jung

The Herald reports today via Internet that David Ortiz has left JetBlue Park saying that Manager Farrell may have a comment regarding his status later this afternoon (Sunday). Ortiz refused to comment himself as he was leaving.

Ells usually finds that extra burst just in time to go crashing into a wall.

For one thing the Berkman deal was contingent on his passing a physical. Could Ortiz pass a physical right now...he can't even jog for crying out loud.

Don't be ridiculous. The Berkman deal is not at all comparable nor did he get two years. He got a year with a vesting option.

Who....well lets start with there is no direct replacement for Ortiz out there...maybe Thome comes close. There are some overarching considerations here. There is no way the Sox would have considered them but I would have. In my view the Sox while enduring what is really based on expectation a bad few years and a completely horrible two years had been given an almost once in a lifetime opportunity via the LA deal. The culture of the Red Sox is not the culture of a winner. Sorry, nobody wishes it different more than I but it is not. The Pats are the only team in this town that has maintained the culture of a winner for any amount of time worth mentioning. Ortiz was the last of the players that cared more about piling more millions atop his already hefty bank account while the economy was going in the tank, people were losing jobs and their very homes and the team had turned into a bunch of whiny, loser malcontents. They had reached a depth that they were not even able to achieve during what some of us true masochists probably consider the real glory years (those before 2004). I would have dumped Ortiz on his royal ass regardless of the consequences. That would finally have cleaned house of the whiny malcontents. Ortiz does deserve honorable mention because with the exception of the one major slump he went through, it did not seem to affect his play. However he was dizzy enough to call that clubhouse of losers his own which was another effort at a money grab by Ortiz. That combined with his whining stuck him in the whiny, greedy malcontent category. In truth, Ortiz is not a leader anyway. Clearly the mess that had become the Sox clubhouse had an impact on him, not the other way around. This is not the Ortiz that we pulled off the scrap heap. Ortiz became the visible face of the greedy ballplayer....rich beyond his wildest dreams off of contracts from a team that had picked him off the scrap heap. But it was not enough because the Sox had f***ed up with so many other contracts that they owned him his f***ed up contract too. This ******** has simply gone on too long in Boston, so long that a number of us simply accept it as the norm and I think even find something attractive in it as if it has some sort of charm that is so classically Red Sox. It just has got to finally stop. It is no longer cute and I did not relish the nostalgic return to something even worse than the Yawkey clubhouse one bit. If it does not stop we will never in this town have consistent, year in year out contending Sox teams. Plus it is high time for the Sox to bite the bullet. They should have made this Pedey's team without question. Pedey is the one guy that still cared about winning when everything was falling apart around him......the one guy that was not so obviously grabbing for everything he could get while the gettin' was good......just about as underpaid as Ortiz without all the drama. I would have even sweetened Pedey's deal at the point of having some extra cash to throw around not only to send a message to the rest of the team but to send a message to the fan base that they finally get it over there on Yawkey way and to quiet the idiots that have decided that Ortiz is some sort of god but Pedey is an *******. These people are gluttons for punishment. So to me the Achilles was all the rational I needed. It would have made a tough decision easy. What better year to finally clean house completely and really move to change the culture of the Red Sox than this, a year that even LL is calling a bridge year. This is a year when they were already bringing in guys that simply play the game and are for the most part grateful for the incredible good fortune they and Ortiz for that matter have had. I simply no longer trust that even the two years would have kept David in line. He would have found something to complain about because that is what he has become. If you want to talk about the Achilles itself, you just cannot ignore that sort of injury on a 37 year old player carting 250 lbs of beef around atop it. Remember, people were alarmed that it had made 0 progress even at the point of the signing. Not only was it still an issue but it had still to that point made 0 progress. Here we are months later and it has still made .........0 progress. As for who to get as a replacement, I might have tried Thome. I might have gone in a completely different direction....away from the dedicated DH.....it would have been a good year to bite the bullet on that decision as well. There is no direct replacement for Ortiz but that was in part the problem with going with him. We are sitting here considering whether or not we are going to be without him anyway and to not be willing to consider that very real possibility is sticking your head in the sand. At some point the risk is substantially higher that even if he does get comfortable enough to play, he is at considerable risk for just ripping the thing wide open anyway. Again, he is trying to stop and start 250 lbs when he is running on a weakened Achilles. Does anybody honestly think he is going to go from making no progress for months to having a healthy Achilles? He is currently by his own admission unable to play and even when back may well just rip the thing which ends his career! Does that sound like the Sox or what!!!

