jung

Is this our 1 in 20 when they actually look like an MLB team?

If you watch ells on the base paths, he wastes nothing. You don't usually see him taking wide or ungainly looking turns. He saves himself tons of time and distance the way he runs.

I think it was in that Tigers series that we saw more pitchers doing this but I am amazed at the number of pitchers coming inside to Crawford and not just inside under the hands trying to make it easier to get him out with the low and away but really catching a lotta' plate inside. Not sure what they are trying to do nor why anybody would pitch Carl that way.

Boy Yu started the year with so much promise. Does anybody know if this is how he has been pitching lately? Ryan must be pullin' his chest hair out (not much up top anymore).

Looks like Cook has been kinda' sneaky tonight the little I have seen so far. Looks like he has proved he can keep the ball down and has slipped a zinger up in the zone in on the Rangers every once and awhile.

So JH just tweeted that the "players are playing hard". Does Henry actually know anything about baseball. Does he have any idea what he is looking at? I would say...no. He would have been better off saying nothing than sounding so completely oblivious to what is happening to this team. I realize that he probably had to put a good face on things but either do it in such a way that you don't sound like a complete dolt or don't say anything. V is not being replaced.

Clearly the real question is will we be down by 4-5 runs before we get out of the second or third inning.

Well rat used in this context to imply that there are people or a person that leaked the chicken and beer story last year and somebody that slithered up the stairs to upper management to talk about V's comments to WMB this year.

I did not say Lackey was the clubhouse rat from last year...I said you "may well have found your chicken and beer rat as well" since people tend to have tendencies. Read the post.

Not thirty pitches in they wouldn't. Ace was up to something like 32-33 pitches I think. I have little doubt that if Ace had put up four fingers at 3-2 and had him walk Mauer he would have at that point pulled Ace.

The biggest mistake V made with Ace was leaving it in his hands to decide to try to pick a corner instead of just giving in and throwing a cookie right down main street. I just don't quite understand why V does not know his players better than he appears to know them. Maybe it is asking to much to have acclimated to the wide variety of nuttiness on this team. But even at 3-2 V should have held up four fingers, instructing Ace to walk Mauer...and then should have pulled Ace at that point. V has now learned that he cannot use Padilla against the Yankees....and hopefully has learned that if you leave Ace in a spot where he is presented an option that is best for the team but might also get him pulled from the game....Ace is not picking that option. Ace threw up that cookie in my view because he pretty much had concluded that it was going to be the last pitch he threw in that game, one way or the other. If he tried to pick a corner and missed it loading the bases, V would have pulled Ace for sure. Ace did not like that idea and tossed up that cookie I guess hoping he could get it by Mauer. As I said before, in the game thread we have seen Ace give in to the hitter before this year which is why he has given up so many dingers. For all his tough exterior and tough appearance, he gives in to the hitter far to many times for my liking.....and I don't at all like this new thing of his....chasing coaches and players off the mound.

Lackey is the rat....the only thing unbelievable is that a guy that is just skulking around the clubhouse turns out to be the clubhouse rat. Now Mr. Beckett..how smart do you look...Mr. ripping through the place looking for the clubhouse rat...while I guess there is a question about Lackey being the chicken and beer rat.....you, Mr Beckett should be just as incensed that you buddy went skulking up the stairs to the owners office to tell tails even if it was to tell tails on a manager you don't like. If you are true to your words Mr. Beckett you should find Lackey's kind of clubhouse rat just as distasteful as the chicken and beer clubhouse rat. in fact, given that people have a propensity to do what they do more than once....you may well have found your chicken and beer rat as well. Wouldn't that be a kick in teeth....if in between picking chicken from his teeth, Lackey was telling tails about the whole chicken and beer experience.

So what do we think folks....are we about to see the last few games of the V tenure? My guess is yes...that a couple of blowouts against the Rangers and V will be done and dusted.....for no other reason than it will give Sox Management a little more runway on keeping people coming to the games this time on the hope that getting rid of the manager will motivate these chumps to do something they have not done all year...play at all and/or play as a team. I don't think actually trying to win at all enters into the picture for Sox Management. If they do win a few more games fine but I don't think that will be the motivation for the firing. I would say that it will come either after the second or third game with the Rangers...depending on how long it takes for the Sox to lose the Ranger series and possibly how lopsided the scores. By the way I don't think it will do a damn thing. These guys have learned some bad habits from each other that are not going to unlearn quickly if at all if this group of players stays together. So I don't see anything coming of it but I really doubt V will last the Ranger series unless the Sox win two of three or sweep the Rangers....good luck with that one V.

s***...any team of players that gets an inkling that Beckett might be coming to town is likely to start to string strands of garlic, crosses and wooden stakes around the clubhouse just in case it turns out to be true. Heck most ML baseball games are at night these days.....pretty tough life if you only feel safe for the day games.:D

The cascades of boos are getting more frequent although you can tell folks are looking at each other in stands looking for support as opposed to just launching right in. Surprised there are enough real baseball fans in those seats to have a clue. This series might open the flood gates as they may easily find themselves looking up right from the 1st or 2nd inning with things like Rangers score 4, Sox come up in their half and record three outs in 10 pitches. A few of those might just about do it.

