seabeachfred

There's a lot of Lackey being hurled here and about but I think the key is whether crybaby Lester and nervous nelly Buchholz will get their s*** together and give us a credible one-two punch on the hill so we can get out of the outhouse this season. As I've said before, I really think Lackey will surprise a lot of us but without a solid Jon and Clay we are in trouble before we start.

Victorino over those four stiffs? Yes. Gomes over Ross? No can do bobaloo!!!!! I would not put Gomes in Ross' class, but you might get the opportunity to tell me I told you so if he should surprise us. Still, the lefthanded part of that platoon sucks as far as I'm concerned. Nava and Sweeney? Be serious my friend:blink::blink::blink:

Whoa Palodios, let's not get carried away. Victorino is not replacing garbage; he could be garbage himself compared to the player he is replacing. Cody Ross hit 22 homers for us last year and drove in 81 runs. Shane will not get close to those figures. The rest I will agree with you on but not Ross. How soon some of us forget.

I think you left out Bryce Brentz, another new possible Killer "B". The guy is a RH hitter with good power and a cannon arm. He could turn out to be future right fielder if meddler Lucchino doesn't decide to trade him and some other prospect for a sexy veteran.

Lavarnay also deserves a chance and someone ought to tell the friggin meddler Lucchino that we aren't going to win either the AL or the WS this year and this would be a great time to break a young player into our starting lineup. Give the guy a chance; he is now 25 years old. We can't keep sending him down for "more God damn seasoning". It is time to turn the job over to him and let him play. Salty hits home runs, he does not hit for average, does not get on base worth a damn, calls a poor game, has a very weak arm, and the opposition always seems to score more when he catches. We didn't give Youkilis a steady job until he was 27 and that type of holding a guy down on the farm is ********.

I think we have to look at the Youkilis move to New York with a different perspective than we did when Damon went from our team to the Yankees, and for that matter Cretin Clemens. Youk was traded from the Sox to the Pale Hose and when they didn't pick up his option had to pick a team. For $12 million for a single season it was pretty much of a no brainer from where I sit. Damon just kissed us off after saying he would never play for the Yankees and went with them anyway, the God damn liar. As for the Cretin, yes, he went to the Bronx via Toronto but his words of being with a real organization and his barbs against Boston immediately brought the brickbats on him. Youk has said nothing of the sort. In fact I am still irritated that the Red Sox have not reissued #21 to anyone. To me the sooner that crud is totally forgotten by the Red Sox t he better.

Let me steal a page from your book Palodios. Look at the bottom of each of your posts.....notice DCNP? Well that's where it all comes to, our starting pitching. I can't see us having as many injuries as we had last year even though I said the same thing about this time last year and the year before that, but if that be true we should win more games on that alone. But how many more on that alone? Maybe four or five tops? No, it comes down to our rotation and especially Lester and Buchholz pitching up to their capabilities and giving us two stoppers. We certainly aren't going to get Dempster or Doubrant to be stoppers for us and we better pray that Lackey makes the comeback I think he will. One thing seems certain now. It looks like our roster is set for the season. Unless we trade one of our catchers our team of this year is the one we currently have listed. It had better be enough for us to make a comeback this season.

It could be a mixed bag Ted. The Red Sox seem determined to keep their good young prospects like Bogey, Brentz, Cecchini and Bradley in their system as well as their young pitchers and we know that is a far cry from Larry the Lizard's insistence on star power at the expense of the farm system. OTOH, we still have a meddling front office where Epstein's former water boy, now in charge of the GM's spot, seems little more than a gofer for Lucchino while Prune Face is still basically AWOL, either worrying about his soccer team, his wheat futures or chasing his wife around the bed. Personally, I think how this season unfolds will tell all of us a lot about where our team is heading---hopefully in the right direction, but the jury is still very much out.

Couldn't agree more Doc. Yes, we have a tough first four series this year but no matter what we have to stand tall and hold our own there. Slow starts have killed us the past three years and in one, 2011, we came out of ST having suffered 12 losses in a row in ST games, sometimes a harbinger of tough times ahead. Winning is important, sometimes even towards the end of Spring Training in order to throw off a losing culture and getting some credibility and confidence in themselves. What we need early is an end to the underachieving and some real over-achieving, maybe playing a little out of our minds. I'm not completely sold on John Farrell except to say that he knows the players, the organization and is a breath of fresh air after what went down last season. Anyway, hope is supposed to spring eternal in the Spring and maybe this year we get pleasant surprises instead of a six pack of lumps of coals.

