a700hitter

Yes, I know that you said that you will jhold him accountable. I sigged it so you wouldn't think of letting him slide for the good times.

Yep, we will touch base in July, and yes, what I posted was B.S.

No politics, just thankful. There is nothing political about that.

I can't believe that I have to work on Opening Day. Opening Day has arisen to Holiday level in my life. Next season, I intend to be at Fenway for Opening Day as I should be retiring soon. Luckily, President B.O's rhetoric about building the middle class was worthless, but the rich have gotten richer at a faster pace. My personal wealth has increased enough during his Presidency to make early retirement a reality. Go figure.

Will they stay awake during my explanation of advanced Sabremetrics, or will they think it was really cool that I was at the Pedro- Clemens showdown at Yankee stadium won by a 2 run Trot Nixon Home Run, the Big Papi walkoff homers that I was at fenway for, or seeing my game 6 ticket for the 2013 World Series and my Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski autographed bats? I'm going with the sabrementrics and kimmi posts first. As for the sig thing, I know that you have a soft spot for Theo, but I am a big believer in accountability. I want you to hold him accountable if he can't produce a winner in 5 years with a boatload of top prospects and a big reserve of money.

A catcher as well-prepared as Varitek is a rarity. He and Schilling had encyclopedias.

I have been dying to sink my teeth into some of that data and commit it to memory so I can add that to the baseball stories that I will tell my grandchildren someday.

Ask pitchers about which catchers call a good game. They will look at you like you have 2 heads. As the catcher gains familiarity with a staff, he learns what pitchers like to throw in certain situations. His signs are suggestions. The pitcher decides what he is going to throw. A kid fresh from the minors might rely on the catcher to get him a game, but that will not last long. Pitchers appreciate the way a catcher receives and frames his pitches and whether they can get him some extra strike calls. Good luck looking for reliable metrics for pitch calling. The best source for that would be the pitchers, and they are not strong believers in catchers game calling skills.

Genius Joe Maddon has been up late nights reading books about double switches. He's trying to figure out how to do a double switch with a DH. It's enough to make his head explode.

You and I have always liked Suzuki.

Low risk high reward acquisition.

Organizationally, the Red Sox have not focused on holding runners, but that has been exacerbated by catchers who took forever to get out of their crouch and release the ball. You could make a sandwich and not miss the end of the play by the time Varitek and Salty delivered their throws -- slower than third class mail. For you youngsters, they were dialup speed. We were always far below league average in CS% in those years. We came close to league average in 2013 thanks to David Ross's 41%. Salty was well below league average. Last year when we got rid of Salty and got some guys that had feet that were quicker than a glacier, they exceeded the league average for the first time since the glaciers formed.

This is where statistics goes of the rails. It has already been pointed out they don't tell you how many more guys would have taken second but for the fear of being gunned out. They also don't tell you how many DPs a pitcher gets by keeping those guys at first base and the number of pitches saved by those DPs that would allow a starter to go longer into a game, possibly being able to avoid a weak middle reliever coming into the game. The stats don't tell you how much harder a pitcher has to work to keep those extra runners at second base both in effort and number of pitchers, because now the ground balls are only getting 1 not 2 outs. The stats don't tell you how much sooner this will cause a pitcher to exit the game and hand the game over early to soft middle relief.

Buchholz's career has tick ticked and gone boom.

I am thinking that we can last into June with the current duo. After that, I think Hanigan will start wearing down and Leon will start wearing on everyone's nerves. If Swihart can't get here in June, I think they have to consider getting another catcher.

We need him (Swihart) quicker than we did before.

Spit, I said it right here ^. You need to work a little on your listening skills instead of being so focused on making you argument. I think we can agree that Hanigan is a guy who starts around 60-70 games each year. That is what his record shows. When you catch 60 or 70 games each year and you catch the second most games on your team most years, I consider you a backup. If you want to call him a co-starter, feel free to do so. I don't care if you call him an astronaut. He is still a 60-70 game catcher meaning that we have to get around 110 -120 games from someone else. Right now the only other catcher on our roster is an untested castoff. We really need Swihart to sieze the day in a month or 2, because I can't see a 34 year old backup catcher and a castoff getting us through the season. You are free to disagree.

I stand corrected. He was the primary catcher in 3 seasons, not 2. He is still a backup catcher for most of his career. That is what he is.

I know a guy that for a good part of his life was a professional horse player. He filed his tax return noting that his occupation was "Gambler". Horse betting is very much about stats. You have all of the horse's times, the condition of the track, length of the race, class of the competition etc. It is all there to be boiled down distilled and number crunched. This guy went to the track all the time, because you learned things at the track that you couldn't possibly know from the racing form stats. He got to know the trainers. Sometimes a horse ran a race just for a workout. The jockey was told not to ride him too hard. Sometimes the trainer had another horse in the race and the trainer decided which horse would go for the win. Stats are great, but stats with observation is better.

Even a drunk manager would not keep his best catcher on the bench for 7 seasons. Hanigan is a back up type. Them's the facts. He has always been a backup. After he left the Reds , he backed up a 39 year old catcher in Tampa. The purpose of the Blanchfield story wasn't to prove anything, but rather to illustrate that some guys are just role players. Everything in a conversation is not about evidence in a courtroom. It's a conversation. It is not a story misremembered by me. I wouldn't even know the story if I didn't hear his former team mate tell it. I don't remember the name of his former team mate or whether he embellished the story. It is also irrelevant whether the A's got him to be a starter. All he knew was that he had been obtained in a trade. No one spoke to him about his role and his team mate was just trying to make him feel better by telling him that he would probably be playing more. Being a backup catcher was a step up for him. Edit: All of that being said and your attempt at courtroom argumentation, none of it changes the fact that Hanigan always has been and always will be a backup catcher. We don't have a major league starting catcher at this time. We are waiting for Swihart.

LOL!!! I thought the number was a joke, but when I called they answered "Boston Red Sox". Hey, I'm not his keeper. If he insists upon embarrassing himself, that is his business.

I am a reasonable and wise man. It just takes people some time to figure me out. Some never do. Some don't want to. LOL!!!

Our best hope is for Swihart to come up by June and take the full time job. I can't see getting through the season with an aging backup (no matter how good he had been in that role) and a bush leaguer discard. That is not a good situation. We have to hope that Swihart blossom like Mookie Betts when he comes to Fenway and doesn't sputter and fail like Boegaerts, Bradley and Middlebrooks.

I know that you are old enough to remember Johnny Blanchard of the Yankees. He was the best third string catcher/pinch hitter of his day. The Yankees traded him to Kansas City and he cried. One of his teammates urged him to look at the bright side, that he would be starting in KC. Blanchard looked his mate in the face and was still upset and told him that he knew he wasn' t good enough to play everyday. He quickly slipped out of baseball. His Yankeee managers utilized him in a limited fashion giving him his best chance to succeed. He was not a full time player. Rather than blaming Dusty Baker, maybe it was Baker's utilization of Hanigan that gave him his best opportunity to succeed. If he was the Reds best catcher, he would have played more. Your criticism of baker with relation to hanigan is baseless. He is a part time player, and the first season that he was separated from Baker was his worst season. He is a backup -- a good one-- but nothing more than a backup.

He was a good part time catcher, and he is 34. Edit: I never said that he wasn't good. I said that he wasn't "that good". I don't put a lot of value on guys that start 60-70 games a year. Good yes. "That Good" ? No. If he was "that good", he would have started more games. He has been the primary catcher on his team in 2 of his 8 seasons. He is a backup type, nothing more.