Yea but there are not that many of them with really really good TV deals and Football is clearly healthier by a wide margin. Undoubtedly guaranteed contracts are an albatross around baseball's neck. Why do you think Uncle Bud was compelled to try this nutty WC format? There simply are not that many healthy franchises. Ya the economy has not been great but it has not slowed football a tick. I actually think the owners have always come out of these negotiations thinking they have negotiated a position that would allow themselves to be the controlling safety valve that would keep player personnel salaries from spiraling out of control and they have never exercised that sort of self control. Honestly the Players Association negotiating with the owners group representatives have been men against boys. It is so bad that the owners come out of them invariably wearing the cheshire cat grins when in fact they have been the canaries every single time!

I can believe that a guy could injure himself the way Ortiz injured himself. His foot did come of the bag rather oddly and that is how he got the injury. I have been waiting for Ortiz to incur some sort of leg injury running around the bases. He never needed to be running around the bases with that much abandon. He was never going to help the Sox that much overextending himself running. More times than not it has not worked out even when he has not gone off limping. I can also see Ortiz pulling this s*** because he has already said and done some things that were kinda' silly. The "I was embarrassed and insulted" speech did not do him much good and pretty much backfired. The "this is my clubhouse'" speech was also ill advised I thought. He has been pretty relentless in pursuit of his own agenda as frankly most of them have been. Honestly I think they are setting a record of misconduct, malfeasance, and self motivated ******** that is going to be tough to exceed outside of groups of players that constantly find themselves in the criminal courts. I seem to recall the Cincinnati Bengals going through a period like that. But, short of that sort of criminal behavior, this bunch really takes the cake. Makes you want to line them up on the first base line and rip the red sox logo shoulder patch right off their uniforms. Honest to God I have never seen anything quite like this. Sure we have instances of individual players throughout pro sports making total dicks of themselves but this is really something else again.It does seem to spread from one to the next which in all honesty you would expect when the group thought process has broken down and the individual agenda's are all that is left. Under other circumstances, would you have expected Salty to make a comment like the one he just made? Ultimately I think they are likely to make wholesale changes shortly because this stuff is so out front now and it is so obvious that it is spreading like wildfire throughout that clubhouse. It would not surprise me in the least if they kept some of the guys that they think would step back in line under better circumstances and dumped the rest. The only one I really worry about of that group is Pedey. You would expect him to step back in line under better circumstances but management may really hold that "we don't do things that way around here" comment against him. Granted they backed him and Youk vs V but that does not mean anything with this upper management group. This management group may simply not be willing to live with the media being able to position that comment against the performance of the team as in a never ending cacophony of "they sure showed us how they do things around here didn't they...look at the record." The only way to stem that tide will be to get the mouth that roared outta' here.

Obviously I don't have any real information on this one way or other but I have often wondered if they generally do not do enough stretching. I was thinking about that when Ells tweaked something the other day just doing the usual pre-game light running....that to me sounded like a real odd time to tweak something...should have been just after having done some stretching...but maybe not....maybe they just do not do enough stretching among other things.

It hardly matters against the Rangers, not with this bunch. It might boil down to how many innings it actual remains a game.

It makes me wonder if they are setting up for some bundled player off season trades that will involve multiple players from within the farm system and on the ML roster. Given what has happened here would that be a complete surprise.

Sorta' funny how that magic 5 number works out huh? Going into the 9th up 6-1. Bing-bang-boom, just like that its 6-4. Had they only scored 4 it would have been tied...Sox likely done squat in their end of the 9th and off to another extra innings lost game.

The owners have never been to bright and from day 1 have fought a losing battle because Marvin Miller made them look like the dummies they were and to some extent still are in the very first union negotiation. They have never really recovered from that first negotiation and from the court battles that have occurred since. Each CBA negotiation that has occurred has never been an effort to deal with the central issues. Worse than that, the owners in another wave of stupidity have negotiated thinking that THEY would negotiate a position that provided that they the owners themselves would be the safety valve saving them from outrageous player contracts and that has never worked out. They have never been able to save themselves from each other and have only served to make their situations worse, virtually playing into the hands of the players union each and every time. The owners are so inept that they invariably fall into collusion schemes and end up in even more trouble.

The biggest problem in two of the sports....Baseball and Basketball because of guaranteed contracts. No wonder football went past both like they were standing still. That is not the only reason but it is clearly one of the big differences.

I suspect the other message Ortiz is trying to send (since I believe under the current CBA, the Sox could not go the arb route again) is sign me to a two year deal now and maybe my rehab goes faster....suddenly my Achilles will feel so much better.

Listening to EEI this afternoon, there are still some knuckleheads that do not understand the hole the Red Sox have dug here. Stop concentrating on the number of games out...even games in the lose column. The problem is the number of teams they have to climb over that are all for the most part now playing each other. So under the circumstances it is like the Sox win a game (every once in a blue moon) and two teams they are trying to catch are playing each other. The Sox don't pick up a game. They pick up a half game. Now look again at how many games back they are and you should be able to see the problem. To make headway the Sox basically have to win games at a 2 to 1 rate.....as in 650 or so ball, assuming that two teams do not run off and completely hide with the WC's. They can't play 500 ball without a struggle and suddenly they are going to play 650 ball???? The issue is not whether the Sox are mathematically eliminated yet. The issue is what do they have to do to make it in and what are the chances they can do it? The only answer you ever get back to that question is "anything can happen in baseball".....like that is some sort of revelation. Earlier this season, in the first half when they were losing games to chump teams I started to talk about the fact that the Sox were already getting to the point where they would have to play 650 ball to still have a chance at the division. That was a million losses ago. Well I am still waiting....they still show no signs of having the kind of team that can go on that kind of run and now 650 might get them to the WC not the division.