a700hitter

How does Garcia get by throwing that slop?

I voted for LaRussa, because he would come along with Dave Duncan, who has done amazing thing with pitchers. I hate LaRussa.

Thanks VA.

Is today's game on TBS?

It would take him 6 weeks of Spring Training to be more effective than Wakefield or Miller.

I count big Schill. He was a horse and a winner. I don't think we'll ever find another player who will be willing to put his career on the line by having surgery before a game. He pitched that year from May until the end by taking lydocaine shots in his ankle befor and during the game to numb the pain. Guys just don't do that anymore. We haven't had a horse since big Schill, and it's been a long time. CJ is not Sabathia or Halladay, but the guy has pitched deep into games for 2 years in Texas. That is not easy to do. The Texas heat is a pitcher killer. CJ is a horse, and he will not command $ anywhere near Sabathia or Halladay $.

Players that don't work hard enough to stay in shape are not good players. Yaz always said that as he came up, he saw lots of guys with more physical talent than him, but they never made it. The reason was that they didn't work as hard as him, and after he hit 30 he stepped up his conditioning to a manic level. The players that didn't work hard weren't good players. They didn't have good careers. They weren't good enough, but they just needed some conditioning and hard work. Good players work hard and the results take care of themselves. You are looking for the bogeyman. Sports is actually one business where it is easy to differentiate the good teams from the bad teams and the good players from the bad players. The wins and loses and the stats tell the story. The 2011 Red Sox won 90 games. They were simply not good enough. It doesn't matter what the pundits and the computer models showed. They predict outcomes, but the outcomes either confirm the models and projections or prove them wrong. This time all the projections were wrong. Honestly, you'd be pummeled down here in NY as whiner. You are making all these excuses, when the fact is that over the long haul of 162 games the Sox were just not good enough. Again, you are in denial, looking for anyone or any bogeyman to blame, rather than to admit that the team wasn't good enough, because your boy was responsible for putting together the team. You say blame the players. I say, yes blame the players. They lost it. They weren't good enough. It still comes back to who put together the team full of players that weren't good enough. What are you trying to establish, that the players were good enough, but didn't try hard enough so you can exonerate Theo. Seriously, I think you are going to cry if Theo goes to the Cubs. If they let him walk, it will be because Theo is just not good enough to keep.

Theo did a good job of putting finishing touches on the team in 2004 and he made additional fine tunings in 2007, but he is not good at building his own roster. He doesn't have a clue as to how to build a bullpen, and he has not given the team a single horse for the starting rotation. All of our pitchers are pretty much 5-6 inning types, and that would wear on a bullpen. It makes a poor bullpen into a disaster. I thought Lester would be a horse, but this season he regressed with his command. He threw way too many pitches, often in the first inning, so he was forced to routinely leave the pen with 3-4 innings of work. That is not acceptable from a #1. Lester is a good #2, but this team has no #1. Beckett gets gassed after 100 pitches and hangs his curve and leaves the FB over the plate. His conditioning was better this season, but not where it needs to be. He needs a kick in the ass. He showed himself to be a me-first guy to me in 2008. Everyone jumped all-over me when I criticized him for being soft and hypochondriacal. If you remember that he was complaining about some tingling in his fingers from sleeping on his arm. It wasn't affecting his pitching. He was having a very successful season. He expressed concern about his career. The Sox shut him down, had him checked by all their doctors who confirmed it was nothing. They built him a contraption to put his precious arm when he was sleeping. That still wasn't good enough. He was still concerned and wouldn't take the ball. He insisted on going to one of the big arm specialists, Altchek I think. The specialist ran every possible test and concluded that not only wasn't he injured, but that his arm showed much less wear and tear than most pitchers his age. That could be as a result of the pampering. Anyway, after being shutdown for a month in a pennant race, he came back. He was out of pitching condition from being shutdown for a month, so he pulled his oblique and he was useless for the playoffs. That whole thing didn't sit well with me. The docs checked him out and cleared him, but he kept whining that he had to be concerned about his career. Wait a freaking minute, he was under contract for 2 more seasons with the Red Sox and he was already whining about his next contract. He was healthy. He should have been pitching. That was a me-first attitude. people dumped on me for criticizing him. They told me that he should be concerned about his career. My point was that he was healthy and under contract to pitch for the Sox for 2 more years at $10 million/yr. If he blew out his arm the next day, the Sox would owe him $20 million. While he was healthy, he owed it to the Sox to pitch. I have had it with him. His conditioning sucks. He was the one that should have called Lackey on his s***, but instead he took Lackey's side. My recommendation to the FO: Trade Beckett for an every day player. His value will never be higher, and the guy is a dog. Fill his spot with a horse like CJ Wilson.

