shape offensively.

I think this involves a forceful manipulation (for lack of a better term) with the first two fingers. With a circle-change you're letting the friction and drag of your last three fingers create a 2-to-8 rotation. So a circle-change looks like a fastball with generally the same rotation, tilted a little bit if you release it as Rician (and Pedro) did. The gyroball is apparently gripped a certain way and thrown at such an angle and trajectory that it has near perfect sideways spin while hurtling through space. Perhaps like a bowling ball before it 'catches' (if you can make a bowling ball hook) near the end of the lane, it spins franticly sideways unable to catch the air correctly and curve. The way your orient the seams with a slider is meant to maxamize that catch (the discrepency in air pressure above and below the ball, basically), same with a curve. The seams seem to grip the air and 'pull' the ball. The gyro--according to that article--just slips through space without the seams catching, or they catch equally on all sides and keep the ball from straying at all. :dunno:

So its a pitch that looks like a slider but doesn't break and goes as hard as a fastball. Combined with an actual nasty slider I could see how that would drive hitters nuts. I could also see how, with only limited movement, it would be possible to miss as a fastball or something. The theory itself makes perfect sense and on other sites I've seen I have no doubt in my mind that its possible. You throw a baseball so it moves forward but spins sideways, much like a football. Footballs don't tumble end over end, they stay relatively straight but spin like crazy. Almost all pitches have some front to back or back to front, but I could totally envision someone figuring out how to throw one that just spins like a bullet. That's why I can't stand idiots who just blatently say 'it doesn't exist' (that moron Colin Cowherd on ESPN radio comes to mind) or who mock those who discuss it as being stuck in some fantasy land like we're talking about a Bugs Bunny pitch. Did anyone see that Matsuzaka threw a 103 pitch bullpen session today? Jesus, I think this guy is going to challenge a lot of what Americans consider 'normal' for baseball players.

Saw this in the Globe: I imagine they mean pretty casual tossing session, because I imagine Francona has seen someone who can throw a baseball 73 yards before. However, that far without too much effort would be very impressive.

Well, the title of this thread is good at least... Speaking of which (non-Keith Foulke related) I didn't see this cited anywhere: http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/thebuzz/ Just a stupid rumor, right? I could definitely see Ichiro and Matsuzaka wanting to play together, but I don't really see a spot for Ichiro unless the sox get rid of Manny. I don't know how you would sort through WMP, Coco, Ellsbury, Drew and Ichiro; I suppose one becomes expendable in that case, probably Ellsbury or Crisp. It's been pretty slow around here and I don't remember many Ichiro to Boston discussions in the past.

You blamed a lot of it on the Sox pen and the Sox going lightly on Matsuzaka (unlike what the Yankees would do with Hughes, right?). The only weak part of the Sox pen (or, I should say 'not strong' part of the pen) is closer. They have good depth there and will find 2-3 guys who work, just like every other playoff caliber team does. The Angels consistently have a good pen but consistently don't make the playoffs. The Yankees pen is questionable. Look, the fact is that if you have a good pen it isn't THAT good, because all things being equal a good pen pitcher is either going to be a starter or a closer on another team very soon. It is tough to 'construct' a lights out pen without getting it through the farm. You don't get the situations where you have Rivera and Wettland, or K-Rod and Percival or Zumaya and Jones very often. Now you're comparing a 19 year old kid to Roger Clemens? Sometimes I'm not sure you are consistent jacksonian. It can be debated whether or not Matsuzaka and Hughes should be compared, but to automatically assume that Hughes could outpitch Clemens is just over-arrogance that I have gotten used to from most Yankee fans (impressively, not you so much). I've seen only a limited amount of Hughes highlights. He looks like a great pitcher. Honestly, the person he most reminds me of is Mark Prior. They have that similar big pitchers build, command of a number of pitches and a fastball that certainly keeps hitters honest. You'd better hope that's where comparisons with Prior end.

I just can't think of the type of place you must work that wouldn't allow you to use the word 'suck' in terms of "I sucked the milk through the straw" or "the copy machine sucked the such and such into the blah blah." Perhaps you shouldn't be wasting your time at work posting innane replies to red sox posts, regardless of what words you use. I imagine your bosses would be pretty disappointed if they saw the product of your 'valuable' time in the form of the posts that you put forth. (the chicken noodle soup comment, and bringing my mom into it for instance... really classy).

Yes, indeed I did mean the Cy Young. It's a more powerful argument when you use Cy Young instead of WS, isn't it? touche!!

Do you work for a preschool or what?

You guys have SO much to contribute here, huh? Let's talk about Phish (a band that is no longer together)! Let's talk about them in the present tense, while using juvenile spellings (suk?) and bandwagonism. How about you stick to the topic.

Hudson was the "ace" in 2002 when Zito won the WS Jacksonian? That's a weird thing to say.

Here's the problem with things like this list. Yeah, if we had to create new teams out of Farm Systems then the Sox wouldn't have hitters. Fortunately, they just hired JD Drew for 5 years, Julio Lugo for 4, they have Crisp for 3 more (and an option for the 4th), Wily Mo Pena for 2 more seasons (also due for an extension if he plays well this year), Youkilis under Sox control for 4 seasons, Pedroia for like 6 (he has less than a year of ML service) and Ortiz until 2011. That's 7 guys who could potentially be MLB caliber for the next 5 years. By then? I don't know, but the qualifier above was "Jacoby Ellsbury is the only star-potential hitter who is close". In 5 years those "non-close" people will be quite close indeed. Combine that with a FO that has had 2 of the best drafts recently and have money to spend, and I'm not really too concerned with the Sox offensive ranking. I think the Yankees are largely in the same situation, though they have less of their future solidified--especially if A-Rod is a questionmark. you have to figure Jeter and Cano are here to stay, Damon will be around for a few years and I could see him signing a Berniesque extension. Otherwise, I'm vexed. That said, I think the Sox and Yanks both approach drafts with a pitching heavy approach and I think that's a great way to do it. Look at the immediate impact that guys like Hudson, Zito and Mulder had on an otherwise weak A's team. I don't think there's anything wrong with havin gthe #7 ranked pitching system. Not only has some of that already paid off (Jon Papelbon) but other parts of it are close (Hansen, Lester, Delcarmen) and other parts are between 2-3 years away (Buchholz, Bard, Bowden). If the Sox traded away two marquee players like Randy Johnson and Gary Sheffield they could get some great prospects too. What they couldn't get and didn't get were great major league players, and that's what ultimately matters.

I like that Ksushi, "you guys shouldn't be talking about s*** like this. By the way, you're lying." nice parting shot. :thumbsup: classic. Is there anything left to discuss about Beckett? I asked the general question "why did they tweak his motion?" and I think its relevant to ask if it was "they" who did it, or if it was a choice he made. I also think that his stuff is just too damn good to do what he did last year. Lots of HORRIBLE pitchers have done better than Beckett did last year. Didn't we have John Burkett pitching for us a few years ago? If Kenny Rogers and his "stuff" is able to be as dominant as he is at his age, there is no reason Josh Beckett can't be turned into a useful pitcher soon.