a700hitter

Some players have no commitment beyond this season, so yes they would get more now. After the season, they will get nothing. Also, selling now will give them the opportunity to play some guys like Iglesias and Lavarnway and give them valuable experience. Do you care about that? How did you vote?

:lol:All voters and their votes will be identified.

I am interested in where people stand two days before the trading deadline. It seems that there is little hope left.

Lester has been so bad lately that in a game where his ERA actually ticked up to 5.49 from 5.46 we think he made an improvement. That is very telling.

I don't know if they are lying to themselves or to the fans, because the fans are not buying it. Most of us think they are cooked. If the lie is for the fans, it is pointless. If they believe their own story, it is pretty scary that they would be so stupid. They need to sell and get what they can for this low rent garage sale. Send Aviles away and Salty and Albers and Atchison and Nava and Sweeney too. Take whatever you get for them. They should be able to get something decent in return for Beckett. Play Ciriaco and Iglesias and Lavarnway. Give them 2 months to see if they are real major leaguers or just over-hyped prospects and let's move on. We know this is not the year. The FO needs to give up the facade.

The White Sox pick up another guy for a bag of balls.

^ Oh yeah, this should net a big fish. This could possibly get us an upgrade of the ilk of someone like Rany Wolf. Just tell Wakefield to start working out. He's probably no worse than anyone that they can land with a package of Nava, Sweeney, Albers and Atchison.

I think you are dead on right in this post about everything, especially the "we buried the last guy" attitude. I think it was a "we buried the last guy and we liked him" mentality. I think unfortunately, Pedroia failed us in this regard. He stepped to the front of the line and let the whole clubhouse know that the inmates were going to run the ship with his "we don't do things that way" remark in Spring Training. That and Cherries rebuke castrated Booby V for all intents and purposes. It became the players clubhouse, and they basically said FU to the manager. Well, they ran the team right into the ground. I love Pedey, but he really should have shut his mouth at that time. I think he was close to Tito and was going to resent any manager who did anti-Tito things and he shot off his mouth. Leaders sometimes don't realize the effect their words will have. If Albers had said it, it would not have made a difference, but Pedey said it and the words echoed loudly in the clubhouse.

It was mistake, and I am cranky watching a team out of the race in July in a season when there is a new playoff spot available. First, it doesn't matter what I would do. I don't run the team. Second, I never would have tabbed the injury prone Bailey to be Papelbon's replacement. In my bold predictions before he got hurt i predicted that he would end the season with surgery. My bad, he started the season that way. I am not holding anyone to "impossible standards." I am just evaluating Benny's record. The trade bombed. It doesn't matter how anyone thought it would turn out when they made the trade, because a trade or acquisition is evaluated after the fact based on whether or not it worked out. By your definition, no one would ever make a bad trade as long as they had reason to believe it would work out and some other people agreed with them. That's not the way it works. I don't think a GM would intentionally make a move that they thought was a bad move. That would be insane. Reddick's live bat was not unknown to scout's. His consistency was in question. Bailey's elbow problems were well known too. At the time of the trade, it could have gone either way. Reddick could have ended up in the minors and Bailey could have saved 35 games. It didn't work out that way. The trade worked very well for the A's, but bombed for the Sox. The results matter. When Benny makes moves that turn out well, he'll get credit like he has with Ross. Ross's season has been better than expected, but Benny still gets credit for it. IMO, his duds outweigh the good moves, and he did nothing to address the starting pitching. That is his biggest demerit IMO. He did not address the teams biggest need in any meaningful way. Dice K, Cook, Ohlendorf and padilla were not depth for starting pitching. Padilla has done a good job in the pen, but none of them panned out as starters,and that was completely foreseeable.

You are just not getting what I am saying at all. I am not disputing whether the cost is or isn't too much. I just don't believe the price for any of these players has changed much in the last two to three weeks, but yet they act surprised now and tell us to forget about an aggressive move. The price hasn't changed. What has changed (and rightly so) is the perception of the teams' chances, but they can't come out and tell us that they don't believe in this team and that it is not worth fixing, because people might stop going to the games. Instead they tell us that the price went too high. That's just BS. They are throwing in the towel while mouthing phony phrases about how they still believe in this team. I think the tag line for the Red Sox 2012 season should be "Sooner or later this team is going to go on a run." Time has run out on that but they keep pushing that nonsense. The truth of this season is that this team will be going home after 162 games, and the FO knows it.

