Dojji

Not hardly. Several fanbases absolutely hate their announcers.

Yep. Good voice, good attention to detail, not above cracking a joke but usually keeps it professional, and plays a great straight man for Remy. We're gonna miss him.

No I don't think it will solve those other problems. At best it will mask them. I suspect that the personalities of our leadership have been behind a lot of the sort of schizophrenic policies that have been bringing this team down. You can only have so many alpha wolves in the pack before they do nothing but try to destroy each other. I suspect that's the core of our current problem and it's not going to get better until the owner himself reminds everyone else that HE is the alpha wolf. I think that's the thing that's not happening right now. Henry strikes me as a hands-off owner. That works best though when the ship isn't sinking. If the owner doesn't have his own individual image of what team success looks like then you have these several parallel images of his direct underlings vying for team resources -- and as things go worse it gets more pronounced. This ship needs a captain, and only one, if we're ever going to get off the reef.

Yeah well for me Mr. Glass refers to the Royals' owner, since I also kinda root for KC.

I think they're saying it because it gets them attention to say it.

I agree with a700. At this point it might take an owenrship change to really sort this mess out.

Yeah and while I'm dreaming I'd like a billion dollars and a unicorn. The free agent market isn't yielding us 2 guys like that. They're too rare. That's why letting Lester go was such a horrifically shortsighted move. Those guys just aren't properly replaceable at all, not unless you strike gold in rookie development.

Umm yeah, Kimmi? You ought to know as well as I do that you can never count on Stickbones to be healthy.

I know. I'm saying it's not even good at that.

I see them going hard after Johnny Cueto this offseason. It's the most rational possible move in my honest opinion. I think that the move to deal Betts for pitching would be misguided on two fronts. First of all we don't have an athlete that can do what Betts has the potential to do, to replace him. Secondly, as Jacko alluded to, Betts hasn't reached his full value yet and won't solve the pitching problem by himself. I think moving Betts this offseason would be selling low. Trading him will see him have his best years in another uniform and that's the last thing we want. That said, I would target Cueto in the offseason and look to possibly pick up a high quality inning burner. James Shields wasn't the ace we needed last offseason, but he'd make a fantastic #2 if we could get him off the Padres, which I doubt. Either way we need one more deep innings guy to keep the pressure off the rookies, however we can get him.

LOL seriously? Even if all of these incidents were bang on true -- last 15 years you've never had a bad day?

I';m going to ask you guys to do something a bit out of the ordinary but I think we need to show a bit of patience here. We do not know whether or not this was Orsillo's own idea. Until we know that bit, throwing blame around for who's responsible and why is way premature. We already know Orsillo's been doing some national broadcasts. If he's got a contract at the national level and that's why he's leaving it'd be a lot different than simply being thrown out on his butt because his asking price was too high.

That's certainly disappointing. Orsillo is an excellent broadcaster.

Thing is, our defense wasn't that bad this year, at least on paper. The outfield wasn't great but there were no below average defenders in our infield. The only really viable spot to upgrade our defensive infield right now is third, where Panda showed exactly what I suspected he would at the start of the year -- good hands, bad range. That's not that terrible on its own, but we don't have the rangiest shortstop, and having two handsy near-pylons on the same side of the infield is one near-pylon too many. Getting our starting catcher back finally is going to have a huge impact on what we can expect going into next season. We really really need Christian Vazquez to be strong out of the gate, I'd say at this early date that his performance is key to our results next season -- but if he is good to go and performing at a competent level, a lot of the other pieces will click into place pretty rapidly.

You're counting on a lot from Rodriguez to call that competitive. I'd want to add another 200 inning 3 ERA guy to that mix if I wanted to call that a winning rotation.

Yep except for the one time he confusingly, aggrivatingly, frustratingly, mystifyingly didn't. I don't think I need to elaborate here. I think that's the big reason I had so little trouble with the news Cherington was moving on while I had so many problems with the way Theo left us. Because with Theo it was clear what the plan was. His actions were usually in keeping with a consistent overall strategy. I can't say the same about Cherington. His actions and the motivations behind them were never that clear or consistent.

