jung

Well pitched game for the Sox so far and the Royals cannot field the baseball.

$13....no way. Hosmer will opt out because $13 is the least he will be offered on the open market. Actually this is Hosmer's last year at $20

I don't think he will get offers for $20M. More like $16M or maybe a little over that.

Really like Hosmer. Just not sure they will make him an offer to keep him here. IMO he is not going to play for $13M per year. He will opt out and the Sox get the chance to sign him probably for something between $13M and $20M.

The crack NESN crew also referring to the triangular pad against the foul pole as the source of the angst down the left field line. I assume it all looks closer to right when looking from home plate. Hard to imagine its actually right even from there. Triangular pad needs to go IMO.

So I have no grips with the HR call on the Perez HR last night. We were going to lose that game last night whether it was called a HR or a double. At least two runs would have scored on the play. However I have no idea why that ballpark is so cockeyed. If you look at the left field foul line it does not correspond to anything vertical at the wall. There is a small yellow line at the base of the wall that does not correspond to the foul line. There is another longer line immediately above that. It does not correspond to either the foul line or the small line at the base of the wall. There is a line up the triangular padding that does not correspond to either. Finally the foul pole itself corresponds to nothing. All of the garbledegook I just described is left of the left field foul pole and most of it is left of the foul line....technically in foul ground. They appear to have screwed up the entire foul pole and foul line design by insisting on putting that triangular pad in against the foul pole and then trying some odd geometry to accommodate that. What they should have done is built the place so that the top fence rail wraps around the back of the foul pole, eliminating the triangular pad and then placing the foul pole where it belongs and be done with it. Seems to me they are going out of there way to prove why fly over country is fly over country. Are the corn rows actually straight out there or not? Nothing in the ground rules about that pad I am assuming because it defies description as a part of the ground rules.

You are correct. That is how it happened Red. SD was caught when Hosmer refused the trade to the Nats and THEY HAD TO MOVE HIM. So what do you do in that situation....needing to move a 1st baseman immediately. You look for the teams that are deficient at 1st base and who comes right to the head of the list.....the Boston Red Sox. That move was prompted by SD's need to move Hosmer, not by the Red Sox trying to do something about their woeful 1st base situation that had festered for two years. Credit Bloom for owning up to it and no more than that. As to whether Hosmer stays here....NO TELLING!

Well I will say this much, the left field foul pole in KC has to have been designed by somebody that flunked geometry. If you look at it from foul territory, there is a yellow line marking a foul ball that does not follow the line of the foul pole. It is actually in foul territory. That line then continues up one point of this triangular pad that is again in foul ground. I could not tell if the Perez HR hit off the triangular pad or off the foul pole itself. Does not change the fact that the triangular pad with its yellow line and the yellow line from the ground to the pad are both in foul ground. They should get rid of the stupid pad. Cover that part of the fence with more fence and then if they want a line on the wall that extends up to the base of the foul pole, have the line extend straight down from the foul pole itself.

But that was not the market price for Mookie....obviously and, Why did the Sox box themselves into that corner in the first place. The looming issue with how to keep Mookie if the Sox were actually going to try was LOOMING for a very long time over which the Sox never got close to positioning themselves to keep him. Further to the point about a Black American being the face of and leading the contemporary Sox, throughout the period in question, the Sox PR (NESN and the actual Fenway PR dept) kept pushing the Martinez as the Zen Master Hitter as if that should define leadership of the team. "Oh look, Rafi is doing deep breathing at the plate before he steps in like JD". Well OK EXCEPT that when JD does his deep breathing he actually shakes out the jitters. Rafi jitterbugs his way to the batters box. Deep breaths and then goes back to jitterbugging. Deep breathing has just been added to Rafi's jitterbugging at the batters box which by the way the NESN broadcast team insists is one of the things that makes Rafi an interesting player. I actually think it is one of the things that is interesting to watch in Rafi as a batter. The Sox organization literally tried to push the JD as team leader narrative which was pure ********.

Hernandez seems to be a feast of famine pitcher. He either has a great inning or gets bombed.

Hey I remember arguing with people here who wanted to anoint JD the team leader with Ortiz leaving. I said NOPE, this is Mookie's team. I got lots of pushback on that and don't think Sam Kennedy and the business side of the house were oblivious to that pushback.

Geezus, Mike Hazen's wife Nicole dead at 45 of brain cancer. Just terrible......whenever I hear something like that I seriously question why this old goat Jung is still walking' around. Sympathies to the family. Very sorry to hear it.

