jung

NESN talking heads trying to make the case that Agons K was the turning point of the game tonight. I predict that if AGons plays out his entire contract we will be counting significant, meaningful hits over the life of that contract on the fingers of maybe two hands. Although I fully expect that his numbers will look terrific, I don't expect them to mean a damn thing. Admittedly I have been really hard on Agons. My expectations for him in big moments is at the heart of my criticism of him as a player. I hope I am wrong but I have not as yet seen anything from him that suggests he will produce in big moments the way Pedey has at times, the way Ortiz has or the way Youk had. If Agons and Ross were to play a similar stretch for the Sox, I would predict that Ross as limited as he is would end up with more meaningful hits than AGons.

Another lost first game of a series. Their numbers in first games must be staggeringly bad by now. They hardly ever win the first game of any series. I really can't wait till the Pawdogs get up here. Anything is better than watching these stiffs just fail on every front. Is there anyway to just import the whole dame team?

Anybody hear V talkin' about the McClure firing today? V tries so hard to make himself appear relevant. How many times have we heard him this year try to make something appear like his decision. Just give it up V. With your luck you will run right into a management trap and before you know it this season will be all your fault. IMO V has bent and twisted himself into a pretzel, to a fault for that matter. Even though I was never a V guy, I think he has done himself a disservice bending over like he has. Considering how screwed up things have been with the owners and the players getting their way all the time, I would surely have preferred they have less influence than they have had.

Man I can see these game threads are going to get awful lonely by the end of the season.

I wonder how many times Mike Scioscia has done this get an out and take his starter out thing this season. I was sort of wondering about that move when he made it. As much as we bitch at V for leaving starters in to long, I am not sure we could have contained ourselves if V made that kind of move.

That was the best pure SS play Mike Aviles has made all season.

Which is why insisting on making this all about Beckett and Lester makes no sense. This rotation is fail, fail, fail, fail, Buch, fail, fail, fail, fail, Buch. Cook simply "insures" more lost games. I am sure we want it to be all about Beckett and Lester because it make the problem appear more manageable to have it focused on two guys. That is far from the situation the Sox find themselves in.

I a still pretty convinced this team is headed straight down the drain for the rest of the season with the final record being truly gruesome. At this point the rational for bringing more players up from Pawtucket will be that they will likely play better ball with them.

Having come in late I take it Cook is having his usual problems keeping the ball between the bottom of the knee and the middle of the knee. I simply do not know how the guy can ever really be successful pitching in the AL East. Even at the top of the knee is up in the zone for him.

Switching back and forth between LLWS game and Sox game. Helps to see a New England team playing good baseball before tuning back to the Sox game. Already 3-0 in the 5th. Does not look encouraging.

My hope is to see bunches of the Pawtucket guys playing together in Sox uniforms and see what happens. Bring up Iggy please...although what now....I guess he sprained an ankle or something.

The Sox management is so much about spin these days I think they dumped McClure now instead of waiting for effect. Sort of a nod in the direction of the fans that really know something about baseball and know the starting pitching issues are significant for this team. They really don't have many bullets in the "we hear ya' gun" as it relates to the starting pitching having done nothing with regard to player personnel. So they throw us a bone by throwing McClure under the bus. Certainly dumping a guy in season is more of statement than waiting to the end of the season. It might be a nod to V as well though I doubt it since I don't think V will last past the end of this season.

I don't think V suddenly went blind part way through his Sox experience either. I think V simply decided not to fight these issues out publicly. Remembering that Aviles was one of the players V jumped on early as well I just think V decided to play along. Suddenly we started to hear V saying things like Aviles defense prowess had surprised him. That comment came completely out of left field.

By the way, in any discussion of FO big 2012 mistakes it goes without saying that the biggest off season 2011-2012 mistake was not addressing the starting pitching and going into the season with so many question marks and in some cases outright obvious concerns. At least in my case I am talking about things they might have done during the 2012 season relative to the farm system.

I was interested to hear that the Giant's players are really white hot pissed off at Melky. Maybe....just maybe the length of time on these suspensions and the impact on a team of players might provide enough incentive to curtail this activity. However I only think that will be true if players feel like chances are pretty darned good that they will be caught. If the players feel like they can get away with it, I don't think the wrath of the players amounts to much of a deterrent.

