jung

My preference would be Johnson but I agree it will the guy pitching best at the time. Johnson is a little older, has a little more frame and width to him and has a more balanced approach. Owens is all about control and sometimes it is there...sometimes not. When not...he gets killed much like other pitchers really dependent on pinpoint control.

It is rare for players to cut into each other at all. So "only one" player is actually quite something. The truth is, the unis they wear are for the most part laundry. They play for the PA. The PA is their lord and master. People need to pay more attention to how players talk to each other before succumbing to the quaint but outdated notion that they actually care all that much about the "team". They pull together more going into a post season run but even that is not much more but a collective mutuality of purpose. That is in part also why players like Hanley are popular with other players. The Hanley's of the world do a fantastic job of raising the overall level of player salaries without doing very much to earn them. Those guys are heros to the PA and its rank and file. Baseball fans need to grow up....I assure you the players have. That Panda ripped the Giants out the door tells much more about Panda than it did about the Giants organization. Panda really opened his mouth about much including some of the specifics of the deal the Giants wanted to make with him....Says much for Panda's view of the world, his place in it, the whole issue of his weight and any efforts to do anything about it. I suspect his act was growing old in SF where there were some strong personalities in the form of players that likely kept Panda from turning into a Macy's Holiday Parade float in a town packed with great restaurants. I suspect his act did get old after awhile. But that is only an opinion. I doubt that means he was a day in day out disaster of a teammate. But years of keeping some aspect of a fellow player's personality or character trait under control for the good of all involved just wears guys out eventually. Since the guys doing the heavy lifting are usually some of the team's better players, eventually everybody resents the player that is the object of all this attention. Just sucks too much energy out of the entire effort. I doubt you will get any of those players to talk though. They are often just relieved to not have to deal with it any longer and are not the sort of player that mouths off to the press anyway. I think only one Giant commented when Panda could no longer even switch hit because he had outgrown the right side of the batters box.

No I complained about the basis for trolling commenting that I can't really take seriously somebody that finds some hole or some negative aspect in our having brought in the best starting pitcher in the division. I then went on to identify the guy I think has the best shot at sliding in behind Price but also suggested that he will have to take "a big step forward" for that to mean anything. Eddie exactly as he was last year would be fine with you? OK for you I guess. As for my comments on Buch...What???...do you want to argue that he DOES not struggle as the innings pile up. Or maybe you want to argue that our best memories of Buch are not those super half seasons he has given us. I think Porcello is a rotation 3 at best and I have seen NOBODY here claim that they see him as better than that and most consider him a 4! Who does that leave? Kelly. Kelly has been tossed back and forth between the rotation and the pen here at this forum so often that he must feel like a rag doll by now. All of the aforementioned comments have been made by posters I know are Red Sox fans. Seen too many of their posts over the 12.000 odd posts I have made to think otherwise. Maybe take some remedial reading before trying to offer a comment on my comments. And..... if you think that was me complaining about the rotation or anything else for that matter...you have not read nearly enough of my posts. If I am about some component of this team or anything else for that matter, I won't leave anything to doubt. Then again there have always been some members here that want to change the name of the forum from Talk Sox Forum to Genuflect to Sox Forum....the sort of fans that immediately glorify somebody just because he is wearing our laundry and then dump him for the next guy that happens to be wearing our laundry. I have no use for them what so ever. Its a discussion forum...not Sunday school or a cheering section. I won't use the term you used because "crapping on" suggests baseless comments and as I have pointed out, you can easily find what I have posted here in the same or in so many words posted by other Sox fans that are simply observing and then commenting.

I had been for the most ignoring this thread. Should have continued. It takes real trollishness to look at a team bringing in the best pitcher in the division and finding some level of negativity to bring to the table. Good grief...I don't mind trolls as much as I mind their steadfast pursuit of the goal of having people feel badly about their team...what a bogus rational...sad really. As for our rotation this year.....It looks like what we have at this point is what we going to have. So for me that means hanging my hat on Eddie as the most likely guy to be an effective rotation guy behind Price. Surely the Eddie of last year will not be enough but hopefully he takes a big step forward. Don't have much faith in Porcello and it is hard for me to take seriously a guy that keeps getting tossed back and forth...should he start....should he go to the pen....should he start....etc etc. If Kelly were so hot we would not be tossing him back and forth so often. As for Buch I would take one of those super half seasons from Buch and be happy with that. Just not sure if he is actually capable of turning that trick. However that would be way better than seeing him grind out a full season of mediocrity at best. He struggles as the innings pile up and I just don't think we get much out of Buch pitching a full season. Give me one of those super half seasons and find a way to cover the rest once he hits the DL.

