jung

Yea at least in the case of the Rangers, they sort of fell apart at the end. An odd time to go that cold all at once. I think the O's will wish they had at least one more LH starter to face the Spanks in Yankee MatchBox Cars Stadium. I don't think their pitching will control the Spanks and I don't think their bats will keep up with the Spanks. Rangers even slumping going in had a better chance to against the Spanks. I do think that either Detroit or Oakland would have a better chance to beat the Yanks than either the O's or Rangers would have. To bad they are playing each other. A's do have strong enough pitching to throttle the Skanks and Detroit could play well enough to beat them also. Although I have a hard time cheering for Oakland I would love to see Oakland's pitching just turn Spankee bats into whiff machines. Maybe would enjoy that even more than seeing the Tigers beat them.

Two of the best teams in MLB over the 162 about to be bounced out on one night in a one game play in. How does that taste Uncle Bud?

Although MLB has a relatively low percentage of teams make the PS out of its leagues, it also plays the most regular season games by a wide margin....twice what NHL and NBA have for regular season games. So it stands to reason that they have to eliminate more teams over such a long regular season. I just don't see how this makes anything better. With any luck this will continue to go badly as it has already and this will be the last we ever see of this 2 WC format.

Even as old as I am, I feel like I have seen Jim Thome playing my entire life.

Selig is probably on pins and needles hoping he does not have a similar controversy in this the second WC game.

I just saw the "special" WC game caps....the legend on the cap is "post season". That is about as funny as the Rays putting up a banner for a year when they make it into the post season as a WC team but go no farther.

What Selig needs is more parity not a jury rigged post season system. This will lose its luster quickly I think and then what does Selig do? I am sure that is why MLB is insisting on calling this ridiculous one game a "post season" game complete with what I guess must be Wild Card Game Caps et al to lend some credibility to this thing. The "rational" MLB gives for this mess is to make the division win more meaningful. However how does that make sense when some divisions are won with fewer wins than the original one WC team had? But lets accept for a minute that it is all about the attendance/money which makes more sense anyway. MLB had a 0.5% increase in total attendance 2011 over 2010 even though 6 fewer games were played in 2011, 2,418 games vs 2,424 games. Per game attendance was up about 0.82% 2011 over 2010, almost 300 attendees per game. The average attendance per game was up by 613 attendees in 2012 over 2011 or 2% up in per game attendance. So, you could say that the new format was worth an additional 1.2% on per game attendance over the average increase per game year over year. So whereas you might have expected an increase in per game attendance of about 300 attendees, you got 613 more attendees per game 2012 over 2011. If somebody wants to look at $$$$, if every team plays every game you have a 2,430 game season total. Average per game attendance across the MLB is between 30,000 and 31,000 attendees per game.the $$$ are maybe about $44M on what must be something like a $2.25B total gate per year. I guess we can all decide for ourselves if we think a 1.2% increase in average per game attendance is worth seeing a 94 win team bumped out by an 88 win team based on a single game where the 94 win team plays uncharacteristically poor defense but worse than that gets jobbed by a bad call in the end. If there is one thing Selig did not want to see it was that bad call. Bad calls are always considered in baseball to be things that will even out over enough games. How do they even out over one game? If they had a way to make this best 2 out of 3 then it might at least be tolerable I think. But there is simply no way to squeeze a best 2 out of 3 in after the 162 and before the best of 5 division series.

Unless the Braves rally, we have the very real possibility of an 88 win team bouncing a 94 win team out of the post season on the basis of one game. Braves spitting the bit on errors and if they lose will likely do so because of errors. Best defensive team in baseball losing a one game play in on errors??? As I have posted elsewhere, I thought the old format was validated by the fact that the one WC team often had a better record than one of the division winners. That was the case for the Braves as their 94 win total at least tied the worst of the NL division winners. 88 wins is way below the number of wins posted by the worst of the NL division winners. I really don't care whether the Cards or Braves win but I do think this format is a travesty. Turns the 162 into something of a joke and that can't be right. Sending a 94 win team home after a single game lost to an 88 win team can't leave a good taste in anybody's mouth unless they are a Cards fan.