Aviled did not have great year as a defensive SS. He is and was a butcher at SS. Aviles costs the Sox buckets of DP's for one thing.

Will BC's biggest mistake relative to the assets he had available to him in Pawtucket be Iggy not being brought in earlier or will it be Lavs not being brought in earlier? The way Aviles and Salty were playing you could about make a case for either being an issue I think. I don't wonder if the Sox FO simply could not have tolerated seeing out there on the field at the same time, Iggy and Lavs actually contributing at what might have been a high enough level to have really been noticeably better than the guys they replaced. As much as I have been on about Aviles this year, if I had to rank them I would say that Salty has been even more horrible at Catcher than Aviles has been at SS. The reason I think it so is because the Catcher handles the ball every pitch and Salty is not only bad at fielding the position, including the mechanics of receiving the ball but Salty also has that poor target problem and does not appear to call a game competently either. If Salty was just bad defensively but provided a decent target for the pitchers and called a decent game then Salty would not be nearly as costly to the Sox effort. I think Ciriaco opened many peoples eyes regarding Aviles as Ciriaco is light years better at SS than Aviles and Ciriaco is about half way between Aviles and Iggy defensively at least from what I have seen.

There is a lot that is wrong with the Sox rotation and pitching in general and Salty is a disaster behind the plate. However I never got the feeling that McClure was as involved as he needed to be. The whole Pitching Coach thing seemed to be something of an issue as well. Should be interesting to see what happens for 2013 as far as Pitching Coach is concerned...maybe all the coaches for that matter...maybe the Manager for that matter.

You are right V2. I only stayed long enough to watch that piece of one inning and picked up on the announce team talking about the Chinese players. Never looked close enough to see who the hell they were talking about. Switched back to the Sox game once they recorded that out. That was probably another mistake on my part. Should have stayed to watch that game.

The season in a nutshell and very good evidence for why their lofty status in Runs Scored is for the most part.....meaningless...another farce like the rest of this team has been in the main.

The entire rotation was a fail. The only difference being that Lester and Beckett were performance fails and the rest was a planning fail. Felix was not going to last the season and didn't. Bard imploded before the season was half done. Buch started the season a major question mark that panned out due to his own efforts, a matter of luck from a planning perspective and a matter of personal diligence from Buch's perspective. What was the FO answer to Buch not panning out and Felix and Bard.....Morales, Cook, dice???? In fact, the whole thing was a farce....a bunch of has-beens tossed in with a bunch of never-was's and few high priced superstars that in the main weren't that super.

