jung

Tito was let go. He played along with the mutual separation story but he was gritting his teeth the whole way and has not offered argument when he has been confronted with the "well you were really let go" view since then.

I don't think they need one of the top 5 of the 1's in baseball. But I don't want to see them go in with a bunch of potential 2's again. Seen to much of how that works out or doesn't. I think they need a legit 1 because: - that guy becomes your stopper. Without a stopper 4 game losing streaks can very quickly turn into 7 and 8 game losing streaks even if the rotation is pitching reasonably well - that guy becomes the guy that your young pitchers look to for direction, for an understanding for how to prepare, both mentally and physically. We have often in the last couple years blamed preparation for some of the problems in the rotation and I believe that their preparation has been sorely lacking. While the pitching coach can help with that, there is simply nothing as effective as having a guy at the top of the rotation that the other pitchers respect and acknowledge as the 1 without question that knows how to prepare. In fact I think part of Lester's problems have been a lack of leadership in the rotation. He himself was not prepared to be a 1 and nobody else was in a position to handle that responsibility either. That said, I would not do something stupid to get one this year because this team has got so many problems that I would think a one year turn to be a miracle. I will take miracles if they happen but you cannot plan around a miracle. Finally I think people have to acknowledge that the Sox either did not plan at all this season or planed unrealistically for a miracle. For example it would have been miraculous for the rotation to have gotten through this season successfully as configured...an absolute miracle. Not only were there serious question marks within 1,2 and 3 in the rotation, the most critical spots but there was NO QUESTION that 4 and 5 were not going to get through the season because of their innings caps if nothing else. The Sox had no realistic plan for that. The "plan" was Cook and dice. Well that was no plan at all. Banking on a miracle with a $189M payroll is just criminal. However I am not interested in PR motivated personnel moves or quick fixes that are not fixes at all. If they can't get their guy this year, that is just the way it goes. Like I said earlier there is so much to fix here that realistically this is going to take more than one year anyway.

I heard something this morning on radio that just sparked some interest. One of the talking heads commented that the Sox not only needed a 1 for the rotation but needed one of the very upper echelon 1's in baseball. There are only maybe five guys at the very top that would fit that bill. Sure we would like to land one. However it that really necessary presuming that Buch continues as he has here in the second half, we have Lester who should at least return to some sort of form and may actually benefit if we just remove the designation of 1 or 1a from him. We have Lackey, an unknown at this point and guys that should be able to round out the back end. It sounds to me like a rotation that absolutely needs a 1 but does not necessarily have to empty the tank for one of the top five guys in baseball. We may even need a 2 but definitely need a 1.

This is in part why I insisted that September 2011 was not an anomaly. It was a signpost. This 1,2,3 you are out ******** started last year and extended into this year. Actually it might not be quite as bad so far as it was at its worst last year. There where periods last year when the guys you most depended on to run up pitch counts, Youk and Agons specifically were literally jogging up to the plate, taking three fast swipes and jogging back to the dugout. Crawford was also terrible in that regard. I had never seen anything like it my whole life. While it has been bad this year, it has not been as bad as it was at its worst last year. However September is still ahead of us, not behind and I have claimed for weeks that we were going to see the same sort of September collapse this year that we had last, only from 5th, not 1st. Still and all they MUST solve the starting pitching as that is dragging the whole team down with it. It is impossible for a baseball team to go 5-10 games in a row behind from the 1st inning on. It is simply not possible for the team as a whole to survive that. Individual players like Pedey can fight that off, but the team as a whole simply can't and won't. Folks have petitioned for Cliff Lee. As I have said before I would only consider Lee if the Phillies kicked in some serious money for his salary. If not Lee then another 1 for the rotation or we wait it out another year. However it must be a 1, a true leader for the rotation, something we have not had for two years now.

Well if there is one guy we all agree is still on this team and does things his own way it is Aceves. Regardless of who manages next, I think Ace will be outta' here and should be outta' here. Ace is clearly a remaining bit of poison that has to be taken care of. That does not excuse V using and abusing Ace for something like 150 pitches over three or four days. That is ridiculous. That is V saying to Ace, "OK *******, you want all the innings you can get...all the pitches you can get....take that jerk-off". There is no place for this ******** on a pro baseball team.

