seabeachfred

Again Jung, this was brought up by me yesterday and it got some people's balls all in an uproar. I saw him pitch for the Dodgers a lot two years ago when they brought him up. Hell, they were on TV every night out here in Los Angeles. To be perfectly honest, DeLaRosa was crappy. He threw, he did not pitch. He went into the deep count on most hitters and got hit hard because his fast ball was as straight as a tack. Now he was younger then and immature but we have to keep in mind that he hadn't learned to pitch and then underwent TJ surgery and that may have taken some heat away from his pitches. He still doesn't know HOW to pitch but if he learns and they work with him he has a good enough arm to become a good relief pitcher....HE IS NOT A STARTER BY ANY MEANS.

It's got to get better kapsis and I think it will Barnes and Webster look like they could come into their own as solid starters and we can sure us some luck in that department because, as you said, we have the worst efen luck with pitching prospects. As for DeLaRosa I mentioned yesterday the chorus of some angry retorts that while this guy has a power arm, he does not know how to pitch yet and he also isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. It may take a little more time with him---and just in case you don't know I have said relief pitching is the best place for him. That also brought down the house a little. Today we saw why we shouldn't get carried away with him yet.

Ballwasher???? Not you my friend. I have never considered you one. You are cautiously optimistic with the glass half full and not half empty. Nothing wrong with that and that is admirable as far as I'm concerned. Believe me, though, I wish we could blot out the last year and that month from our collective memories---and maybe we can if we can get off to a decent start and make a surprise run in the AL East. With Papi maybe gone, we need hitting and why not put Jackie in the lineup. I know ST phenoms often flame out when the real pitching starts but I'm convinced Bradley is the real thing. Another hitter with speed on the bases with add another dimension to the team. We can then keep Gomes as our RH DH and platoon him with one of our lefties. Something I think we should start thinking about.

Bellhorn, tell the story in full instead of creasing at the margins. Unlike here where no one completely predicted accurately what exactly was going down in 2012, on Sawxheads there were predictions and one side called it down to a tee while the other insisted that we were wrong, disloyal, off our rockers and predicted total success. Remember the post on July 26 2011? If you don't you don't remember anything of what riled both camps. It was after one side proved itself correct and a couple of posters came out with I TOLD YOU SO'S, and the other side's refusal to accept it, it was then they fled to another board. Now personally I think it has gotten a little hot here and I would suggest we should all try to cool down a little, 700, Jung, me, Sox Sport and the rest of the crew. I can't help thinking that if we were coming off a much better season than we were, the feelings here wouldn't seem to heated as they are now. I'm suggesting now that we shitcan whether Ortiz should have been signed or not, and maybe try soft peddling the last five years and get down to the nitty gritty of the here and now, what is needed to restore the Red Sox to prominance---something that would make all of us smile. Any chance of the 2013 Red Sox becoming an over-achieving team???? I think that would relieve a lot of angst, tension and frustration.

I respect you a lot Palodios and want no beef with you except a friendly argument now and then. We each have our own idea of what constitutes success and failure and I think the old coach in me simplifies things such as winning and losing. More extreme than you? Yes! More extreme than normal? Yes again. There are teams that think that way like the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Angels, the Cardinals and maybe one or two others. Do I want to be like them? Hell no!!!!, but I want to see our team in title contention every year. OK, we don't have to win every year but we have to better than one division title in 17 years, two AL Pennants in 26 years and two WS Titles in 94 years. I think we should expect a little better success than that.

Please accept my personal congratulations BSN on your adopted country's win over those Communist bastards. A good day for all of us.

And you butt in with some dig at me and contribute nothing to the baseball dialogue except to make assinine comments. Keep waving those 2004 and 2007 pom poms madame and hark back to the glory days while keeping the blindfold on and not seeing or understanding the rot that has eaten into the team.

Speaking of idiots, if you think Ortiz would have passed the physical if he had signed with Texas, you not only need more bran in your diet but a brain transplant as well. He was damaged goods, ergo, he would not have passed the physical and that would have been that. Also I am convinced that if the Red Sox had let Ortiz go you would have stood and clapped and said it was the right move because, no matter what anyone says about anyone, your reputation is solid......you simply cannot disagree with ANYTHING the front office does. And soon everyone on this board will know it and your credibiity will be as shot as your thinking process is.

