Looch Ness Monster

Kind of wishing we traded him now. Confidence is going doooooooooown the drain.

Nope. The offense is back.

This is the offense that has been hiding for about a month.

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBUCK NO

It's pretty awesome to see him hitting this well. I was more expecting a few 0for games with 2 or 3 strikeouts. This could be huge for giving Drew/Bay each a little time off. We can send him back to AAA I think when we move him back to the Minors. I think he's ready to move past AA, but I don't think he's ready to be the 2007 Jacoby Ellsbury. Even Ellsbury played the majority of his 2007 in AAA.

I understand that but the writing is on the wall for Papelbon. He's a hard headed player that has pretty much abandoned the breaking ball and relies on his fastball. I don't know about you but when I watch him come into the game I cringe because a clean inning for him is a walk, a single, a groundout, a strikeout, another walk and then a long flyball to the warning track it seems like. We're lucky to have gotten so much production out of him but I don't want to see what happens when he stops getting lucky and they turn into blown saves more often.

Wow I didn't expect this thread to blow up like it has. My point: Bard deserves the chance to earn the closer role next season. In Spring Training 2007 they were willing to hand the role over to J.C. Romero while trying to decide whether Papelbon was a closer or starter still. Daniel Bard is starting to show me something that says he can close one day if given the chance. I'm not saying trade Papelbon in the offseason like JE is. I'm saying PUT SOME PRESSURE ON HIM TO PERFORM BETTER. When somebody gets too comfortable in a role, especially with the arrogance of a guy like Paps, that's when you start to see negative results.

We don't pay millions of dollars to anybody. I don't know about you but my family is struggling to pay the bills. Sure as hell am not paying millions to anybody. If you're gonna play that card then you were technically paying the Baltimore Orioles players salaries since you bought tickets for a game at Camden Yards, so go over and get Nick Markakis' autograph or Adam Jones' autograph.

Just said the first name to come to my head. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/cody_ross/ Read it.

Cody Ross would have been a nice pickup. I'm not sure if he was ever on the trading block but he was mentioned a few times on mlbtraderumors.com from what I recall.

Daniel Bard is really making a case to be the future closer of the team. Jonathan Papelbon is making a case to be the next Kyle Farnsworth for the NYY in a few years. I understand that Papelbon is the closer and will continue to be the closer for the rest of the season, there's no question about that. But right now Daniel Bard is showing that as the bigger the situation becomes, the more confidence he shows and the more dominant he is. Believe it or not they have almost identical ERA's (although Paps has 14 or so more IP)..the difference is WHIP. Bard is at about 0.96 while Papelbon is at about 1.33. Not as sexy of a stat now that he doesn't have a WHIP of 0.77 like he did in 2006. I've watched pretty much every game this year and Papelbon is starting to lose it. Sure people will come in here and say "Oh for crying out loud he has 3 blown saves, stop crying"..but my eyes don't lie. A clean inning for Papelbon is a walk, a single, a ground out, a strikeout and a fly ball out that goes to the warning track. Am I wrong? Maybe I'm just getting on my high horse because of Bard's recent performance where he hasn't allowed a run in 14+ innings and has been striking out hitters at a ridiciulous rate. Maybe we have to wait until he gets more experience and shows he can handle a full Major League season. Maybe we have to wait until he starts to face teams for the 3rd or 4th time to crown him. But in my eyes he should be given a chance to compete for Papelbon's closer role in 2010, Papelbon can only hold on to his reputation as an elite closer for so long. That shoulder's going to start to wear down really soon as he pushes 30 years old with that violent delivery. And please read the whole post before coming in here and bashing me saying how "Papelbon is untouchable and the best closer in baseball"

It seems like he has better mechanics than Papelbon which are better fit for a long term career. Papelbon's delivery is so violent. Can't wait until Bard is our closer. His stuff is RIDICULOUS.

A K would be nice here Bard. EDIT: And the request is granted.

I'd rather have Markakis and I would even take 20 points off his batting average over Drew.

Beckett's fly ball% has been a career low BY FAR 30.1 %..while his ground ball% has been 47.0 %, close to his career high 47.3% in 2007. And we know what happened in 2007. And we know how poorly Beckett started off, so it's probably even more ridiculous since his rejuvenation in May.

I'd like Beckett go the full 9. The bullpen needs a bit of a break/rest.

Wow, Reddick draws a walk. He's an infamous "needs to work on his patience" guy that strikes out twice as much as he BB's. Impressive considering he started off 0-2.

Nice to see Reddick get a hit, a double nonetheless. That's gonna be his bread and butter when he's up here I think in the future.

It was funny to see V-Mart get a standing ovation in Baltimore. I bet he wasn't expecting it.

I think that Martinez can catch Wakefield..Kottares isn't the only person in the league who can but it's not going to help with runners on base because Martinez is almost as bad as Varitek at controlling the running game.

Red Sox 1. Jacoby Ellsbury, CF 2. Dustin Pedroia, 2B 3. Victor Martinez, 1B 4. Kevin Youkilis, 3B 5. David Ortiz, DH 6. Jason Bay, LF 7. Jason Varitek, C 8. Josh Reddick, RF 9. Jed Lowrie, SS -- Josh Beckett, SP Orioles 1. Brian Roberts, 2B 2. Adam Jones, CF 3. Nick Markakis, RF 4. Aubrey Huff, 1B 5. Nolan Reimold, LF 6. Luke Scott, DH 7. Melvin Mora, 3B 8. Matt Wieters, C 9. Cesar Izturis, SS -- David Hernandez, SP Reddick batting 8th and starting in RF. I'm really curious about why they wanted to experiment with this. It wasn't like he was playing out of this world with AA.

What's your vision for the pitching staff for the rest of the year? We have a good amount of depth so we have tons of options. Beckett, Lester, Buchholz, Penny, Smoltz, Wakefield as the long relief bullpen guy Beckett, Lester, Buchholz, Penny, Wakefield, Smoltz as the long relief bullpen guy Beckett, Lester, Buchholz, Penny, Bowden, Wakefield and Smoltz both out Just a few..there's obviously other options but I think Beckett, Lester and Buchholz are gonna be our big dogs for the rest of the way. Buchholz has to step up. We need somebody to fill Masterson's long relief role in the bullpen. What do we do?

We added Victor Martinez Chris Duncan Casey Kotchman Brian Anderson We lost Julio Lugo Justin Masterson Bryan Price Nick Hagadone Argenis Diaz Hunter Strickland Mark Kotsay What I take out of this: We got the best player out of the whole bunch in Victor Martinez and we dumped dead weight in Julio Lugo as well as our 2007 1st round pick and our 2008 sandwich 1st round pick..which is kind of disappointing. We did however not lose much on our 25-man roster and essentially replaced George Kottares with Victor Martinez. (I excluded LaRoche because we didn't really "lose" him) And I bolded Major League players. Solid B from me. Still feel like we need to somehow acquire a SP during the waiver wire period though.