Dojji

THey've been around since the 70's actually, it's just taken them awhile to circulate down to the masses. It's just numerating stuff that people already knew anyway. After all, we knew Wade Boggs was extremely utterly good without OBP to tell us. And in some cases, advanced stats serve to tell us that a guy we thought was pretty good, turned out to have been even better than we thought Classic example: Dwight Evans. Always loved as a great RF with a bit of punch, more than a bit in his heyday, but not always the highest BA. Now we know that he was a walkaholic too and a very disciplined hitter in his own right in a lineup that already boasted disciplined studs like Rice and Boggs. Finished up with .100 IsoD, making him one of the most disciplined and effective hitters of his day. At his peak put up an elite-level .400 OBP to go with his pretty-danged-good .290 averages. All this to say, he was better than we maybe thought he was at a few things like working the count and getting the most out o his trips to the plate.

Wins Above Replacement. They pick a value that they think any AAAA player should perform at, and decide somehow if you're producing more whns than the blue-collar schmo they could call up in your place. Lackey was worth less than you could expect to get out of a replacement pitcher last year. He would have literally had to pay the team to play here to be worth a cent.

That's pretty convincing. Nothing definite, but a strong indicator.

I wish people would stop doing that. OBP is not "Walks." It's batting average and walks. What it is saying is that walks are a successful trip to the plate and should be treated as such, thus not counting a walk as an AB (like they do to calcuate AVG) is silly. Give credit for the walk, since it requires skill on the hitter's part. That's what OBP does and AVG does not.

Now now, I made it clear that I was talking about Tavarez as he was then.

http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2008/02/24/1203886837_5506.jpg I didn't hate Tavarez. He was a riot on the mound, he had a decent first half, and he held the rotation spot down until Lester was healthy. But he was not a good pitcher. Had all the stuff he needed to concievably be one, but it just didn't ever fall together for him in his whole career. I can't help but suspect though, that the 07 version of Tavarez would have been more helpful than Lackey this year. He's a guy who coulda helped keep the team loose, even if he wasn't pitching well. And they needed it. And his antics on the mound would have been fun for the fans.

Before not = during.

PLEASE stop feeding the media. PLEASE stay off the stage. Step AWAY from the microphone. Go about your business and let the players go about theirs. You have embarrassed yourself. You have offered your explanation for why you embarrassed yourself. Nothing could possibly abate the embarrassment of your EPIC CHOKE any more. You have said all that could be said and done all the possible damcon. Mission accomplished. NOW SHUT UP! I do not want to HEAR any more about this failed team and its disastrous collapse. I do not want to hear about how a manager I loved was forced out, and how the GM who ended our national suffering is now somewhere else with an organizational drone taking his place. These things are painful. Do you think we enjoy pain as fans? Come back when you, as an organzation, have demonstrated that you have a plan for how to turn this team around and get us moving in the right direction. Until then, STOP pouring pepper in the wounds of an entire nation of fans just because you're a group of compulsive talkers! I am DONE with the Red Sox this year. I want to lose myself in the Pats and Bruins until Truck Day. It's the best way for me to move on from what happened and move towards forgiving the team for breaking my heart this season. STOP MAKING THAT IMPOSSIBLE!!!!! That is all.

I would like to say all this isn't affecting my ability to rally behind my team in this time of crisis, to stay loyal when things are looking like they're heading down hill and remain a true fan. Unfortunately N can't shake the urge to constantly grab my monitor and keep screaming "SHUT UP IDIOTS! YOU'RE MAKING IT WORSE!!!" Incidents like this are why I became an apathetic fan before 2004. And it's a struggle not to slip back into those habits now.

Considering he was the worst SP in the big leagues last year I'd pay for the privilege of facing him, sure.

Youth? Energy? Drive? Hunger? Commitment to excellence (from the players)? Health for the most part each of the last several seasons? A medical staff that knows how to diagnose injuries correctly the first time? There just isn't always a quick solution in baseball. Baseball is a patient game, you can't count on always being able to find the ideal answer to keep your team in the winning side of things.We're used to there being one because Theo made some key hits on talent at good times throughout 03-08. His luck ran out each of the last couple years, by which I mean it normalized and he started making the mistakes he'd avoided to that point (the Lackey and Crwaford signings went against his grain even if they had worked. You don't replenish your core out of free agency, FA is for supplimental talent). Right now we look very much like a team juuuuuuust about to seriously settle into the doldrums for a few years. Personally I'd be inclined to let it happen, and if the team can pull enough talent together from the guys on the field to contend, make a deadline move in that direction, but other than that fall back out of the addiction to big splash signings and trades that infested the FO in the last 3 years. Let the farm dictate where we go from there. I suspect we'll stay competitive anyway. We have some great talent in the minors.