Honestly none of the stuff that comes out of Upper Management sounds like anything but ******** these days. They have not spoken with one voice for God only knows how long now and just about everything sounds like an excuse. Bill James "fell out of favor" for three years? So what are you telling me here? Did you allow this to go on for three years or did you just not know? Frankly the big money signings have gone to guys that had great numbers for the most part. The issue has been do they mesh as a team not whether they have had great numbers individually. Is this a left handed way of pointing to the amount of leverage that LL has apparently wielded over Baseball Operations for years now? You would have probably said, this makes a great fantasy baseball team but it has not blended well on the field where the game is actually played. I don't think they any longer have the means to build a baseball team and in truth may really not have fed enough of that skill set into Baseball Operations since Dan Douchette left. It takes more than a computer software program and a guy just looking to make the biggest PR splash he can with every signing.

I don't think they know how to build a baseball team. Don't think they have a clue. Don't think they any longer have a Baseball Operations infrastructure capable of building up to these decisions and think they have for years now allowed LL to much leverage over Baseball Operations. Recent comments about Bill James and his lack of involvement in the process for the last three years are baffling. If anything, the players they have acquired that got the really big money have great numbers but don't mesh as a team. Plus if that were true, and you thought Bill James had been left out of the process, how would you allow that to happen for as long a period as three years? How does that make any sense? Are they telling me that they knew James was being left out of the process and did nothing about it? Is this a left handed comment about how much leverage LL has wielded over Baseball Operations? I swear to God they would be better off saying nothing than making comments like this that just make you wonder if they even know how to run a business any longer, let along run a baseball franchise.

I actually don't know how they can win another game this year other than pure luck, law of averages, some team has an off game whatever. The upper management of this organization while generating revenues and profits has taken a quality product and turned it into junk. Not sure how much play they can get out of the Fenway Experience when the product itself is junk. NESN viewers get no Fenway Experience. They have to change so much that I really don't think this group can do it. - they seem to have bought into Sabermetrics so heavily that no longer have any idea what team building is about. The only way I can rationalize putting together such a mismatched mishmash of players and calling it a team is by simply looking at stats and plugging people in. That has got to stop. - how do you justify hand picking your Manager from the offices of upper management and then kicking the stool out from under the guy that was going to have a noose around his neck from day one anyway. I know you love you LL, JH but you have no choice but to move him sideways or fire him. You just don't have a choice. - In addition to getting LL as far away from Baseball Operations as possible the Sox need somebody to lead Baseball Operations. BC can probably stay as GM as long as there is someone immediately above him that is not LL and is at the top of Baseball Operations - the lack of understanding for what a team actually is has also resulted in a lack of leadership among the players. Mr. This is my Clubhouse is not a team leader. Pedey does not want the job in the Mo Vaughn or even in the Tek in his prime sense of the job. I don't think you can anoint somebody as a team leader and the next time one emerges it will likely come as a consequence of rebuilding the team. - stop using Baseball Operations as nothing more than a tool to further your marketing intentions. Tired or glitzy signings that do nothing to further the team's ability to win games. Even their propensity to hang on to aging stars until they are falling apart is an aspect of using Baseball Operations to further Marketing intentions. They want to keep the old sentimental favorites around because it panders to the witless fan base that these days is frankly almost as much of an embarrassment as the team and organization itself. - Anybody that thinks they had a plan for a rotation has simply not been watching. They ignored it...the most significant single aspect of winning baseball is starting pitching and they ignored it. I am unwilling to accept what they did as some sort of a plan. It represented the outcome for not having a plan or at least for not giving a rats ass. Pitchers don't put fannies in seats. Overgrown 1st basemen and speedy outfielders that can hit (sometimes) put fannies in seats. - Pick a Manager that you have confidence in and give him a contract that reflects that. Never mind using the choice of a Manager as yet another piece of your PR and Marketing strategy. Pick somebody for what he can do to help you win games. Honest to God I am so sick to my stomach with what they have done to this team and this organization that I can't stand it. They don't even have the common decency to come clean so that we might at least be left with some feeling like there is hope. Based on the comments of TW and JH and LL why should I hope for better than I have gotten.

Amazing how supposedly smart people could be so completely clueless and these guys are totally clueless. I am having the most difficulty watching I have had all season. It is a completely rudderless ship now, a team without a soul. It even leaks out of the TV screen. Don't have to be there to see it and feel it. Honestly this is now what has made it very close to more painful to watch than I can bear.

As usual I see the starting pitching is a fail on a grand scale. These guys would consider a success getting through the 4th inning.

