Dojji

Storybook!!!!!! SAVARD WITH THE GWG IN OVERTIME! YAAAAA!

Brown's got a puncher's chance to put up a .340 OBP and defend well. From a catcher' that'd be acceptable -- heck, it's pretty much Yadier Molina's skillset, although Molina's arm is worlds better than Brown's. He's not a guy you'd want to count on going into the year with no Plan B, and if he plays too much in a given year he'll probably get exposed. But he's a half decent ballplayer who'd be backing someone up in the bigs for a lot of teams. Either Brown or Wagner brings a better arm than the guys we have right now. That said Wagner's definitely the better model and it sucks that he got hurt this way.

Ahh -- I take your point. Still though, even when he returns to consistency it'll take a lot of consistency to make up for the butcher's job he's doing right now. Like a hitter regressing to the mean, it'll take a lot better than average production to make up for an early major slump. and the longer this goes on the harder it wiill be to iignore.

So when someone insults you that incompetently, is that a compliment?

Thanks for 2004 and 2007 big guy. When you were good, you were really good, and you retroactively earned your salary this year by giiving us some of the best seasons a Red Sox hitter ever had, and you played a tremendous role in both of the rings the Sox earned in my lifetime. But everything comes to an end sometime and it looks like it's your time. We'll always love what you were, but you're sapping your legacy with every at bat. Time to move on and go build schools in the Dominican or something, and let us remember the good times.

We're nothing CLOSE to Old School Red Sox. Old School Red Sox was one good hitter, one good starter, a closer if you were lucky, no baserunning -- at all -- and a rotation of schlubs in just about every other position.

The fact is that Beltre's career line is a heck of a lot closer to .745 than Victor Martinez' is to .639, and V-Mart didn't have a weak aberration of a year the year before to sow doubt. You know these things as well or better than I do so why even ask that question?

YAB, I started this thread to ask the question. My mind isn't made up on this issue. The reason you got the response you did is because you decided to phrase your response on the basis of a lack of options when options exist. I suspect Beltre will turn it around too, but I don't know it, and I don't trust Beltre that much.

You're really clinging to that. Why don't we just assume we figure out catcher some other way and stop hiding behind Varitek's supposed weakness as a way to duck the question of Beltre's nonperformance. Lowell at 1B, V-Mart at C doesn't change the paradigm much.

You mean as bad as a 3B whio's not hitting for power and is on a 36 error pace?

If I had to choose between Beltre playing and Tek at the moment, I know what my choice is. At least in the short term. The miles on Beltre have worried me for awhile -- my concern basically being that they may have contributed to his misery last year. He's got a lot of wear and tear on that body of his for his age because he debuted at 19. He could be a candidate for early decline.

Only true if and when Beltre bounces back. I would at least space in some Youks appearances at 3B to try to break up Beltre's slump and get him in gear a bit. Not a formal benching, but a couple days off to get his head on straight. Managers do that stuff all the time.

No. When you're in a situation where someone's the starter for the remainder of the season, it's because you don't have a realistic option. We have an option. We can play Youkilis at third. He's not great at it, but he's not as bad as Beltre has been so far this year. We CAN choose to make an adjustment. We can do this without cutting anyone even.

I don't think we can do this much longer. He's had 5 errors already, that's a third of a season's errors for a good 3B and it's only one month. We have a realistic alternative to putting up with the problems we're dealing with at the hot corner. We can play Youkilis at third and Victor Martinez at first. So how long do we try to keep faith with Adrian Beltre, when you combine the present lack of power with a serious cold streak at third base? With all the other issues we're also gutting out? When we could do something relatively simple about it?

Feh. Bad pitch by bard there.

http://www.soxprospects.com/players/wagner-mark.htm Could have used him this year -- but I guess we do still have Brown if we need a catcher in an emergency.

I don't think we really need to add power to the lineup. I would definitely like to stack on a bit more contact and OBP though. I think I'd rather have another really good disciplined hitter, a Dustin Pedroia type if you will, in the lower echelons of the lineup, than another big thumper. I wonder what it would take to talk the Royals out of Alberto Callaspo. Probably more than we're prepared to pay, but he's exactly the kind of player I think we need and if they get shortsighted about Gordon's diminishing potential I'd grab him and play him at 3B in a heartbeat.

It was the trade deadline. That was before the bulk of Rask's stretch run surge. This is the group that got burnt by Toivonen, it's not too surprising they'd be interested in playing Rask a bit conservatively.

Red Sox "cautiously optimistic" about his return. http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20100428/SPORTS/304280061/1050/Top-Red-Sox-prospect-on-mend

I need a link to the chart so I can save it as a text file on my computer for ease of reference.. The last couple times I've gone looking for it I came up empty.

That IS fearless, considering it never has done so before and we're not exactly blessed with an uberslugging team. . This is a great park for RHH power (IE RHH slugging), but it only surrenders more HR to RHH than LHH because it's so deep to right center and straightaway center. Last 4 years this has been an average park for RHH homers and a park that depresses HR's overall (just less so to LF than to any other field). As a park for RHH to homer in, Fenway's about average among stadiums. The reason that doesn't mean this is a terrible SLG park for RHH should be fairly obvious. It's an short flight to the left field wall. There's a whole flavor of doubles that can only be hit at Fenway. The wall-kissers like the one Darnell McDonald got that walkoff on last week. Also a lot of blasts that would be HR's in some parks, you know the kind I mean, the low line drive lasers that take about two seconds to clear the outfield wall but are never more than about 30 feet off the ground. Between the two this is, bar none, the best park in the league in which to double. So what you have right, is that Beltre should get a lot of XBH. Just don't expect more than about 20 of them to be of the long variety, with less than half of those at Fenway

Am I the only one that remembers posting stuff like this before his public meltdown in 2008? All I'm saying is with a guy like Buchholz, don't count your chickens. We all know he's going to be a stud once he gets his mindset right. I'd like to hope he's well on his way and he's given signs of it, but I'll take him as he comes and lean on the veterans to get the bulk of the work done.

It isn't. He was a part-timer for the Reds last year. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mcdonda02.shtml