jacksonianmarch

And what do you base that supposition on? A feeling? Does it make you feel good to know the sox did it the right way? Sorry to burst your bubble, but they didn't. Heck, EVERY TEAM since the beginning of baseball have used some form of PED. Nicotine is a stimulant, guys used to chew. Greenies (amphetamines) were used for decades. Steroids had been used with impunity since the 70s. Designer drugs started coming out for sports that actually tested with the benefit that they wouldn't be caught well before baseball started testing. Heck, AFraud didn't get caught due to a positive test, he got caught for being on a mailing list.

Manny also failed his drug test in 2003

https://www.bostonherald.com/2009/07/31/david-ortiz-failed-drug-test/ Really?

Cleaner than anyone is speculatory garbage and you know it. All teams were dirty and just as complacent in addressing it

The sox would get a pick after the fourth round if JD gets a QO and declines it. Not exactly a good trade off

Verlander is a unicorn. Guy who is a power pitcher dominating all. He loses some stuff, moves to Houston and regains his dominance by adding a slider to his regimen and living with good but no longer elite power. He refined location, still sits 95, but now has 4 pitches he can throw anywhere he wants to and all are plus

The Nats aren't going away. They're a horrible relief appearance by a reliable starter away from having a 2-1 lead in this series. Plus, the Dodgers get Scherzer and Strasburg to finish out the series. They're gonna have to earn it

The Giants always had a world series hangover. It was strange. Win the title, miss the playoffs, win the title, miss the playoffs, win the title.

Most of the time, having anything "by committee" is a bad thing. I get that the 03 team with Theo as the defacto GM certainly qualifies as a "by committee" FO. But he seized power pretty quickly. It was Lucchino's meddling that caused the gorilla suit thing and then Lucchino's meddling that screwed with Cherington. I still remember the quotes from Tito. We are winning but we need some more pizzazz. You need to hire a baseball president of ops who is the decision maker. Than hire a green GM to grow with the president

Now I need to find out what he took when he failed a PED test? And you think Manny wasn't using in Boston? How naïve. Listen man, I don't pretend to know or care what these guys used. Everyone was using. My catcher in college made it to the bigs for a cup of coffee and he was using. He said everyone was. Pretending your team was somehow magically clean when the evidence is pretty damning they weren't is some fanboy s***. Hence why I don't care if someone wants to get an edge. Let me put it to you this way. Jose Canseco made millions of dollars as a baseball player. Before he started using, he said he wasn't good enough to make the majors. Would you roid up if you could give your family the edge that Canseco did? Would you roid up if you could be the best player in baseball and win titles, etc? Most of us would do it in a heartbeat. And a lot of guys did

To some extent. But having a .240 hitter with lost power and on base skills hitting second for a whole season really kills your mojo. Having him play SS when he couldn't get to balls anymore was also pretty problematic. But the team around him sucked anyway, so it didn't matter. At least Mo looked like he could play another couple seasons when he left

Fact: David Ortiz failed a drug test Fact: Manny Ramirez failed two drug tests

The PED scoreboard? That is really where we are going here? The two biggest reasons for your 03 and 07 title runs were proven to have failed drug tests. How many Yankee players failed drug tests? Nobody's hands are clean here. Pretending otherwise is ignorant

There is nothing worse than watching an overpaid and over the hill team fight to be "competitive" when you know that the team isn't building towards s***. That was 2013 for me. Sox win a title, Yanks fade and it was pretty obvious that we were gonna ride the Mo and Jeter goodbye tour while having guys on the team performing far below their contracts and no brewing talent to speak of. It really, really sucks. Even when the sox were a last place team, they clearly had young talent that was building. We didn't. We had a piece that ended up still being good for our current run (like Gardner) but for the most part we were a retread team of overpaid guys not living up to their contracts.

After Theo left, Ben was the "GM" but there were lots of fingers in pots. The one thing DD did was consolidate power. The only thing a "GM by committee" does is allow for finger pointing and create a built-in excuse for failure.

