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Well I am not sure that I agree that both Beckett and Lester cannot be moved in the same off season. Beckett is not going to be a player deal. The Sox will get nothing back for Beckett. The entire discussion presuming they get into one will be around how much salary the Sox will pay. I suppose there is a chance that a meaningless prospect will come back the Sox way for Beckett. Certainly won't be anybody that impacts the deal one way or the other. Lester does have value and that will be a straight up player deal if they do try to move him. I was OK with keeping Lester all the way up until this last start. He STILL is unable to deal with this ump s*** and now he unravels seemingly even faster than he was before. Considering all the other issues he is facing, I would no longer be all that concerned if the Sox moved Lester as well. I am not saying that they MUST move him although if this continues like this for the remainder of the season by the end I might just decide that I have seen enough. There is just to much going on with Lester at this point. In fact if they decided to keep Lester at this point and move him down to something like the 3 or 4 in the rotation, I would take that as a sign that they may be considering 2013 a bridge year. You cannot have a guy pitching like that in your rotation and then be taken seriously if you claim you are on a mission to the post season. Remember what we will likely have if the Sox are unable to bring in a legit #1 for the rotation: Lester....basket case needs to figure out his mechanics and find a way to deal with the ridiculous amount of attention he gives to ump calls and every tom dick and larry thing other than making pitches. Lackey...no idea what he will have for an arm and another ridiculous head case on the mound last time we saw him Buch....the guy that should be slotted into the #2 behind a legit #1 hopefully. Literally praying he does not run into health issues Felix.....second year of a young starters ML career...if he pitches well and can up his innings total I will be happy with that Frank....see Felix above Cook.....Sort of a guy we can go to if we need him but if the Sox have to rely on Cook they are in a lotta' trouble. Player X....should be our legit #1 and needs to be a guy that can fill the role both on the mound and off. If we don't get one it is by definition a bridge year. No team starting in the AL East can make a legitimate claim to be contending without a legit #1 which we do not have.

I really don't think so. They are not even playing baseball any longer. Sometimes when I get going really badly on the golf course I start playing golf swing instead of playing golf. Something like that is what the Sox are going through right now and it has gotten worse and worse and worse. This is not baseball.

NESN must be fleshing up this little promo videos of Red Sox players emoting like they care about something from three or four years ago.

You would have thought that pride or something like it would have kicked in by now. Apparently not a single thought goes through their pea brains that is at all associated with team. Notice as well that there appears no basement...just like last year....it becomes a free fall and you think there has to be a basement but they never seem to find it. I just hope to God that the silver lining to this free fall is a recognition of how truly f***ed this team is now. Like I said a couple weeks ago...last year they went free falling out of first and then out of the post season and this year they are free falling out of the post season into the basement.....a bad bad baseball team. Heck they are so bad that we don't much talk about their bloated player payroll any longer. They would be bad at half the budget.

Wow, the Sox pen is averaging 3 innings of work per game now over the course of the last 30 games....do you know how bad that is?

This is yet another season where the Sox have degenerated into playing thoughtless baseball. I know it looks like they are playing out there but they really are not. Unless the Jays have already degenerated the same way, I think the Sox will have difficulty avoiding the basement this year.

In the meantime we are the best confidence boosters any opposing pitcher ever saw.

I think V is in a no win situation at this point Tut....he is desperate not to put the pen into total oxygen depletion state where they will just be so ineffective that some game at some point turns into a complete embarrassment. Seems clear at this point that V did not think last night was enough. While I get what he is trying to do, V always seems to push it to the point where the guy coming in has no room at all. Sure, they are pros...they are in the bullpen...the job is to shut the other guys down. But do you really want to leave the starter in so long when you have to go get him anyway. Given how Frank was pitching...clearly slowing...why was the first walk not enough for V....why push it out to the point where all the Guardians needed was a sac fly to take the lead in a tied game. But No....two walks and a hit batter and now he goes out to get him. I just don't think it makes much sense to leave every reliever with no room ever and he usually does it with the game on the line.

That was one of the dumbest plays I have seen on the base paths in a year that has seen buckets of dumb plays on the base paths. and our reward is going to be runs for the Guardians in their half. I wonder how often the Sox think about how much momentum they give away to the opponent when they bail them out doing something that stupid.....Never mind...of course they don't....

Great play by Pedey....Pedey stands out so much on this club.....not that it seems to matter to the rest of them......

I do understand Tut but I think V is still worried that his pen is gassed even with the one night of rest last night. Will likely try to preserve them for the rest of the season.

This team turns stupid baseball into an art form.

Upset with what call Ells...what the hell are you doing trying to get to third on that play anyway.

The little league game from bristol is a little more exciting although Connecticut is blanking New Hampshire. Sox and Guardians just seem to grind away at each other every time they play.

Do they use the C cap when they are wearing these more simplistic looking graphics uniforms? Maybe the uni caps fit with the rest of the uni.

Damn...that was unlucky....not the best base running but that is sort of Monday morning quarterbacking.

Oh my God...Sox flashing speed on the base paths....be still my heart!

Geez Remy please do not mention Frank's name and Lester's name in the same sentence. Don't want any Lesterness rubbing off on him. And..... Ortiz not starting tomorrow because he has pain running forward....Jerry and Don having fun with that one....since it would seem to have made at least as much sense to have announced that Ortiz is having trouble "running". Why qualify it "running forward".