He has to be at least able to handle a bat at this level. I would take him being able to handle a bat like a average pitcher. Right now, based on what I have seen he has not given any indication that he can handle a bat better than a weak hitting pitcher. That is just to far down the scale. However not investing the time in these last few games to find out is just stupid.....since they have done every stupid thing you can think of in the space of one year, I guess that would be in keeping with the spirit of things. Play him every day against a variety of different pitchers and see if the guy can at least not be completely overpowered every at bat. As I said earlier, so far he can't lay down a bunt, can't even hit a seeing eye single cause he ball comes off the bat so weakly that he cannot even get it out of the infield. That won't fly if he can't do better.

Felix had not been stretched out in the previous year due to injury. He was slated to have a short ceiling for innings right at the start of the season. So this should not be a surprise to anybody. He may well end up with another shot next year anyway as I don't see the Sox resolving the rotation issues in one off season anyway. If he does he does. If he doesn't he doesn't. The Sox have a long way to go to be competitive again.

As for Aceves and his animated discussion in the dugout, I think if V saw or heard his gesture toward him, V should have told him to sit down and shut the f*** up. If V heard it, saw it and did nothing, you have another aspect of having been castrated at the start of the season. If Ace took it beyond that, suspend him again. I suspect that Ace will be outta here anyway....maybe even before V is outta here.

I doubt we have seen the worst these guys have to offer us believe it or not. The pen issues are a consequence of the poor starting pitching. Yea i complained a bit here early in the season because I thought V was playing a bit to much match up baseball with the pen when you could see even early that the rotation was going to be a FAIL. But in the end I can just about guarantee that with the rotation failing this badly, the pen would have gone down in flames anyway. Again this makes two straight years the pen has gone down in flames...two different managers....two different approaches to using the pen...same result....its the starters.

And we are off to double digits again. It is beginning to look like somebody is going to have to gift a whole game to the Sox for us to win one. Geez they are going to be laughing stock by the time it is over.

Aviles at SS when we need to see what Iggy has. We already know what Aviles has.

They have already posted the lineup today and Aviles is penciled into SS. Why? What the hell do we have to learn from having Aviles play SS tonight?

It will be hard for this Sox management group to fight off its instincts. Its instincts will be to spend a bunch of effort and a bunch of money to sign a big bat before it even has a strategy or a plan or has made a single move to deal with the real problem if they want to win games...the starting pitching. If we see no evidence even of a plan on the pitching front and find ourselves in the middle of a massive effort to sign Hamilton, watch out! You don't need a monster bat to have a competent, cohesive and competitive offense. You are not going anywhere without pitching.

Where the rubber will likely meet the road is in the post season and not this silly one game thing either...the real post season. If they even get in to the play in and get through it, the O's may simply not be good enough to win in a short series against what I guess today would be the Rangers. I would not deny though that it takes some amount of good fortune or luck if you will regardless of how good you are. I just don't think you can ever do better than give your team the best chance to win. You could certainly do much worse than giving your team the best chance to win but I don't think you can do better than that. The rest is in the hands of the players themselves and the Baseball Gods.

As good as he might be defensively he cannot be the equivalent of a weak hitting pitcher in a league that does not even allow pitchers to hit. He has to be able to at least handle a bat and so far he has not shown an ability to even handle a bat at this level. He is being completely overpowered so far. I have not given up hope on him but if he cannot improve at all from here as I said earlier I don't see how one could ignore that. If that is the case it almost does not matter what any of us thinks. Under no circumstances that I can envision would the Sox allow a player that cannot even handle a bat at this level be their everyday SS. It just won't happen. He is so overmatched, he cannot even lay down a bunt....can't get a ball out of the infield even. I am sorry but that is just to far off the charts on the bottom end even for me and I have wanted him here to this point. We should see where he is after these 30 or so games. He should play at short every single game in an effort to see if he can catch up at least to the point where he looks like he can handle at bat at this level. He needs the 30 games as well just so that we can see the result against a wide range of pitchers than he has faced so far. Not even sure how many LH pitchers he has faced so far...mostly Righties I think and the last few series have been against some tough teams looking for victories because they are in the hunt. But even at that if he cannot handle a bat at all against any of the guys he sees in 30 games, I will be more convinced than ever that the Sox will end up trading him somewhere. That is the problem if there is one. So far at least in these few at bats he has not even exhibited an ability to handle a bat at all. I am going to be totally pissed if I see anybody but Iggy penciled into SS for the remainder of the season.

