jung

These Mariners and teams like them are so so bad. That we struggled against any of them should have been early indications that this 2012 edition of the Sox was in lots of trouble. I have to admit that I am at least pleased not to have to fret over tools like Beckett, anti-studs like AGons and no shows like Crawford any longer. I am even happy not to have little Nicky to kick around any longer.

Middlebrooks can definitely be somebody that will join the club but he has not done nearly enough to get in just yet. I think its Pedey and Papi and even to some extent Ross. All Ross has to do to join is sign a reasoned, well intended, not totally whacked out contract with the Sox and he will be a full blown member in good standing.

And down goes Ciriaco again swinging at a pitch that was never in any part of the zone at any time from leaving the pitchers hand to the point where he waved at it. Swinging at bad pitches is one thing. Swinging at pitches that never once looked like they could be a strike is something else again.

I don't think Ells is a face of the Sox guy at anything like the level of Papi and Pedey and even Ross at this point. Ells is a pretty face and that is about it.

Hindsight is 20:20 but Ells is to typical for a Sox player. In reality the odds were way in favor that Ells 2011 was a once in a career event for him. As I have said I think he is a fine ball player that will have fine but not outstanding seasons for the remainder of his career all of which will remain under the shadow of injury and what injury does to him as a player. The Sox have never in my mind played the odds with players and have taken the long odds time and time again. When you don't win any of those long shot bets, you really end up behind the eight ball as you did not take advantage of the player's value when you had the chance and you now have an asset that is quickly declining in value. I am not even sure we should consider the fact that Ells will not be able to get anything like the contract deal he could have had "looking on bright side" as we likely would have been better off with the assets we could have garnered out of trading him at his peak than we will be getting more time out of Ells at a relative bargain price. Boras will be in a tough spot for a change as he will likely be forced to concede and take an extension deal for Ells with the Sox or run the very real risk of Ells having a very similar 2013 to his 2012 which will make FA a bust for both of them. Even a mean average kind of season for Ells in 2013 will not come close to recovering for him the lost FA value he once would have had.

I would like to see the Sox resign Ross but I hope they don't go nuts with salary. Ross in part looks so good because the rest of them including guys that should have distinguished themselves much better have simply not done so. Ross is a decent enough hitter against LH pitchers but struggles quite a bit against RH pitchers and is just plain terrible in the field, especially RF. Ross needs Fenway's left field as much as Fenway needs Ross and both sides should come to terms based on that understanding.

The fact that Cook can throw a pitch as badly as the pitch he threw to Seager is why he simply cannot pitch in the AL East and may simply be shot as a pitcher in the ML anywhere

Ciriaco has not nearly had enough exposure to ML pitchers as yet and has yet to come out the other side of having every pitcher in the league know exactly what you weak spot is and pitching to it. Some guys come out of that OK, others do not. At this point without anybody else I would start the season with Ciriaco at SS and Aviles or somebody backing him up. However we really do not know where Ciriaco is at this point. Although what he has shown is encouraging.

If (still willing to say if) Iggy does not work out, it is truly a shame for a number of reasons....not the least of which is that until the next guy is ready to come up (already being talked about as passing Iggy by) then the Sox really don't have a SS. A true testament to the screwed up FO. They have three guys....none of whom represent a complete SS. Aviles who hits (sometimes) but fields (rarely), Ciriaco who fields far better than Aviles, not nearly as good as Iggy leaves us unsure as far as his hitting goes and Iggy who is a fielding genius but appears so far unable to hit a lick...as in not at all! I know SS's are at a premium especially of late but this is ridiculous.

Things like the Temp Gauge are I think indications that James is struggling to come up with more interesting ways to look at numbers than what he has already developed.

