jung

It just keeps getting better and better. Ortiz announcing that he is not going to jeopardize the rest of his career by coming back to early. Clearly double speak for "Ells and Crawford dragged out their rehabs only coming back when they were fully confident that they could not do more damage than they were prepared to sustain." Fine David do as you please...another perfect fit for this bunch (I refuse to any longer refer to them as a team). There was no need to announce anything. When you come back is when you come back. Salty announced to the world that he no longer knows what his role is.....meaning what Salty???.... that just because the team brought Lavs up while Ortiz is on the shelf, you no longer know what your role is??? I can tell you that Salty. Shut the f*** up....look for your name on the lineup card and go play the position assigned....how is that for role you K machining, stone handed jerk.

For constructing this piece of s*** team it is all on them. For playing like this...it is all on the players. The players wanted the responsibility...they took it upon themselves so now they can take their responsibility for the result. They did it their way.

There it is....this is the jumping off point....I feel it...I see a 10 - 10 run coming in the next 20. Exciting isn't it? And yes everybody who has repeated it is correct...the starting pitching is far an away the thing that has buried this team more than anything else from a team performance perspective.

Funny....early in the season McClure looked like somebody had nailed him to the bench...hardly ever came out to say or do anything. Lately he has been wearing a path. Oh wait....he is trying to give Ace time so that we can be treated to another of his appearances. Actually I was OK with Ace earlier this year as I thought he was adapting to the role but looking at his body of work so far this season has really sort of turned me the other way. Did not like the appearance where he chased AGons and McClure from the mound and did not at all like what he did last night. Clearly the Twins are headed to the AL Championship...No...they are not....Geez you would have thought so.

Yup, they are over that 5 run threshold where they at least actually might win the game.

1-3 against the Twins at home is not more meaningful than 0-4. I suspect the only thing this team has going for it at this point is the law of averages.

A bit of a surprise that more Sox have not hit the waiver wire as yet. The list can't be Crawford and Punto.

Obviously nobody in a Red Sox uniform cared what V had to say from day 1. I would however suggest that they would have been a team at least had they not thrown the towel in on their manager before he even got out of the gate. They have not even been a team of any sort this year...not good not bad not indifferent...just a bunch a' guys wearing the same laundry. But there might finally be some justice in this. I am not sure some these guys will ever shake the stink of having thrown one manager under the bus one year and coming right back the next year making an effort to throw the next one under the bus as well. As I have said before I was never a V guy and said so right from the start. But I can't judge what he has done because he has done it under circumstances that no manager should have had to work under. This has easily been the most bizarre coaching/managing situation I have witnessed of my sporting life across the big four pro team sports. I think the only thing he maybe could have done would have been to say f*** you management I am going to run this team the way I want to run it...fire me if you want to....landing in the middle like he has won't and has not helped him one bit. If I were him I would have wanted to go down at least on my own terms. In fact the Sox have ended up such a laughing stock across baseball that I think baseball would have held V in higher regard had he just told all these idiots, players and management alike to just f*** off.

I would not put Morales up there with Buch at this point. He is the next best though and even that is just enough to tell you how much of a mess Lester and Beckett have been. We likely won't know exactly what the Sox view of Morales and an inning limit was as now they have to start him.....no choice. That might have been relevant back at the Yankee series. Hardly matters at this point. Nothing was going to save this team from itself as they were going to do it "the way we do things around here" to the bitter end. There is a book in the mess somewhere...a tell all where V tells us if and when he finally threw in the towel and decided to truly let them drown in their own vomit. You guys what to do it your way....go ahead....lets see what kind of a record you guys can produce doing it "your way". Watch...AGons can't get back to second for some reason...who knows why which will open the flood gates this next half inning. Gotta' follow the script.

Nothing about this 3 run lead feels comfortable. The Twins at least have some idea what they should be trying to accomplish at the plate. They have little talent but that does provide us with a striking example for the difference between a team that has an offensive plan (them) and an offense by accident team that is just up there taking their hacks (us).