Agreed on Bard. His collapse did not start in 2012, but in the last months of 2011. People forget that with the bard-as-starter narrative. From 8/1 to 9/28 of 2011 Bard put up a 6.95 ERA and over the last two months of that year his season ERA shot up a point and a half. He was already falling apart before they ever converted him. In fact I strongly suspect they already realized he was damanged goods and were just trying to find out if they could get something, anything, out of the kid before he completely splattered all over the landscape. Turns out, no, but if that's what they were trying to do, it was the right thing.

Yeah I'm with MVP. Too many people advancing their own opinion as fact

Seriously guys? Enough. Besides, mine is EVEN LONGER.

Needed to be done. Not sure Dombrowski is the guy to bring in though. But Cherington at this point is damaged goods. You need the credibility to sell your ideas to ownership simply in order to function as a GM, there is no way that Cherington still had the trust of the FO.

If a .281/356/386 line has become blase for second base some people need their perspectives adjusted. That's above average offensive numbers for that position. If he gets on base at around the .340 range and defends well we're ahead of the curve at that position. That's his performance level over his last 800 plate appearances, which calling that a small sample size is laughable. And again, my concern is that Pedroia won't be able to do that well in the years going forward. I'm frankly not even sure he'll be on the field all that much 3 years from now.

So what you're saying is you couldn't find one. Pedroia has been hurt each and every year he's been in the majors. He plays through it but that doesn't mean he's not getting hurt. He has to do so much more with his body just to stay competitive that it wears out a guy faster. Lack of height absolutely can mean health problems down the road. Heck it's one of the reasons Pedro (5'11" and all the talent in the world) didn't have a longer career. He was efectively in full decline starting at age 32 producing exactly 1 fully healthy and effective season after 2003 because he started -- guess what -- getting hurt. I don't think the Red Sox are under any obligation to follow this ride all the way to the ground and I am very bearish on Pedroia's ability to remain healthy, effective, and in the field for 140 plus games three years from now much less 7. We have a reasonably quality replacement. Pull the plug and move on. It's the big market move and you all know it. This man isn't anywhere near where he was in his prime and he's showing every evidence of beginning to go the same way Kevin Youkills did -- first a slight decline in performance, than an injury-shortened year or two, then bang. GONE. Sound familiar? With, again, a very solid young replacement in hand (Holt is no MVP but let's be frank about it, neither is Pedroia at this point) I see no reason to take that risk.

First of all, duly conceded facts: 1: Dustin Pedroia is a very good 2B. That's why I feel he has value. 2: Dustin Pedroia is the single most significant leader on this team... that has lost more games than it won since that was true. Points to consider 1: If he played the position fulltime Brock Holt would be a well above average fulltime second baseman based on his existing track record 2: Dustin Pedroia has been significantly injured every single year he's been on this team, which throws his longevity into serious question 3: Players of Pedrioa's body type do not age well. He is a small man who uses high energy and effort to overcome his diminutive frame. This is one of the reasons he is so frequently hurt. Here's a fun challenge: Find a player who is Dustin Pedroia's height (5'9") or smaller that is healthy and effective at age 35. Go on. Try it. Good luck with that. Perhaps I was spooked by the premature evaporation of Kevin Youkilis, but that kind of guy who's constantly nursing minor injuries makes me unreasonably nervous. Holt meanwhile has no particular affinaty with injuries that we've discovered yet, and I find that moderately significant to a team that needs its best players on the field at all times in order to prosecute a playoff run, which I'm honestly not sure Pedroia can 100% do for us anymore. If we can trade a player with that heavy a risk of injury and premature decline, for an asset of high value, based on his very good reputation, and immediately replace him with a young, above average player at the same position, you have to consider it. Pedrioa is respected throughout the league, a former MVP and known to be a positive example for heart and hustle. I say we leverage that into a young starter with some upside to augment our struggling rotation and we'll make the team stronger from doing that even if we lose a little raw value at 2B.

Right. The best analyst is the guy who knows what he's looking at and has the numbers to back him up. In the absence of that you need both perspectives to have about equal weight in the front office as a collective unit. The issue comes when you have someone who has no aptitude for one or the other, and they'll talk up the one they're good at and try to downplay the significance of the one at which they are incompetent.

So Youk discipline with Reddick style pop? I can get behind that.