seabeachfred

Don't want to leave you, 700, Elk, Ex1 or anyone else in the lurch so I will put on my upbeat cap on and say this could work for us next year but a lot of good things have to happen to make it work so we make up for 2011 and get back into the Playoffs. One, no matter how anyone of us slices it, Beckett, Lester and Buchholz must pitch outstanding baseball next season as our "Big Three". They must not only be effective, they must stay in one piece. Health is an absolute necessity for these three if we are to challene for a division title next year. Secondly, we need to hit just as well next season as we did most of this one, and that includes comeback years from Crawford (bat him second) and Youkilis. That would make up for the possibility that Ellsbury and Papi might not duplicate their solid 2011 seasons. If they do, however, more power to us. Thirdly, here is where we might depart in how we go about it. We still haven't settled the compensation for Epstein going to the Cubs. We could initiate talks and carry them over in trade talks for Matt Garza. To me he is the pitcher we need, a proven solid No. 3 or 4, was tough against us and though his record and ERA against the Yankees was not all that great, that is deceiving because when he was bad against them he was really bad and his ERA shot up, but there were game when he pitched very well and beat them. He is AL East experience and would give us four solid starters. Fourth, I hate to say this because of our miserable experience with Penny and Smoltz, Jason Johnson and Kyle Snyder, but a low risk, high reward for a No. 5 might net us some good luck for a change, especially if our hitting is strong. Maybe Miller, maybe Doubrant and then we wouldn't have to sign anybody and concentrate on our bullpen. Fifth and last, despite all this talk about building a bullpen being a crapshoot, under Epstein, it was more crap than shoot. We are due for some luck down there in our pickings. It would be so much better if we had Bard and Aceves down there to give us two credible people at the least. This is where we really need some luck but there are some arms we could go for that would not be prohibitly expensive. Oh yes I still think we are too lefthanded. We need a RH hitting outfielder with some sock. OK my friends, tear it apart, praise it with reservations, add or subtract from what I said. I'd like to hear some definitive suggestions on these matters from you. Is this plan of mine even workable?

Dick Williams is my favorite manager of all time and I tried to pattern myself after him during most of my 30+ years of coaching baseball. He corrected mistakes immediately and didn't lolly gag and wait for things to calm down to say something, and let me also say that he was a terrific manager in helping to develop players on the Big League level. Reggie Smith, Mike Andrews, Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Catfish Hunter, Tony Gwynn, Kevin Mc Reynolds, Andre Dawson. Gary Carter---the list is endless. I never cared much for Yaz until I became part of RSN and lauded his great career. He was a bit of a spoiled and pampered player and was mainly responsible for getting Williams axed. Bad move by the Red Sox when you think of some of the stiffs that followed him. You like the 2004 team better and that's understandable since you and the rest of the crowd have followed the Red Sox longer than I have and have suffered through more tryin times as well. Four years after I came on board the pulled off the miracle so it wasn't a long time for me. As I said earlier the 2007 team won everything and I like to see that because it means we beat the Yankees and to me that's over half the battle.

And no one else has access to that kind of data either Palodios because this is all opinion and speculation anyway and it goes according to what we think is more important. For me I like division titles simply because it means we finished ahead of the Yankees, a team I have despised since I was seven years old. I'm 71 now, probably the oldest guy on this board. When you get a chance page through World Series results from the late 40's through the mid 50's as you'll see what I mean. When I was a kid in Queens it was always the Yankees over the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series, save one time. I got used to seeing that as a Brooklyn fan and I'm sick of it now as a Red Sox fan. I think that is why 2007 was my favorite Red Sox team. We won everything that year and no damn Wild Card.

Way to go iortiz. It does seem so simple of some of us.

Wrong EX1, winning the division does matter and if you'll jog your memory back to 2007 you can see it in clear Red Sox RED. We don't win the division, we don't get home field advantage and if you'll remember we were barely breathing in Cleveland and only Beckett's career year and outstanding performance in Game 5 of the ALCS gave us the opportunity to come back to Boston for the final two games. You can try and tell me had those games been in Cleveland we would still have won but I'm not buying it and I believe a lot of others reading this wouldn't either. You talk about total wins as being a tell tale mark of success, but what psychological advantage accrues from that if you are looking up at the Yankees' rear ends year after year. To me anyway, seeing them looking at us, as it has happened this century only once, is a great boost for morale. Maybe not for you but I would bet it would for a helluva lot more Red Sox fans than it wouldn't. It also is the only way to get home field advantage, the item that won it for us our last successful season.

I have a small container of Fenway dirt that was sent to me by the Red Sox Destinations people and I allow no one to touch it. Every time I turn the corner and head over the bridge and see Fenway Park I get the same feeling you do. I know it's silly for an old war horse like me to getting all teary but the ballpark has that effect on me. I hope they never tear it down.

