jung

Gee, don't we need to build up our stock of pitchers with potential durability, performance issues. Apparently we could never have enough of those.

Well I guess that is just too bad for us in 2020.

They certainly rolled the dice as far as marketing the potential greatness of a particular edition of the team in this case the 2020. They will compete for a wild card. So what. Everybody but 2-3 teams a year competes for a wild card. There were particular aspects of the Henry/Warner/Kennedy presser that I found silly in the usual Sox manner of silliness. But if we have not grown used to that by now, will we never? "We did this deal because of the return" SERIOUSLY!!!! I found Kennedy shilling for tickets particularly distasteful given the setting. Oh your ticket sales are suffering. Too F-ing bad, Sam. The Sox Brass cannot come out and tell us the truth. They just cannot do that in this town, maybe could not in any town. The simple fact is they are not going to give Mookie 10+ years and even $350M, let alone 12 years and $400 or 13 years and anything because they don't have to. Some team will do that BECAUSE THEY CAN MORE READILY RATIONALIZE giving a guy who is not Mike Trout, Mike Trout money. Just look at those two bodies for one thing. If there was a serious collision in a fantasy OF that includes both Mookie and Mike, who survives that train wreck just for example. While you can't calculate injury you have to think about who you are giving 10+ big money contracts to. Mookie is a dynamic player who is as exciting on the base paths as he is everywhere else on the ball field. How long does that last for Mookie with respect to a 10+ year contract beginning at age 27? What happens even to his hitting if he suffers a wrist injury given his hitting style? If they could have signed him for 10 years after his 2016 season at age 24 now that would have been a 10 year deal that they could at least rationalize with a player like Mookie. Were they not trying to sign him from end 2016 till end 2019 if they are to be believed? They only thing I find tough to swallow about the trade itself is in the brass not acknowledging that it was a salary dump. It certainly was not about the return. GIVE ME A BREAK. Had we are druthers, would we not have preferred that the Sox hold onto Mookie till the deadline and try to pull a Chapman/Miller/Yankees kind of deal at the deadline? Why couldn't they do that? Because they could not have unloaded all that Price money at the same time and they obviously wanted to shed the Price money. So this is a gamble in the sense that MLB is struggling. Please, lets not argue otherwise. All these nonsense rules changes and the baseball being juiced now beyond belief and the silly league marketing crap is occurring because MLB is struggling and they have no real answers for it. So the gamble is that the fans will not show up either in person or on NESN in 2020 and getting them back could be difficult. Did MLB get the fans back after the strike year? Steroids saved the entire MLB in that instance and that was over two decades ago! So, if significant numbers of Boston fans take a hike for 2020 and teach themselves what other pursuits they like in the summer, the Sox may just not get them back. That is the gamble. I will credit Henry for not dodging the fact that the Sox are responsible for where they are. Warner and Kennedy were not happy about some of Henry's comments but SO WHAT. They were in effect holding Henry's coat for him. The Sox real problem is pitching and nothing about the trade or either end of this deal is going to resolve that in the short run. Even without the Price contract, the Sox have too much money invested in questionable pitching assets and I don't see a solution to that in the short run. Surely they will end up making a few pitching deals this year right??? Surely??????

Past Lester, the rest of your list was not at the top of their game when they left the Sox. I don't even know what "The Rooster" is doing on this list though he was one of my favorite Sox players. Virtually all except Rick were much older than Mookie and or had sustained enough abuse from the game to be well past their prime.

Part of Kennedy's pretty ugly pitch for ticket sales was the following: "every dollar of ticket sales and concessions gets plowed back into the team." A complete and utter fantasy, a lie that is beneath him or at least I thought it was.

So OK, I did not hear Sam go off on a tickets sales pitch during this press conference which he did during this presser which was ill timed at best....flat oblivious at worst.

Using video and electronics to steal signs real time, in game and in the moment is a whole nuther level of cheating though. Sale today very critical of where the game is today. Frankly, I really don't care what the league report on Boston says. Manfred has got to get on top of team access to real time, in game, and in the moment video and the use of real time in game in the moment use of electronics or he is going to have a tiger by the tail. Frankly the MLBPA should be as vocal as anybody as one group of their union membership is taking advantage of another group of their union membership. This is as close to a zero sum game as it gets and while I am sick and tired of members of opposing teams greeting each other with "have a good year BROTHER" as in union brother, this could get much uglier than anybody wants to see and quickly.

They are definitely going to take hit there regardless of having a relatively large payroll. "Sneaky good in 2020" (from Roach today) is not something that markets well to the Boston fan base, given ticket prices, other things you can do with your entertainment dollars and 4 championships in 19 years. Henry was not blaming anybody for where they are though. He basically said the Red Sox themselves put themselves in this position. They can't come out and blame the Sale and Eovaldi contracts because those guys are still here. Some of the assembled media tried to get them to go down that road but they just can't. I can't blame the Sox Brass for that.

I had no issues with that the Sox said today in their presser. Usually I have something to complain about. No, they didn't come clean on the genesis of the trade (getting under the CBT). What they are saying is tantamount to saying they don't expect anything out of the 2020 season. That does surprise me. Then again if they can't market speculation about the possible "greatness" as opposed to goodness of the 2020 edition, what are they really going to say? It's clear that the Sox absolutely positively think Mookie will test the FA market and there is nothing they could have offered him within reason to prevent that. So fine....it is what it is. Verdugo's back problems better not turn out to be chronic. That is about all I have to say.

So is the recent news on Verdugo behind all this Maine horse bleep or has nobody noticed as yet that Verdugo is headed for the operating table before he does anything in a Red Sox uni. He has a stress fracture in his back. He will be operated on and of course start the season disabled. Last I heard that was a possibility that has now turned into a certainty.