Not many places are like Fenway Park. On balance, JBJ IS IMO a better CF than Mookie. But Mookie's talents are far better matched to Fenway CF than to Fenway RF. In the short span of games he played in RF last year I saw Mookie rainbow two throws from mid-depth RF that would have required 20' tall cut off men...just total rainbows trying to get the ball to 3rd and that was just from mid-depth RF and he only played there in a couple of games last year. I would recommend it in the main because I think the worry voiced about moving Mookie around last year is last year's news. I marginally agreed with it last year. Mookie is now a competent OFer IMO. He should not have any issues moving from Fenway CF to RF other places.....like that shoe box NY has the gall to call a stadium. I think the only concern will be that in CF, Mookie is playing the OF position where you get the best reads of the ball off the bat. RF might expose a bit of a flaw there. But again.....no harm no foul. Keep him out of Fenway RF and if that is an issue, how much harm can it cause? JBJ for his part has already proven that it does not matter whether he is in one of the corners or CF...his positioning is excellent, his reads are ridiculously good.....his first step is terrific and best of all....he never takes a wasted step....his paths to the baseball are as pure as I have seen in decades. As for whether the Panda story is true or not...PANDA apologized for it. My God are people just blind?

All of the various Porcello stories might have some truth to them. IMO, problem 1 was his decision to try to turn himself into Kelly for some inexplicable reason. But where 700's concerns might be valid is that Porcello's bread and butter pitch is not easy on the arm at all. His reasoning for his selection may well be some concern that the wear on his arm was taking its toll....then possibly failure on an epic level forced him back to a more balanced approach. What was he risking at that point....more failure when he was already failing? It is as plausible as anything else and might explain why both his selection and then his execution left much to be desired. 2016 might tell us more than 2015 did on Porcello. We might not like the answer we get though. I think he is a rotation 3 at his very best. As for the other signings from the end of Larry/BC that concern us, I for one think we should have known better on Panda at least. This is a player that has knowingly and willingly put himself right on the edge of the weight/age line graph choosing to just get by over being what he could have been. I am so sick of the "he was great in the post season BS...meaning what? You should give a guy like that close to $20m per because he was able to cobble together good post season runs...That is a joke. He should have had a weight clause and not forcing that issue was just plain asking Panda to spit right in your eye which he did as Hanley did for that matter. That said, unlike the enigma that is Hanley, the eclectic basket of offerings, most of them not very good that is Castillo and the mystery that is JBJ, with Panda at least there is a heck of a ballplayer buried under all that blubber. If it were me, I would stop screwing around with the guy. Force the help down his throat putting him on a weight management program in the process and if he does not like it, too f***ing bad. The guy owes us one year already and frankly rather than see another year like that, I would bench him in a heartbeat. What would we be missing: He, - can no longer switch hit at his 2015 weight forcing him to hit LHed into Fenway's huge RF - looks like he is playing in slow motion as balls go past him at 3rd - literally had to be removed from the game and possibly hospitalized after going from 1st to home - could not even turn in some instances in order to make a good throw to 1st looking like it would take a crane to get that ponderous front leg turned and planted - could not or would not make the effort to even put himself in the right position when he had the responsibility as the cutoff man, choosing instead to take a few thudding steps and lounge around 3rd...no mans land for the 3rd basemen as the cutoff man and last - was caught in the clubhouse on his smartphone trying too hook up with some baseball groupie during a game he was still playing in , poorly as usual. That story if taken to its worst conclusions would give you nightmarish, upchuck visuals! By the way, what do folks think about Farrell more than suggesting that JBJ is going to be the CFer in 2016. Frankly, I can only buy that one if JBJ were to remain in RF in Fenway switching places with Mookie in parks where that is warranted. If Farrell mean's full time, he is out of his mind.

Just to be clear 700 there was a decided dif between Panda batting from the LHed and Panda batting RHed last year. You could see him at least able to clear his hips LHed but no luck RHed. So if he never goes back to hitting RHed again while keeping all this weight, you might never get a chance to see what I saw in 2015. Other than news of doing two-a-days in Florida, have not heard a word about Panda's conditioning or his weight to this point. Although all the quiet on the topic is not IMO encouraging.

