jung

But this is a chicken and egg issue. There was at least in my view zero chance of the Sox hiring a GM that had been allowed an understanding of the job "outside" of the recent Red Sox experience. LL wanted someone that had grown used to LL's meddling, someone who would not fight it even as much as Theo did and that assured that BC would get the job. The only guy that has the authority to force a different organizational dynamic on the upper management and baseball operations group is JH and he seems to detached and unwilling to deal with LL. JH appears to prefer the devil he knows to the devil he does not know and does not even seem disposed to choose someone that may not be any sort of devil at all. I suspect the fact that LL succeeds in driving the revenue line is the key element to this dilemma for us the fans of this team. As long as revenues are sound, I just don't think JH gives a rats ass how they are derived, short of things that expose FSG to criminal indictment.

Who V....I don't think V has a chance in hell unless there is some way for LL to use V to weave a tale for 2013 as well as 2012.

The organization, not the team but the organization set a goal to generate as much revenue as it possibly could...our misery or lack thereof is a mere footnote. Obviously, this is pure opinion on my part. I do think LL needs to go...as soon as possible.

I had always thought....right from the start that LL wanted V for his ability to stir the pot....give the media something to talk about and keep the Sox front and center on the Boston sports landscape. Now I am modifying that view a bit. I think LL wanted V as a ready made scapegoat allowing the Sox to continue their marketing and merchandizing blitz unabated and after all said and done claim that the on field failure is all V's fault and maybe BC's to some extent. Those two guys will be this year's sacrificial lambs whether they know it or not. I never thought the V hire was about cleaning up the clubhouse or focusing on fundamental baseball or any of that stuff. I always thought it was about the sizzle. I now think even that gives LL more credit than he deserves. This was about the 100 year Fenway thing ala bricks and bats, the unwillingness to spend more money to right the recent wrongs ala the LT cap, and the need from LL's perspective to have ready made scapegoats in place to explain another disaster of a season should it occur, which it has. How else do you explain all that "talk about why V for manager", immediately followed by his public castration at the first opportunity? How else do you explain V having been set up for that public castration instead of being told that the Sox did not want him to be the kind of manager everybody expected him to be? It would have been easy enough to set some parameters for V. How else to explain not allowing V any of his own coaches? V was set up by a true master of deceit. I have never been a V guy, but nobody and I mean nobody deserved what he has gotten. However I do think this is backfiring in that nobody is going to buy it. In truth I don't even think LL cares. He will have gotten the revenue job done for 2012 and will dream up something else for 2013. that is actually quite typical for guys like LL. LL reminds me of this marketing manager that my company was competing with several years ago. His company gave him a huge marketing budget which he chose to spend by basically spinning a tale that the company engineering assets simply had no way to live up to. It was a facade for the most part immediately understood as such by potential customers as soon as their own engineering assets looked under the skirts. Mine was a technology field with big dollars at stake so everybody looked under the skirts. When the company sales department failed to generate sales from the company marketing effort the marketing manager commented that he had "brought the dogs to the dog bowl. It was somebody else's job to make them eat". In other words he absolved himself completely from being responsible for bringing the dogs to the dog bowl under false pretenses and was unwilling to acknowledge that those dogs would be rightfully miffed when the dog bowl turned out to be empty. LL would have loved that marketing manager and would very likely have blamed the sales manager for the failure to turn those potential customers into actual customers. How is that for a f***ed up situation. LL is the President of the Boston Red Sox. Go figure a way to rebuild this team with that jackass at the helm. Obviously everything posted above is my opinion.

Clearly the starting pitching has been the biggest problem as far as on field performance. Pedey has really had a rough year although we may never know how much his injured thumb has hampered his hitting. My comments above are more about having a plan going up to the plate and having an idea what you want to and can accomplish against a particular pitcher. I do think Pedey has always done a reasonable job of having a plan with regard to his plate appearances. The result has not been anything to write home about this year.