They are not going to back up the truck and clear out the clubhouse. While clubhouse issues may have made things more difficult for Tito, I'm not going to divert the attention away from the real issue-- that this team was not good enough. The pitching is thin and lacks depth. Maybe they clear out 1 or 2 culprits. Hopefully, one of them is Lackey. Another may have been Wake who still has an ego even though his tank is empty. We're just guessing about the rest of them.

Youk works like a mad man, but the guy is too thick. As he is getting up in age, he will need to trim some weight off his frame to help his durability. Aceves lost about 30 lbs and this year he had no back problems.

Here's a link to one of the stories. http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/columnists/view/2011_0901papi_calms_the_waters_defends_teammatefor_salty_language/ I am sure that the clubhouse problems were identified by Tito in the meeting before he was fired. I think the big culprit was probably Lackey, since he had lost all control of his emotions and discretion. His behavior was on full display. As for everyone else, I think we would just be guessing. If Ortiz comes back in 2012, I think that will confirm that he was not part of the problem.

Obviously, no one stepped up and said anything. No one got in the players faces., not even Pedroia. That doesn't mean they were all cancers. If you are gonna load Ortiz on the moving van, because he didn't speak up then you'd have to load everyone in the truck with him. Not speaking up doesn't equate to being a clubhouse cancer. Most players are very reluctant to do that. Derek Jeter would never do it. I don't think he is a clubhouse cancer.

I don't think it spells clubhouse cancer either. He always had the backs of his team mates. When Salty stuck his foot in his mouth about hispanic players, Ortiz had his back and said that Salty was right and that he was a good guy who didn't mean anything bad. More stories are going to have to leak to make me think he was a clubhouse problem. I've never read or heard anything negative about Ortiz coming from the other players or from the manager all through the years. Maybe Salty should be shown the door for his negative comments about Hispanic players.

As a pure DH, I don't think he has a leverage. I'm not sure where this "Ortiz as a clubhouse problem" is coming from. The RBI thing was such a big deal.

Where are the reports on Ortiz being a problem? I don't think the RBI thing was a real big thing.

So, if you could get Ortiz for 2 years $15 million you would pass on that to pay $13-15 million for one year to get another premium bat. I'm not sure that I see the value in that.

It will not set back the Sox. Theo set them back with some terrible long term contracts that are going to hard to get by.

If the owners are giving him permission to talk to the Cubs, they must be willing to let him walk. I was suspicious about the leaking of the Cubs rumor during the season. The ice may have been thin before the collapse. You can't blame the owners. Theo wasted a truckload of their money.

A similar premium quality bat might cost as much for 1 season as Ortiz would for 2. If that would be the case, would you be okay with giving him 2 years?

I agree that mental preparedness is very important, but Ortiz and Youkilis have always been two of the most well-prepared players on the team. I really think you are engaging in scapegoating, and the two guys you are scapegoating have never been problems. To now be accusing them of being clubhouse cancers is really off base. The only problem with Youkilis in all of this is that he was out of the lineup.

Then give a 1 year contract.

No, I am not exonerrating them. I am acknowledging that they weren't good enough. You are making some sort of insinuation that they weren't trying. I don't believe that for a second. They tried, but they weren't good enough. I thought they were built to win, but I was wrong. They weren't good enough and the season proved it to be the case. It wasn't luck, injuries, attitudes or some other boogeyman. They simply weren't good enough. Are the players to blame? Certainly, they are. They weren't good enough. Did they try? Yes, they did. Who put together a roster of players that weren't good enough? You know the answer. Sorry, your boy Theo messed up. Just because we all thought it was a great team doesn't make him right.

Actually he did change his approach and it was talked about a lot during the season. He had become pull happy and he made a conscious effort to take lefties to the opposite field. That's what he used to do when he as at his best. He adjusted his approach. Are you insinuating that he started juicing and that's the reason? Do you really want to go down that road? If he is juicing, that should help keep him young and he should produce at a high level for years to come, so I don't get the point of your insinuation. Edit: If the FO wants to go in a different direction than Ortiz, because they think he is too old, I am fine with that, but they need to replace him with a premium bat, and as I said before, that will be very expensive. If they are cutting ties with him because of his attitude, that's just ridiculous. I have never read or heard one story where any team mate thought he was anything other than a positive personality.