V did a terrible job....no question....should have been fired....no question....never should have been hired in the first place. However, Sox starting pitching has been deteriorating year after year after year to a low point this year that was beyond belief. Can't win without starting pitching...just can't. I do think V did almost exactly what LL wanted him to do...just did it even more than LL had estimated. As bad a job of managing or coaching (depending on sport) that we have seen in this town.

Happy to see V go. As mentioned before I cannot for the life of me understand how a guy that continually uses a sarcastic tone and speaks in code can be any sort of manager or coach. V has set some sort of poor communications history as a manager that will be hard to duplicate by anybody. We found out today that when V aired out Aviles in spring training about his execution of the cut-off play, Aviles had not even been given the instructions from the coaching staff regarding how V wanted the cut-off play executed. How many times after that did we hear the same thing over and over and over again. V thinks something is done and it is not done. How many times did V need to be beaten over the head with this communications issue before finally deciding that he should ask questions first and then shoot later? Now I hear the Sox are still after Farrell, I guess because he is a known quantity. He is a known quantity as a pitching coach. Farrell has not covered himself in glory as a manager. Why can't these guys get out of their way? They make an incredibly risky manager hire in V likely for all the wrong reasons cause you cannot convince me in a million years that V was hired on his strengths as a manager given his particular situation or on the strength of an actual process including interview. They go from that to trying to make what they perceive to be the safest possible move...for what reason I do not know. Also, if they are settled on pursuing Farrell, how is that any different from nullifying BC's managerial search process when they hired V? Maybe BC is more on board with hiring Farrell than he was with hiring V but it still sounds like the same ********. Lets call this a search process when in fact it is simply filling out the paperwork on a decision that has already been made. I hope they do not land Farrell for any number of reasons, not the least of which that it smacks of having no process at all AGAIN!

I don't think any of the retreads should be brought in as manager here.

Iggy actually finally did do enough at the plate in the last few games to be worthy of a shot because of his glove. He finally stopped getting blown right out of the batters box by ML pitching and discontinued that defensive slap hitting style. The most disappointing thing Iggy did in the last week was not make that play in the second game in the just ended yankee series. Stopping runs with his glove is exactly what he has to do and although he has made several great defensive plays the last few weeks he did not make that one. Iggy will be traded. I have said it for weeks now. The Red Sox are incapable of making a correct assessment of the SS position at the ML level. Want proof? Getting ride of Scutaro in a salary dump to make room for the incomparable Aviles and Punto....brilliant! Not that Scuts was God's gift to SS but offing him to make room for Aviles/Punto was a joke. They currently do not have an everyday ML SS. Aviles is comical. Ciriaco is the closest thing they have and nobody takes him seriously as an everyday SS. Ciriaco is probably destined to be a terrific utility player possibly including OF in his repertoire. Ciriaco may get the SS job next year as they simply opt to take whatever they can get at SS time and time again. They should trade Iggy so that he can get on with his career and then use some of that cash from "the trade" to bring in a prototypical Red Sox SS. That is frankly a loser direction to go in because the prototypical Red Sox SS generally sucks. But an Iggy will simply not fly in Boston. We have gotten used to a certain type of SS here, stone hands...lack of range and all and unless we have one of those so that we can claim him "adequate" all season long we just won't be happy.

Are you assuming Xander will outgrow SS for 3rd base?

Major problems for sure. There is very little pitching to build from at this point. Lester needs a complete overhaul, Buch is well Buch, not sure what you have really from one start to the next, Lackey is a multipitch pitcher...tougher to come back from TJ, and then what...Felix???....Frankie????....Cook should never take the mound as a Sox hurler again. How do you go from this to a contending pitching staff.....time and good work.....not going to happen overnight...sorry to disappoint those that want to think the Sox have a legitimate shot to return to legitimacy in one off season but it is not going to happen. There is almost nothing here for starting pitching to build from at least in as short a time frame as one off season. 2014 maybe, 2015 surely if management and FO don't stumble and bumble their way their as they have since at least before the 2010 season.