I don't blame you 700. I have no desire to see these guys succeed at anything. They don't deserve success. Look at this Beckett situation with his back...another sham...another effort to keep us buying tickets, buying bats, bricks, jerseys whatever. I said when it happened that he would be on he shelf for at least two weeks and likely longer. Today we are finally told that he has not even touched a baseball since the muscle spasm (singular). Not a surprise to me. I fully expected him to be out for an extended period. The Sox still had him slated to pitch Sunday even though there was no chance of him pitching in that game and they knew it. As for the players....this "we will just have to try again tomorrow" stuff has just gotten old. They won't know more about winning games tomorrow than they know about winning them today. They are with few exceptions ill prepared for their plate appearances seemingly oblivious to the opponent pitcher and the situation. They have some good ballplayers but they are just surrounded by substandard players and the team is not prepared to play as a team...against anybody. I don't know at this point if nobody in that clubhouse listens to V or if V does not try to lead at all. Does V have a plan that he shares with his coaches instructing his coaches to prepare the players a certain way? Do the coaches ignore his instructions or do the players ignore both the coaches and V? or is there no plan communicated to the players either directly or through the coaches. I suspect that V had a plan or maybe even still has a plan for how he wants the Sox to play but that both the coaches and the players ignore him with impunity having been empowered by management to do so. I suspect that as much as Pedey for example is a dirt dog and a heck of a player that he does not have the capacity to understand how much damage he was doing to this team with the "we don't do things that way around here nonsense". He with the help of management took the manager off the table as a relevant factor and the players can play but they can't manage and play. They can't formulate game tactics designed to take best advantage of what they represent as a group of independent assets. They don't know how to do that and even if they did they would be so focused on their individual goals and ambitions that they would not do it anyway. It is the managers job and one that was not done here. As you can tell, my view of it is that V was dead on arrival and was not allowed to do that job. He may be the wrong guy. I am not a V guy. However they never gave him a chance and in fact buried themselves along side their manager much as they did last year. I guess they are not even capable of learning from their mistakes. While the starting pitching appears to be for the most part an issue of talent with the guys we have simply not as talented as we had hoped, the everyday players could have played better than they have shown if they went to the plate with a plan and with preparation. Yes for some of them it is talent or talent lacking as well. I think something has happened to Agons and he is not the power hitter we had hoped he would be. I think his issue is likely physical in some sense. Crawford has continued with injury, known before he came here but I also think he has never gotten comfortable enough here to get himself on track But injury aside he may actually be on track at this point. I am inclined to think that the biggest problem with Crawford is the same problem most of then have at this point. They do not have a specific plan for their plate appearances and simply go on up there to take their hacks. That is it. The reason so many of them look like they have the same problem is because they have the same problem. There is no cohesive offensive effort that I can recognize or identify. In addition the suffer from the fact that the team itself is poorly constructed having the wrong assets to play 81 games in Fenway Park and in truth are to much of a hodgepodge to play well for any real length of time anywhere. However they are least capable of playing in Fenway, their home park which is why the record is worse in Fenway than on the road. I refuse to believe that V did not recognize that designing a plan for how the team would develop a cohesive offensive effort is a part of the manager's function and I refuse to believe he did not try. I am inclined to believe he was blocked by both the coaches and the players empowered by management....all of them to naive and unsophisticated in their understanding of what organizations need to prevent them from completely imploding. I believe they all in their own way and for their own purposes believed that V would emerge as a larger than life scapegoat than even Tito was last year. In my view Upper Management's purpose was to put up a facade of being focused on winning in order to continue on their merry way marketing the brand that is the Red Sox and generating as much revenue from that effort as possible. Maintaining this facade allows them to maximize their ticket, TV and merchandizing revenue streams while still giving them a scapegoat for the failures of the team on the field. They can maintain the notion that they are justified in not spending more money on the team because of their existing commitments when in fact they really could spend more money. They would lose some revenue but they could spend more money. Nobody has got a gun to their heads with regard to this LT cap nonsense. The players simply want their easy life in the clubhouse regardless of the fact that they had it under Tito and buried Tito. They literally want their cake and eat it to. So for them, the goal was to run V out of town as fast as he came into town defining for Management exactly how far they are willing to go to maintain the cushy status quo. The coaches simply were Tito guys now stuck with V, the antithesis of Tito. For the coaches I suspect they saw it as survival. If V survived he would ultimately be allowed to choose at least some of his coaches. So their vested interest in running V out of town on a rail was to stay employed and get a Manager back in here that would have empathy for their situation and want them aboard. Heck maybe even one of them would be chosen. BC was chosen from within wasn't he? So as groups they all had their reasons for burying V but they have not escaped unscathed. It has all gone to badly for that and none of the knowledgeable fans are willing to believe that this is V's fault. The damage is done now. We are left sifting through the ashes of a completely demolished team and another disaster of a season. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

