jung

OK so here is why I am not excited by Owens or his peripherals or anything else about him. Do you really think he is going EVER be anything but a control/location pitcher. I would say NO. He is not getting stronger. He is not going to get stronger. At best his 92 mph FB might some day turn into 92.5. You can watch him pitch till he and you are blue in the face and he can't hold it together for more than two innings....not three innings....not four innings and certainly not five. He is going to top out as either a AAA pitcher or a 5 on some low rent rotation and thats it. I don't have any patience for that...I don't have any desires for that...no expectations of a guy that will actually help us some day. And if anybody noticed in the cold of October he just folded like a cheap suit. The wind cut through him like it was taking slices off. The opposing pitcher didn't fold like a cheap suit but he did. So pardon me but I don't need a joint. I need more depth to our starting pitching.

for a guy like him that is just another version of no control. He is wild both in and out of the strike zone. Gets tagged in the strike zone...produces walks out of the strike zone. I have not been excited about Owens ever and I guess I likely won't be until he is wearing some other uni.

Owens is a control pitcher who has shown no ability to control it for over two years now?????

Castillo is swinging early in counts this spring to avoid his death pitch...the late count breaking ball. But real MLB pitching won't let him get away with that. In fact he did that in the regular season last year and they didn't let him get away with it then either. I think JBJ is set up to finally get to that .250 mark we have been setting for him but that won't do much to help this team score enough runs to matter which is what the Hanley, Pablo, JBJ Castillo, Ortiz on his victory lap lineup will struggle to do. Hanley caught a pop up on Saturday but he was late getting there and it was not much of a pop up at all. They need to just drop Pablo off the back of the barge...just forget about him before he starts to pack on his in season pounds. If they can rotate Shaw, Holt at 3rd and Shaw, Hanley at 1st AND can convince Hanley to hit the way DD wants him to hit they have a shot at being a decent run scoring lineup. Hanley is simply not smart enough to try to be a power hitter without making himself too vulnerable. Hanley is like a 2 year old with a new toy. Ortiz is smart enough and I think the Sox will depend on him for power and to some extent depend on Shaw. Eddie's set back just goes to point out how thin we really are in starting pitching. Owens is a joke...Johnson has not returned from injury. Owens.....a control pitcher has such poor control that he throws it and looks like a bowler hoping his roll is going to hook back into the pocket instead of going in the gutter. Most ridiculous post throw pose by a pitcher I have ever seen. So far it is looking like Price and pray for rain. Wright will likely get the call while Eddie is out....hopefully for a very short time. Porcello is again having trouble throwing his sinker and if that follows him into the regular season.........yuk!

I suspect that Hanley in limited action looks better than Pablo in the field as well. But that is not saying much. They don't want Pablo to do more than catch the balls that are hit right at him deciding that Pablo has gone beyond limited range to no range whatsoever. That is one hell of a 3rd baseman for you. They are not letting Hanley handle any pop ups and are arranging to have whoever catches cover Pop ups out toward 1st and Pedey handle pop ups behind first. That is a hell of 1st baseman for you. By the time our middle infielders get done covering at corner infield they may have a heard time covering their own territory! As for the glove, the reports were that Hanely showed up with no 1st baseman's glove, not his, not Napoli's not anybodies. As far as not putting in any work adapting to first base in the off season is concerned....Hanley seemed quite willing to work from the Shortsstop position though nobody was going to ask him to play Shortstop. I seriously doubt Hanley asked the Sox if he could do work at Short. It was just want Hanley wanted to do. Hanley always does what Hanley wants to do. While playing or not playing winter ball is a decision an MLB team can have a part in, Hanley could have worked at adapting to 1st without playing for a team just as he worked at Short without playing for a team. But NOOOOOOOOOO. Maybe he could find pop ups now if he had. Maybe he would have been able to at least start the process of developing footwork around 1st base if he had....but NOOOOOOOOO. People need to understand that Hanley simply does whatever pops into his mind that sounds good to him, like swinging for fences every single AB of his 2015 campaign for example. He lied his way into this contract, convincing BC that he would "WORK" at LF and he didn't do that either. Remember, Hanley went to BC, not the other way around. He went to BC hat in hand willing to say anything to get BC to sign on the line that was dotted which is how we end up with this stiff in the first place.

They are laughably terrible. I will give you that. They are audacious as all get out though. Capable of trying to sell anything at any time to anybody and they make sure to get around to all the possible candidates for embarrassment so they all end up needing a looong hot shower before rejoining polite company again. Slimy as eel oil might have been better.