It was a stab in the dark. Thus the "or so." Fans seem to think we'll be able to erase these mistakes with trades and keep going. I doubt it. A few too many of them at once, and I don't mean just the big signings. And who the heck would take Lackey in particular off our hands? I could see someone buying low on Crawford for little cost in talent, for the same reasons people want to keep him here, and Beckett might actually fetch a half decent return, but a lwe're better off getting what we can out of Lackey in particular than accepting the kind of disadvantageous trade it'd take to get him off the payroll.

I think people are trying too hard to make sure this is a competitive squad next year. Which is fair, because Theo tried to hard to do the same for at least the last 3 years with disappointing results, and we can count on Cherington to continue the tradition if only because a new GM right after a firing doesn't make a habit of trying to upset the boss. But I honestly think the pieces are NOT in place to get better next year. I think we're about 3 years behind the Mets, and would be well advised to take the foot off the gas for a few seasons, build up from the farm, let some of these contracts go, and ramp up again in 2015 or so. More likely though, we carry this farce forward right off the cliff a la the Mets and Astros.

Middlebrooks, definitely, But Vitek is a lot better in the hitting discipline department. Middlebrooks is most likely to become a superstar, but also the most likely to flame out. Vitek is probably destined for at least a bench role in the majors. Vitek's extreme upside is kinda Muellerish, but I think this is roughly what we see. If we get any more than that, so much the better. Needless to say I'm not really all that high on him.

Disagree about Lavarnway, although with his inexperience he isn't ideal. All others, agreed.

Yeah, you're going to have to do more than just repeat yourself if you want to convince any of us of that. But, but, he had bad signings and free agent deals!!!!!! Yeah, and so does everyone else. That's why GM's have shelf lives on teams. Doesn't mean a thing.

I'll be happy to call for the signing of a perfect GM who never makes mistakes. All you have to do is go find one.

Mmh. I'm inclined to agree. We need a more fundamental change to the culture of the team than this, I think The crack is narrow, but it's very deep, You won't fix it with a little epoxy and a fresh coat of paint.

I have two ideas about that. One is that they have much less ability to stop someone from reporting a fact permanently, than they have to delay someone from reporting a thing. If teams try to punish writers for reporting, that runs them afoul of the whistleblower laws as well as potentially violating the First Amendment right of free press, and the team gets sued (or the Globe, which owns part of the Red Sox, clears its throat loudly, accomplishing basically the same thing). On the other hand, a request to wait is much more reasonable. After all, "never" is a lot more drastic a word than "later" in nearly every circumstance. The other idea is that it's really the writers currying favor with the team, trying to worm their way into a notoriously tight and leak-proof front office, and both withholding and dropping these tidbits are done on the instigation of the writers and editors themselves in order to get in with the team. Still gives the team far too much control over what is printed though.

I don't think my scenario is quite so hypothetical. We've had multiple sportswriters openly admitting they've known parts of this story for months and hadn't decided to share it with us. That is known, the only question is why. I think the front office has used its control of information to punish writers who get too aggressive about embarrassing them and scare the rest into line. And the result is that risk-averse writers hold onto things that might offend the front office until it's probably safe to let it out -- such as when a player departs (although not always -- merely being in disgrace with the front office is sometimes enough to paint a target on a plater or coach's back). The result is far, far more control over the media by the team than could ever be healthy, and it really shows at times like this.

Mm. I don't think this is a deliberate smear job. I think there's things that writers had known about these guys for a long time, but that they kept quiet about for fear of offending their sources, or putting the jobs of said sources in jeopardy. Basically once these guys walk, all the stuff that you held back, there's no reason to hold it back anymore and it comes out. That's all. Looks really bad from an outside perspective, but all the media's doing is using all the juicy, interesting tidbits they couldn't use when the guy was here. What it does tell me though is that the media is much too much in bed with the front office, if the front office is able to earn that much deference from the writers. We talk about what a tight, leakproof club this is most of the time, this is the ugly side of that. If this stuff leaked out at the time the media learned about it, instead of exploding all at once when the guy is gone, it'd probably be healthier.

And I wouldn't worry about the Yankees. It's unlikely they go in that direction as they don't really like having a DH-only player on the roster. Besides they need their DH spot for Jeter when they make their full-court press for Jose Reyes this offseason.

Sad when things end, isn't it? We're in as good a position to replace Ortiz as we're ever likely to be, so if it has to end, it might as well be now. Farewell, big guy. Thanks for 04 and 07 but all things end.

Probably fairly well. The big issue is if maye there might need to be a renegotiation of media territory between the Astros and Rangers. I just think looting one of the big markets from the National League won't do it any favors.

What I would have done instead. San Diego to AL West Houston to NL West Move the least significant vulnerable franchise, like they did with the Brewers. It wouldn't hurt the Padres to switch leagues, they don't owe anything to the NL. the Astros on the other hand are a pillar of the NL Central, and they're one of the flagship National Leauge franchises (or had been for years until they tailed off recently). Seems shortsighted. Or if you really wanted to get crazy, do the same thing they did with Milwaukee, take the town in the NL with the closest ties to the American League and the fewest league-transfer-related problems with media territory and move them to the AL