jung

Apparently, this year's effort with Iggy is to see if shortening his swing will yield more consistently good plate appearances....maybe begin the process of lifting him over the Medoza line.

That is actually pretty funny. These media guys generally take themselves to seriously to add a little levity.

I can't say that I am thrilled with Carp either. The Sox have already cornered the market on backup outfielders, fill-in infielders, project catchers and wanna' be starting pitchers. While Carp would fit right into that menagerie...that just sounds like a big so what. Near as I can tell, he would just be another complication in what will likely turn out to be a verrrry complicated year for Mr. Farrell. Just filling out the lineup card could turn out to be a challenge and that is not meant to besmirch Farrell's abilities as a Manager. I am beginning to wonder if the FO guys all sit around a big table trying to figure out if a certain player is mediocre enough to be attractive to them. Fortunately for Farrell, realistic expectations for the Sox are about as low as they can get with a big piece of the expert pool picking the Sox for the basement. Unless Farrell finds a way to finish lower than last, he just cannot disappoint. What are we gonna' say.....that he did not finish last with enough style?

Alfredo is way better off in a role that he excels in(middle relief, swing man) instead of one that he would be lucky to survive (starting).

While Aceves was excellent in 2011, he was excellent in a very specific role. He is about the only guy that thinks that translates into excellence in a bigger, more pressure packed role and his thinking in that area is clearly driven by the added Dead Presidents. As I mentioned earlier, I saw a guy that crumbled easily in the more pressure packed role. Both Starting and Closing are more pressure packed than middle reliever and by a wide margin. He crumbed not once but several times last year....literally giving in to the hitter and the situation, grooving FB's right down Main Street. That is not hanging tough. That is what giving up looks like for a pitcher. So for my money, one of Alfredo's assets turned into a deficit in the more pressurized role. I can no longer consider him a tough guy that will not yield to the hitter or the situation unless he is in a less pressurized situation....like middle relief. Oddly enough, if a guy does crumble in the middle relief role, you can usually get him the hell outta' there pretty quickly. So as far as I am concerned, Alfredo can consider himself Starter material till he is blue in the face. I can no longer consider him viable as either a Starter or a Closer. If he continues to bristle and bitch....and test his Manager because he just cannot deal with that or for whatever reason...get him the hell outta' here. By the way, I saw my first film of Felix this spring. He is not just a few pounds overweight. For a guy his age, and with his bone structure, he is downright porky with a full spare tire around the middle....an embarrassment.

Myself I think the chances are really small for trading Aceves under any circumstances Bell. I think they are committed to seeing if the combination of new pitching coach and Farrell can keep Aceves on the straight and narrow. That does not change what I think about his chances for success as either a starter or a closer. I suspect that in a perfect Sox world, Aceves accepts his role as the most versatile of the middle relievers and takes advantage of the visibility and the work that affords him. While I would want him to get a spot start I can see where he is going to be the most difficult guy for Farrell to work into such a thing. Your most versatile reliever is likely to get a good deal of work. Farrell will have to sit him on a shelf for a few days working up to a spot start which is not exactly what you want to be doing with that particular guy. The Sox do appear to have enough bullpen arms to do it. I am not sure how it is that Aceves has gone unrewarded. What are the Sox supposed to do with him? Should they reward him with jobs that he simply is not well suited to regardless of his wishes? Should they overpay him for the job that he can do? Frankly I don't think overpaying him for what he can do will work in his case. He is not looking for middle reliever money from what I can tell. It might be that actually trading him, if there is some team out there that thinks he can either start or close would be the best reward they can offer Aceves. Save that, doing what he does do well and waiting for a shot at a spot start is probably the best they can do for him.

Pitchers will always bring something in return. Duda for Aceves sounds like a decent enough idea. Kills two birds with one stone.

