jung

Boy you got to give Jerry some credit....I agreed with Pedro the other night when he talked about pitching inside and I could see where it was an issue for the Sox....even posted something here about it here. Pedro was being far to diplomatic though. Recognizing he was back for a Sox event, what choice did he have. But Jerry really put an ex-ballplayers bite to the issue from the hitters perspective. Man is our pitching screwed up. In part why I just cannot buy into the notion that a tweak here and a tweak there would have done anything for this team this year. They are totally....TOTALLY screwed up mainly because there really isn't much in the way of a bright spot that is not standing on quick sand within the existing pitching.

Yea but who brought us this turd of a team and this jerk of a manager.....Red Sox upper management and FO. Bunch of clowns if you ask me. Raked in the money this year I am sure...how bout next year.

Jerry is right though....Pedro clearly was trying to get to this issue without being as direct as Jerry has been tonight...Sox pitchers do not know how to pitch inside along with the bevy of other issues that they have....in fact, you could make a case for their inability to pitch inside without beaning somebody is the other end of the same problem.

Can't convince me that this band box of a Yankee Stadium is at least as big a sham as the 2 WC system. Now 137 HR at home and 107 on the road. Pull the Yanks home HR record down to something relatively normal and their home run totals are probably not that much higher than anybody else as opposed to being 30 HR above everybody else.

There is just no way to add games to the 1 game play in and preserve a 162 game regular season. So that is out. As I stated above, the only real way for MLB to get what they really want is to create a system that ultimately creates more parity between teams. Jury rigging post season formulas will not get it done. This is what makes major pro sports such a complicated business structure. It is the only one I know of where you want your competitor to succeed to some extent....you just want to succeed more.

Good piece of hitting by Iggy. He has slowly but surely gone from being completely overpowered by ML pitching to being able stand in the batters box and not get blown back into the backstop by ML pitchers to starting to get balls out to the outfield with line drives much more regularly. That lends credibility to the view that there is nothing more for Iggy to learn in AAA ball and if the Sox really want to get the opportunity to insert him as a SS, they will need to commit to allowing him to work out the rest of his offensive issues up here.

The only thing that gets the issue that MLB is really trying to solve is parity and in fact MLB is moving farther and farther away from gaining parity. The division between the haves and have nots is greater than it has ever been. The Sox are playing like a have not cause they spent their money foolishly but the teams that are at the bottom of these divisions now are for the most part really at the bottom. As long as teams are able to take multimillion dollar money making opportunities available to them by virtue of demographics and drive that right into their player personnel payrolls, there will not be parity. MLB is nipping at the corners of the problem by instigating these temporary taxes on teams the break the LT threshold but that is not a long term solution of any sort. If MLB wants a show in the majority of its cities it will have to find a way to parity and that means a hard cap and that means the players association having to accept a hard cap CBA.

Its about the money? Tell me what would have been different this year with one WC? The races that are alive for both WC were all alive for the one WC until the last week of the season. The only team that exited early from WC consideration in a division race was the CWS and Chicago was only out of its division race by 3 games. So even CWS fans had a reason to go to the ballpark all the way up until the last two games of the season. In every other case you have AL races that were alive to the end for the division and the 1 WC. Even the Rays, now out were just as in for the 1st WC as they were for the second. They got eliminated from both about three days apart as I recall. Hard to see where there were many NL teams that extended their relevance to the post season by anything meaningful either and for that, you end up with what looks like a joke of a system. The system should reward performance over the 162. Any system that denigrates performance over the 162 for 1 is a joke. Its a sham and a rather transparent one at that.

Second WC is a joke. 2-3 five game series is a joke. Somebody goes home...somebody does not...it has been that way from time incarnate. Baseball's golden era happened when everybody but two teams went home. The Oakland A's just invalidated this mess by beating the Rangers in the last game of 162. So in effect, the Rangers had one game to win the division and lost. Why is that less exciting than having one game to extra game to play that you have to win. At least the A's have a record of accomplishment over 162 that says they deserve their spot. This "formula" just looks like a grown up version of the everybody gets a trophy formula we have developed for use in children's sports leagues. OK, lets play 162 games to eliminate 20 teams and 1 more to eliminate 2 more...ridiculous. If the Rays had gotten in they would have been putting up another flag, this was "2012 Second WC Winner". What a laugh. They had a good formula...it worked fine....it was based on the premise that the team with the best record that did not win a division, deserved its spot and I agree with that. You could easily have years where a team that did not win a division has a better record than a team that did. If two teams play to a flat footed tie for that WC then let them play a one game playoff. If not, leave it like it was. This is a joke. Just can't leave stuff alone. Gotta' fix stuff.....stupid.