Frankly I think all of this "back to Bill James" ******** is a cover for the real need from a Management and Baseball Operations perspective, that being leaving Marketing instincts out of player personnel decisions. That is the real problem and while I don't know if JH knows that I suspect he does but has no interest in throwing his buddy and confidant LL under the bus since LL makes money for JH. As someone recently pointed out, other than Crawford's OBP, the big money went to guys with great numbers. They just did not gel, did not stitch together into a whole quilt. That is a team building skill, not the sort of thing you would expect Bill James to bring to the table. Sure some of the signings since the Beckett Extension (the flag in the sand that I tend to remember as the beginning of a disastrous string of big money signings), like Jenks and Cameron were horrible signings but they did not get the huge money. Every penny they got was wasted but it was not the huge money. In fact I am inclined to think that if as reported Bill James was also not a fan of the Crawford signing it would have been over his OBP not the simple fact that Carl Crawford was not designed as a ballplayer fit for a Fenway team especially one that already had Ells. So I really think all of this Bill James is back nonsense is a smokescreen for a needed cleansing of Baseball Operations of Marketing instincts. Although I am no longer interested in any blather that emanates from the offices of JH, TW and LL. I want to see them walk the walk. For example if the first thing we see in the off season is some big slugger signed without even the beginning of an effort or the exposure of a plan to fix the pitching then I will go back to these ******** announcements from the corner offices and call foul.

Sox down in the 1st inning again...what else. You would think one of these turkeys would just say to himself "I don't care what it takes, I am not giving up a run to this opponent first...I am just not doing it." Not these guys...they just go on out there and give up runs like clockwork. "Oh what....they scored on me?????....Oh well.....s*** happens ya' know. Lester needs a complete overhaul at this point. Atta' boy Jon...lets see that glare back at the home plate ump....it is just so effective Jon and to be honest I just live for that glare.

The O's are a great story this year....I think as good a story as the A's have been. Suppose I would like to see the Angels get in just to have more fire power to stomp the Spankees with. Even with what happened with the O's end of last season hard to root against their team or the A's. Would prefer Angels and A's getting in as it is very hard to just swallow the Red Sox wallowing in 5th and/or 6th while other AL East teams get in.

Watching Rays-Yanks and waiting for our game to start. I was just thinking about how I really have to begrudgingly hand it to the Rays....year in year out they have been a very tough ball club. Maybe they have not played great baseball at times but down the stretch they have played good baseball and have done what they have to do. Nobody but nobody seems to want them directly in their rear view mirror either. Really does irritate me that they have that sort of profile as well cause I am sure it reflects well on the players, the manager and the baseball operations guys responsible for putting that team together. I think I will go slit my wrists now.

Well then they need to trade for a SS or simply bridge the season with Ciriaco and Aviles. Ciriaco sits about halfway from Aviles to Iggy. Aviles is simply not close to Ciriaco and Ciriaco is not close to Iggy but has a better bat than Iggy. In truth from what I have seen, the Sox simply don't have a SS at the moment. It is just that simple. By the way, they clearly won't even let Aviles play 3rd under any circumstances although he is billed as being available for the position. At least they let Ciriaco play there. SS is the most difficult infield position but 3rd is enough different that a good SS does not necessarily make a good 3rd baseman. Ground ball plays are completely different between 3rd and SS. It is truly a different skill set.

I don't see ells getting close to those 2011 power numbers again. But I do think he will have very good seasons both in the field, ranging not throwing and at the plate, just not producing big HR numbers.

Reyes scares me. Not at all sure I would want to see him here.

You are right Bell. CC was not a great OBP guy. Clearly they thought his other numbers offset his OBP cause I cannot find another rational for how they got there with him. Funny thing about that is that while you could blame his really ugly OBP for his lack of steals here, even when he got on he did not steal. The CC experience is the oddest Red Sox personnel thing I have seen in a long time.

Aviles does have a great arm...that is his major asset. In fact if they moved him to the outfield he would immediately have the best outfield arm they have with the exception of Kalish when he is around and it might even be better than Kalish's arm. I suspect unless something miraculous happens with Iggys bat or a trade does not happen we will see much more Ciriaco at SS next year as he is far better than Aviles is defensively and so far has carried a decent bat. Will have to see where he is when AL pitchers have more of a book on him.

I think this "story" is just more ******** from Upper Management. Seriously....."largely ignored" for Three years which was the number in the article. So what are they telling me...that they knew James was being ignored for three years and did nothing about it or that they did not know about it for three years? In addition, the big money did not go to guys that did not have great "numbers". The big money went to guys that had great numbers but did not stitch together into a team. If anything that sounds like to much Bill James and not enough team building skills. So much ******** spits out of this Management group now mostly with one saying one thing today and another contradicting it next week that I frankly no longer trust anything they say. More PR and more spin is all I see. Until I see something that suggests walking the walk and not just talking the talk, I will remain from Missouri at this point. They made a great deal by shipping off a bunch of poor contracts but that was as much to do with luck and the existence of an angel to bail them out as anything. Now what? How will they use the money? When will they use the money. Will they end up again with a great fantasy baseball team that is not worth a lick on the field where the game is played?

