Dojji

It all factors in, and that's the problem. The man's in decline, just like I feared he might be as early as 2 years ago. It was never about performance with Pedroia. It was about how long his body is going to hold up to the strain he asks of it. Not a lot of really short guys are effective into their mid to late 30's, and it looks at the moment like PEdey's not going to be an exception to that rule.

It is when you take after your mother!

That regression trend is not particularly significant statistically -- as was pointed out to me when I pointed out Dustin Pedroia's similar regression trend last year which bore a great deal of similarity to Sandoval's if for different reasons. Oh and for the record from a WAR standpoint that trend continued this past year, owing to the number of games Pedroia wound up sitting out (first year he's ever lost that much time, and a really disturbing development for such a game little guy who always wants to be out there)

I agree with Kimmi. Coming to Fenway I can see a very good argument for Sandoval actually improving his performance. There were a few warning signs that he might not be an All-Star but none that he would decline to the degree that he did. And I say that as someone who utterly disliked the signing at the time.

Eh. The problem is that even when a short guy can get the velo up he frequently does it in a way that causes increased wear and tear compared to a longer pitcher who can throw harder with less effort. A lot of those short righthanders wind up profiling as relievers due to lack of durability, or else having short careers, and neither of those outcomes are optimal for scouts. As for soft tossin' skills, there's a sense in baseball circles that these are skills that pitchers with power talent should also be developing, as they will need to rely on them as they age. Pitchers that start with that and nothing else tend to wind up with even shorter careers than short hard-throwers, as it is very hard to maintain a respectable arsenal if you top out at less than 92MPH. You're giving great hitters too much time to center in on your stuff, it's hard to come up with a combination that can counter that problem and keep it countered. Not many pull it off, and those that do, are pitchers who usually used to throw harder effectively and had to figure out how to do as much with less. Greg Maddux falls into this category.

It's still not a bubble, the money right now is more than there to cover the cost of the increased salary At the most it's a potentially risky gamble that the money will always still be here, and a bubble will be created if the revenue does dip..

The increasing revenue is the salary bubble. Trying to pretend that revenue and salary are in any way unrelated is frankly silly. Ownership leaguewide has more money to play with than it ever has had before, in what crazy parallel dimension is it rational to believe salaries wouldn't go up in that environment? In what strange world is it somehow unfair or unreasonable for the players to claim their share of the revenue spike in the form of higher salaries? As long as revenue remains this strong, this isn't a bubble at all, it's just the new economic norm at a time when baseball owners are themselves making even more money than they shower on the players. Frankly the real crime in all this is that the rookie minimum is not keeping pace. The rookie minimum is only about 30% larger than it was 20 years ago. That's really not OK. IF you want to talk about revenue imbalance, there's the imbalance, and if you think top FA salaries are too high, look to the rookie minimum for a big part of the reason why things are so far out of balance. Now if the money starts to go away and salaries keep going up? THEN you have a bubble. Not before.

To elaborate a bit, physical advantages can play against a young athete as they can, at low levels, get away with bad fundamentals and rely on sheer talent to dominate. This sets up a player to be well behind the learning curve, when he reaches levels where phyaical talent on its own is no longer enough. We saw a sad example of that relatively recently with Will Middlebrooks. So this question in the OP is one that can be correctly answered yes and no at the same time based on how you frame it.

I think it's more accurate to say that it does necessarily translate. Basball is a game of skill over talent, raw physical prowess only fdactors in as, and when, the player can harness it.

If we feel every contract is an overpay, perhaps it's time to reindex our expectations. Revenue is up across the board, I believe at record levels, it really is not all that unreasonable for the players as a group to be claiming their share of this apparent prosperity. It's the nature of salaries to go up in flush time, if that weren't happening I'm very sure players would be complaining to their agents, the MLBPA, or both..

I think the infield defense played too big a role in why those leads were blown to blame the Mets pen The Mets strategy was to trade defense for offense, and they got enough offense out of it to get to the WOrld Series, which is impressive. But it's the same tradeoff they made to get there that guaranteed they weren't going to win that series against the Royals.