The problem may well be that Iggy simply will not develop further at AAA. I tend to agree with that. Just looking at the way he has fought up to actually being able to get the ball to the outfield from where he began a few weeks ago is a good indication I think. He has at least fought out of that terrible hole he was in where he looked like a 12 year old up there trying to hit against men. So now what do you do? Certainly as badly as the Sox played this year, getting Iggy up here to play would have made sense. This team was a disaster that was not going to win enough games to be relevant. You could see that pretty early on. We surely wanted to believe otherwise but that is fans thinking with their hearts. Now the Sox are in a real pickle. I still think there are massive risks associated with trying to fix all of this in one off season. To many holes on this team I think and even a competent FO will make some mistakes trying to make this many changes. Remember, the O's are not where they are because they changed a good deal in one off season. If anything the changes they did not make were as important as those they did make. Maybe they can afford to have Iggy play SS next season. I suspect they think Xander is their real future at SS so it might not even be worth it at this point. This year was the year to do it if they were going to invest time in Iggy....if next year gives them the same opportunity that is going to probably disappoint many.

Feel like the Sox really did dice a disservice tossing him out there tonight. He has no idea what he is doing with the baseball post TJ. Arm angle all over the place...just a complete mess. It can take a long while for a guy with multiple pitches to come back from TJ.

To late now...a four run lead is more than enough tonight. JoeG will just use his bullpen if he has to do so. Nicely done Sox...V....whoever decided to start dice. They had their shot to at least be relevant for one night in MLB and not be a laughing stock for the entirety of 162 games and as usual, they blew it. As soon as dice took the mound this game was over.

I am surprised that V does not have some f***ed up code for whether he wants a RH or LH relief pitcher. As for dice, he never looked like he was really ready to pitch after TJ. As I said back when all these discussions were taking place, the guy really has to learn how to pitch all over again cause he now has an arm that he probably never had during his professional career and has no idea how to use it yet. I think power pitchers can come back faster than control/location pitchers that depend on multiple pitches. Dice without question depends on multiple pitches. Makes me question all of this BS coming out of the Sox about how good Lackey is throwing. What the hell would V know about whether Lackey is throwing good enough to actually pitch effectively. I would be surprised if Lackey can just be what he once was at the start of next season although he has an offseason now to continue to work. Maybe he pitches somewhere in the off season and that helps him back.

Oh V is gone already...gone long before tonight. How you can hire somebody that speaks in code as a coach or a manager is beyond me. I could not imagine playing for a guy like that nor learning a single thing from him. Is he legit this time...is he speaking in code again...is he going to call me a dunce if I can't figure it out...screw V and screw LL along with him. Anything LL learned about baseball he must have forgotten a decade ago cause I cannot in my wildest dreams imagine how you could come out of an interview with V deciding that he is your manager.

Why even start dice tonight....anybody but dice. There was no doubt that the yanks were going to do this to dice. Start anybody...just anybody but dice. If he is there in the 2nd inning it will be another 3 runs and another and another.

If I had my way I would have the Sox beat the Spanks and the O's win tonight to force a one game playoff between the Yanks an O's. However I think the Spanks will just pulverize dice and that will be that. Another hearty goodbye to dice. I often don't include dice in my list of woeful big money moves by the Sox cause folks want to credit him for his involvement in a championship and another early good season to boot. I think it was another failed move but that is just me. Glad to see dice gone after this season.

If they can get Napoli at least then I think they have the basis to take some risk on Gomez at 1st and Lavs behind the plate. I really think they will have to come up with a relatively short term solution at SS waiting for Xander to come up. I love Iggy but he just cannot hit....at all. Worse than that, just the sort of play he absolutely has to make he did not make last night. Could have saved them a run and he didn't. The biggest gamble the Sox might have to make next season unless they do decide to make Iggy the full time SS is Kalish in RF. They may end up having to gamble on his shoulder finally coming around and his hitting with it. While nobody could have foreseen Reddick having the kind of success he has had in Oakland and there are no guarantees that he would have had that sort of success here, having now seen more of Kalish, It appears to me that this is yet another case of the Sox getting stubborn about a decision and sticking with it to the bitter end....in the this case the decision was Kalish instead of Reddick. Kalish has been injured a ton but that also means he has been polished to a mirror finish in the minors. They may at this point be stuck. They may just have to gamble on Kalish in RF as he is at least a very strong defender in RF, something they do not have without him. However they never should have been forced to decide anyway. Bringing Bailey with his injury history to the Red Sox was a huge gamble that rightfully blew up in their faces big time. As for Scutaro, nobody could understand what the hell the Sox were doing with that move anyway. We were all mystified with that one. Scuts seemed like a heck of a value. He finished the year strong and none of what he did looked like an aberration. Another terrible Sox move because it created a hole where one didn't exist. Scuts could have held down SS until you can get Iggy or even possibly Xander up here. Another terrible decision in a long line of terrible decisions. Can't blame Theo for that one.