I suspect the thing that has been a bit of a surprise is that so far he has not even shown that he can even handle a bat at this level. So far he is being completely overpowered at the plate. Not many games yet and the Sox have run into some pretty tough rotations of late. I would reserve judgement about this until he has come to the plate against a wider range of pitchers. However it is like watching a young boy up there trying to hit against these guys. He has so far, been completely overmatched. It is like watching a weak hitting pitcher up there. I would want the Sox to keep him here to see if he can catch up to these guys during these next 30 games. If he can he can and if he can't he can't. Not sure it is more complicated than that. He deserves the chance though. There is nothing better to do with the time anyway. Based on what we have seen so far, if he just end up looking like he can handle a bat at this level that would be encouraging. He is is exactly were he is today 30 games from today, I think that will be hard to ignore.

Not to this extent as far as Iggy goes. He must at least be able to handle a bat against a ML pitcher. So far he cannot even handle a bat against them. That is as I said earlier a completely different kettle of fish. However I want to see him against a wider range of pitchers before passing judgement. But if he never does better than this, he won't play here.

I would like to see Iggy play enough games against enough different pitchers in these final games of the year for the Sox to be able to reasonably gauge whether or not he can play up here. I for one had not expected Iggy to be completely overpowered by ML pitchers but that is what we are seeing. Sure he has not played many games yet and the last couple of series have featured some of the toughest rotations in the AL. But if against a wide range of staffs, Iggy continues to be completely overpowered then that is a different kettle of fish than I thought we were talking about. He may just not be strong enough. There is nothing left for this season anyway. Lets see if Iggy can right the ship. If not, then actually I guess my prediction oft identified in these pages comes true. Iggy never plays as a Red Sox SS for any significant time and gets traded to an NL team where he may or may not turn out to be anything.

There is no good place to post this but there is a post in this thread that talks about the O's as a part of a discussion about the AL East generally and it points out that in order to win as many 1 run games as the O's have won this year, you have to have a high degree of luck play into the result. I agree with that. However, team building is not about the result being a sure thing. There is no such thing as a sure thing in ML baseball. Look at that powerhouse Angels team which does have pitching as well. If the season ends today, they are going nowhere. We only have to go back to last season and the much discussed dead lock cinch to go to the WS of the Red Sox for a recent local example. The point is not that the number of 1 run games the O's have won involved some luck. I would contend that every successful team sports effort involves some degree of luck. The point is that the O's team was built as a team that would be competitive in 1 run games. The point is, it is a team that does have a cohesive approach to the game. The pieces fit. They may not be the most expensive pieces but they blend into a competitive, reasonable, cohesive approach. Then, they put themselves in real position to contend by making some reasoned bets on pitchers. That is where the effort was really made as it should have been. They have all worked out for the most part. But they were reasoned bets in the first place as opposed to a bunch of reject, has been, retreads or guys that had not proved that they could do a thing at any level of pro baseball within the purview of starting pitching or in the case of Beckett a guy going through one of the most difficult transitions in all of baseball while TELLING YOU that baseball no longer holds the place for him that it once did. The O's are a brilliant case for how you build a team that has a chance to win just as much as the Red Sox are an excellent case for how to build a team that really has little chance of winning. Virtually every move from the Beckett extension up through Carl Crawford was a mistake. Some of them monster mistakes. I always thought it was something of a shame that Dan D was so distant and held himself so aloof when he was GM here. He left himself open to criticism in the sense that a player being paid a ton of money and then underperforming is open to criticism. If you leave people lying in the weeds for you, at some point they are bound to get the opportunity to pop up out of those weeds and nail you. I seriously doubt we would be in the mess we are in today if Dan had remained a key piece to the Red Sox Baseball Operations effort and Theo had gone on his merry way to do whatever for whomever. That said, maybe Dan would have had as little success holding off Larry L as anybody else has had. Dan always had an instinct about baseball personnel but I suspect he may have been late to the party with regarding to using more contemporary tools in conjunction with his instincts because I cannot think of other reasons why he alienated so many people just as those contemporary measures for baseball talent were becoming very popular. That is just a hunch on my part but I remember that time and Dan seemed easy to dislodge at a point when you might not have expected it to be so and then he could not get back into baseball in a similar role. I suspect he has had to have a "come to Jesus" regarding contemporary talent measurement tools but we should also recognize that there is more to this team building thing than deep pockets, success in other business ventures and a computer software package. Recent Red Sox teams have looked good on a computer screen but have sucked on the field where the game is actually played. They may have been unbeatable in a fantasy baseball league but have not been able to win a thing for real.

Fire him out of a cannon. Everything is good for something.