As usual the slicker than eel oil Sox PR department will be backsliding into this.....first implying that it was a big nothing....they will slowly work their way around to something remotely resembling the truth. Figure he is out for at least most of April and any setback will kill most of May.

Why because they are all part of the same Sox PR machine. Like Pablo and his 17% body fat. That was the same report the "coaches" have been giving while reporters have been following Hanley around looking for him to put in the kind of individual work actually caring would demand....In fact caring would have demanded that Hanely gain at least a working knowledge of 1st in the off season....but NOOOOOOOOO. Hanley does not even show up with a glove....wondering what closet that thing was in gathering dust.

Who cares when he gets it...they won't let him even get near pop-ups ...are you kidding me. Why even try...there is no plan for him to play 1st past this year. This is the guy Farrell should have announced would be platooned every opportunity. Hanely will only actually care about playing 1st to the extent of not "looking" uncoordinated out there. His ego is about all we can count on. But does that mean he will "work at it"....NO. We already saw what that means...he just won't try to make a play that he deems potentially embarrassing. Hanley is an all loss proposition except for the opponents. We loss, Farell losses, the team losses, the other infielders definitely loss. What we are actually watching play out is the ultimate stupidity of telling a guy like Hanley Ramirez that he has this temporary role to fill and then expecting him to lift a finger to help himself fill that temporary role. That was never going to happen. Did not happen last year and is not happening this year. My biggest concern is not Hanley at 1st. I am hoping it only takes a few doses of that medicine in the regular season and I suspect Farrell and DD will be fully on board platooning him there. My concern is that Hanley will view the DH role with the same cavalier, this is easy, attitude within which he views everything and after wading through two years of the misery of Hanley in the field, we will find he is a lousy DH on top of everything else. I suspect the only reason DD is even interested is that he desperately hopes he can move either the Whale across the diamond or Hanley to somebody....ANYBODY....PLEASE

That Hanley would have trouble holding the bag with one foot and picking it was predictable. That is a 1st baseman's meat and potatoes play. But one only makes it regularly or even often IF HE PRACTICES IT. The neophyte 1st baseman, especially one with his ego will either look down at the bag afraid to look stupid pecking at with his foot or will in fact peck at it with his foot. Even when he finds it he will not feel comfortable dealing with a baseball skipping in to him when he can't move! He will often find himself off balance for one thing and No Hanley, you can't all time out and try to get your crotch adjusted. That is the big difference. Shortstops are used to being able to step to baseballs to make plays. Sundance Kid line "I am better when I am moving". Taking throws at 2nd is completely different and no preparation. But since Hanley won't work at anything that opportunity is out the window. So he can't take popups, I seriously doubt he can throw accurately to save his skin any more and struggles with everything but straight up ground balls and the occasional liner around 1st. Terrific.... And Pablo...a beached whale would actually be an improvement

