Dipre

I'm gonna go ahead and call ******** on the penny pinching. With the luxury tax threshold already being breached this year, the Sox should have the capacity to go out, fix the bullpen, re-sign Beltre and V-Mart plus get an OF bat like Werth, even if it comes at the expense of low-balling Ortiz and maybe see him going to another team. Then you can DH Drew against righties with V-Mart catching (Kalish in right, the kid is ready), and have V-Mart DH against most lefties with Tek at the plate and Cameron taking Drew's/Kalish's spot in the OF.

One of Doiji's big knocks against Beltre in the offseason was that because he has played so many games (he reached the league at a young age) with his body type and prior injuries, he was liable to break down at any moment.

Now everybody loves Beltre. I LOVE IT! No more concerns abut the mileage in his body? :thumbsup:

Head hurts again. You guys are ridiculous.

Lol Jason Bay. They offered Bay four years, then took the offer back due to concerns about his knee/shoulder, which given his power outage last year, may have been legit. And please don't tell me you don't think shoulder issues can sap a player's power, since you used that argument criticizing Beltre.

Derek Jeter has a great arm, as per every scouting report and from watching him play. Dunno where this one came from. In fact, it's his arm that's allowed him to masquerade his range deficiencies for all this years. Size is not a really important factor in arm strength. Erick Aybar, Miguel Tejada, Rafael Furcal are all smaller guys with cannon arms. Marco Scutaro, Jason Bartlett, Stephen Drew are all bigger-framed guys who rely on release quickness because their arm is not so strong. Jed Lowrie's arm strength is being criminally undermined here. Every scouting publication i've read says he has "a (insert strong, above average, upper-mid tier) arm but is very erratic in his throws". The reason Lowrie shouldn't play 3B isn't because of his arm, since that's just a cheap excuse, it's because he doesn't offer the production of a corner IF.

Please cross Pujols off that list. He's not going anywhere. But goddamns would he look good in a Sox uniform.

Tonight's game was one of Dice-K's finest efforts in a Red Sox uniform. I'd hope that, at least until next season, no one bitches and moans about him or calls him semi-racist Japanese based names or slang terms. At least tonight, he lived up to his reputation as a big-game pitcher. Focus your rage on JD Drew or something. Oh wait.....

This is the one time i'll defend Jacko. He conceded to the Yanks not looking like World Champs. However, Jacko, you need to revert from douchebag mode. You're only giving them more material to give you s***.

At least you don't sound like a "Really uppity black guy" which seems to be the "theme" with me here in Michigan.

Hughes is never going to fulfill his promise unless he stops over-using and overthrowing that cutter.

But, but, but, Jacko told me the Yankees were a second-half team!

Doiji is a woman.

I see that Beltre, another one of Theo's "Colossal failures" and the classic "Banjo hitter" is getting some love over here. Oh where art thou rhet...... By the way, i wouldn't touch him with a 10-foot pole unless they gave him a perpetual "contract year" option, he'll be productive, but not for the price Boras will put on his services.

My head actually hurts now.

So a700, you want the bullpen to be fixed, unless the solution comes with the price of getting rid of Papelbon? :dunno: I can't, for the life of me, figure out why you still cling to his days of glory. Face it, he sucks now.

Add something productive. On topic: Newsflash: The Red Sox are not the Yankees. Even though some people on site aired their concerns about the bullpen not being as effective, anyone who says (or implies) they "foresaw" a decline like this one is flat-out lying. I'm sorry to be a "Theo apologist". But no one expected it to happen. Not the FO, and certainly none of us, or any sports writer. Oh, and the bullpen "woes" have been magnified throughout the season as means to attack the FO (nothing new there). Let me add a couple smileys here to mitigate the effect of my statement. Boston Red Sox month-by-month bullpen ERA: April: 4.16 May: 4.21 June: 6.14 July: 3.07 August: 3.43 September: 4.53 The bullpen was around league average for two months, horrible for two months (June/September) and above league average for two months. Now June is inexcusable, but we've had some "stars" pitching in September that certainly justify the ERA. But my point is, that with the exception of one really bad month, the bullpen was acceptable for most of the season. The main problem with the 2010 Red Sox was the rash of injuries, not the bullpen. With a healthy Pedroia, Youk and Ellsbury they make the playoffs. What Theo should and the rest of the FO should have done, IMHO was the following: Theo plays CF, John Henry plays 1B, Larry Lucchino plays 2B, the rest of the FO pitches in the BP. Problem solved.

Congratulations on your victory WB!

Oh definitely. No way in hell the Sox have a chance to score more runs than the Jays with scrubs like Youkilis, Pedroia and Ellsbury in the lineup. Nuh-uh, no way. There are better ways to convey ideas than passive baiting, you know.

My three questions: 1) Would a healthy Sox team have won more games than the current unit? Indeed, which is the crux of the argument. 2) Are the Sox the only team with "sloppy" play problems? I'd venture say no, since i've seen some pretty "sloppy" moments from the likes of Nick Swisher, Elvis Andrus, Troy Glaus, Skip Schumaker, Brad Hawpe, among others, just to name a few on contending teams. This is, in reality, a non-issue when accounting for the current W-L record. 3) Is the bullpen the most important reason for the Sox' current record? No, it's the half that the Red Sox have had more days on the DL from their initial roster than the Yankees and Rays combined, therefore looking at sloppy play and/or the bullpen as main cogs in the current argument is just a way to created a five-legged cat. The bullpen's impact to the W-L record is insignificant when compared to the missing production from the injured players. Without the injuries, even with the "sloppy" play and the bullpen issues, the Sox are at least 8-10 games better than what they are right now, so you can conclude that you can, in fact, place almost all of the blame on the injuries. It is what it is. Oh, and to anyone mocking the "lack of regression" from the Rays, consider the following: What was said here, was that they would not maintain their current pitching effectiveness, no one said they would "fade into obscurity" which is in reality nothing more than a mischaracterization and a typically weak "i told you so" baiting attempt. Consider the following: At the moment that me and some others concluded that the Rays would not continue their legendary SP performance they boasted a ML-second best 2.60ish ERA, which said posters concluded would regress, and their current 3.81 ERA, a full 1.20 runs above their mid-May mark , but injury issues from both the Sox and Yankees, as well as some ill-timed slumps from the Yankees have allowed them to stay at the Yanks' level and above the Sox' level, but the truth is, that moderately healthy, both the Sox and Yankees are better (on paper) than what a fully healthy (which is the key to their run this year, their only significant injury has been JP Howell) Rays team is.