No MVP, I haven't been a Red Sox fan as long as you have and wasn't around for those years you call lean. I know about them though and they weren't lean, they were miserable. I would call the past three seasons lean years, however. When you start winning you want to keep winning and frankly I thought after 2007 we were about to go on a magical run of real success. The last four seasons have been disappointing in that we have won nothing at all, not a division or a league title, let alone another WS, and this past season cannot be described as anything but miserable and disastrous. I wish it weren't so.

We've seen that in the past, haven't we Sox Sport???? Remember Jason Johnson, circa 2006? He was a human pinata in every start he made for us that summer save one effort against I believe KC, yet he kept being trooped out there because Epstein insisted we might have a sleeper on our hands even though the Guardians had had their fill of him and let him go. How about Smoltz and Penny in 2009? By the summer of that year they were getting hammered every time out yet FrancoMa started those two boobs in crucial opening series games against the Yankees despite the fact they both could have been bypassed and Beckett and Lester used in their place since they were on full rest and ready to go. I needn't tell how those things worked out. Call it over confidence in mediocrity or just plain stupidity but the Red Sox have this tendency to keep sending these battered has-beens out there until the damage has been enormous. This is what we might see in Miller. As Elktnnick said, Miller should have been a last signing this winter, not a first. And we still haven't done a damn thing to improve the team and we're almost in mid-December.

Well we agree on this at least. Frankly MVP, I cannot understand how they could sign this guy in the first place. His mechanics are abominable, his control worse, and when he lays it in there he becomes a human pinata. I just heard of these Saunders rumors but he once was a pretty good pitcher for the Angels. I would certainly take a chance with him....and over Miller anytime.

In the game of baseball MVP it's the old saying of WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY, and lately the Red Sox have been one big lemon, 2009-2010-2011, and we should have won the AL in 2008 and would have if we had a manager who could change his pre game script when conditions changed---which, of course, we didn't. That's four years without a title of any kind, division, AL or WS. I would think that would be unacceptable to you because it sure as hell is unacceptable to me and others. If you use the mantra of 86 years between titles, your argument is on a solid foundation, but some of us think that from 2004 on we were or should have been on a course of making up for lost time. Another title in 2007 (my favorite team BTW) was fine but we should have been in at least another World Series by now, certainly at least an AL East or AL Title but we have won nothing. You might not call that failure but I sure as hell don't call that success either.

Another team's reject. Epstink made a cottage industry of taking those types and festooning them on us. Snyder, Burns, Seanez, McDonald, Patterson, to name a few. Don't be shocked to see this reject Hensley signed up by us. You know, there seems to be a mindset among Red Sox brass that these types of failures can redeem themselve by donning a Red Sox uniform. Sorry but there is no magic to wearing such a uni. You need chicken to make chicken salad. You cannot make it with chicken turd.

Sox Sport, first you....Spot on my friend. We most certainly have more than one prima donna on the Red Sox, but you would think that some old fashioned pride would inspire them to go all out to make up for their miserable performance this past season. If we don't see a more determined and less selfish effort next season, we'll all know lickity split that we have a real pig of a team on our hands. Maybe they will pleasantly surprise all of us. As for you Jung, you won't be alone in the booing if we see a repeat of what went down this past season. The players have to plant their feet down hard and make a stand and show everyone that they have learned from their errors and will be damned if they don't take it to their adversaries next season. These guys are professionals; you have to think they would show enough guts and pride to make a concerted effort to give us a team we can be proud of, wouldn't you? Of course, it would be nice if Benny the Bozo would be able to make a decision and sign a couple of quality players and for Henry the Prune Face to ante up some money to make it happen. The 100th Year Anniversary of Fenway Park Johnny boy. You own the team, we love the team you own, give us a chance to win next season. My sympathy for you stops at the water's edge of Fenway Park. They are the only Boston team I root for. Being a Californian, my basketball loyalty is to the LA Lakers and I'm jumping in anticipation in the hope that we can trade for Dwight Howard this season. It would be nice to see my favorite basketball player playing for my favorite team.

XOSK---I've told this story before so I will make this short. After the Dodgers left Brooklyn I was a male without a team, sampling this or that team, usually the one with the same name of the team I was currently managing. On August 19th, 2000, I went to Fenway at the tag end of a baseball tour sponsored by Sports Travel, located in upstate New York. That day I fell in love with the Red Sox mainly because of Fenway Park. I now have a Red Sox baseball room, a 34 by 25 Fenway Park painting that hangs in my living room with my Angels fan wife indulging me, and for posterity, it has been planned that I will be interned in a Red Sox casket when the Good Lord calls me home. My friend, I know exactly what you mean.

It's called thinking with your ass instead of thinking with your head amigo. Listen iortiz, I will gladly back down and take it back if you can tell me why they would sign a bum like Miller who can't pitch effectively as a starter and is too wild to relieve, and then let a decent reliever like Wheeler walk. It's as if Lucchino and Benny the Bozo have taken complete leave of their senses.

Dumpster diving 700? I think outhouse crawling would be more appropriate.