ksushi

Its against his best interests to tank it because hes unhappy in a back up role and either way I think we have a strong enough club house to withstand an unhappy coco crisp.

If I were you I would probably find the nearest commuter rail stop on MBTA.com. Most commuter rail locals have ample parking. give yourself plenty of time and just take the train into south station and from there you can catch the redline to park street and from park you can head on down to kenmore on the green.

Yeah, rooting for fantasy players over your teams players is not a good thing. Thats my professional opinion.

I think I am one of a very very small minority of people who think Coco shouldn't be traded at all... for now. He provides us great depth in case of an inury. He helps keep our corner outfielders fresh. No matter which player is starting having two quality CFers provides an obvious weapon off the bench that makes us pretty damn formidable late in close games. Think about the advantage we will have late with a lead being able to tighten our outfield defense to the extent we can with those two. Crisps BABIP is pretty significant right now and is isolated power is pretty much at his 2006-2007 levels. If the other shoe drops for Crisp I think there is the potential for Ellsbury to be getting the nod much more often in that platoon, if not winning the job out-right. Either way, I don't think its a given we trade Crisp. He has not performed over the last two years and if he is relegated to defensive replacement/pinch runner, it would be deserved. A demotion would curtail any trade talks because it would tank his value, but given the advantage of having potentially the best fourth outfielder in baseball no matter who ends up on the bench, I don't really see that as a problem. He doesn't need to go anywhere. So what, hes unhappy, he will accept his role and help us win games because if he wants to have any chance of getting traded he can't flat line. Not to mention its in his best financial interests to stay positive and try to play his way back into a job.

He wasn't free to sign anywhere he wanted. He was traded to the Red Sox and the 72 hour window fell during thanksgiving.

Bad news, I think my friend made that up. But yeah, at least you're cool enough to admit that. Even if all of her songs are stolen. Hey who cares. I've been hoping for clay to get to face thanks yanks this season all winter. This is going to be the longest 25 minutes.

I wouldn't admit that in public. I heard from a friend she agreed to do playboy and while I'm sitting here at work I think I'm gonna see if there is any truth to that.... i mean, of course I'm not... no... erm, go red sox. literally all of my friends are at this game and I'm stuck at work.

Thats me and phish but I do like me some DMB. I think I've seen him like ten times, so i need a break this summer.

Yeah, Boyd is a total animal. To me, Carter Beauford is up there with Bonham and Jordison and one or two others as possibly the best drummer to pick up sticks. Wow, DMB

Is he starting the tour up here again? Cause I've been seeing him every summer for like 5ish years and he always finishes here and only really sounded great the summer he played at fenway. Last summer he kicked off his tour at tweeter though and I thought it was the best I've ever seen them. Even dave sounded good. Am I still the only DMB fan that thinks its funny the band is named after the least talented member?

I think this is going to be the first summer in a long time that I haven't seen DMB. Good song. Good mojo. Win.

Lol, DMB Mojo? Why?

Hey, I wear my love for JD drew on my sleeves, even through the bad times. Even through the .200-and-2-HR's-through-last-june times.

Nobody can claim to know what you'll get over a full season from either of these guys, but right now, Aardsma has shown command of a 96 mph heater. You stick with that guy.

Lets all just be friends, eh? Or at least not name call and play nice.

I just don't buy comp. players as predicting longevity. There are too many factors that go into determining the length of a career.

Lol. All I can do is say I hope by 2010 we're not looking at at Tek behind the plate with no viable options knocking on the door.

Wow, is he really bringing that kind of heat? This is really looking to be a great scrap heap pick up by Theo. The pressure is on wake and buchholz to put up quality innings, cause Colon is going to take that 5 spot.

Eh? I was quoting and responding to someone else entirely. Unless you're talking to someone else. In which case I say "LOL". Oh how I love the quote button.

I think you're right on target except for the 25 SB's. This kid can swipe and toward the end of september he had the green light from tito to go whenever he wanted. In tight situations in AAA, he would steal bags with no throw, because he had it by a mile. If anything this kid will be a major swipe threat through out his career. I'm not a big Ellsbury guy. I'm becoming one as he makes his swing more and more consistent, and as his routes get better. I think .290 with 95 runs is a possibility. He seems to offer at too many pitches, and I have the sneaking suspicion that he has an underexposed wily mo-esque inability to hit breaking balls, but if he takes care of that he could be a Johnny Damon type lead off hitter with better speed.

The problem then with our guy would be that he is 26 in a league roughly equivalent to AA - and obviously a 26 year old in AA hasn't made a whole lot of progress thus far. Any idea where one could find the average of a player in his league?

I hate this myth that one single failure can kill a persons career or ruin their confidence. Major leaguers aren't born 25 years old and sent to AAA for a little seasoning and then called up. These are the guys who 20 years after the fact are still talked about like heroes in the towns they played little league in. Guys like Clay Buchholz DOMINATED high school and college to the point where they made their opponents look like they were stepping to the plate for the first time. I watched Jeff Allison pitch firsthand in high school, if you don't know who he is look him up - sad story, but he DESTROYED everyone he faced. He made some of the best baseball players I've ever played with look like children. They have confidence. Hansen has been hampered with sleep aphnea which kills your energy and is an actual health concern and would easily affect performance. He still has all world stuff, and could make an impact this year. Cla Meredith went on to be a dominant reliever almost overnight after we dealt him. A career 2.98 in 100+ games at the bigs is pretty impressive. In Boston I think its tough to get out from under the weight of a negative performance and succeed because of the obvious and unrelenting media pressure. But this hampers even established major leaguers. Edgar Renteria, Eric Gagne, thus far, Coco Crisp has struggle with the fact that the majority of Boston fans consider him a banjo hitting defensive specialist, when that might not be the case. Yeah, this has basically been one big pointless aside, but the point is, one bad performance doesn't kill a professional athletes confidence, they've had years and years of building confidence enough to trust their own natural ability. Being in one of the biggest markets in baseball, you're either going to flourish or your not, it depends on how you handle constant scrutiny.

Untapped talent doesn't mean good talent its just that as you said, the sox went outside the box to sign a guy out of a league that has been largely untouched by the rest of major league baseball. The point was I think its a move to just inject a little japanese culture into our system to smooth the transition for guys who we might reach out to in Japan who aren't major league ready but are young enough where if signed and left to develop in AAA could be nice major league players. It's tough to entice those players over here to make 60,000ish a year and have no guarentee of ever seeing the big leagues. They'd be living in pawtucket and their per diem would be in the nieghborhood of 60 bucks and they would drive themselves crazy. If we collected a number of players and lined our system with japanese speaking talent, no matter what level of talent, enticing the guys with raw upside and actual value becomes possible.