a700hitter

The *******s in the FO figured that they were a lock for the second wild card, so they went cheap. It blew up in their faces and they ruined baseball for Sox fans in 2012. After tonight, we will have a $174 million payroll and the 11th best record in the AL. Only the Royals, Twins and Seattle are worse. Welcome to sucking.

Maybe he doesn't have the balls because LL cut them off, but he doesn't have them and don't expect any bold moves from him. Yes LL does run the place. Cherrington is a puppet.

By the time that happens, it will be too late and all the prime time guys will be gone.

Cherington has no balls to pull off a big trade, whether it be buying or selling. He is the embodiment of the Peter Principle. He is a gopher and a chief assistant, but not capable of being a GN of a premier baseball franchise.

Hope anyone?

The turning point of the season was breaking Spring camp to come north. This team never had a realistic shot. It just deteriorated much more quickly than anyone had anticipated.

It's an old story-- one that I have seen many times.

No, he will get crushed. Put him in the pen. No DL. He needs to work out his issues in real game situations. There will plenty of garbage time for him to work out of the pen and regain his confidence and mechanics.

Unfortunately, a team like the Red Sox in their market doesn't have the luxury of waiting and assessing situations like other teams. They have to put a quality product on the field every season or be subject to intense scrutiny. That's just the way it is. That's what comes along with the passion of their fan base. The non-baseball fans that you speak of in the expensive seats will be the first ones to desert the ship. The businesses will no longer buy those seats if its customers decline the free tickets or not happy to receive them. The real fans will have an easier time getting good seats, but we will have to watch a bad team. It will not be my first time. To some extent they have lost some of the real fans during the successful run from the constant catering to the pink hats with Sweet Caroline, loud music all game long preventing any conversation of the game, the wave, the nightly pre-game ceremony celebrating something that no one cares about other than the people being celebrated. Enough is enough. Maybe the team should take some infield practice-- a lost art. Stop the music. The sounds of the game are beautiful. Please, no more 50-50 raffles. No f***ing chowder. If people want chowder, they should go to a restaurant. Stop all the nonsense and distractions and go back to good baseball. We don't need a pre-game manager show or a post-game press conference like he is the President of the United States. He's a f***ing baseball manager. He makes a lineup card and makes a few in-game moves, and often he does a bad job at those things. If you can't follow the game while you are watching it, how much more do you think you will understand after listening to the managers. They don't have a lot of profound thought. Fenway and the Red Sox have a circus and the art of the game has been lost in all the hoopla. I am tired of what this franchise has become. Get back to building a good baseball team that focuses on baseball.

Extremely.

This upcoming week should put the Sox soildly below .500 and in sole possession of last place. The rangers have been slumping, but visiting texas without Ortiz and a pitching staff full of pinatas should make for an interesting Home Run Derby for the Rangers. At least being on the road will delay the opposition scoring until the bottom of the first inning. A similar carnage should follow in the Bronx. This is make or break time for the Sox, and they don't have the talent or character to meet the challenge. At some point during the week, expect some of our stars to get a day off for "routine maintenance" or some other ridiculous excuse for gutless selfish players. I don't even know what routine maintenance means. Do they need their oil changed and tires rotated? Is it mani-pedi day? It's time to step and show what they are made of. I'd love this pampered group of selfish spoiled gutless players to prove me wrong, because I am convinced that they don't have what it takes. It is probably the biggest collection of disappointments that i have witnessed in red Sox unis in 45 years.

Mentioning Manny Ramirez and Daniel Nava in any sort of comparison just blows my mind. They don't belong in the same league.

You are making excuses for the FO. Just because they have a budget doesn't mean something is impossible. Sometimes contingencies like an historical collapse or the season ending injury to a $15 million pitcher like Lackey justify blowing the budget to maintain your brand. Gio Gonzalez would have been worth the investment in prospects and at $8.5 million/season for 5 years, the guy is a great value. If they wanted to go shorter duration, there was Edwin Jackson, who is like Cy Young compared to Lester this season and Jackson is having an off year thus far. They decided to go cheap and stay within their own fiscal constraints. That left them little or no room for injury or under performance. Well, that hasn't worked out as they have had tremendous under performance on the pitching staff-- worse than anyone could have imagined. yet they are still at .500 and in the hunt for a wild card. If they had added pitching, it wouldn't be this bad. if they had seen the folly of putting 2 rookies in the rotation, it wouldn't have been this bad. You are making excuses for them. There are always options. To say otherwise is just not reality. They made terrible choices and they have damaged the franchise. They are getting more negative press than I can remember-- ever. It's in print, on the radio and TV. Worse yet, no one gives a s*** about them. Everyone in Boston from the Meter Maids to the executives were up to date on the Red Sox. Everyone in town knew what day Pedro was scheduled to pitch. It was the only large city that I had ever been to where so many of its citizens were so tied to a sports team. That is no true any longer. There is no excitement about the team or any of its players. They have damaged their franchise and they have no one to blame but themselves. This isn't the result of a couple of bad signings. It is the culmination of many, many poor decisions, and this past off season was the straw that broke the camel's back. The one good thing to come from this is that tickets will be much easier to get for a while. The bad news is that they aren't worth watching.

Before the season started, we knew that this team was thin in the pitching department and that everything would have to go right to compete with the Yankees. We also acknowledged that the lack of pitching depth could result in the unraveling of the 2012 Red Sox, but speaking for myself, I didn't expect them to be so consistently horrible from opening day until the trading deadline.

Good pitching helped the A's sweep the yankees in 4 straight games by 1 run. you will not see that from the 2012 Red Sox.

I am cursed with a good memory when it comes to baseball. I have watched so much baseball in 45 years that I have seen scenarios like this play themselves out dozens of times.

He was acquired June 24th and released July 16th-- that's 3 weeks and 1 day. I stand corrected.

Oakland is 7-1 so far in the second half. They are 1/2 game behind LA and Baltimore for a wild card spot. There are 3 teams and 3 games between the Red Sox and the A's in the wild card standings.

In this case it was Texeira.

Lester after the game: "I am not a big fan of sucking."

After giving up a home run to make it 9-3, Lester was bitching at the ump on 1-1 pitch. he's completely f***ed in the head at this point.