Benny is not the only reason for the Sox losing this year, but he has been part of the problem. He did nothing to address the Sox most obvious needin the off season-- pitching. The pitching need was not addressed. He liked the pitching and thought he had enough pitching. He was very wrong. Two rookies in a rotation is asking for trouble. It puts pressure on the other 3 guys to win almost all the time leaving little margin for under performance from any of the three. Well, he lucked out big time. He got under performance from all three and they are out of the race before July ends. I expected that the pitching would fall apart, but not until much later in the season. In that regard, Benny and I both over estimated the strength of the pitching.

The issue isn't whether the fans wanted to keep him. The answer is whether the trade was a mistake. The answer to that is pretty clear.

They are not going anywhere. They need to give up thos mantra that "sooner or later they are going to go on a run." Ain't gonna happen. To go on a sustained run, you need solid reliable starting pitching. That's Baseball 101- a course that Benny the Boob either failed or skipped. They need to take whatever they can get for Salty and Aviles and get Iglesias and Lavarnway up here to see once and for all whether they have what it takes to play at this level.

I was listening to the YES broadcast too, and Michael Kay went even further. He elaborated that he felt they had robbed Bobby V of a lot of his personality. I am not sure exactly what he meant by that, but I think Bobby V was told to tone it down and play nice, especially with Cherries. When he was hired, I thought that in the worst case scenario, Bobby V would piss off the players and they would unify with regard to their hatred of the manager. That has been known to work with teams. Instead, they got this mealy mouthed guy who never says anything bad about his players. He has been a huge non-factor.

Weeknight or weekend?

I agree with you that transparency is not required as to whether they are selling or buying. They have to keep the fannies in the seats. I do get a chuckle when year after year they feign surprise at the cost. When I call it a lame ass excuse, people challenge me on it by arguing that the cost was too high. That is not what is lame about the FO. What is lame is that they engage in this ridiculous routine almost every year and they feed the fans the excuse that they were caught off guard regarding the cost. I laugh at their deception, but I fully expect it. Some teams are even more deceptive. A few years back, the Mets put out the rumor that they had made an offer for Roy Halladay that the Blue Jays turned down. They named names. When asked about the offer, the Blue Jay GM stated that he had not been contacted by the Mets. I am amazed that fans accept the excuses and explanations of the FO at face value. They play us for fools.

We will have to agree to disagree on this. In my view, Benny has done nothing to distinguish himself. I like Ross. He is an excellent platoon type OFer who can play against righties at Fenway. His fielding isn't great, nor is his baserunning. He's a good acquisisition, but the best by any GM. In the offseason? I think that is a tremendous overstatement. It's not like he signed a good value for multiple years. It's a one year deal. As far as the bad deals go, you understate the Melancon debacle. Lowrie does break down, but as a utilitry guy who could get 300 ABS a year, he carries a big stick for that role and he would have been a very valuable fill in and sometimes starting SS. Melancon is a complete zero.

Check the Red Sox transaction wire and take your pick-- basically everything other than signing Ross.

Reddick is going to hit more than 30 HRs this year. That is not a AAA ballplayer. The ball jumps off this kids bat. It always has, and now he has found consistency. Now, he he not just a major leaguer, but a very good major leaguer. The fact that he would not have achieved this success speaks to the deficiency of the Red Sox player development capability. It does not point to the fact that the kid is not good. Anyone who thinks that he is not good has not been watching him.

Well, we tried Theo's personal assistant as GM, and that didn't work. Maybe his barber or chauffeur are available.

I really hope that there are a lot of empty seats at Fenway for the last 2 months of the season. That's the only way the fools in the FO can be shamed into changing the direction of this team. Let them enjoy crowds of 10,000 pink hats singing Sweet Caroline as the team is getting its clock cleaned.