Excuses excuses. Cough syrup? Lol. Such a blind fanboy

Manny was suspended twice and Papi failed a drug test. Keep pretending your team is clean. Keep trying. I’m only giving you facts

Prior to DD, the Sox always had a good farm. Even when they dipped in the rankings due to promotions, the word was always about depth. Well, they graduated Lester but Buchholz is right behind him. Or they graduated Bogaerts but Betts and Devers are behind them. There was always a next wave. This is where DD f***ed up. He killed the next wave by dealing it away (and won a title, so it was warranted) but the wave after that never came to be due to horrible drafting/signing and development. That’s his failure. Then he overspent to prop a window open that was rapidly closing and sent the Sox into lux tax hell

Keep living in the past my friend.

Manny and Papi must have known a few Yankees then

What the point of being competitive if you know your team has no chance to win a title? Are you really gonna be happy if you eek into the second wild card and get shitstomped in a play in game? Is it cool when you’re over .500 but finish the last half of September knowing that October isn’t happening for your squad this year? This is the kind of mindset that leads to perpetual mediocrity. Henry needs to decide if he wants to go for it or not. Halfway only worsens your team’s long term outlook. I lived through the “rebuild while staying competitive” s***. It sucked, and we only rebuilt because we didn’t deal away real prospects and then decided to tear it down and take advantage of two curses in the same season. You’re not gonna have that this year. You’re not gonna get to fleece a team that needs a title desperately like the Cubs did. You’re gonna have to restock somehow. Your best bet is to do it with the tradeable assets you have before they leave of their own accord

They’re not gonna deal years of Rizzo for a year of Betts

And one thing that everyone needs to be aware of is that mediocrity destroys baseball teams. It just does unless you can outwit the rest of the league. The problem is, when as a system you outwit the other teams, your personnel get pulled to other squads and you need to adapt. You cannot sit back and get supp picks anymore. You can not unload on the INTL market anymore. You cannot just sign tough sign guys and spend recklessly on the draft. You either suck for a bit, increase your spending or stay in purgatory. Henry is gonna decrease his spending, so your options are purgatory or suck. If I were a Sox fan, I’d vote to suck, reset, bask in the glow of 2018 and rebuild once the big contracts allow for you to spend again

Right now, the sox have 4 starters under contract, three of them had injury wrecked seasons with a fall off in performance and stuff when on the hill. The idea that you aren't blowing it up seems laughable. I get that the sox need to hope they can get something out of the debachle that is the Chris Sale contract, but you cannot consider moving him unless he is healthy. If he is actually healthy, then he is too good to get rid of.....until his arm falls off again and he misses the second half of the year for a third season in a row. Sale isn't old, but he has an insane amount of mileage on his arm. He had 6 straight 170+IP seasons (4 were 208+IP) following his debut 1.5 seasons where he pitched in 80 games as a reliever. He has amassed over 1600IP in his career, which is a lot. He also isn't built like most of the durable starters who usually have some girth to their legs and core. He is a beanpole with very skinny legs and a motion that is concerning at best and a miracle he got as much out of it at worst. Then you have Price who is literally breaking down. He's over 2000IP in his career and has had arm issues wreck two of the last 3. His velo is down and hits the DL yearly with elbow issues. He's also 34, so it isn't like he's due to gain velocity or stuff. Then there is Eovaldi who never stayed healthy and outside of one miracle month, he has proven he is both maddeningly inconsistent and frequently hurt. Those guys are your 1, 3, and 4 in your rotation. ERod has shown some injury issues in the past, but his effectiveness had been solid 3 years running. He is a pretty easy guy to count on for at least 150IP for 2020. The rest, who knows. It wouldn't be that big of an issue if your pen wasn't a heaping pile of dogshit and if you actually had money to fill it in. The idea that the sox aren't blowing it up is somewhat laughable to me and actually makes me happy. I hope you keep going for it

It sure looks like a collision course. Sucks we don’t have home field. 103 wins is usually good for the top overall seed. Heck, we barely got 2nd in the AL with that this season. We’ve got the offense. We have the pen. Our rotation has held up against a better offense in this series. But it’s hard to compare Berrios and Uber driver to Verlander and Cole. All I can hope for is the Rays defend their home turf somehow and get it back to Houston. Facing Verlander once in a 7 gamer is far more enticing than seeing that bugger twice