Look Jung, you have to understand that some of those posters simply do not want to hear anything negative about the team, even if the team is loaded with negatives as ours was last year. When it turns out that way and we remind them of it, they lash out with anger and then deny we were right in the first place. You talk about those who scurried and I will bet dollars to donuts that our esteemed mvp will say I scurried out the way USER did. Wrong!!!! In June I said I was leaving the board because I didn't want to ruin for others since I had nothing good to say about the 2012 team and wouldn't I stayed because the team was s***** and wouldn't get better. USER left because he made some ridiculous predictions and then fled when he came out looking like a fool. We don't have to defend our loyalty to the Red Sox but I'll be damned if I am going to be a pollyanna when I see a pile of rot eating away at our team like last year and instead claim that all is well and hark back to 2004 and 2007. Six and nine years are a lifetime in baseball these days.

If all I want is meaningful games in September, I should have been fine with 09, 10, and 11? Well thats not what I wanted if it didn't end up with a title of some kind. For some reason you think that those of us who are more critical of our team all think the same. WRONG!!!!!! My friend 700 Hitter has some ideas different than mine and that goes for Sox Sport and Jung as well. I've said this to you before but apparently you're getting senior moments long before you should. To me success is an AL East Division or an AL League or a WS Title. If you don't one of those three I consider it failure. Pure and simple. You don't have to agree with me, no one has to agree with me but that's how I see it........and we haven't won anything the past five years. That is not success in my book; it is failure, especially for a team with a big payroll and a deeply loyal fan base. Some of you might be satisfied with less. I woul have to be too I suppose if I didn't have any choice in the matter but I wouldn't consider it success. You think now that I have explained my philopshy of what I constitute as success that you have finally gotten it???????:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Enjoy it Palodios? My ass we enjoy it. It kills us, ruins our day and evening. Our problem is that some of us care too much and we rail at the stupidity of the front office that has made questionable signings and miserable mistakes by the carload the past few years. There is supposed to be a new culture on the team this season---so the FO says, but we still have punks like Aceves around and we now have a crippled ballplayer who is not only not going to be ready for the start of the season but who may miss considerable time after the season begins.

Jung, I don't know what BSN was reading but it wasn't what we were reading. No team was ready to step in and give him a two year contract for he money the Red Sox were offering. The fact is that the money wasn't there, teams were leery about Ortiz injury and no team wanted to surrender a No. 1 draft choice for the privilege of signing a player who might not be able to play come Spring. No matter how you slice it, the only thing we can take out of this debacle is that the Red Sox were determined to see Papi retire as a Red Sox, and, as you said, only our team so glories in its past that they sign a guy because he once was one of our star performers who helped win a couple of titles. Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Scott Brosias and Tino Martinez, among others, actually helped the Yankees win more title for their team than Ortiz won for us, but when their time was up they were sent packing. We keep them around. Witness how long we held onto Varitek and Wakefield when the sun had descended on their talents two and three years earlier.

And fair warning to you BSN....User never finds fault with anything the front office does. He goes down the line with them on every conceivable move they make and even when he occasionally say something they do wrong he quickly modifies that so as to make them less culpable for any miserable move they may have made. We have had five years of failure and near failure and last year we had the worst season any Red Sox team has had since 1965. For some posters to gloss over that and play make believe that all our problems are now in our rear view mirror is to me absolutely foolhardy at best and totally ignorant at worst. Now with Ortiz on the shelf for a week, don't be surprised if he winds up on the DL. He is not healing and in fact, it looks like his health has regressed. This is nothing to pass off as immaterial.

Someone else would surely have given him a two-year deal? Really? Who would that be Mastermind? Talk about talking through your levis, that has to be rank with some of the dumbest things I've heard this spring. And what makes you such a know-it-all that it would have happened? It didn't because no team made such a move and they didn't because they knew Ortiz was hurt and might not recover and they sure as hell weren't going to give him the money the Red Sox did under those circumstances and then surrendeer a No. 1 draft choice in the bargain. Now that the Red Sox have shut Ortiz down for a week, odds are he will not be ready for he season and it wouldn't surprise me if he winds up on the disabled list. As for people flip flopping, you base it what you think we would have said if it had turned out differently but from what I've read 700, SoxSport, Jung, me and others were never in favor of giving Ortiz a two year contract. You were because you support whatever the front office does. You cannot help yourself, it's in your DNA. If the front office does it, all is fine. Well all is not fine. There is a good chance we might get bumpkiss from Ortiz this season.

A guy can throw 97MPH but if his ball is as straight as an arrow he is going to get hit, and if you saw his last performance he got ripped good by a bunch of second raters. He got hit in LA and he will get hit in Boston and harder if he doesn't harness his stuff and learn to pitch instead of throw. Your enthusiasm is commendable but get a grip. I'm not the only one who thinks he future is in the bullpen. You seem to be one of the very few who sees him as a starter. And be sure, I saw him pitch more than you did b ecause he was a pretty regular bullpen guy for the Dodgers in 2011, and he was NOT t hat impressive at all. We'll just have to agree to disagree on him at the moment. You are not going to convince me that he is a starting pitcher any more than Bard was, and I've given up trying to convince you otherwise.