Remy's comments were very interesting because when you think about it, every team's hitters have looked very comfortable standing in against the Sox pitchers. That is in fact likely behind the fact that not only have hitters hit so many HR's off the Sox but so many long HR's. Home plate became a launch pad the last couple of seasons. While we muse about what the Sox have for pitching now, the fact is most of those launch pad pitchers are still here. Not terribly encouraging.

V has looked rattled in the last few interviews. The idea that he has probably had his last day in the sun in uniform has likely been sinking in the last few days.

Tough to watch dice walk off the field. Sure there is much to admire and like about the life of a big league ballplayer but when you see that much disappointment etched into such a young face, you get to see the other end of it as well. OK, hard to have sympathy for the guy. I realize that. But just think about how much of a life like that has been totally devoted to reaching the pinnacle of his craft and how difficult it is to stay their competing with guys that have made the same commitment. I do think the dice experiment, really calls into question bringing pitchers in from Japan and expecting them to succeed here. The baseball culture is different in Japan. That much is obvious. Simply do not think they are prepared for the level of competition we have here and then you add the impact from the DH on the MLB version of the game.

For one thing ya' gotta' wonder if we had a good pitching coach last year that was just ignored into irrelevance. Would not surprise me. There is so much to fix here. I don't at all expect a fast turnaround and don't even think it is remotely realistic. Maybe an incredible helping of luck might result in a fast turn but I think that would actually be the largest component of any fast turn.

Glad some of the regulars from earlier in the season came back at least for a night. It had turned into a lonely vigil some nights. Thanks to all for making the game threads an interesting place to be. I really mean that.

I doubt there is more for Iggy to learn in the minors, especially with Xander breathing down his neck. He is not going to get to be a much bigger, stronger guy. He needs to learn how to survive here. I do think he is something of a special case in that he is a guy fully developed defensively at the most demanding defensive position in baseball. Youk was not a SS and Youk should not have been in the minor as long as he was for that matter. Sox may catch a break. They are not the A's or the O's. I don't look at what those two teams have done as relevant to the Sox situation. They may get the time to give Iggy....may not....sure as hell had it this year...blunder number 20,468 on the list for this season.

Pods trying to figure out if all the pieces are still there. Nice catch but hell of a crash

I doubt it. People mused that LL wanted controversy. Wanted a lightning rod to distract attention from the team's play while providing more flash in the pan sort of interest. Sox must have invested one hell of a lotta' money in this whole 100th anniversary thing cause while they never looked like they had much team going into this season, they sure as hell put on one heck of a blitz to drive the revenue line this season. It was a promotion a minute from day one. I just don't think LL bargained for such a poor communicator with ballplayers...and anybody else for that matter. I suspect LL got much more than he bargained for in that regard. That said, V is far down the list of things wrong with the Sox and he is way easier to fix than the rest....see ya' V.

I doubt it. People mused that LL wanted controversy. Wanted a lightning rod to distract attention from the team's play while providing more flash in the pan sort of interest. Sox must have invested one hell of a lotta' money in this whole 100th anniversary thing cause while they never looked like they had much team going into this season, they sure as hell put on one heck of a blitz to drive the revenue line this season. It was a promotion a minute from day one. I just don't think LL bargained for such a poor communicator with ballplayers...and anybody else for that matter. I suspect LL got much more than he bargained for in that regard. That said, V is far down the list of things wrong with the Sox and he is way easier to fix than the rest....see ya' V.

Yes Don a healthy WMB will help but WMB is far from a complete ballplayer as yet. He is getting there but not there yet.

If I were the manager of this or any team I would not speak in code. V can take his riddles back to Stamford please. Nice inning Will my ass.