Lousy....that's how they would be...lousy. Certainly they would play better than what they have now but they would still be strapped to those miserable contracts with no flexibility and no room to move. That is certainly no murders row for one thing and is more of a roll call of roommates at the hospital ward for another. I suppose if you could get one year of healthy baseball out of that lineup it would be some fun but it would certainly not be any guarantee of going anyplace as it is full of poster children for a lack of timely hitting or even in some cases professional hitting. Mate that bunch to the pitching staff we have had and you would not have won enough games to have gone anywhere.

I thought the Sox team deserved a lot of credit for matching the Spanks intensity last night and putting themselves in a position to win the game in the ninth inning. Guys with experience pitching in the 9th are supposed to be able to feed off the intensity of ninth inning baseball. I really don't care what Bailey has had to deal with up to this point. That was a complete fail of incredible proportions. The biggest mistake this organization made between 2011 and 2012 is that it did nothing to make the point that the sort of performances we saw at the end of 2011 were unacceptable. If anything through early 2012 this organization did everything in its power to make what was already bad a total fiasco. Your job is to close, your team makes what I would consider almost a heroic effort to put itself in position to win and you just go out there and simply throw meatballs one after the other. Nope...not for my money. I would dump Bailey in the off season. Don't want to see his fat useless blubber body anywhere near this place next season.

I thought the Sox team deserved a lot of credit for matching the Spanks intensity last night and putting themselves in a position to win the game in the ninth inning. Guys with experience pitching in the 9th are supposed to be able to feed off the intensity of ninth inning baseball. I really don't care what Bailey has had to deal with up to this point. That was a complete fail of incredible proportions. The biggest mistake this organization made between 2011 and 2012 is that it did nothing to make the point that the sort of performances we saw at the end of 2011 were unacceptable. If anything through early 2012 this organization did everything in its power to make what was already bad a total fiasco. Your job is to close, your team makes what I would consider almost a heroic effort to put itself in position to win and you just go out there and simply throw meatballs one after the other. Nope...not for my money. I would dump Bailey in the off season. Don't want to see his fat useless blubber body anywhere near this place next season.

God I hope not...Bailey is a product of the current FO mess.....he is a distraction....hopefully will be outta' here. Would rather that than seeing the Sox FO waste more time on him.

Beckett isn't and won't be pitching a nit better than he did here. He simply does not have what it takes to pitch in the AL any longer. He will without doubt have more success in the NL but not because he is pitching any better. I expected Agons to have more success in the NL as well, although his diminished power numbers seem to be following him and may likely follow him wherever he goes. Still and all, I think Agons will not be quite the disappointment that he was here. Agons needs to hit it really pure these days to get it out. He should see better pitches to hit and that should yield him a few more HR's per year. Does not really change anything. Neither Beckett nor Agons would have enjoyed success here, just not quite for the same reasons.

I suspect that whoever they likely bring here will have a hard time competing with Tazawa's single inning stint heat, one off season stronger post TJ from where he is today.

I am struggling to remember such a pitiful performance by a closer other than Aceves and some of his laughable efforts. In Aceves case, he has that massive chip on his shoulder that he must carry out to the mound with him every stint. Bailey does not have that issue to deal with yet simply went out there and tossed up doughnut after doughnut, seemingly without even a wit of an idea what he was doing or the opportunity that he had in front of him. While most times the Sox do no longer field a competitive lineup that was not necessarily a bad lineup last night. It put the guy that was supposed to be the closer for this team from day one on the mound with a 2 run lead. What more could we possibly have asked for. I still think there is a silver lining...I don't see how you even allow Bailey to compete for the position next season. He would be taking away time from somebody more worthy of a chance to compete for the job. Better to know for certain what we have now then live through a season of Bailey.

I am not saying that they would just hand it to Tazawa but I suspect he will win it next year. Now you could argue that he will win it if they do not bring anybody else to contest him than the "studs" we already know about in Red Sox unis but I am inclined to think that is how it is going to work out.