a700hitter

How do people feel about whether Price can handle pitching in Fenway? I have never thought of him as a big pressure game pitcher, but I love his stuff.

All of the contracts are insane. Contract aside, he is terrible against lefties and that trend was in place when he was signed. Plus, he is a meh fielder at best. He was a bad acquisition at any price.

Panda is OPSing at .467 against lefties. Anyone would have done better.

Tanaka is their ace and McCann is probably their most consistent offensive producer.

I think Kelly can pitch out of the bullpen, and I don't think that is an option with Buchholz. Also, will Kelly still have minor league options next season?

Tanaka was a big name acquisition. It was only a year earlier.

That is what concerns me going into next season.

Ben, you lost your dream job. That is very sad. You were given the opportunity that very few are given -- to be the GM of their favorite team. You weren't a former players and you were not related to ownership or any other baseball executive. You worked your way up the ladder from coffee boy. That is almost never done. Then in your second season you won a World Championship and the team won it at Fenway for the first time in 95 years. You were living the dream. You were in baseball heaven. In two years, it is all gone and you have no one to blame but yourself. That must be very hard to bear.

It is the large loyal fanbase which provide this franchise with its wealth of resources and gives it a huge competitive advantage. To blame that aspect which gives you the advantage for the FO mismanagement is patently absurd.

A win is a win. The last pig got the final out.

A pig

I am as surprised as anyone by Bradley's turnaround. I was hoping for major league replacement level offense, but he is looking much better than that.

Other than Tazawa, our bullpen is a parade of pigs.

That was crushed.

Especially, those fans eating the blue cotton candy. They tend to be the most demanding. It is not the fans fau!t. The FO has made lots of bad moves that are inconsistent and belie any cohesive strategy.

It was pretty obvious after April that this was a very bad team again, after finishing last the year before. Yet, the fans keep coming. The theory that Red Sox fans would not tolerate a rebuild is an unsupported theory. Their steadfast loyalty indicates otherwise.

The Phillies have a bunch of no-name bums. They are like watching a minor league team. We should clean their clocks.

Ahem, the Red Sox fans are still packing 37,000 fans a game into Fenway Park in the third season of last place teams out of the last 4 years. That's pretty patient. The Cubs lost fans prior to this season during Theo's rebuild.

Maybe the schizo FO should have figured some of this out before they traded one of the big stars of the game (Rizzo) to get those overpriced players that they so desperately dumped. Edit: Essentially, we trade Rizzo for Miley. Yuk.

To quote Maxwell Smart, "Missed it by that much." holding fingers an inch apart. LOL!

Anyone who thinks that Ben's plan is about to bear fruit is seriously mistaken-- at least with regard to the pitching. I am not sure that he had any specific pitching plan or strategy except to collect mediocre garbage. From today's Herald: DD has his work cut out for him.

I thought it would be interesting to have a thread where we discuss which starting pitchers from the 2015 train wreck staff will carryover to 2016. I have said since the 2015 preseason that we needed 2 top of the rotation pitchers. Ben disagreed. See my sig. Ben is gone. He thought that he knew better, but he didn't. Here are my holdovers. Who are yours? You can votes for as many or as few as you would like. Who do you think DD brings back? Rodriguez/Owens -- one will make it, based on September and Spring Training Porcello -- his contract is too large to move Buchholz -- they will exercise his option but not be able to trade him for good value due to health concerns Miley will be a victim of a numbers squeeze. His contract is reasonable and his performance is consistent. He is our most tradeable pitcher. I believe that he will be traded. Has Kelly turned a corner? If he puts up a solid September to build on a spectacular August, Kelly could force his way into the rotation possibly forcing out the rookies.

I agree with you. If you have 2 rookies in the rotation that would be another year of rebuilding and pitching failure. I think we should let the kids fight it out for one of the spots. The others should go back to AAA hone their craft and be ready if needed.

You have lot of time on your hands don't you.

Agreed. They have been horrendous over the course of the entire season.