It's almost like sabermeterics are so en vogue today that traditional skills like speed and defensive fundamentals are the new market inefficiency. It was pretty much by having a faster and more fundamentally sound team that the Royals humiliated the Mets. The Mets loaded up based on stats, sacrificing defense for offense and playing players where the numbers were acceptable but where players had severe defensive flaws, and wound up being slaughtered by their own mistakes when the stats hit the field and started playing out in realtime. I mean for pity's sake you had an example on the very first pitch of the World Series. A proper center fielder runs that down. Yoenis Cespedes, played in center to get his bat in the game and far more comfortable in left field. had a terrible read on a flyball to deep center, and followed that up by taking a very inefficient route to the ball, and as a result that first pitch allowed Alcides Escobar to circle the bases for an inside the parker. Throughout the series the Mets lack of fundamental skills was only shown up even worse by the Royals' brilliantly fundamentally-sound play on both sides of the ball, culminating by the incredibly ballsy read by Hosmer to take the plate in the bottom of the 9th to tie game 5, which happened because of three different defensive mistakes happening all at the same time. -- Wright should not have charged the ball, that's the shortstop's ball and with a man on third he should have covered his base. -- The shortstop should have called Wright off, if not come in and charged the ball himself and looked Hosmer back, he stayed back on the ball and Wright, ironically fearing Hosmer might take the plate because of the shortstop's conservative play, charged the ball himself leaving a gap that Hosmer felt safe to exploit. -- And of course, Duda's poor throw -- probably the most forgivable of the three due to having the least time to think or operate, but Duda could possibly have taken his time to set his feet and maybe his throw still gets Hosmer, but he rushed the throw home and it wasn't close.

Point is the door is open so we can't say "we can't." Only valid options are "we should" or "we shouldn't."

HE did. In the final analysis CHerington may have done more good than harm. That does not excuse the harm he did however.

Anyone with me? They're lowering the standards, and frankly Tek might have made it in under the old standards since he played his whole career here. I think it would be a great way to recognize the guy who was one of the smartest catchers we've ever seen and made a lot of sacrifices for this team, as well as leading them to their first 2 World Series rings in the modern era. As starting catcher of both versions of the team he had a big role in how they got those Series titles. As much as I do think Boggs should be recognized, or at least I don't have a problem with the decision to recognize him, when it comes down to real contributions to the team Tek probably deserves it a little more.

This team has been entirely too stingy in retiring numbers. We have among the richest histories of any franchise in the majors and most of it is opaque to all but a few grayheads who we lose by the minute. Whole eras of Red Sox baseball where the team was on top went without anyone recognized for their significant contributions to the success of the franchise. I don't feel like that's OK. Without that tactile recognition on the wall we're coming to forget whole eras of the team's history. I think it would be entirely appropriate if at least 2 of Boggs, Evans, and possibly even Clemens were on that wall. Right now we've got nobody from that era and memories are fading. My actual preference would be Boggs and Evans who were among the best two way players at what they did in their era for their respective positions. But yeah if you're going to put Boggs up there the case for Dewey to be honored is almost completely undeniable. You'd have to have blinders on to find a way not to honor Evans after honoring Rice in particular, once you add Boggs who was also not a "lifer," Evans has to get something out of this. He was a better player than Rice for pity's sake, and Rice is now on that wall.

Speed? Tony C never demonstrated more than average base stealing ability. He was a good hitter and player but nothing like a generational talent. In his two healthy years he hit 32 and 28 home runs -- nothing to spit at, but also nothing the world hasn't seen before. Tony C had the good luck to get hurt during a storied period in Red Sox history and be remembered as the ultimate if-only guy in an if-only franchise and that is the only reason he is even remembered. He was a super hyped prospect that had a couple great seasons then exploded due to injury, anything more is nostalgic magnification.

What place in history? He was a kid with talent who got hit in the face. Kids with talent get hurt all the time and it's always a sad tragedy. Why is this any different at all from hundreds of other such stories over the course of MLB history? There are 7 different players on the 1967 team alone that deserve a bigger place in history than Tony C. The level of nostalgic magnification when it comes to this player is almost criminal. He wasn't even all that good even when he was healthy, yes he could hit but he gave up runs with his glove and his WAR is only pretty good, he was by no means a showstopper, and that was before he got hurt. Only the 1967 narrative and the nostalgia from that campaign keeps Conigliaro from reflecting his ACTUAL place in history -- which is as a one of the tens of thousands of players who played in MLB who had great potential who for one reason or another never quite got there.