IMO, Farrell, with his undying faith in players and his general stubbornness will play Hanley and Panda till they drop almost regardless of what they are doing with a bit of a nod to Shaw but not much of one. DD does not look inclined to give Farrell an option with regard to Castillo who I expect will play 100+ games or more if he holds up.

Just losing the ability to bat RHed is enough proof that at some point the weight took over on Panda. Usually that is a graph of age/weight and when the two lines cross, the player is in trouble. Anybody that could not see that Panda was fighting all that weight batting from the right side is just plain blind to it. He was utterly motionless through the hips and torso. You actually could not see his hips turn at all if they were turning. The bat simply appeared out from behind all that rotundness with no evidence of his hips clearing. The best way I could describe it is a guy trying to bat while wrapped up in bungee cord that he was trying to fight through to get around.

I cannot even begin to count the number of times that this happens here at this site and it has happened AGAIN. The point was never from the posts I have read and posted that guys have got to be big in order to throw hard. In fact several including myself have pointed out smaller guys that have reputations for heat. Some have made the point that: - There appears to be something of a bias toward height from the mound and that the average height of pitchers is greater than it once was. I have not looked at the actual data myself. But I would bet that it has grown. - Hard throwers abound now as the average height for pitchers seems to be on the rise and greater (ergo...it is easier for a bigger guy to throw hard) It hardly matters whether the data tracks exactly to accuracy or not. The point seemed to be that bigger guys were finding their way to the pro mound more often and that scouts more than anybody seem to be attaching some link between size and the ability to throw hard. I thought that for his time, Greg Maddux one of the great control pitchers of his or any era was average height for a pitcher at 6' listed and probably a little under 6' actual, maybe more like 5'11". Height stats have been played with in pro sports certainly as long as I have been alive and you can't take either the listed height or weight to the bank...EVER. Regardless of actual height, whatever it is, I think he would come in at slightly below average for a starting pitcher today. By the way, while it is cross sport, have you checked out the average height for pro tennis players lately? Have you checked out the average speed of serves lately? Some here just like to argue and have no qualms about changing the point of the discussion so that they can: a) turn a discussion into something confrontational and into the basis for an argument come out on top in said argument while having drifted off all by themselves into a place NOBODY ELSE WAS GOING

Signing a player known to have weight problems to a monster contract without a weight clause is the determining factor in the dif between the Price contract and Panda's contract. Now we are stuck with a player on the wrong side of the weight/age factor and completely reliant upon the player to do the "right thing", a player that insists he is "not fat" which is a complete dodge. Whether or not he is fat is not the issue. Whether he can play at a level comesurate with expectations at his weight as his age increases is the issue. He had to give up switch hitting for one thing and is now stuck batting left handed playing 81 games in a park with a huge right field...not exactly what anybody had in mind for him. If you were going to sign Panda, you had to include weight as an obligation. The Giants new it...Panda knew the Giants knew it. Panda publicly stated he knew where the Giants were going in a next contract and that it was a deal breaker for him ala' the Giants. So signing him at age 28 to a big contract and expecting him to perform to age 33 with a progressively more damaging weight issue and no contractual obligation to control it was just plain shortsighted and asking for trouble. Signing Price is a risk but it is not a risk that is looking you in the face every instant of every day from first year to last. My best expectations for Panda was that we at least get a year or two out of him before the weight caught up to him and even that would have been a bad deal for us. As it is, we are being smacked with the weight issue right from his first year. It owns him now. If he deals with it responsibly, maybe we get a player again. If not, we will have to start to look for a crane to cart him out to 3rd base.

Farrell hates the sac bunt. Not sure what you are watching unless you are going to call him to task for using a sac bunt in the 7th inning which under the right circumstances I think is fine. I do not think there is a manager in baseball that has been more vocal in his disdain for the sac bunt and less prone to using it than Farrell. He has been known to ignore it in circumstances that are screaming for it, allowing hitters that would have to close their eyes and hope to run into something to hit away when they should at least could get something out of the AB. In fact at this point I think it would be safe to say that up and down the Sox organization, they are no longer even devoting a minimal amount of BP time to bunting as nobody coming up from our system can bunt a lick. I very much suspect the organization is taking its lead from its ML manager in that regard as young guys coming up from our system look like they are taking their life in their hands turning to bunt now. There is a dif between not being very good at it and being flat terrible. Maybe it is this way all over the AL and I just notice it more here. I personally don't believe that players should be allowed to drop off basic skilled at the front desk as they make their way through the professional baseball ranks, particularly if they have no offsetting skill....talking to you JBJ!