Heck maybe this will work out...it should be pretty transparent at this point....they will do whatever it takes to maintain the illusion of going someplace in order to put fannies in seats even when they are absolutely done and dusted. Hence they are not even able to take what advantage there might be in selling and making their chances better in another year....an appallingly bad organization that has built an appallingly bad team and spend a tremendous amount of money doing it is now unwilling to spend more because it eats into their ill gotten gains...I say ill gotten gains because a sports franchise that is not committed to generating revenue and winning does not deserve its fan base. Fine...generate revenue but generate it by putting a good product on the field, not by simply using the team's good name, and its loyal fan base to bilk them under false pretenses. As I said in another thread, these guys are carpetbaggers...scalawags. They are actually becoming an embarrassment on the scale of the LA Dodgers and the Mets. The only difference is that the Sox still fill the league's coffers with gold. If it were not for that, they would be on there way to the ignominious end that befell the Dodgers ownership. They have finally done it. I am ashamed of them. This has gone past embarrassment...I am ashamed of them and ashamed that we as fans have not held them to a higher standard. Not trying to blame the fans cause we have been the sheep led to the sheering....they won't even give us the peace that comes with death.....no no no no no....you can only kill sheep once...you can sheer them forever if you are sinister enough to think about your loyal fans/customers that way. Just keep them on life support long enough for next season's sheering...heck lets toss in some bat sales and some brick sales and we will have our Red Sox HOF inductees so that you gullible fans are reminded of those few cherished memories in hopes that you forget the bums wearing your laundry today. I made the mistake of chastising the media today for doing their level best to make this even worse. Forget it...have at it media...rip into them with both hands....take unfair advantage of them.....I just don't believe there is a way back up unless they find absolute rock bottom and are left with their pants down around their ankles and their lilly white asses hangin' out in the breeze. Lets not even get me started on the players.

This is a heartless, gutless shell of a baseball team. They just actually do not know how to win baseball games...they just don't. They have no idea. While their pitching is terrible there are games they are in and have a chance to win and they simply have no idea how to win them....none what-so-ever. I am terrified to think what the actually season record in wins and losses will be when this is done.

Remember guys we are only even here cause the twins 1st baseman dropped the 3rd out allowing Crawford to homer for three of these runs.

Feels so good to have your favorite team just beating you into submission..."still like us....take that you masochist you" What.... still hoping that cheering us on might put a little lead in our pencils????"Heres another for ya' right in the kisser." I just cannot wait for this anemic bottom of the 10th they have planned for us. We will get a single followed by nothing nothing and nothing and end the game with the runner still standing on first or worse, our hitter will get a double and will still be left standing right were he stopped after the hit. and with all that....700 is still right...we can't pitch our way out of a hat

Great we die with the mad man throwing meatballs in the 10th. This is without any question now my least favorite Red Sox team in 50 years of being a fan...no other Red Sox team is even close in my case.

Damn that is the best pitch WMB is likely to see

Are they still constipated or can they s*** out a run here.

I am glad we got the K there but do you know how absolutely wild we would have been if the hitter took that down main street pitch and deposited it into the outfield? Yea it was a rising FB but if that is what you are trying to accomplish as a pitcher, that pitch got way to much strike zone and could easily have been tagged. Why go there with an 0-2 count.

Well that is what we were being told happened...evidence would suggest otherwise and now here comes the mad man

You are right Tut...those were terrible terrible calls....I actually think they were so far off the plate that even whatever mauer was doing should not have had an impact. That said, that was a terrible effort on the part of Shop on that backdoor breaking ball from Miller...he did an awful job framing that pitch.

I think MVP said it...squeeze bunt...although they also can't bunt to save their skin but try something...anything because it is not like the usual is working in most cases.

But those were swinging strikes on both cases...did not matter where Mauer had the glove in those cases. They just swung at bad pitches in very big spots. There are times when the Sox look like the most constipated offense I have ever seen....just cannot push a run across to save their skin.

Wow......both guys swing at balls way out of the strike zone....with the bases loaded and a chance to just win it in the next half inning. No wonder some folks are thinking this series may just touch off the trigger on that nuclear bomb waiting to go off.

Now nothing else will do but a hit. Great

For crying out load we can't get a guy home from third with less than two outs in a tie game late....why????????

You can have one speed guy and make due with that but having two speed guys that you think will likely be at the top of your order just does not work here. All we have to do is look. I also think Roberts spent most of his time down in the order and even pinch running. You should be willing to take more risk with guys batting down in your order because you are not as confident that the hitters behind them are going to get the runners around by strength of bat. I really would have thought Crawford would have at least looked like he was trying something with Shop up there.

I have posted a couple of times now though that I really think that game where V got burned bunting with Punto (I think it was Punto) really has turned V off to trying anything with this team. Remember Punto bunted into a DP....hard to do I know and then the next guy ran into an out...can't remember how that last out happened but that was the last time I saw V aggressively try to manufacture a run with this team as both plays blew up in his face. He went from two on and nobody out to three outs and no runs in.

Well if they did red light him....pardon me but that is ridiculous...it is Shop for crying out loud. If they are not going to let Crawford go with Shop up there, how are they ever going to let Crawford go when he is batting higher in the order and guys like Pedey and Agons are coming up behind him?

It is so hard to make speed count for much in this park...the painful lesson that the Sox should have known long before bringing Crawford here.