That was not the general consensus. The general consensus was that Ortiz had the misfortune that befalls other players on occasion. He got injured at the worst possible time. The general consensus was that the Sox were the only team that would even consider it because they would at least get the bump from having retained a player from the "glory years", the championship years. That was considered the Ortiz' ace in the hole. While he had the misfortune to get injured he had the good fortune to be able to attach himself to the glory years of almost the only team in baseball that cares about such nonsense....your and my Boston Red Sox. I completely agreed with that opinion at the time and considered the Sox signing him a lead pipe cinch and two years almost a certainty. Me, I would not have done it regardless of the ramifications. But that is me. You take half the teams in baseball off the radar screen right from the start since the DH only exists in the AL.

No other team in baseball was going to offer David Ortiz two years under the conditions he and the Sox were under at the time of the signing. That is utter and complete ********. In the first place no other team gets the bump from being able to harken back to some championship from some bygone era. Only the Sox get that bump. Incidentally the Sox are almost the only team in baseball that values such utter nonsense.

Would they be trying to eliminate possibilities other than the continuing issue with the Achilles? Maybe their concern about the longevity of the problem has them thinking they want to make sure there isn't something other than the Achilles causing some discomfort for him.

I guess tonight's game with the Orioles is also televised. Wonder if this game sees Lester and DLR pitching again. If last night is any indication, tonight's pitchers might be on a lengthier pitch out.

I suspect the Sox will want to bat Napoli ahead of WMB.....maybe not. Drew might end up being a real wild card in this Batting Order. If he comes all the way back and gets hot the Sox may have to move some pieces around the lineup to accommodate him. This does not look like the kind of batting order that will have Farrell keeping guys in their spots figuring that they will come around. I suspect he will be inclined to play the hot hands and try to take advantage of guys that are on a decent hitting stretch as opposed to starting the year with a set 1-6 and keeping them there all year.

I did not claim that the Hamilton deal would not have had it's risks. I simply asking the question. Hamilton had no injuries at the time of his signing and has none today. He does have overarching risk elements beyond injury. The dif between the Hamilton contract and the Ortiz contract is years far more than it is per annum. So it is not quite accurate to say that the Angels risked five times the money. They own the player's rights for three more years than the Sox have on Ortiz. Again, I did not use Hamilton as anything more than a part of the discussion. They might have gone elsewhere with that money passing on both Ortiz and Hamilton and may well have been better served. I stand by my earlier point....if David cannot play, it will be very hard to justify that deal since he is already 37 and the clock is ticking. Ignoring the very real chances that he will not be able to play is simply putting your head in the sand....it was then and it is now.

Dewey Evans is not a doctor either. Ignoring the chances that the lingering nature of the Achilles issue may well mean that when the day comes when he finally does really stress his Achilles it will simply blow up on him is just putting your head in the sand. The dialog has not matched David's ability to stress the Achilles for several months now, suggesting that the lack of any distinguishable progress was not anticipated. Yet the chance of it was always there and that has been my point. Besides, Ortiz lost 25 lbs before the 2012 season to get down to 250. He is 6'4", 250. D. Evans played at 6'2" and 180. Ortiz is carting a hell of a lot more weight around atop that Achilles than Evans ever carried.

That is from John Tomasi's Herald piece from Friday.

Oh yea' David sounds like he is right on that timetable.

The point is that there was no clear reason to sign Ortiz when they did. Nobody else was going to sign him under those circumstances. They would have been out of their minds to have done so. Once again, the Sox end up competing with themselves for a ballplayer. The "competition" if there actually was any would have been restricted to AL teams only and even then it is hard to envision any GM with half a brain making a serious run at Ortiz with his bum Achilles still unresolved. Hindsight is not at all in play. Common sense is all that is needed in this case. I don't think there was much discussion of it at the time because there was no clear baseball reason to sign the player. Frankly I think a good many of us were resigned to the Sox signing Ortiz regardless of the Achilles for the usual ******** optics that has so often driven their decision making. Why fight city hall? I did not think there was a snowballs chance in hell that they would pass on Ortiz and they didn't.