I believe that well balanced teams that while being balanced are optimized to the place where they are going to play 81 of the 162 stand the best chances of ending the season with a winning percentage. Whether that team can win in the post season or not tends to be an issue of pitching more than anything else, by a long margin. Before going further, the 2015 WS was a blood bath for the Mets. They lost 4 out of 5 games. Stop making believe this was a close series just because games went Extras. It was a slaughter. As for the elements of that series..... Folks want to contend that the bullpens were the big dif in the WS. But the KC pen had been the strength of their team all season in the sense that once it is in the game, the opponent's offense is done, the opponents neck is on the chopping block and KC can take its sweet old time administering the coup de grace.. So 7th inning on that should not have been a surprise to anybody including the Mets. What really hurt the Mets is that KC is an outstanding FB hitting team and the Mets high heat starters often could not even get to the 6th inning early in that series. Basically, the Mets could not build significant leads early in games which is when they needed to build them. Letting KC hang around in games is just death, post season or regular season. Then when the rubber hit the road late in games, the Mets defense cracked under the pressure of KC's speed. The Mets could not throw a base runer stealing out to save their skin. KC clearly exposed the Mets catchers who might actually have trouble throwing out grandmothers for that matter. As we know, that was not the only hole in the Mets defense. So for my money, KC's pen was no different a tool in the post season than it had been all season long. The Mets starters failed to give the Mets enough of an edge going into the later innings, with the exception of game 2. They simply did nothing effective to keep the Royals from scoring at least enough early to stay in games and the Mets starters HAD to do that. It was the only shot the Mets had. If anything maybe the overall youth of the Met's rotation was their undoing. Schilling's they were NOT.

That series was a very tough match up for the Mets especially after losing their Shortstop. I don't know if the Royals knew how much the match ups favored them but they seemed to be taking advantage right from the start. As strong as the Jays were at the plate, I am willing to bet the Mets would have at least done better in that match up. The Mets might have still come out on the short end but I think they would have faired better. Which is not to say anything in these preceding posts is wrong. But man I would hate to see the outcome if those two teams played 162 games against each other.....I think it would have been ugly.

There is no need to go all the way back to 1967 to see the effect of speed that exists throughout a lineup on a team not well equipped to handle speed. The Royals ran some teams right out of the ballpark last year and did it on the biggest stage in baseball as well.

I think the other reason you are seeing more and more big pitchers in baseball is because now from high school on, baseball is trying to develop more and more power pitchers and those tend to be bigger guys. Pedro had those huge hands and could get a good deal of leverage on the ball. Timmy had terrific juice for a smaller guy in his early years...but you could see that his buggy whip motion, the force behind the leverage he could get on the ball was going to exert enormous stress on his body and that his period of high velo would likely be short lived as a starting pitcher. Developing more power arms means more of them are making it to the bigs in one way or another. It is yet another example of baseball really sort of being broken down to its least common denominators....something I really don't like. Everyday players are now more and more, hitters that can play tolerable defense. Even within the category of hitting, can they actually handle a bat? Nobody can bunt anymore. Guys can barely sacrifice. Pitchers are more and more power pitchers and pitchers generally are clearly not even trained to cover 1st off the mound!

This is a tough place for Owens to pitch as well. The last game he pitched here in 2015 he looked like a poorly connected bunch of 2x4's. He was a stick figure out there in the cold and got bombed. Whatever success he is likely to have is likely to be found in a warmer climate than we can offer him here. Maybe he has thin blood. But all those long limbs are tough enough for him to get under control. The cold looks like one brick too many loaded onto his back.

There are both tall and short pitchers for whom the ball appears to the batter to either be coming right out of their heads or right out of their uni jerseys. That IS a matter of arm angle. The ball tends to get onto the hitter with a bit more surprise as the hitter has to pick the ball out of the guys head or more difficult, his uni jersey. With Young, the batter is trying pick up the ball out of all that mess and it has been thrown about six inches to a foot closer to him than he is used to. With that, Young usually does not get past one or two times through the order and the hitters have adapted....end of trick! But he can be one heck of a change of pace coming in for a starter when the Royals need two or three innings from somebody.

Tall pitchers are not likely to have the control of shorter guys but what they lose in control they make up for in juice. Arguably the greatest control pitcher of all time....Greg Maddox. Sort of makes the point. While a shorter guy can have gas.....the really tall guys should be able to throw gas and if they can't they are really in a tough spot to advance from IMO. I don't know what the Sox will do with Owens...big tall guy with no gas.....NO THANKS!

