a700hitter

They had better get a special shoe for him to help prevent any recurrence of this injury.

Maybe he injured Kalish with one of those bullets.

I was just going on my personal observations, almost entirely in the second half of the season. He wasn't throwing hard at all in my recollection. Hopefully, I am wrong about that.

I hope Middlebrooks is okay. The Sox need him to be a power bat. Plus, I just picked him up in a pre-draft fantasy trade where I parted with Machado. Middlebrooks looks like an imposing specimen. He must have been able to rifle the football.

But on the bright side, we have him for 2 seasons.

I don't understand the compulsion to disagree with me. After all, we are diehard fans of the same team, and we both know a lot about baseball. We are bound to agree with each other at least occasionally. We have withstood the test of time on this forum. Many have gone by the wayside voluntarily and involuntarily.

And you will have every right to gloat and I for one will be very happy for you. You will not get any snide remarks from me like even a stopped clock iis right twice a day, nor will there be any references to blind squirrels and nuts. Those are the things that I hear from some asshats even though I am right much more than I am wrong. You are a knowledgeable guy and you have been right about a lot of stuff. You may be the only guy who saw something positive in Miller at the start of last season, and he was a pleasant surprise. I hope you are right about our pitching this year, because last year was torture. BTW I am still mad at you for ruining Kalish's season.

I guess they were registering his other puff balls as offspeed pitches. I watched this guy in particular at the trading deadline to see what he had. The games that I watched he was sitting 84-87. I remember thinking that his velocity had dropped off considerably from what he had been. My recollection could be faulty, or maybe he was starting to wear down by then, but I think we will not see a guy sitting at 90 unless Fenway juices its gun.

I am not going to jump on SFF, who is a nice guy, but I will jump all over the FO. Last year, they had an obvious need for 2 starting pitchers. They did nothing, made Bard a starter picked up some guys off the scrap heap for minor league contracts and crossed their fingers. Those who defended the FO reasoned that getting rid of Wakefield and Lackey was addition by subtraction and that our pitching couldn't get worse than 2011. That argument was made all over the pages of this forum. Alas, things got much worse. Even as things imploded and we were subjected to the torture of 2012, people pointed out that they had no payroll flexibility as they were already over the 8:14:52 AM cap. They purged themselves of a ton of payroll in August and they had a ton of payroll flexibility going into the off season. I thought surely they would strengthen their pitching. Tomorrow is February 1st and all we have added is a soft throwing Dumpster who was mediocre in his NL career. Are you kidding me? This is way below any reasonable expectations. I am not interested in hearing the excuses that no real aces were available or that the market was over priced an yada yada yada ******** excuses. As usual, a long list of starting pitchers changes laundry in the off season, and many will be very productive for their new teams. Even a team like the Mets, with little prospect for success in the NL East and an austerity payroll landed Marcum who many of us wanted. The O's got Jurjens for $1 million. These guys would have helped us. Pitchers were available. We had the money and we did nothing. What about trades? People criticize the Blue Jays, but are you kidding me? If we added Dickey, Buehrle and Josh Johnson to our staff, we would all be tickled pink. On the offensive side of the ball, they added Reyes and Melky. We got their loser manager. WTF! Those same people who said that losing Lackey and Wakefield after 2011 was addition by subtraction are now trying to sell me on the return of Lackey being a good thing. He's in great condition. He's going to be the Lackey who pitched for the Angels etc. Etc. Make up your minds. Is having Lackey a good thing or is losing him a good thing. Talk about a severe flip flop. To sum up, our starting pitching has little hope of being productive. We have to get rid of Salty. That should help. The strengthened bullpen should be able to salvage some games in the early part of the season before they get worn out, and we have to hope that all of our starting pitchers are juicing HGH so they can stay healthy. Those are our chances.

It is beyond me how Cherries can look at our starting pitching and see a big improvement over last year. I read SFFs posts over and over, but all I see is the same guys plus a mid 80s Dumpster and Lackey taking Beckett's spot. It doesn't inspire confidence.

Dempster was throwing in the mid 80s last year. I don't think we can expect a lot.

Yep, I did forget.

They should get rid of Salty. That will help just in case Farrell is notsuch a guru. Ricky Romwero fell apart completely on Farrell's watch in Toronto.

Last off season, the MVP, Ryan Braun got tied to PEDs and this year, the guy who finished in third place for the CY Young award is implicated with PEDs. Not good news for MLB.

The depth would be okay if we had a couple of lights out studs at the top of the rotation. We don't have that. We have at best two #2's. More likely, we have two 3's and three 4/5's. A rotation like that need better depth, because the top is not strong enough to get it through rough patches. Depth would have been Jurjens or Marcum. Those would have been good,effective signings, and cost controlled.

Cook was a horrible depth option. He has been a MASH unit of injuries for several seasons. I can't remember the last time that he pitched close to 200 innings. Plus, he stinks. Please be reminded that we had Morales last year. I wouldn't expect a lot more from him this year-- maybe 100 innings. We just disagree on the adequacy of our starting pitching and our depth.

None of those guys, Morales, Aceves or De La Rosa have been big league starters that have held down rotation spots for close to a season. Morales season high in innings is 75. Even with his relatively light workload, he has had arm issues. As for De La Rosa, unless he is lights out in camp, he has to prove in the minors that he can take the ball every 5th day. Aceves is another guy who has never been a regular starter. This is not ideal depth. Could these guys step up? Yes, that could happen, but IMO it is unlikely. If the house of cards comes down with our starting 5, these guys will be very unlikely to stem the damages. When I talked about hiccups, I wasn't talking about missing a few starts, I was referring to the fact that one or more of our starters might have lost seasons. If that happens, we do not have the depth to be successful taking regular rotation turns for 3 or 4 months.

Also, they are rolling the dice big time on a post op Lackey. I am not seeing the wisdom in that. If he has a hiccup, or Doubront hits a sophomore slump, or Dempster has a dumpster type year and it will be a very rough season. One or more of these things are likely to happen. If 2 or more happen, the house of cards will collapse very quickly, and it will not matter if our offense is like the 2004 Sox.

Good advice.

His point is not completely without merit. There is some good advice in there.

I don't think suspensions will result from this.

I don't have "guys". We're all here together. Fred and I disagree on very fundamental things. He's for bringing up the kids and developing them. That is not a position that I have ever taken. We disagree on a lot, but we just don't attack each other over it. Fred bites back if attacked. He doesn't attack first. The calling out mentality results in retaliation and unpleasantness. It makes for lousy discussion.

How about just discussing sports in a civil manner without this mentality^

Yes, the season would not be a success. Improvement doesn't equal success. It's just improvement. Standards of success would differ from organization to organization relative to the resources of that organization.

I see iortiz point. A big market team that spends up to or over the LT cap, should have as its standard for success making the playoffs .