The only thing you can ding media for is inaccuracy. Unfortunately most of what has been reported about the Red Sox has turned out to be true....in fact the vast majority of it has. Aceves "problem" or issue is a baseball issue and a player issue...not more and not less. The amount of money baseball has thrown at players has been insane and it has set expectations at a high level with players anxious to get their opportunity to pull the brass ring. However only players that exhibit immense talent get to grasp that brass ring early and sometimes often, not Alfredo. Alfredo's strengths are his endurance and his unwillingness to yield coupled with a multiplicity of pitches....mostly mediocre pitches. Unfortunately, the last we saw of Alfredo last year, he was yielding all too often, giving in to the hitter and to the situation. We saw way too many instances of Alfredo simply, finally throwing a meatball right over the heart of the plate only to have professional hitters do what they do with that kind of pitch....crash....bang....don't be parked in that lot across the street from the LF wall. He once gave in completely last year having just told the pitching coach to get the hell off of his mound! To be perfectly honest, that tendency to finally give in, something he never showed as a reliever that was not closing, puts him outside my comfort zone for ever really being a closer again and puts him outside my comfort zone for being a starter as well. Neither closing nor starting leaves much room for a guy that can just that suddenly crumble to dust on the mound and start throwing meatballs. However closing and starting are where the real money is for pitchers. Unfortunately for Alfredo, at least as far as money goes, what he has proven is that he is the consummate middle reliever, quite possibly the best there is at that role. He can come in to start a fresh inning or with guys on in anything from the 2nd through the 5th and succeed. While that is an interesting skill set it does not recommend him further and it is not a skill set that generally means much at MLB's pay window. I am willing to see the Sox give him another shot at starting this year....just....just because I think there will be ample opportunity for some of the relievers to spot start this year. IF he is on the team, Alfredo should have that opportunity IMO. It is also my opinion that he will not do good enough in that role to make the grade as a member of a ML rotation.

Relievers don't make the kind of money starters make with closers usually somewhere in the middle. Some players lately seem to be getting really amped up about the kind of money that might be out there for them under the right set of circumstances. Seems to me that Alfredo is pushing on a rope if this is the Alfredo should be starting thing all over again. Where in baseball will Alfredo get more exposure combined with a rotation that might just give him his shot? He really has the best situation he could hope for without having proven that he should be starting somewhere yet. He just needs to be ready for his opportunity if and when it comes. I would be shocked if a few spot start opportunities did not arise for the usual suspects this season. Maybe the Sox should put Alfredo at the head of that list.

Perhaps Felix and Alfredo are trying to start their own bottom of the rotation/bullpen version of 2011 the top of the rotation debacle. I would not be surprised to find that this is a continuation of Aceves pouting over the fact that once again he is in the bullpen, not even closing at this point and only lined up to spot start if anything. This could easily be just the beginning of the Aceves antics for 2013.

Soxsport's comment about getting hurt in Boston vs treading water in Pawtucket does remind me of one thing. Unless you are on the 40 man roster or have a contract as a minor league player that dictates a certain pay scale, being called up represents a huge difference in pay from almost nothing to major league minimum. I would guess that any really important prospect is being paid based on a contract.

IMO that is just about right Bell.

Well there are actually two points here. You are correct....Kalish appears to be the outfield version of Bailey, maybe with the one difference that Kalish may have a shoulder so weakened at this point that it will never be 100% while Bailey is just a walking encyclopedia of injury. Neither has been able to prove he can stay on the field. The other point about minor league vs major league baseball may well have been valid at one point. There was a time when many of the minor league parks around baseball were terrible places to play. Many had poor fields, crummy drainage, lousy padding, dangerously screwed up foul territory...so much so that you could at one point make the case that extended play in the minor leagues vs. play in the major leagues did in fact represent a greater chance of injury. I just do not think that is the case any longer. Minor league parks I go to all in great shape these days. They may not be as luxurious or as attractive as ML parks but they are not more dangerous. I think that is pretty much true around baseball. That said, blocking players mainly for reasons of salary still represents a pretty bad value proposition, having nothing to do with thinking there is a greater chance of injury playing minor league vs major league ball.

I would not think the issue is the danger of playing one place or the other. The issue is that if a player is blocked either entirely due to or even mostly due to salary then as an organization you are likely paying way to much to the player on the ML roster for essentially the same performance that you could get from the guy that is blocked. If you extend that line of reasoning out farther, if the player that is blocked is injured playing minor league ball, you not only lose the value that his major league play would represent at that time but you may well lose it for an even longer period of time.....maybe even forever.

We had none of these tools when I went to school....anchiant....But if I were a teacher, I would want kids using wiki to go to the sites or the other works that wiki references regarding a specific topic and read the content within context, as it was written and reference those piece as opposed to referencing wiki. Using wiki that way, I would think a student could actually learn something. If the student just directly copies or even recomposes work already done and sitting in a wiki page, I suspect there is not much learning going on. So I would not want to see a wiki reference, not because it might represent a common knowledge fact. Common Knowledge Facts can be a dicy topic where students are concerned anyway.