That is objectively wrong on so many different levels that I don't even. You do realize that the Red Sox got closer to winning it all in 86 than they ever did in 67 right? For one thing they had the pitching in 86, they got by on Lonborg and a dream in 67. For another, Bogs had a few more bites at the apple after 86 and Tony C fades into insignificance as anything other than a tool of nostalgia after 67. Yes. He was a flop. Considering the promise everyone said he had before the injury and what he showed after? "Flop" is accurate. The man promised much and delivered little. It's a textbook definition. Now that said it was hardly his fault, Tony C's career died because of a nasty injury and IIRC it was additional injuries that derailed his comback, but that's true for a lot of players deemed by the masses to be flops. I just don't see why the tragic end to Tony C's career is all that different to two dozen other kids we've seen come and go who had the same sorts of things happen to them The only real difference I can see not having been born in the era when he played, was that his initial injury, the hit to the face, came in the middle of the narrative of the Impossible Dream year and got mixed in with the nostalgia of the 1967 season after the fact. That and the sense that maybe if he had been healthy the team would have won in 67 has combined to turn Tony C into some kind of tragic hero, which I honestly don't believe the man deserves on the face of it.

Why the hell would you retire Tony Conigliaro's number? People keep saying this and it makes no sense. He's not a Hall of Famer -- not even in the same galaxy as Hall of Famers. Tony C was a fan favorite who got hurt 3 years into his career and turned into nothing but a sob story. Nothing less, but definitely nothing more either. Is there a player in the history of the Red Sox franchise more overhyped than this guy? We've seen other injuries end the careers of other players early before. Why is this different? He had all the talent in the world but so did a lot of other flops. Sure, this flop has a tragic ring because baseball to the face, but that's not enough to make for the fact that this was just yet another guy with all the talent in the world who ultimately wound up going nowhere. We see these guys every few years. The only reason we even care about Tony C any more than any of the hundreds of other similar players that have been and gone and come to nothing, is because of the Impossible Dream. His story is especially sad, but not especially special. I mean seriously, if we're going to put that guy on the wall, I can't wait until we retire #20. I mean after all, unlike Tony C, Youk actually won something before his mounting injuries ended his carreer, right?. Tiant, Dewey, Rice, these are guys that deserve active decisionmaking on whether to honor them. These guys were among the best at their craft for a long period of time. I would put Boggs on that list too, as he was the best 3Bman in the world for about 10 years. Tony C was just a guy who was popular and had a bad injury at a time when the eyes of the world were on the team. That's pretty much his entire career right there.

I do. He was the second best player in baseball during his peak years, and he's a Hall of Famer. What's not to honor there?

lest we forget not coming back for the 1993 season was not Boggs' idea the team practically kicked him to the curb and i don't think even made him an offer so there was no betrayal there, free agent means free agent. He had to sign sith a team that would take him, turned out that was NYY the horse incident came during a world series celebration event, you know that thing the Red Sox never gave him the opportunity to do. Maybe if they had there would have been less bad blood to go round and he would have been kept on. Boggs is one of those players who looked good enough at the time, certainly good enough to get into the Hall of Fame even before the modern era, but modern metrics later revealed just how much better than even that he was. In the 10 year period between 82 and 92 modern metrics mark him as the second most valuable player in the entire league for that era, second only to Rickey Henderson. His combination of patience, OBP and defense looked like an all star, until modern metrics reveal he was actually a legend instead. the sad thing is by modern netrics he was still a 2 WAR player even in the "bad" year in 92. Fangraphs shows his WAR at 2.1, still above average, and he would not be that low again until his age 39 season. They should have made the man a reasonable offer.

Raja did more to damage his legacy here than Boggs ever did

Well that and he was one of the best pure contact hitters this team has ever seen, probabvly second only to Ted Williams

My opinion of Damon is that a free agent is a free agent. If the Sox wanted him back they should have met his price. THis team can't go crying poverty when the Yankees simply outbid them, not when they're one of the top 5 financially strong teams in the league even today. Lowballing Damon told everyone the Sox didn't want him back and after that little display of nonloyalty, free agent rules apply. Loyalty runs both ways and the team showed Mr. Damon none at all. Everyone had his price. The Yankees would meet Damon's and the Red Sox would not. The hatred of Damon for going to the Yankees is just pointless. It's not like his decision cost us anything. Damon was great, helped us win a Series and made way for Coco Crisp, who a little disappointment about his offensive numbers aside did a fine job, helped us win a Series and made way for Jacoby, who helped us win a Series and made way for Betts. It's just baseball's life cycle.