Mookie was the only hitter we had that stayed in the box. Even when he got knocked down, if his feet were still in the box on the ground, he would get up IN THE BOX and start his pre-pitch routine. The rest of them...not so much. They have to stroll around for awhile, converse with their long lost relatives in the heavens etc etc etc on an uncontested BALL called by the ump.

Of course, the actual home plate ump will still be there doing nothing while the batter's set out their blankets and picnic baskets after their strolls around home plate.

Nah...who wants those two guys. The new Chief Baseball Officer has to leave his mark you know. "Hey Officer Bloom are you the new sheriff in town? Officer Bloom can you at least blink so we know you are alive?"

I suppose I could just macro "Manfred....Mother of God" and just hit F-whatever for the rest of the year.

Is this Manfred's response? Mother of God!

None of that changes the fact that we have a real issue with real time, in game video and electronics whether via dedicated camera system or not. It should be eliminated and if that means the ill advised poorly implemented, review system that includes involvement by the teams and the Managers goes with it....FINE BY ME. Its a joke as implemented anyway. Its not baseball and its a waste of time.

Altuve's and Brugman's comments today won't help him dodge FB's at home plate this season. Would have been better off saying nothing. The apology to the fans will likely help them in Houston. But who cares. WHAT A CLUSTER!

We appear to be in agreement. I am simply arguing that the Sox got spooked by something they should have known regarding gatorade from jump st.

I would say that claiming the Sox wanted to "back out" of the basic premise of the deal with LA would be a stretch. However you have in your own post pointed to that prompted the change away from Gatorade. Verdugo already represents a pretty big risk. It should be obvious for example that of the two teams LA is not at all risk averse in their pursuit of a title now and the Sox are quite risk averse. The Sox simply balked at the combined risk represented by Verdugo and Gatorade. I don't at all buy the idea that the Sox saw something in the medicals that scared them away from Gatorade. You cannot tell me that you can MRI a MLB pitcher's arm and shoulder expecting to find perfect specimens. The Sox simply balked at the combined risk of Verdugo and Gatorade and opted out of the Gatorade risk for a couple of prospects that they could stow away as relatively safe bets in comparison.

With Boston for 11 years, Boggs, 422 doubles and 85 HR's. With Boston for 8 years, Vaughn, 199 doubles and 230 HR's. Total bases for Boggs over 11 years in Boston, 2869. Total bases for Vaughn over 8 years, 2074. Two different kinds of hitters. Vaughn went over the wall. Boggs went off the wall. I don't think Boggs could have hit enough HR's to move out of the punch and judy category. He slapped many of his hits because he could. Placed a number of them exactly where he wanted to because he could. If he thought he could have hit for power I think he would have done that.

So the Astros stuff just keeps oozing out as you would expect and of course former Astros are stepping on their dicks. I don't know how many people took my advice and watched his Verducci/Hinch interview. IMO, Hinch will NEVER get another job in baseball after that mess. That is what happens when you hire consultants to "advise" you how to solve your problems for you. If you hire them too early, they will NEVER tell you to wait. They have to justify their existence. So they convinced Hinch to do the interview. He will be lucky to get a job as a clubhouse boy whenever he is allowed back to baseball. As for Cora and Beltran, the story remains the same. "Its all their fault. Cora and Beltran made us do it." Ah-huh. It is still my view that the Astros top to bottom with the possible exception of ownership are all guilty as hell and it would not take much to convince me that ownership knew. I don't think the Sox are going to come out of the 2018 investigation clean either. I do think if anything Cora will be tossed to the wolves AGAIN whether deserved or not. The only way for Manfred to get ahead of this is to immediately suspend all team access to in game real time video across MLB whether by dedicated video system or league video. Unless he does that, this will just get worse and worse. Maybe it should just get worse and worse so it explodes any final thoughts that these goons know what the f*** they are doing with this game.

Not better than Ortiz in the overall....far from it. Just best at using the Wall from the Left Side. Nobody knew more about using the wall from the Left Side than Mo Vaughn. In some ways he was our version of the Yankee's Voit from the Right side playing in Yankee Stadium. If Voit hangs around the pinstripes for very long he might end up putting up numbers that are just silly for the hitter that he really represents. I have yet to see a HR he has hit against us in Yankee Stadium that did not have me shaking my head and headed for the liquor cabinet. Just to be clear though, Mo Vaughn was a better hitter than Voit can ever hope to be.

Mo Vaughn was probably the best we had at using the Monster at Fenway from the left side. For those interested our very best hitters just by stats have been LH hitters, Ted Williams, David Ortiz and Yaz, Wade Boggs (punch and judy category), Mo Vaughn (does not get the credit he deserves from Sox nation because the team didn't go anywhere), Tris Speaker. The preponderance of our best hitters have been RH hitters including, Bobby Doerr, Jimmie Foxx, Manny Ramirez, Dwight Evans, Dustin Pedroia, Jim Rice, Dom Dimaggio (crushed by military service), Rico Petrocelli, Pete Runnels (punch and judy from the right side), Nomar, Harry Hopper (border line but thought he deserved a call out). I believe Mookie would have slotted in somewhere as a RH hitter and he still might if he comes back. Rafi might slot in from the left. I am less sure about him as he has such a violent swing. He certainly has the potential. Less of a sure thing than Mookie. X will likely be here long enough to slot in from the right side.

I suspect we will platoon our 2nd baseman before we platoon X.

You might want to check out how many HR's our LH hitters hit on the road vs how many they hit at home. Its a tough home park to hit it out to RF and while 81 total games are played on the road, they are played at a variety of parks. 81 of a team's games are played in their home park.