Red Sock for life...Yankee for now....what dif does it make. Players are going to play for who pays them. There is simply too much money at stake these days. I don't blame Youk a bit. Players are likely doing far worse things than play for the Yanks given the kind of money teams are throwing around under the right circumstances these days. Guys are going to do everything they can do to keep playing. If Satan himself decided to own a MLB team, guys would be lining up to play for him. A paycheck is a paycheck.

Staggering dif between Jurrgens NL K/9 and his AL K/9. In truth his K/9 is not much to write home about in any year, either league. I am still anxious to see how the junk-ballers do in the AL East this year.

Lohse has to be a no. The guy would be a double overpay when you add in the Boras factor. Its not worth it. I just want the Sox to get through this year re-establishing some level of respectability. Maybe next year for anything else. Might be a good year to try to clean out any more bad blood or whatever poison there is still infecting this team.

Hugely disappointed in Felix. Now I think the concerns about his commitment to baseball expressed the last time he did this are justified. Felix has not proved anything to anybody other than that he can show up out of shape wasting a bunch of time before he can actually advance himself from where he left off last season. I would also suggest that it says two things about Felix that are somewhat disconcerting. Why would you show up out of shape when you consider how much money MLB is throwing at pitchers these days? unless.... You, yourself did not think you really had it...whatever it is and are just bumping along in professional baseball until somebody finds you out and forces you to get a real job. So he either does not have it and knows it or he is dumb and unmotivated as a 2 x 4.

I would guess that what will happen is that at some point with one of the B's waiting in the wings, some team that values SS like Iggy more highly than the Sox are ever going to value him, will end up trading a player to Boston that is more of a Boston/Fenway typical player and hence valued more highly by the Boston FO. IMO, That will end up being Iggy's path to ending up in a ML uniform with more permanence than he will ever enjoy here.

I don't think Iggy's time as a player has run out at all. In fact I think Iggy will play ML baseball for somebody.....and have said so many times here. As much as I like Iggy, he is atypical for a Boston SS. Now that the Sox can likely see light at the end of the tunnel for the eventual arrival of guys like Bogaertes I think time is running out on Iggy as a possible Red Sox SS. Getting him out of here may likely be the best thing for him. IMO, he will be under appreciated here as a SS even if he can get above the Mondoza line.

Unfortunately for Iggy, there is a "B" barking up his ass already. I really think the clock either already has or is about to run out on Iggy. Lavs does not have that to contend with just yet.

WEEI's original sports talk format really did not have any elements that distinguished it from any other sports talk stations or formats. Ordway developed things that ultimately resulted in various WEEI shows occupying the top spots "nationally" for sports talk radio programing, going on to occupy the top spots in some cases for talk radio "all formats". Ordway was the Program Director for the station as well as being the host of the afternoon drive time show. Much of what is taken for granted as a mainstay of sports talk radio and talk radio generally was actually developed in the early days of Ordway's stewardship as Program Director for that station and WEEI literally came out of the woodwork to occupy top rating spots nationally..a total shock to the industry. That takes nothing away from the various early hosts as personalities. The old "A" was legendary. Ordway simply had a knack for understanding what would play within the sports radio talk show format and developed programing content based on his understanding. Some of the stuff developed at the EEI of that era was considered absolute suicide at the time but eventually launched the station to those top spots.

The comments about the level of interest in the Sox here in Boston as baseball just gets ramped up again and its impact on the station and its most visible personality. Some of the forum members mentioned having an easier time getting ST tickets earlier this month. Wonder how ticket sales are going generally. Haven't seen anything one way or the other with the exception of LL's comment about the sellout streak.

What has almost become a Boston institution has seen its last day today. Glen Ordway is often credited for developing much of the model for contemporary sports talk radio formats with his WEEI Big Show. Ordway hosted his last WEEI show today. Maybe there is just not enough interest in Sports Talk Radio for the various competitors. While the Big Show won the ratings battle last spring it is losing that same battle this year to the competing Felger and Maz show. Felger and are two guys that got their start in Sports Talk Radio on the Big Show...as most Boston Sports Radio personalities have. The interesting link to the Red Sox is that WEEI has always been a Red Sox first station. There were a few industry comments today that the Sox are simply not generating the kind of fan interest they once did with WEEI taking a hit as well. Ordway's departure leaves Michael Holly, brought in two years ago to "young up" the show as the lone host. Many of the show's staples are exiting with Ordway. LL has been saying that the sellout streak is going to die this year...likely in April but has been downplaying the significance of the streak.