But with Hanley it is never about what he can do but what he will do and what he wants to do. I have often found the comparisons between Manny and Hanley humorous. Manny worked his ass off at playing OF. He was not good...but he worked very hard at it. Then when it came to his hitting, Manny was the consummate professional hitter. He worked extremely hard at his hitting. While he was often goofy like Hanley, there was nothing about the game itself that Manny did not take seriously, especially his hitting. For example, you never would have seen Manny just decide to try to hit a HR every single AB of an entire season and if in fact he had a bad shoulder or shoulders and knew it had robbed him of some power, he would have taken that into account as well. Hanley works at nothing. Hanley does whatever Hanley wants to do and sometimes it looks like work. But it is always what Hanley wants to do. Hanley appears to be a gym rat who enjoys his time in the weight room. So while that looks like work it is simply what Hanley wants to, likes to do. IMO Hanley likes the camaraderie of the clubhouse and he likes the accolades of the fans. But he needs neither. He just likes them. Hanley does not want to play in the field...not anywhere...not LF, not 1st base, not 3rd base, not Short. He just does not want to play in the field. In fact I don't think he really likes anything about the actual game of baseball any longer. He just wants to get paid like a MLB player. He can barely muster enough interest to play in games. But he really does nothing outside of playing in games and hasn't now for a long time. The last time he was a force at the plate was 2008 and then for 86 games, half a season in 2013. So I really have no faith in Hanley as a DH either. I think at best he will go on runs or streaks and they will last as long as he does not get bored with them or does not hear a boo from somewhere or for as long as he feels like he is being successful without putting much in the way of work into it. Overlay onto that his shoulder issues, now both of them and honestly there is not much ballplayer left here either at the plate or in the field IMO. Either of his shoulders could stop a streak now as well. Since there are no plans to continue to play Hanley at 1st past this season, if Shaw is playing good ball I would immediately change one game a week for Shaw to two. I would monitor Hanley closely and when his head is in the clouds sit him even more and play Shaw more. But I would not sit Hanley entirely. If he shows signs of going on a run, give him more playing time again. But it makes absolutely no sense to force this 1st base issue when we have a guy sitting there that wants to play the position, will clearly field rings around Hanley and may well hit as well as Hanley hits. Again there are no plans for Hanely at 1st beyond this year. So what the heck are we doing? This team becomes too much an eclectic mix with Hanley and Pablo playing which is in part why the team plays better when they sit. Ortiz being on his victory lap does not help this. I expect Ortiz to heat up as we get deeper into the season. But I don't expect him to risk that Achilles of his in his last year. That then also makes the shift more effective when used on Ortiz as there are now so many places from which a fielder can get the ball to 1st base, before Ortiz gets to 1st base. I think once again and probably even more so than last year, we will find few reasons to have Hanley and Pablo on the field at the same time. I am encouraged by JBJ but don't see anything worth much discussion in Castillo. While I want Shaw to get more time than Farrell seems to be planning. I am less thrilled with Farrell having already announced that Young would platoon with JBJ. We literally threw JBJ out there to fail day after day after day, wasting about 650 ML AB's on a swing that was never going to work in the process. Now that he has a swing that completely changes his prospects as a hitter, NOW we are going to platoon him!!!!! This is a tough division. It was not a pushover last season and it will not be a pushover this season. This whole wide open AL East thing is BS. We will surely pitch better this year. but an eclectic offensive mix and swiss cheese defense at the corners is not something that we will be able to just sweep under the carpet IMO. So anytime they can give me less of Hanley and less of Pablo and to a lesser degree, less of Castillo as well, the happier I am likely to be.

Where I see a glimmer of hope here is that Farrell has already committed to Shaw for one game a week. Well that may not sound like much but physiologically, it is. If he is already committed to playing him one game a week, then it is not much of a jump from there to two games a week. Once you are up to two games a week, you are already playing in at least 30% to 35% of the games. If Shaw gets there and is just playing Hanley into the ground, then it will be hard to keep Shaw off the field no matter what they are paying Hanley. While I am also not a believer in Hanley the DH, since that appears to still be the eventual plan for next year....forcing this 1st base thing in that context would seem stupid regardless of what they are paying him.

Sam made a play at 1st the other day that Hanely only makes if he lays down in front of the ball and lets it hit him. Shaw for his part is doing just about everything he can do to make his case. Sure it is just ST. But the guy can only do what he can do and Shaw is doing it to the nth degree.

Does anybody know Sam's actual age. I have now seen 27 AND 22. I guess I would believe either. But one or the other must be an error.

Except when it encourages management to warehouse players in favor of paying some stiff a fortune to do basically nothing. We end up paying a fortune to said stiff while the guy that should get his shot runs the risk of injury basically marking time.

Sort of makes Pawtucket a scary place unless you are already a MLer trying to play your way back from injury or something like that. If not then it sounds like about the only good thing that can happen to you is that you don't get hurt playing down there before you get up here. But that does seem to be how it is.

Shaw is already 25 and Travis is already 27. Seems like they are what they are going to be. I would think they should be playing someplace. The shame of it is that at their ages they really need to sink or swim meaning they should get a shot at real ML play. Hernandez looks more like a traditional prospect should look...young...but where to play him. Both Shaw and Travis could probably play here right now. They would not be stars but would likely contribute more than the slugs ahead of them. Travis would have to skip AAA to make it up now. But another year in the minors means he would be 28 before seeing ML time.

Well actually it does matter but OK whatever. I am beginning to think JBJ actually has a chance to pull a career out of his ass. He hit a ball today that he does not get close to 2 years ago with that previous ridiculous swing. He was not trying to go the other way today...there was no effort to get his hands inside the ball. But without that stupid over rotating torso he can get the bat into the hitting zone so much faster and keep it in a little longer. So today his swing was a tad late which was the reason the ball went opposite field. but He still got a a hit out of a ball that he would have been a foot away from 2 years ago.