And if a front line pitcher, somebody you had plans for gets injured, then what? The pitchers are clearly going to be pitching more innings sooner than they would have under normal situations.

Well SBF, I kinda' think it would be unrealistic to have expected Ortiz to go for surgery at the end of the 2012 season. He did not have a contract at that point. At his age given the average recovery time, it would be very easy to envision Ortiz unable to sign a next contract on the other side of recovery from surgery. Certainly, two years would have been completely out of the question at that point and he very likely would have been looking at light money even for a one year deal. Now the shoe is on the other foot. While I think it is much easier for Ortiz to accept the idea of surgery at this point if that is what is presented to him, we won't be too happy about seeing Ortiz go off to surgery with his two year deal in hand. While Hamilton would have been a huge gamble and more money, could that have been worse than what the Sox are now facing with Ortiz? While none of us can really know how the Achilles feels to Ortiz, to me he looks like he is moving around about the way he was from the point when he apparently came back too early late last year. That is not much improvement for 6-7 months of "healing". While the healing process is often not serial, it seems like it would take something of a miracle for him to be ready by opening day considering what little progress he has made to date. Comments he made after his last light jog were really discouraging. If anything it looks like as soon as he puts the tiniest bit of pressure or strain on the Achilles he ends up with even more discomfort. That sounds like he is making no progress at all and is in fact going backwards. Would the Sox have taken some hits in the press if they resisted the temptation to sign Ortiz when they did? Maybe. To believe that you have to believe that some other AL team would have signed him for money he would have taken. I don't believe that possible with the open Achilles issue. As it is now, at least for the moment it looks like the Sox really got snookered. If it really does turn out that Ortiz goes to surgery before swinging a bat in anger again, the Sox are going to look incredibly stupid.

Iggy is still swinging the bat aggressively. I think the Sox and Iggy are both committed to this shorter, more aggressive swing. I am convinced he will get better results with it. I have no idea how much better but better none the less. Even when he gave up that punch and judy swing last year, his swing was longer with much more involvement from his upper body. This approach is all hips and wrists. That is not a bad idea for a smallish guy.

Sort of off topic but not really. The world of baseball has got to figure out what to do with this WBC s***. Too many ballplayers away from their teams. I would really be flipped off if I were a Manager and one or more of my pitchers was involved. I don't know where they should put it. Doesn't belong here though. Maybe shorten it a bunch and every other year lose the All star game and try to do something then. I don't know....Maybe the WBC has got to do something without the ML players. There is no shortage of baseball players in the world. If they need the MLB players to make it work there is something wrong with the thing in the first place.

A pretty funny NESN moment. During the Twins/Sox game, the Twins broadcasters have been interviewing Twins players (from the booth with the player miked up) and our girl Jenny has been down in the Sox dugout for Sox interviews. So time to interview Ells. What does Dell do? "So Jacoby, what do you like about JBJ as a player?" Ells looked at her with one of those "you have got to be kidding" looks. But to Ells credit he tried to cobble together an answer prefacing it by saying he has not actually played with JBJ at all. So Dell apparently still not getting the message asks "So what qualities do you see in JBJ that reminds you of yourself". So now Ells is kinda' irritated but in great Bull Durham fashion answers that JBJ is "a hard worker and that is what you like to see from a young player". That was it. Interview over. Leave it to f***in' NESN. Good thing they have Orsilo and Remy cause beyond that, they got nothin'. Their Producers suck and Dell is just eye candy.

Dempster doing his best Bard imitation, had two outs in the 3rd (likely his last inning) then promptly gave up four straight hits and two runs. He seemed to lose focus completely, a real trademark Bard two out move. Dempster was pitching batting practice from that moment forward and the Twins took advantage. Lavs looks like he is well on the way to another 0-fer tonight. Geez you know there is more ballplayer there than he is showing.

Nice defensive half inning for the Sox. Dempster looked good..kept the twins hitters off balance...forced a number of ground balls. WMB and Iggy both looked good making plays on ground balls.

Pelfrey has got a heck of a move to first for a big guy. Just made Nava look like the career minor leaguer/backup major leaguer that he surely is.

Notice Iggy is playing SS. So far the shorter stroke at the plate seems to be paying some dividends. Hope he shows us more of the same tonight.

Tonight's game against the Twins should be on NESN if anybody is interested. Looks like another 7:05 PM Eastern start time.