Small ball is really generating runs without the help of mashing....it is scoring without the benefit of power in the form of extra base hits or without benefit even of base hits designed with moving the runners that are on along. Your main tactic CAN be if you choose, getting two guys on and hitting a HR. That is a tactic. The O's never had much speed in the glory years...were able to move runners along if they had to. But they generated an absolute boatload of walks and just never let you of the hook with runners on base. That's OK....that's a plan. I would never recommend that the Sox adopt small ball as a plan. They have a ballpark that would not favor that sort of plan. As we have plainly seen, the idea that you can use two speed guys at the top of your Fenway lineup effectively is a joke. The Sox were never going to be able to implement successfully by utilizing those guys to steal though it would have been nice to see more opportunities to go from 1st to 3rd and from 1st home. They should however be able to play small ball a little and they can't at all. However they never have eveb had a Fenway plan this year. They have simply had a procession of hitters coming from the dugout through the on deck circle to the batters box and for the most part to often back again without any semblance of a coordinated effort to score runs. That did not have to be small ball in all cases but it had to be something other than I am up here at the plate....I am taking my hacks as I see fit....come what may. That is for most of them, what they have done....they will often try to pull balls they can't pull and will try to pull when it is the wrong thing to do based on what the team needs. Earlier this year Agons was insistent that he would go to left regardless of whether or not that is what the team needed. Never even protected the inner third in that stretch. Just way to much independent thinking and activity and baseball whether it is in the pitching ala Ace last night and other pitchers on the staff on several occasions this year or any number of hitters in the lineup.

Coming out this flat is really telling....they have nothing left....while some of us have claimed the season has been more or less over for a long time now....to be honest I think a few of us have just wanted to just not pile on....we already had pumps to do that for us. So at least in my case I had no need to go that far with pumps way out there carrying my forum water for me. We can say that we saw the games when it truly did completely end....these four with the Twins. We won't need any count down to tell us when the season is over. Hopefully I can get some cheap tickets to take my kid to see Fenway for the first time. Unfortunately there is no way to pick a game or series I think they might win at this point.

They have come out and done the same thing game in and game out day in and day out...does not matter who they are playing where....so why should that change now. When they win it is because they get a combination of pitching and their offense by accident that combines for more runs in 9 innings than their opponents...that is it....there is no better plan in games they win than in games they lose. Small ball is a tactic within a larger plan. Everybody should be able to play small ball to some extent. The Sox don't have an overarching plan....never mind an ability to execute a tactic within one. I am sure V had an idea what he wanted to do....at this point IMO, he has just been ignored in that regard just like he has been ignored everywhere else. They have done this to themselves. These are ALL self inflicted wounds. I would wish a pox on Sox house were it not for the fact that they are already plagued and as a group, may never recover. This bunch will have to be disassembled just for the team to be a team again and in some cases for some of these players to even continue a meaningful career. Today I suspect we will see them run up to the plate, take three quick swings and run back to the dugout as fast as their little legs will carry them....with little exception.

Vermont day at Fenway....Poor Vermont....The State should have declined embarrassed to be associated with this bunch of losers.

I don't think they have a clue when he will actually start again. They announced today's game against the twins and left it there all way up until the last minute when he had not actually picked up a baseball since the night he injured his back. They don't have a clue when he will be back I would wager.

The whole miserable bunch of them need to be taken down a notch. This is disgusting. They play like s***...whine at a moments notice.....have not exhibited a single characteristic that you would associate with a "team" since August of last year and expect what for it....their monster salaries and the admiration of adoring fans. The whole miserable bunch can go ta' hell. You have no idea how far away from being a V ally I ever thought I would be but considering how he has been treated by Management and the Players frankly he can do whatever he wants as far as I am concerned. He has built up so many chits in his corner at this point that I don't have a choice. As for the players....they are an embarrassment....AT BEST

Won't happen again!!!! It just happened again...the only difference is that they collapsed for the entire season as opposed to just the last month of it. Holy Cow

Regardless of who they bring in to manage if the players feel like they can just go to ownership/management and complain and actually get something to happen, they are doomed, doomed! I have never seen anything like this in my entire lifetime and hope to God I never see it again in any team, ones that I am cheering for and ones not....this is just to ugly for eyes to behold. I hope I never see a bunch of players given the distinction of a team that are so utterly underserving in that regard. The players took on this mantle...they took control of the team and did exactly what you would expect a bunch of individuals with their own individual priorities and agendas would do with it....they buried it under those individual priorities and agendas. Oh yea Pedey, this is the way we do things around here alright.....this is exactly the way we do things around here. They should put up a God Damned plaque above Fenway Park with those memorable words em-blazed on it. The players got their way alright.....I think we are going to be treated to a full understanding for how little they actually care about being a winning team. They have not cared all year preferring to care far more about their pet peeves and petty grievances. "How dare management hire a manager that might haul us into line. We will show them. We will bury him without even giving him a chance. That will show them." All they showed us is how undeserving they are of even wearing the mantle of a "team", something they surely are not.