On the face of it you are absolutely on target Bellhorn. It did play out that way, but I also remember those two series with the Rays September of that year where we won the opener and then dropped the next two games. I always felt Francona's miserable handling of the team in the dugout, his refusal to move runners, hit and run, and bunt once in a blue moon, cost us those games. Hell, even on TV Remy wondered why Tito wasn't allowing the runners to move when the Rays pitchers weren't even paying attention to them. I guess they knew that Francona was cemented down with a station-to-station philosophy that wouldn't allow that. Of course, in his eight years as manager didn't the Red Sox lead the AL in hitting into DP's six or seven of those years? Look, I am not saying that Francona didn't have his strengths. He took bullets for his players, deflected criticism of them to himself, ran a great clubhouse, handled the press with aplomb and kept the pressure off the players. Those are terrific attributes for a manager to have nowadays. It was in the dugout where his ineptness shined brightly, and, keep in mind, by 2009 John Henry had become very critical of the way Francona ran the team from that dugout.

Our friend MVP no doubt has not read the Francona book because if he had he would have known that by 2009 owner John Henry had become very critical of him as a field manager. Someone send mvp the message. I also agree that for he whole organization the chinks really did start in 2009. By then the whole organization was in headlong retreat. My take on 2008 was and always has been that Francona's inept handling of the team in the dugout was the cause of our not going to the WS.

What the hell are you talking about? Wakefield was left off the 2007 post season roster because he had a bad shoulder and couldn't pitch. I felt that a mastermind like you would have remembered that. As for those other times I'm pretty sure it was a physical thing with Wakefield because he usually came up lame late in the season, a reason I always felt why he should have been shown the door two or three years before he was.

Well some of us here are amazed at just how much some of the apologists and pollyannas refuse to get a dose of reality and continue to hew the wood and carry the water for the organization. Francona was the topic right and the year was 2008? How about a trip down memory lane and see if your memory and brain can compute what went down that dreary summer. I have always believed that Francona cost the Red Sox three division title--2005-2008, and 2009. Now for 2008 and the summer youu can't seem to remember. That was the first year of what would become the four year June swoon of the fast fading Jason Varitek. That summer as we pissed away the division lead there were at least a dozen or more times that Jason came to the plate with a key runner in scoring position and failed miserably to get the guy home. Not once did Francona ever pinch hit for him even though he had Sean Casey, either Jacoby Ellsbury or Coco Crisp, or Jed Lowrie available to take his place. We lost all those games. It wasn't until the ALCS that Francona finally pinched hit for the guy and the result was a scene in the dugout. Want more? Second game ALCS!!!!! Francona announces before hand that Beckett, who has been nursing a sore shoulder on and off all season, will be tabbed to go seven. Never mind that he may not be able to, the master pre-game plan is that he must. So what happens. We blow three leads, score enough runs to win but because Josh is g etting hosed by the Rays we wind up in an extra inning game. On two occasions later in that contest, we have two on and no outs and Terry refuses to bunt the runners along. The result was two rally crushing double plays. I could pass one off because one of the times Youk was at the plate. The second time Crisp was and still no bunt. We lost in extra innings. You may not like to hear it but in my opinion Francona cost us the division and league title that year. Division? Remember that last series with the Rays in Boston? Of course you don't. Well their pitchers weren't even watching our runners on second, four or five times I saw that on TV. Not once did Francona send those runners. We lost both games after Lester won the opener. So, yes, I stick by what I said.

Red Sox fans hope that the organization is starting from a clean slate finally after four miserable years of rot, but they will do it without the goodwill they once had. Except for the pink hats and pollyannas, most fans know pretty well how inept the team has been run since 2009. I would also include 2008 but I give that one mainly to Francona's inept handling in the dugout. What fans really want to see is a full commitment to winning, a complete deliniation of authority and the end to the constant meddling from up above, and less dependence on marketing and TV ratings and more for the nuts and bolts of winning. Can it be done? It can if John Henry will just take over the ship and start acting like an owner who gives a s***. Great if we could see some of this in 2013.

