jung

Apparently though it does seem to be a long off-season, it is not long enough for Mr. Ortiz. The news seems to get worse each day. The last couple of days, he has not even been comfortable jogging. Some lofty projections for the Sox in the division's thread. Clearly anybody picking us to be fighting even for a WC has to be thinking the Sox get significant production out of Ortiz. Frankly, I think His Holy Eminence, the Insulted One is about to give us "all a big shitburger to eat". I did not think much of our chances WITH Ortiz but now, more and more I think we end up totally f***ed thanks to His Holy Eminence.

Doin' OK Kaps. Tough off season.....too long.....too much snow.....too much of just about everything Winter. How you doin'

Absolutely right Kaps... In reality, DLR is just not ready yet and he is not going to be ready by April 1 or anytime soon after April 1. Based on what I have seen, I suspect he will need 2013 to get his act together. He might possibly be worth a Fenway look late in 2013 depending on what else might be going on. Maybe he gets a start or two late this season. With any luck maybe he is on the 2014 roster. All of this rush to judgement stuff on DLR is mostly instigated by hoping he could be a part of the 2013 rotation. DLR is neither good nor bad at this point. He is an incomplete. From what I see I think he will likely need most if not all of the 2013 season at AAA getting his act together.

Remember you youngins', there is that magic age when regression starts setting in and we start the journey in reverse, back to our childhood. At a combined age of 125+ I would think that at least one of them must be on the road back. Come to think of it, I might be on the same road......in the passing lane no less.:D

That sounded like an encouraging outing for Bard. Didn't hit the mascot. Didn't hit any batters. Didn't allow himself to be hit......Hey at this stage of the game, if Bard can just put one good outing atop another, he might just work his way back to some sort of a role for the Sox.

All LA got out of "the trade" was a three-headed excuse machine and a second rate utility infielder. I think there is more than a chance that LA will never see the AGons that once was. That AGons would be preferred to Napoli. However he seems to be long gone and hard to find.

IMO, whatever Ruby is, he is more of a gonna' be ......somewhere off in the future. I know there are folks that want to be encouraged by what they are seeing from Ruby cause our starting pitching is pretty IFFY, with a capitol I. So suddenly Ruby has gone from a decent pick up in the salary dump to the savior of this year's rotation. Nice leap of faith but it is all leap. Let me know if there was any water in the pool when you guys finally stop free falling. He is very very inconsistent. If you want to convince yourselves that at his very young age, he is inconsistent by design ( Oh that cagy Ruby) go right ahead but I think you are kidding yourselves. I said it at the time and will repeat it here. As whacky as taking on all that salary was, the idea that along with doing so, LA gave up starting pitching that could actually produce in 2013 is in a word, preposterous. I refuse to believe that anybody with a ML FO job is that stupid and incompetent. Its neat that the kid can throw with some gas....sometimes.....but he has a looooooong way to go. I am glad we got pitching back in the salary dump but it is pitching that we might see in red stockings sometime after 2013 if at all.

700, I was wondering if you had any thoughts regarding Ruby and Jon today. Did you see anything worth discussing? For one thing, It seems to me that the media concentrates too much on a young pitcher's ERA in these Spring games. It is ST for crying out loud. I have read a couple of pieces written about today's game and the basic theme is that Ruby pitched far worse today than in his last outing. Concentrating on Ruby's ERA in these Spring games is just wrong headed IMO. I saw Ruby pitch in the Sunday game. He was up and down IMO with very little in between. When he was on, he could make your mouth water. When he was off, he looked like what he is, a young developing pitcher. Reading the press reports, I get the impression that he was up and down again today, impressive at times and not very impressive at other times with little in between. But in today's outing the Pirates clipped Ruby for some runs and suddenly its a bad outing today and Sunday was a terrific outing. The way Ruby is pitching on these Spring games is far more important than whether the opponent plates some runs or not and claiming that this outing is much worse than his last cause the Pirates plated a couple of runs is laughable. I think its ******** and it is just one of about a zillion reasons why I don't want to see Ruby up this year. IMO he is not ready. Yet if he is in a Sox uniform this season I would be willing to bet he will be treated by the fan base and the media much like he is being treated now. I am not at all sure that the Sox brass, Manager and Coaches can isolate Ruby from what can happen to him because of unrealistic expectation. Great....lets screw up another pitcher. Why not....they are just growing on trees down there at Fenway anyway aren't they?

I think the spring games do give you a good opportunity to see the younger players play mixed in with ML ballplayers. I am fortunate to live near really good AAA and AA baseball. So I can see these guys play but not along with the ML players. In some cases it gives you a chance to see why some of these guys are just not ready yet. I suspect some will choose to be blind to it. To each his own.

07 were you actually able to watch this spring game? Are there special packages available that will give you something like the whole season plus ST? I think that is pretty neat if that is the case.

Darn.....probably means Ruby and Jon won't pitch Friday's TV game. Maybe Saturday. I think that game is also on TV.

SFF, did Ruby and Jon throw again today or are you referring to the Sunday game? If today, how did they do?

But if you watched him the other day, he was very inconsistent with his pitches during periods when his arm angle was sort of all over the map. Also the velo on his FB suffers unless he is above 3/4....pretty much over the top. When he is above 3/4, that is when he starts to nail the radar gun at 95+. When he is not over the top, that FB gets to be a 91-92 mph pitch. At least during that outing he was also way up in the and out of the strike zone when his arm dropped down. That is not unusual for a pitcher that needs to keep coming over the top. So in his case, I don't believe changing arm angles is at all done with a purpose and his a hindrance when happening to him.