Lavs looks so much better behind the plate than Salty. While it would be unrealistic to think that the rotation problems have all been Salty it is hard not to imagine that he has made a serious contribution to the abysmal rotation numbers. Scary to think that while the rotation guys have underperformed, a marginal improvement by way of a decent catcher might have made a huge difference in the actual results. Lets take an acute view of the situation just for argument's sake, just for the fun of it. Seeing how Lester and Beckett have pitched (small sample size I know) to Lavs....and looking at the giant number of games that have been lost in the rotation this year, would it be completely off the wall to think that we might have gotten ten more wins with Lavs than Salty? I don't think it is completely off the wall. Where are we with ten more wins in the bank? How does 69-53 and in the hunt sound? Ten wins to rich for your blood you say....to acute a view of the situation? OK....lets say seven wins. Now seven wins based on what we have seen with Lavs sounds like something we would believe as opposed to something we might think is just totally nuts. 66-56...ten games over 500, barking up NY's ass and up on Tampa and the O's. Still think that is ridiculous...OK lets take it down to six games dif between absolute disaster Salty and Lavs......Now you get 65-57, eight games over 500....still barking up NY's ass and right in there with Tampa and the O's. Think I am totally nuts...well I have close friends and family that would be inclined to agree with you. But, if you remember about six weeks ago, we had two games very close together where the walk off runs came in off of Salty screw ups around home plate. Just in those two games, we had defensive mistakes by Salty that ended those two games, having nothing to do with his receiving...those were just outright mistakes that ended those two games...That is two of my six right there. I am not counting any of the other countless dropped pop flies, passed balls, various and sundry other sins around home plate and just saying that his receiving and handling of the pitchers has been worth anywhere from four to eight additional games plus those two walk off games. You might want to counter that he has done some things with his bat that should go to the other side of the ledger....what were those...the HR's he hit late in a couple games were superseded by additional runs scored by the opposition so I am just for the sake of argument suggesting that he has won no games with his bat. So if you just want to fool around with one thing as opposed to multiple things that might have changed this whole season around I give you Salty vs any decent ML catcher. If the Sox had a decent ML catcher and maybe even the one in their system this year, we are likely right in the hunt for the division. Now before I cause a riot, lets not forget that the Sox had no real plan for Felix needing a blow long before the season ended, and Bard just imploding and Morales being just to young and inexperienced especially as a starter and Cook simply needing to be to fine etc etc....while I cannot blame Felix for his youth for example, I have to say that the Sox had constructed a "plan" for the rotation that was doomed from the start. That said if they were right in the hunt maybe they do something besides twiddle their thumbs at the trade deadline. Also teams are supposed to recognize their shortcomings and pick each other up. Of course these are the Red Sox where most of the players likely know to the penny how their individual stats might contribute to their next salary negotiation but pick each other up...Christ they don't even know when one of them is down or who or what is doing what when!!!!! Regardless of whether they did something at the trade deadline or not, they would likely still struggle with these last 40 odd games but hey...right in the hunt is still right in the hunt. So, the next time somebody puts the words adequate and catcher together in the same sentence regarding the impact of a good defensive catcher on run prevention, run do not walk but run in the opposite direction as fast as you can.

The way I remember it, Agons shoulder had been mending fine and I think he felt like he had recovered most if not all of his strength and then game the HR Derby of the 2011 season....the one where Dave Magadan warned AGons not to participate. The stuff that was written at that point was not that Agons re-injured the shoulder as much as he damaged the repair. It is possible that AGons has done something that while not causing him long term pain has weakened the shoulder. That would not be a complete surprise and may fit with other things that we have seen. Agons went through that slump earlier this year where he was hitting few balls cleanly and his power numbers really suffered at that point. Now he is hitting the ball much better but it looks like unless he gets all of it, the ball just ain't goin' out any more. Maybe pain will come later but lack of strength is what he has been left with at this point...all conjecture on my part but just trying to make what we do know and what we can see fit. Guess we will just have to wait and see but something still does not seem right there.

From what I heard the latest news was no longer that CC WOULD have surgery on Tuesday but that they would discuss options on Monday. It all seems so ridiculous. Will they just do anything and everything to extract every last dollar out of a season regardless of risk to the player or risk to his ability to start the next season on time and ready to roll. What rational could they have for waiting other than trying to pump up the tires on the 2012 season. The level of insanity that real fans have had to endure is just beyond belief. Of course, anybody that really knows something about the game and is passionate about the team is not really somebody LL wants anything to do with anymore. Give him the lady from Colorado for whom the Sox organization can do no wrong and Larry is all in. Give him somebody that wants the team to win on the field and Oh no...not Larry's kind of fan...not likely to pump up Larry's brick sales. I think the spin that the Sox are trying to put on things these days is really disheartening and I hope it backfires the way it deserves. This is not the medias fault. If they don't like this stuff getting out then go to the leaks and plug them...they are leaks in their organization. I think calling the fans out for being to demanding or feeling some sense of entitlement is a red herring as well. I don't know a single real fan that would not be OK with a plan that was aimed at 2014 instead of 2013. That is not to suggest that the Sox have to tell us what the plan is. We do want to feel like they have a clue and nobody feels like they have a clue and most of us feel like they are lying through their teeth at just about every opportunity. They would not have to lie if they were not trying to spin every possible issue five ways from Sunday. It has gotten so bad now that I am convinced that they no longer even know which direction to spin something any longer. They even look more idiotic these days when there are occasions when the despised media for which we are ready to believe just about anything ends up with more credibility than they have.

There are times NC when I get server error messages stacked up one on top of the other for awhile whether a game thread or otherwise. It just happens sometimes I think. I did not get any during this game thread although I was out up until the 4th inning or so.