So paying Castillo $11m a year for what is it......7 years was worth what he gave us in a basement dwelling season! Much like Castillo possibly being better than Hanley and Pablo says more about them....Castillo being better than anything we had anywhere says more about our vaunted farm system than it does about Castillo, Without moving Mookie to the OF, it has produced all of one OF guy of late.....JBJ. On a brighter note, seeing Vaz for the first time today. Unlike Pablo who could lose a 20lb dif under one arn, Vaz looks solid as a rock with the 20lbs gone.

Unfortunately that says more about Hanley and Pablo that it does about Castillo. Castillo for one thing simply can't hit breaking balls. Generally speaking if you are 29 years old and are this feeble against the breaking stuff....you are on your way to your window washing career. The only reason they are stuck now fooling with Castillo is because they are paying him. Also, he takes poor paths to the baseball in the OF and he has an Ole' glove. He has a cannon arm though not JBJ's but he has this odd knack for taking balls of the the Monster.....better with his back to the infield than even Yaz was with his back to the infield. So how much are they going to put up with for a guy that is meat for any breaking ball, has a so-so at best glove hand, a cannon arm that only comes into play on caroms off the Fenway Wall? How many guys do they have that they are stuck dealing with because they are paying them....Castillo, Hanley, Pablo, Craig....Geez. Clearly they are paying Porcello more than they should by a fair amount because the Sox insisted on extending him for some ridiculous reason mid season. Usually when you make bad FA signings you worry about how much time you are going to lose off the back end of the deal. We can't get past the front end of these deals, never mind the back end.

I have no idea what people did not look at Pablo's massive body in a baseball uni...which was the real proof for me and would not acknowledge that he is without question bigger than he was at the beginning of last season and quite possibly so close to his end season weight that it is hardly worth discussing a difference. That is SCARY! Hanley, another case of Red Sox hope overarching reason...why I am not surprised he is having trouble picking it. There is NOTHING about footwork at shortstop that is remotely similar to footwork at 1st. The only shot Hanley really had at being relevant as a 1st baseman was to have at least worked hard at it in the off season. BUT NOOOOOOO!......not Hanley....not in your or my lifetime. I actually think Hanley will be no better at 3rd but could do less damage there and it takes one of the terrible two off the field. We look at what we had done under the last of Larry/BC and then for some reason wonder why we end up eating AL East exhaust. Hanley, Pablo, Porcello resigning, Castillo (who IMO is not even a baseball player of any kind), Lackey mess, Lester mess, and the coupe de grace, Farrell who we should have bumped someplace last year so he could have kept his health insurance through his cancer fight. Bringing John back as manager was flat stupid. People age in their jobs and like it or not, father time catches up and they just are not what they were. Something needs to revitalize JH and TW I think.....with Larry now gone. Larry was a great President that JH refused to corral allowing him to run amok in Baseball Ops where we ended up with BC, heaven help us. As for Hanley actually playing 3rd base, I don't think Hanley can throw anymore...as in across the diamond with something on it anywhere near 1st base. You would get Pablo off the the field all together and Hanley off of 1st but you would need to send your new 1st baseman out there with a step ladder!

MLB players and coaches have wayyyyyyyy to much time on their handa. Too much time to eat....too much time to make cell phone calls to baseball groupies.....too much time for a little sports reporter hanky panky.......just entirely too much time, especially for the money they make.

Yankees play the Sox at 1:00 PM on Saturday. First appearance of pinstripes this year. Grrrrrrrr........Grrrrrrrrrr.....woof..woof...Crrrrrrrrrr

Both Hanley and Pablo have been and will likely continue to be albatross hung around the team's neck. The fewer games they play the better the overall performance of the team. That is not to say that Sam or Travis or Holt are likely to have monster seasons. But unfortunately Hanley and Pablo are slugs. The sooner they find pine the better for this team regardless of their salaries. If they can get to about June with Pablo somebody else can probably close out the year at 3rd. Hanley may or may not hit. If he does, hopefully he will hit enough to make up for what will likely be another year of negative WAR in the field. Who know....I am already tired of both of them and simply look forward to seeing somebody else trot out to both 3rd and 1st as the season progresses.

I thought it was pretty comical that the very first play Pablo tried to make in the field this spring went..........right under his glove. That is not to say I am happy about that. More to say....FIGURES!