I would love to see Ruby use a more consistent arm angle as well. I assume that will come in time. Until he does, he will be vulnerable to things like telegraphing certain pitches and he may also be something of an injury concern if some of those oddball angles cause undue stress to his throwing arm. He not only seems to use different angles to throw different pitches but sometimes appears to use different arm angles to throw the same pitch. Seems to catch himself at some point and at least goes back to using the same arm angle to throw something like a FB. IMO, inconsistency here is one of the marks of a young and developing pitcher.

I have to admit that I am a little surprised at the way Rolen has gone with this. He is 37....his best years are surely behind him. I could have read it wrong but it sounded like he would take the money being offered at least for a year but would not accept the backup role. That sounds like he thinks he should be in the everyday lineup somewhere or that he could be. Maybe he thinks he can get one last bite of the apple if somebody would just give him one. That seems unlikely at this point.

I don't think the Sox draft more idiots than anybody else. I think there are just more idiots to around lately.:D

I agree SoxSport. The argument that he MUST be ready now is a red herring. That is not the point. The point is whether or not he will be ready at all and when he is, if in fact his Achilles will be resting on a hair trigger. The length of time it has taken him to come back and the amount of dialog that has in hindsight seemed unrealistic. I am concerned that the length of time it has taken him to come back is an indication of how tender and fragile that Achilles may well be.

Actually the WEEI afternoon crew is saying that Ortiz tried to run yesterday but had to stop because his Achilles felt sore and then ran a little again today. Have to hunt around a little today and see if I can find any other reports besides what is coming out of the WEEI afternoon crew.

Calcification...shoot....at the rate Ortiz is going its more like fossilization.:D

McQuaid or even Lucic....I would give up a few minutes of Lucic before seeing Z leave the ice. Heck Lucic is usually meandering over to the penalty box anyway. McQuaid definitely needs to step it up. Jeez Campbell will step in before McQuaid will.

Yea I know wyo. I'm not liken' it much either. Can't say I didn't see it coming though. Maybe some miracle will befall us and Ortiz will suddenly "feel" like his Achilles will be OK to trot around on a little. Now that he is already preparing us for missing opening day, I really don't think the chances are good of his making opening day. A month away and the Achilles still does not feel right to him. Like I said in another post, even when he does come back, if he does come back I suspect that Achilles is going to be a ticking time bomb just waiting to explode.

This is looking like it will be a very tough defeat for Bruins against Montreal tonight. Somebody has got to step up for the Bruins when Thornton is not on the ice. The Bruins are going to lose this very important game tonight for one reason only. When the Canadian's ran at Seguin and he went down around center ice, Z Charra took it upon himself to seek out the Canadian player and teach him a lesson. Well great lesson that. Z ends up with a ten minute misconduct, two minutes for instigating and another five minutes for fighting. In the span of that seventeen minutes, the Canadians went from down by one to up by one even though the Bruins killed off the penalties. The Bruins did not survive the remaining time that Z was off the ice. I have seen this time and time again. When Thornton is not on the ice, Z becomes the enforcer and the best defenseman in hockey can't be the enforcer. The Bruins need to figure out that when Thornton is not on the ice, somebody, anybody but Z has got to step up and get to the opposing player before Z does. If Z gets there first, forget it....he is gone for multiple minutes if not stuck with a game misconduct. The Bruins have proven over and over that they really cannot survive Charra serving multiple penalty minutes.

They have already announced Ruby starting in AAA and I don't expect them to bring up Webster either. Now we actually have Ortiz dialog matching reality. I guess the start of the season is to close at hand and even David is leery of continuing this charade. They are announcing that the start of the season is definitely in question for Ortiz. They are checking him every three days to take a new reading on how the Achilles feels. I have not believed a word till today. Has anybody been watching Ortiz in drills? He moves around like he is walking on egg shells and that was all the way up till last week when they were filming him in drills.

Dempster will have to play his Steady Eddy role as well. I think they will rely on him to give them a good chance to win games against the lower echelon teams in the AL, not so much against the upper tier. If he fails against the lower echelon teams as well, that would be a big hole I think. All five of them will have to be at the tops of their game as none of them alone are much to talk about. My expectations for Lester is that he will duplicate the end of 2012 only for all of 2013. Not great but a big step up from his 2012. My expectations for Buch are that he just take the ball every time his ticket comes up in the rotation. That would be a big step up for Buch. I doubt he will produce at a high level for an entire season. But if he takes the ball every time, that would be big for him. Lackey....he aways takes the ball so I would expect that at a minimum. He may well have the potential for the most on the upside. If he pitches well 3 out of 4 times out, that would be a big deal I think. Felix is really pissing me off. I expect him....to lose that f***ing spare tire. Beyond that, we will see.

Well I am thinkin' you mean on TV so with that qualifier.....I thought Lester looked really very good all things being equal. His location looked particularly good.....movement looked good.....velo on the FB, not quite there though. I have not seen enough of Ruby to really offer anything worthwhile. His arm angle was all over the map. But, I don't know enough about the guy to know if that is common for him. When he stays on top of the ball, he has a monster FB. When he drops down a bit, things start looking a bit disorganized. For the time being, I am just going to consider him a developing young pitcher, just out of TJS. Seen in that light, I thought it was an impressive early ST outing. Even given the obvious difference in experience level between the two pitchers, I was more impressed with Lester based on expectation than I was with Ruby based on expectation. By that I mean that at least based on this tiny sample size, Lester is farther along than I expected for being so early in ST.