I have always believed Sox Sport that after those two World Series titles the ownership and front office shifted from emphasis on winning to what you hinted at, selling tickets, emphasizing promotions and marketing and selling the "Red Sox brand". It was as if they told the fans we got you two titles, be satisfied and let us now do what's needed to make some real money. Of course, I could be wrong but what I read in the Francona book and Theo's amplifying what Tito said pretty much makes me suspicious that you and I and others who feel the same way might be on to something. I don't mean to piss anyone off here but on another board I used to mimmick Francona by always prefacing anything I said about him with some words to an old hit some two or three decades ago.....FEELINGS, OH THOSE FEELINGS!!!!. Tito was so blind loyal to his old guard that he just couldn't bring himself to cut the umbilical cords of people like Wakefield and Varitek. Certainly a sort of complacency set in and now we're paying for it . So there is enough blame to go around, but Francona and Epstein don't get off scott free either. Together they concocted some on field strategy with the rotation and lineup in crucial series in 2008 and 2009 that torpedoed any chance we had to win a division title and if anyone wants to question me on that I can give him chapter and verse of specific instances that this was so. Hell, though, this is now in the past----what do we do now? I think there has to be a deliniation of authority as to who is in charge of what. I have always believed that Lucchino is a big royal pain in the balls; he wants to be the general manager but he doesn't want the title. He is disgusting meddler. Henry has become pretty much of a ghost in every day running of the team as his interest seems to be elsewhere and Werner is concerned with TV ratings. As for Cherington, I wonder just how much power he really has, whether he is competent enough to operate on his own, and whether the whole front office edifice is in dire need of a good enema. :dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno:

Some of my friends agree with me that Tek hung on a little too long. He had a miserable 2008 season and when he went FA it might have been wise to just let the guy walk. He couldn't hit a lick after the middle of June, his throwing was pathetic and he deteriorated as a defensive catcher. His strengh was preparation and handling pitchers; he was A1 there, but the problem we had was his always seeming to come to the plate those last few summers when we needed a big hit and Francona's stubborn refusal to pinch hit for a guy who could no longer hit after the first two months of the season. Varitek, as well as the stumbling Wakefield, should have been shown the door two or three years before they were but that's just my opinion.

With our questionable starting pitching Doj, I would think our middle guys have to be able to hit as well. See ya Jose.

For a short time I was convinced you were just trying to provoke some of us with some of the questions you asked, but no more. You're a straight shooter all the way so I will try to give you my take on why Sweeney is not what we need. He is a big guy but he has NO power---two home runs since 2010 according to MVP 78, who pretty much always knows about these kind of things. He has putrid speed so he can't run. Can't run and hit for power and he is a corner outfielder? Pardone senior but that is not what you need out in a corner outfield position. He is a good fielder and singles hitter but we saw how he faded even before he committed self hari-kari last summer. We can do better and we need a little more power out there that he can give---which is next to nothing.

You know Bellhorn, I'm still waiting for someone to tell me that I am wrong, that Sweeney will be fine as a possible platoon partner for lefty crushing but righty pansy Gomes. No one has come forth so that tells me this is one time just about all of us are on the same page. Of course, it might turn out that Sweeney will not be the one but rather Nava. Wow!!!!!! Some improvement there. :dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno:

In Sweeney's case, YES!!!!!! The guy can't run, has no power or run producing potential and is a singles hitter playing in a power position. Cherington signing this dodo simply confirms the low regard I have for him as a GM. A crappy signing. OTOH, at least we don't have to face the spectre of seeing "Lazy Lars" Anderson polluting our lineup ever again. Chances are his stay in Chicago won't be too long either.

There are no rationalizations, qualifications or excuses of any kind with me. Youkilis is a Yankee, therefore he is an enemy-----pure and simple. Thank you Youk for what you did for the Red Sox when you were here but I hope he has one s***** year just like his new team.

You see Ted, your post is exactly what the front office supporters and polluyannas don't want to hear. There was pitching available this winter and all we got was Dempster, who y ou refer to as Dumpster and maybe that's the way I'll be referring to him by if he pitches like you think he will. I do take a more optimistic position. I really think that if Lester and Buchholz stay focused and healthy we will have two pretty solid pitchers, and, laugh if you will, I think Lackey is going to be a pleasant surprise for the Red Sox this season. I remember when I predicted a real comeback year for Beckett in 2009 I literally got laughed off the Sawxheads board, so I will risk it here with Lackey. Look, honest posters will see that Cherington and the front office once again dropped the ball in the pitching department this winter and now we have to hope that what we have will be enough for the team to make an impressive comeback. You and I and those in the know fully understand it will all come down to starting pitching---though I might add if would be nice to have a good LH hitter to platoon in LF with Gomes and not have to stomach looking at Nava and Sweeney this season.

EFEN brilliant Jung----remind me if I ever diss you. You earned my deep respect with that one. Best post I've read this month.

Right SFF, I agree we could certainly do worse, BUT WE ALSO COULD DO A HELLUVA LOT BETTER my friend......Don't ya think?????? Of course, BSN threw us a parachute. He is better than Lazy Lars.

Right SFF, I agree we could certainly do worse, BUT WE ALSO COULD DO A HELLUVA LOT BETTER my friend......Don't ya think??????