ORS

Dude, your vanity needs to stop. This thread is not about you.

What circles? What main argument? Our discussion last night was about a point you made and the consequences of that philosophy that I pointed out. I decided to end discussion with you because you lack the ability to recognize the legitimacy of those consequences. It's not my job to teach you.

No, I never did. Read the effing thread, dude. You've got it 100% wrong. My discussion on the injury topic has only been about letting them be in the conversation. That discussion was with iortiz. Apparently, you are so allied with him that you rushed to his defense without taking the time to see what I was talking about. That's not my fault.

Huge misstep? They missed the playoffs by one game, going 7-21 in September, with their best two pitchers doing this..... Lester, 1-5, 5.40 ERA Beckett, 1-2, 5.48 ERA Was their recovery plan supposed to account for that happening out of the blue? I mean, that is the accusation here, that they failed to manuever around the roster impact injury was responsible for. Their recovery plan apparently, and realistically, assumed status quo, which would have been fine if the s*** didn't hit the fan in September. That's the biggest reason they missed the playoffs, and the upper management response was pretty clear. Laugh all you want, but nobody got fired when they missed the playoffs because they failed to recover from injury in previous years. I've never tried to pin anything or excuse anything on injuries. I just didn't want to see them thrown out the window on a nonsensical cliche.

Example1 made a good point in the Yankees Trade for Pineda thread. In all the caterwauling about the pitching staff, the doomsdayers are pointing to the loss of Bard in the bullpen as a cause for great concern, but nobody is talking about him as a starter. I find that interesting. Now, let me preface this by saying, I'm not even sure he's etched in stone as a starter amongst the management. Maybe that's because I've been following the offseason very casually, and I've missed any actual reporting on the subject, so maybe this thread is premature. I don't care, I think it a worthy topic of discussion. What do you, citizens of Talksox, think about the following things..... Should Bard be in the bullpen or in the rotation? If he goes to the rotation, will he succeed or fail as a starter? If they lose him in the bullpen, how big of an impact are we looking at? etc ad nauseum Go!

I know. Only, I disagree about the chronic negativity being limited to this offseason. It's pretty much like this all the time.

Read my posts again. I'm not excusing anything via injury, no "loser's lament" from me. I'm saying they can't be thrown out of the discussion with a cliche, which is what iortiz keeps trying to do. They are worthy of mention.

I have no desire to debate with you.

If you don't know what my point is the last few minutes, then I have no desire to continue the discussion.

They're accurate. You know they are, because you aren't arguing them.

I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with that one this year. Valentine will get canned at least 25 times for making the wrong tactical decision in my book. No excuses. Cherrington, he's lucky he still has his job, even if it has been only 2 months. No excuses. Marmelard? Dead. Neidermeyer? Dead. NO EXCUSES!

Your philosophy is bordering on comical absolutism. Why wait 3 years? Failure is failure, right? In fact, isn't everything short of winning a championship a failure? They should have a new GM every year they don't win one. No excuses, right?

I'm sorry, but this is foolishness. If they adjust their plan based on unfortunate results from one year, then they quickly end up in a situation where the plan calls for an abundance of talent in order to protect them "at all costs". That's just not reasonable. You can't expect them to use that many resources "just in case" they are beset upon by another rash of injuries. That extinguishes a lot of their resource budget. Look at all the speculation we've had about how much they will spend this year, when it's clear they are not as deep as they were in previous years. You are suggesting they need to not only add to their current depth to get to where they were in the past, but also they need to stockpile more talent, at more resource cost, because they experienced difficulties with injuries in the recent past. Where does it end? Your suggestion would snowball into an unmanageable situation. No, the only reasonable thing is you plan for a normal distribution of injuries. If/when you get more than the normal, you make value decisions based on your expectations for the remainder of that season. This is what they've done, and it's perfectly reasonable. Expecting more is a fantasy.

What about a 27 y/o who is only 6' 4" with easy gas and good breaking ball, interested?