What more due diligence??? You're asking that with what the situation is right now? How about a one year contract and a team option? Think he could have gotten a better offer from another team with his injury of his----or more money? As for whining, I see you're back carrying the water and wood for the front office again. To you they seldom do any wrong. I guess it must be all the success we've had the past five years.

That's a very good point Bellhorn; Ortiz is doing his damndest to g et back in action. We have to keep in mind that Achilles injuries are very slow healing to begin with and often times there is stagnation and maybe even a little regresion before light is seen at the end of the tunnel. I just hope that light is not a freight train bearing down on us because today there were a number of articles that were strongly hinting that Papi might open the season on the DL. I just wish the Red Sox had just given him a one year contract because with that injury I don't think any other AL team would have ponied up more money than we were offering him and perhaps not a two year deal either. Of course, that we will never know for sure.

I've always believed the Red Sox should have offered Papi only a one year contract, especially when his achilles tendon was seemingly in a very weakened condition. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the Red Sox were determined to have Ortiz retire as a Red Soxer and might have feared some o ther team would swoop down and sign him to a longer contract. I have no qualms about his retiring as a Red Sox player, but due diligence seemed to be missing and it could go down as another stupid move by the Red Sox front office if David can't play this season. From what I've been reading he may actually be regressing. Is that possible? Hindsight is 20/20 but this might have been handled better with a real close inspection of the injury he suffered. Or did it look like he would be fine with rest? We know Achilles injuries are very slow to heal due to the lack of blood that enters into that area. One of these days Jung this Red Sox nightmare of the past few years will end......we hope.

Wasn't it that I agreed with you instead? Oh, the hell with it. We are on the same page with this---and I guess I may have forgotten. A senior moment!!! He may have a higher cealing than I currently give him credit for but I'm going by what I saw two years ago. Then he had that surgery and, well, who knows how much that set him back? Like you, though, I see him as a reliever. For an inning or two his hummer could be very effective in that role.

Some players never return to full form after tearing the achilles........that's what you said and you are right and that is why I' m beginning to think Papi may be on his last legs for us. Howard tore his in October of 2011, but didn't he wait a few months before he had it operated on? I thought he did. No matter, though, we're not concerned with Howard, but Ortiz' absence from any real activities in ST make me wonder if maybe it would have been wiser for them to operate on his achilles instead of going the rest and therapy route? I'm getting the impression the Red Sox gave Ortiz two years because they want him to retire as a Red Sox player and if so that is not a bad idea from where I sit.

Well since I gave an opinion on a player I was waiting for you to give an opposite opinion on it since you have never agreed with me on anything I've posted. Then, again mvp, miracles can happen and I was waiting with baited breath to see if finally you might actually back me up for a change. Frankly, I don't think DLR is ready for the big time yet.

A big shitburger coming up Jung!!!!!! You know, on another board someone suggested that when he injured his achilles last summer that he get it operated on, but once again our pathetic medical staff and the front office agreed to do by therapy and rest. Ryan Howard of the Phillies ruptured his achilles, had it operated on and in eight months was back in action. It has been eight months for "His Eminence" and he still can't run to save his ass. Papi has meant a lot to the Red Sox and maybe we should go easy on him, but between he, Lucchino, Cherington and the medical staff a real royal fu@k up has occurred. We now had better get good pitching and good high average hitting because we might be suffering a power shortage this season-----and I don't want Middlebrooks, Pedroia and Napoli swinging from their asses and ruining their swings. More than ever, we will need Drew, Victorino and others to step up and that includes Ellsbury who has to force himself to stay in the lineup this season.

Hell, when I got up this morning I was 72. Now I'm 71? Maybe this reverse process does begin at my age. If I wake up at 69 this weekend the drinks are on me. Well a little humor is terrific. VA and I will stay out of each other's way and take any pressure off yeszir who runs a terrific board. Now, when the hell is Ortiz going to be ready to play. In his case ST can't be long enough.

Older than that yeszir....Hell, I'm almost three fourths there already---but you are right. I should ignore her completely. We have never gotten along and suggested she put me on ignore----and I think I will do the same to her. There should be no more of that.

Fans still have plenty pf reason to be worried. It was only one inning, one assignment. Yes, he looked good and struck out the side....that is to his credit but how about we see him a few more times before some of you start pounding your chests and saying he's back. He was so screwed up last season, phyically and mentally, that some of us thought he might never come back. He would be a big help to the bullpen if does make it all the way back but I think a few more trips to the mound is needed before we can be certain he is back in form.