How is that they lose in so many different ways.....because they are each running their own show....If anybody ever asks you what a baseball team looks like when they players simply go off and do whatever they want to do, independent of each other, empowered by upper management to do it....you can say that you saw it and without question it is the 2012 Sox. The pitchers do as they please (Aceves last night, Beckett any day or night you please etc etc), the hitters do as they please, every single one of them does exactly as he pleases. Maybe as individuals they take some particular comfort in that. But as a team they simply lose and lose and lose some more. As a team, the suck because they are not a team.

Right now I would say Ace looks like a perfect fit as the closer for this team....perfect...exactly what you would expect from a Sox player....vintage 2012. Not sure he started this year this screwed up but he looks kinda' screwed up to me now.....another lone wolf doing it his way like so many of the Sox players.....good for him and good for them....they can do it their way all the way to an 81-81 record....if they are lucky to win that many.

Lost three straight at home to the Twins......forget it....done and dusted....been done and dusted.....are not going anywhere. And the players can always say they did it "their way".

Yup 700 I expect V's head to explode at any minute. I am so not a V guy yet it has gotten to the point where I would believe anything the guy would do at this point...he has been so abused by management, by the jackass players, by the coaches...I just don't know where V turns at this point...to a priest I guess....I don't know who else. I am just mortified that it has come to this. If anybody doubts for one second at this point that the inmates have been allowed to run this asylum they should just look at tonight's game. For the most part the performance on the field is on these players.....nobody else....don't put it on V, don't even put it on the coaches who have also stabbed V in the back I suspect. On the field it is on the players without question at least for me. Beyond that this mess of an organization of empowered players is on upper management.

More disturbing than that...that was just stupid on Ace's part. Blame V if you want for going to long with Ace and I can see that point but I am going to give V the benefit of the doubt and believe he would have pulled Ace if he walked Mauer. Ace has got this thing about doing it his way (boy how much have we talked about Sox players insisting on doing things their way) and instead of trying to hit a corner on Mauer he gave in to him and laid a meatball out there for Mauer to hit. Now I have jumped on McClure a bunch also but if you remember the last time people went to the mound to help Ace make a decision he chased them off the mound! What are these people supposed to do? I'm sorry but as I said above I have seen Ace give in like that before this year in similar situations and now that he is chasing people off the mound, I don't know what they are supposed to do with him. Maybe this a late lesson for V to learn much like the lesson he learned about using Padilla against the Yankees. Honestly this is on Ace....as usual it is a player or players that fail again and for the usual reasons I might add. They manifest themselves in what the pitchers on this team do. They manifest themselves in what the hitters on this team do....and like 700 said during the game about being students of the game....I am willing to bet that JH and TW have no clue what actually just happened in front of them.

I actually don't wonder if in that situation Ace does not want to come out of the game and figures if he walks Mauer he is coming out. But that is the way it goes....Like I said above...Ace can't give in there. He had to try to hit a corner and if that did not work fine. You don't give Mauer that opportunity to beat you like that. I have not liked this thing lately of Ace pushing people off the mound that are trying to talk to him. He is not that great that he can pull that s*** and he just proved it tonight.

They did go to long with Ace there... Obviously hindsight is 20:20 but instead of just giving up which that meatball pitch was.....just walk him, try to hit a corner and if not...he gets the base and either the manager goes with another pitcher to try to get the last out or leaves you in and you start fresh with another batter. I would have hoped that V would have decided that he had gone long enough with Ace and gone to the pen for somebody at that point if Mauer had walked. I have actually seen Ace do that a few times this year and you cannot give in....you just can't. Honestly...yea V maybe should not have even gone that far with Ace but Ace did give in there...I have seen him do it before this year in that exact situation and you just can't do it especially with an open base. Might have made sense for McClure to have come out and discussed it with Ace.