Did I ever miss that. They must have extended him at some point but I sure don't know when. oh wait...now I remember. This must be the contract extension that had some people wondering why the Sox did not wait till part way through 2016 although I don't ever think you want to wait that long to extend a manager in this town. But if people were talking about it in that context, it must have been before 2015 started.

Actually if the two are at loggerheads, then the Pres of Baseball Ops just fires the Manager. Again, Farrell is being left a lame duck. There is no line he has to toe managing this team. He can and should manage it for wins all the way up until the point where wins in this championship season no longer mean anything. That is the point generally where Baseball Ops can offer who should play. Up until then, he is a lame duck Manager and Managers are judged on wins within the Championship season. As far as he knows, he is looking for a job for 2017. If they want to exert some pressure on Farrell to toe some line, throw another year on the table, and just pay him for it if you fire him anyway. If they are not going to do that, then they have a lame duck with no incentive to do anything other than Manage the team for wins as he sees fit up until they fire him or very much less likely but possible, extend him.

Which is what I said and what I think Elk said both about 10 maybe 20 posts ago.

All the reports were that Hanley did not work at all to become a LFer and frankly that is exactly how he looked. DD does not decide who plays. The Manager decides who plays and the Sox have chosen to leave this Manager a lame duck. Farrell has no incentive to do anything other than Manage the team exactly as he sees fit and if DD does not like it he always has two options someone in his position always has....get rid of a player or players he feels are being misused or fire the Manager. Option one is not quite as available as it usually is because nobody wants some of these guys, at any price. Option two is a very likely scenario. In fact, DD is helping it along as the very fact of TL being there is going to undermine Farrell to some extent. The biggest danger to the Sox this year is getting off to one of those stumbling around 500 starts. Farrell may not have much in the way of tools with a team with proven disdain for lame duck Managers. DD's move with TL was brilliant but only to the extent that he anticipates Farrell not making it through the 2016 season. Leaving him a lame duck and overpaying TL to remain bench coach will not be lost on these players, not in the highly monetized environment of Fenway. Some of these guys would actually prefer TL to Farrell and we would have our heads firmly stuck in the sand to think otherwise.

I don't think so. DD would have gotten to pick his own GM. There is no way you hire a guy and make him head of Baseball Ops and then take both the Manager decision and the GM decision out of his hands. The Sox decided to play the Manager decision the way they did for a number of reasons that had nothing to do with DD. The Sox long history with the Jimmy Fund and whole Cancer issue as the Sox have played it in the past left them deciding to hold the job for Farrell. But taking both jobs out of DD's hands simply would not have happened. That would have left BC in some function that has nothing to do with how they title him. BC would not have been the functional GM of this team IMO even if they chose to simply sling a bunch of VP's in between DD and BC. It should be obvious by now that the "titles" within the Sox organization are not as meaningful as you would hope they would be. We still have Larry in a titled role though he no longer even has a contract and is not really functioning in any real capacity directly with the Sox.

IMO, there is no way JH would have allowed Larry's contract to expire and then just kept BC around. Clearly what they had was not working. The convoluted, cross functional organization that JH had was IMO entirely a result of his over reliance on Larry and his lack of trust in BC. Where do we think Bobby V came from when BC clearly wanted somebody else? I actually do not know what JH would have done if DD had not become available. Though nobody is going to admit to it, I would not be at all surprised if JH new something was happening with DD and Detroit. I seriously doubt JH just decided late in the 2015 season to let Larry's contract expire and THAT was the moved that spelled the end for the organization JH had and that also for all intents meant the end for BC. I expect JH had put more forethought into that and again IMO, there is no way he keeps BC around without someone JH truly trusts in complete control of Baseball Ops. How many other guys were available that have some history with JH as that was the only kind of guy JH was going to hire....somebody with history with him that JH trusted. The guy that ended up in Seattle, Jerry Dipoto probably was a possibility though I think a scary one. But if you told me that for JH it would have come down to Dipoto and BC, I would bet JH would have picked Dipoto if only because he clearly did not have confidence in BC. Just his public comments about pitchers over 30 and the fact that those comments had teeth tells you JH simply had no confidence in BC. Honestly I do think that the way JH insists on this history coupled with trust thing really limits his options. He really does not have a history with that many guys. in baseball.