Very good point Native. Somebody was making the point today (not sure where I heard it) that these guys are going to look really stupid if that elbow actually does pop on CC. Then the surgical repair and rehab ends up carrying well into next season and for what...they are not going to catch up even with the second WC. CC has had a nice little run here. Get the surgery done....what the hell are they waiting for.

I would say the Sox will make every effort to move Beckett and will in fact take the best offer made for him. That probably means trying to find somebody that will eat enough of his salary to make the remainder palatable for the Sox. In his case, I do not even think they will be careful about where they send him. He is a 10/5 guy so that already stands in the way. I would say that the best they can expect is to pay half Beckett's salary, getting nothing in return unless somebody gives them some throw in guy they don't care about. I am tired of caring about whether he is hurt or not. What does it matter? He is not going back to 98-97-96-95 or even 94 mph. He will likely be down here at 91 and maybe 92 for whatever remains of his career.

Once again though it suggests that as bad as Aviles is at SS he must be downright terrible at 3rd. Why else would you put Aviles at SS when you have Ciriaco? If he is that bad at 3rd then why is playing 3rd still part of his resume'? SS is clearly a far more important defensive position and Aviles can't carry Ciriaco's shoe laces at SS. This is easily the most fouled up Red Sox organization, top to bottom I have seen in a long long time. I am happy to see Ciriaco at 3rd instead of Valencia but it still makes no sense to have Aviles at SS and Ciriaco at 3rd. Maybe they finally realize they are toast for the season at this point and just want to see what Ciriaco looks like at 3rd.

The comments about inter-league play and Ortiz are interesting. To be honest I almost wish he had not stepped up like he has this year. It only serves to make the Sox more and more dependent on him. I do think that the money Ortiz can make in baseball shortens up every year though regardless of his potent bat. The key to signing him if the Sox decide to do that might be convincing him that the best place for him is here in Boston. Try to sign him for reasonable money on either a one year deal with a team option or a two year deal with a team option. I would also sit Ortiz down and insist that he stop this nonsense in front of the media. This team has difficulty scoring runs with Ortiz out of its lineup. Sooner or later they have to learn to live without him. Not sure 2013 is that year though. None of the proposed rotations I have seen here will get the job done for the Sox in my view unless the Sox decide that 2013 is finally a rebuilding year and plan to resolve the rotation issues in 2014. It might after all be the best way for the Sox to approach 2013 as these continual efforts to resolve years of mistakes in one off season just seem to make things worse. However I do think everything wrong with the way this team plays is solvable if they have a real deal contending team rotation. IMO, they need a true 1 to solve the rotation issues. They score runs. They don't score them when they need them but they do score runs. There defense is terrible in the key defensive positions but there are really only two super important defensive positions on the field and maybe one that is about half that important. The Sox have answers for those defensive questions but just seem stubborn about resolving them. This team is struggling to stay out of the basement of the AL East. So if you want to look for some evidence that they are in a situation that will take much more than a tweak here or there to fix, you need only look there. They had virtually all of their pieces back once Ells and Crawford got here and still stunk as a team. But it is not so much of a mess that it is beyond fixing.

One aspect of the team and how it seems to feel about Lackey that is disturbing is that I can't argue with the people that contend that regardless of Beckett and what we attribute to Beckett as part of the "problem", the real decline in this team started with the arrival of Lackey. They are no longer a tough team. They don't fight back. They whine about every call that does not go their way and worse than that the whining does not even allow them to put it behind them. They whine and then they fall apart. I don't have an argument for the people that have that view of Lackey and his impact on this team. Yet, you do hear that the players like him. I am assuming a great deal here but its a forum. We post our opinions in the main and ask questions. Assuming all of the above to be true, to what extent is their affection for Lackey a testament to their belief that this is the way it should be....ala' "the way we do things around here". Maybe they just do not even see how f***ed up they are as a team. I have said this for a long time now. However, to me at best, they are a collection of players, some of them very talented that happen to wear the same laundry but are not a team.

I just don't know why it matters frankly. He is an Ace....he is not an Ace....He is an Ace here in Boston....this team is going nowhere. He is the best starting pitcher right now on a team that is going nowhere and that will see significant changes in its rotation next year or will continue to go nowhere. While being able to either trade for a true 1 that can be a true 1 for a contending team or getting a true 1 via FA will not be easy, that by itself will completely change the profile of this rotation. They might not even be able to accomplish this task by the way. Beckett should be gone with the Sox just hoping somebody pays part of his salary. Lester will likely be down in the 3 hole behind Buch if Lester is here at all. Player X will hopefully be the 1 and the backend is Lackey, Felix, Frank, Cook or who knows who with one of those guys the 3 if Lester is not here. While the season was over games ago it officially ended regardless of what the record says when we heard that crack of the ball hitting WMB's wrist last night.

I have never understood why they have avoided putting Aviles at 3rd. He has the arm for it. He has range going left and the ball gets there so fast that you have to deal with picking it up after it bounces off your chest often anyway....something he should be used to by now. I can only assume that despite the book on him that says he can play 3rd, that he just cannot play it at all. I do not want to see Aviles play another game at SS.