Dojji

And some people only like the star players that carry the team. That's fine. It's a part of the fanbase I understand.

Stuart was actually a pretty good player by the numbers. He hit 42 and 33 homers for the Red Sox in his 2 years with them. In the modern era, they would have used him as a DH and he would have largely been valuable in that role..

That's what I loved about Tavarez. A lot of athletes have thought stuff like that, but Crazy Julian was the only guy I ever knew who was insane enough to say it.

Mmm. That's a tough one. He had a couple great partial seasons for us. That change was vicious, and when he combined it with a 89-91 MPH sinker and was able to locate, he was pretty deadly. He had the makings of a pretty danged decent success-out-of-nowhere story. Threw 12 consecutive scoreless innings in limited time in 06, and in '07, he came up when Schill got hurt and dominated. I'll never forget his "where the **** did that come from" CGSO against KC . It was rated at the end of the 2007 season as the third best Red Sox starting pitching performance of the year, behind Clay's nono and Schill's one-hitter. He had the stuff. When he was on, he could strike you out and he could keep the ball down. If he hadn't gotten hurt he could have made a career for himself. After he got hurt his command went all to hell though. Just another injury-related baseball tragedy.

I think Pokey Reese is guy who belongs here. Great glove, great name, below average overall.

Offerman isn't technically eligible under the rules since he did have one above average season with Boston. For the same reason, another crowd unfavorite, Jurassic Carl Everett, isn't eligible.

Not practical. That would involve sending Bard to Pawtucket. If they want Bard to start, he's going to have to learn on the job. That means there's definitely going to be nights where he gets rocked, especially early on.

Tavarez never had a year where he could do what Aceves did last year. I don't think people realize just how rare Aceves' skillset is -- to be able to come in at unpredictable times out of the bullpen and pitch 3 innings? That just doesn't happen. Wouldn't be surprised if Aceves couldn't do that again.

Compare that to Cook's 3.8 k/9. This is why I was so adamantly against trading Justin Masterson. A guy who can do the sinkerball thing and strike people out is frequently named Roy Halladay.

I'd take what Tavarez was in '07 on the back of this rotation. I'd hope for a little more, but he did provide a 92 ERA+ that year.

http://images.wikia.com/baseball/images/7/7c/Julian_Tavarez.jpg

I'm talking about players who were entertaining, fun, or interesting characters, but never really performed well here, or even did average. Rules: -He had to play for the Red Sox for at least one full season. -His performance had to grade out below average and never put up a particularly good year for this team (as in, no JD Drew, and no Tim Wakefield, but Julio Lugo might be fair game). -He doesn't have to abjectly suck. If he did something useful but grades out below average as a whole, that's not only fine, it's the guys I'm hoping to hear about. -The reason he was your favorite does not have to be on-field reasons. I'll give you an example. My favorite bad player to play for the Red Sox is Julian Tavarez. He wasn't a great pitcher, but was fun to watch, and pitched an entertaining game when he was on. I'll never forget the time he tried to charge down Brian Roberts, or his Bowling for Baserunners on slow rollers to his left. He was insane and very unconventional, but he could pitch a little and most of what he did made a certain bizarre sense when you stop and think about it. He also had a sinker that could make him very dangerous from time to time, such as the where-the-****-did-that-come-from complete game against the Jays in the doldrum days of 2006. He played out after awhile, but he was a fun member of the team and did contribute to the World Series win -- if in no other way than by being a warm body to hold the rotation spot until Jon Lester was ready for it.

I was thinking more about his career as a ~ 100 ERA+ man. And I would not rule out that level of performance from Cook. This is a hard division for a pitch-to-contact guy to manage.

Cook ~ Paul Byrd. That's not unacceptable.

At least he's proven he has some ability to go deep into the game, fighting through 6 innings. Anyone who thought we were going to magically get an ace by moving a guy who hadn't started in 5 years to the rotation should probably check their medication.

He was a part of the collapse in the W-L column. You can buy or sell opinions about whether he was part of the attitude problem, but his failure to pitch effectively in September *for whatever reason* was a huge part of the September collapse.

I don't believe the fried chicken and beer thing was the *cause* of anything. It was the symptom of an attitude in the clubhouse, nothing more. And just because a given player didn't show the obvious symptom didn't mean he didn't have the disease. you don't fail that badly without everyone chipping in.

If anything, it highlights his importance to the staff. When he fell apart, the team fell apart. If he wasn't important to the staff, his ineffectiveness wouldn't have sucked that much.

Love how you qualify that. Aceves threw 113 innings last year. Even if you want to assign him 6 innings for each of his 4 starts, that's still more innings of relief than Bard. Ramram and MDC both pitched more than Bard in 2008 alone. Melancon matched his numbers for Houston last year. His usage pattern. Is not. That unusual.

Yep, and he wasn't overworked, nor was he underrested. He became ineffective despite a very normal usage pattern for a setup man.

Bard appeared in 70 games in 2011. That's really pretty standard for a late inning reliever. And Bard's September troubles began in literally his first appearance that month. He'd pitched the night before, but before that had had about 4 days rest. Bard wasn't overpitched, and he didn't pitch that extensively in September (his second least number of appearances in a given month all year). He just fell apart, nothing more or less to it than that.

10.64 September ERA Bard, of all people. SHOULD be lumped in. It was his arm falling off that was a big part of why we blew some big leads that kept us out of the playoffs. He blew three leads that resulted in critical losses that month, including a critical blown save against the Yankees. His "highlight" for the month was probably coughing up 5 runs in an eventual 8-7 loss against Toronto on 9/7, including 2 big flies He surrendered nearly as many runs in September alone (14) as he had in the entire year through August 31 (15) it would not be entirely inaccurate to say that Daniel Bard *was* the September collapse.