IMO, the best baseball organizations from the fans perspective build a decent farm system that they are willing to ravage on occasion but that they for the most part use to develop players. Then if they have the money hammer they use it to bring in the big guns they need to actually have a contending team. My biggest recent disappointment with Sox management was boxing themselves into having no ability whatsoever to keep Mookie. Plus they sort of just stunned themselves at the point of having worked themselves into that mess. Bad enough that we were stunned. But Sox Management sort of just shrugged its shoulders and let it all happen right in front of them. I do think there is something underpinning that decision that is somewhat disconcerting. The Sox were well willing to allow a Latin player, Ortiz be the face of the franchise and the team leader. Not sure they were comfortable with a Black American in that role.

Why should not offer some sympathy to Bloom for dancing to Henry's tune and taking home buckets of cash for it. This is not going to yield a team we will like or have any empathy for IMO, nor will it yield a WS Champion IMO. Henry has done well here and has done well by the fans for much of his tenure. It might actually be time for Henry to go. There is one thing I will say for this mess, MLB is governing toward mediocrity.....so it could well be that teams building toward mediocrity is in the same spirit. That said, I don't think the trend is good for baseball and I suspect we are going to end up with teams that have no choice but to hope for mediocrity, teams that plan to mediocrity and teams that plan to greatness. As a fan count me in the plan to greatness crowd. That is not where the Sox are going at this point.

Bloom has never had the money hammer before, likely does not know how to use it and I seriously doubt Henry brought him here to use it now. Funny, Cherries did not know how to use the money hammer well either but was the opposite of Bloom IMO. Cherries spent like a drunken sailer and he did it quickly but not well.

Dare I say we can't help but get runs out of this

Who cares....the Dodgers are run like a big market team....which is how the Red Sox used to be run and should be run.

Thats Kyle Schwarber. I don't know who Schreiber is. Frankly I am less impressed with moves at the deadline than actual trades before the deadline or in the off season. Trades at the deadline can often simply represent a MLB wide understanding of a massive weakness on one team that is recognized by the entirety of MLB including somebody that absolutely positively has to move a player....like Hosmer from SD to Boston. Wacha and Strahm....not bad. Problem with the McGuire deal is that McGuire is not going to amaze anybody. Two rising prospects for Vaz. Great...not sure they are rising very far and trading away your front line catcher means you have given up on the year....no matter what blather comes out of Bloom's mouth. Blooms model is an efficiency model. Beane's mode is also an efficiency model. Neither are WS ring models. Has Beane won one of these things for all of his years of spread sheeting? Did Bloom win one in Tampa? I do think Bloom's model favors pitching which I think is a good thing. Beane's model appears to just value players without a bias toward pitching. That said both are efficiency models which I simply don't think match the assets and championship capabilities of a big market team like the Boston Red Sox. I think we are just setting ourselves up for years of eating Yankee exhaust, years of Red Sox mediocrity. Somewhere along the way, if enough of Bloom's bevy of flotsam and jetsam of prospects "bloom" we might make a real run....if not....not.

I never said "top brass" had to be there for every game. You more than implied that I did. I purposefully distinguished between top brass and direct reports something you appear to have completely ignored. Again I really cannot suggest naïveté on your part as the cause of your oversight. Further while I did not say that "top brass" had to be there for every game if I am not mistaken Dave Dumbrowski was there for every game, road and home.

Why don't we just cut to the chase. Has Beane in Oakland with all his spread sheets or Bloom in Tampa ever won the World Series? They are both using efficiency modeling. Efficiency modeling gets you .....efficiency.....sometimes. It does not appear to yield champions. Bloom's model appears to be biased toward pitching which I suspect is a good thing. Likely how Tampa got to two WS. Still has not won one of these things.

Sorry won't wash. All they needed to do was have one of them get on the charter to Houston. I't ain't rocket science. Stop putting words in poster's mouths, especially mine. It is a bad habit you have. Of the six members of the FO staff, four are direct reports to Bloom and O'Halloran. Bloom and O'Halliran are "top brass". The rest are not. There should always be at least one member of the FO staff traveling with the team to see the team play. There absolutely should have been one member traveling with the team to be with them at the trade deadline. I am sorry you come off as naive too because I know you're not. Putting naïveté aside does not leave attractive options to consider.

Best move Bloom made this year: DFA for JBJ Worst move Bloom made this year: trading Renfro for JBJ For all his faults Renfro is at least a MLB player. JBJ is a late innings replacement at best and apparently, the Sox no longer think he is even that.

To do what exactly. Its not like McGuire is an unknown quantity. Plus he has to learn this pitching staff and the staff has to get used to him.

A better lineup...possibly, a better shot at going anywhere? NOPE.....you don't trade away your front line catcher if you think you are going anywhere. That guy has your pitching staff in his hands. Who has that now......Dollar Store Stroker with the sticky steering wheel?

Tell that to the guy that just traded away the team's front line catcher at the deadline.