Although it pains me to say it, Danny Boy and the O's are as good a story as the A's. It might do us all some good to recognize that both of those teams rely more on run prevention than on run production and we are sucking exhaust in both cases. Sorta getting tired of seeing our FO chase after every overgrown hitter in existence while the pitching sucks and the defense is passible only because you are not dinged in errors for missed DP's and balls you simply do not even have the range to get to. While Billy is a Sabre fanatic he has put in the time to understand how to stitch together a team that can play well behind solid pitching. The A's and the O's are both studies in how you can build a winning team on a short budget with the Rays pretty damned good at it also.

Mike Aviles is a butcher at SS. He has no range going to his right almost falling over trying to make his first crossover going that way and takes forever to make plays regardless of direction which is why we miss so many DP's. He simply takes to long to get to, corral and then release the baseball. He is not at all graceful around the position and even Ciriaco makes him look like a stickman at SS. Aviles error totals are acceptable because you are not dinged in errors for missing DP's and you are not dinged for balls you can't get to. Aviles has at least twice this year come very close to ambushing his teammates in left field and at 3rd running with reckless abandon after pop flies in the outfield only avoiding monster crashes because they other guys pulled up before he careened into them full bore. Mike Aviles is a utility infielder and a utility infielder has no business playing the most important defensive position on the field everyday especially with a weak pitching staff.

Mike Aviles is horrible. If he is here next year he will likely split time with Ciriaco. But the fact that he is here at all is more evidence for a clueless FO. The only thing as scary as Aviles at SS is Ross in RF. Ross needs to play in left as he is a circus act in Right. Fenway's left field is Ross's savior both at the plate and in the field.

As for 2011, to be honest SoxSport I think the Sox were a house of cards. As I recall, the Yanks were a game and a half behind and coming on and I think the Sox finally found themselves staring into the abyss with no means to rally themselves. They crumbled. They did not remember June of 2011 choosing instead to remember April. They decided that April was who they really were, not June and they were right in that regard. While we did not know it at the time, they had already given up on their 2011 Manager, Tito and there wasn't a one of them ready to take up the slack, take up the mantle of leadership and bring them home. As I have often said, Pedey is not in the Mo Vaughn mold of a leader. He is miscast in that role which is not his fault. He never asked for the job and frankly nobody has been there to fill that void. They gave up on their Manager without having the means to supplement what he provided in terms of team leadership. However that is only one piece of the puzzle. The starting pitching was a house of cards as well and the trend of falling behind early in games really started late last year not early this year. The everyday players responded to falling behind early late last year the same way they have this year. They lost heart. They did not believe in themselves and began rushing up to the plate to take three quick hacks so they could rush back to the safety of the dugout as fast as their little feet would carry them. The bullpen finally yielded as well to the everyday pressure of overuse and that was the end of that. It got so bad at one point that they could hardly field a ball let alone hit one, their atom's apples dwarfed by their hearts stuck in their collective throats. If you go back to some of my winter posts you will find that I used this same argument in discussions about whether September 2011 was an anomaly. September 2011 was not an anomaly. It was a signpost to what was coming. This is and has been a gutless, spineless, heartless, whiny bitch of a team with guys like Pedey just overwhelmed by the amount of apathy and cowardliness that surrounding them and the complete lack of anything resembling a "team" to rally around. Oh not, not this bunch. These guys turned 25 guys, 25 limos into an art form. But before I heap to much blame on the players themselves lets not forget that it was Management that lost track of what a team looks like, slapping together pieces out of Sabremetrics stats without giving any thought to whether or not the pieces they were slamming together stitched up into a whole. They ended up with a terrific fantasy baseball team that could not play a lick together on the field where it actually counts.

Both issues should be addressed at the same time. The intangibles if not addressed result in players that don't blend together to form an actual team regardless of what their individual stats might be. Somebody that knows how to judge stats and understands how a player plays the game is the kind of talent evaluator that can make these sorts of judgements. The Sox seem short on guys that can evaluate talent that way and long on guys that know how to manipulate a computer program.