jung

I think the whole thing is just unbelievable....that a player went to upper management/ownership...that they had anything at all to say to V about it. Honest to God I am so sad and so depressed by this mess. Your sports teams are supposed to rescue you from the daily grind not depress you further.

I do think it is OK for Magadan to come out and comment because he is just talking baseball and he must be beyond frustrated at this point. He may even feel like this is a reflection on him and he wants folks to know that he is trying to get these guys to change the way they are making plate appearances. It is so bad now that I don't know how they work their way back. AGons had stopped swinging at s*** and has been much better for at least a month or longer. Pedey is always pretty good in spite of my stupid comment from the other night. Ortiz is excellent and only rarely falls into periods where he is swinging at pitches he should stay away from. Ells is pretty good. Nava is good at it but does not have much talent to go with his patience and good plate appearances. Crawford is terrible. Aviles is terrible. WMB is not right now that good at pitch selection and does not appear to have a complete idea what he wants to do when he goes to the plate. Kalish is about where WMB is at this point. Both are young. Sweeney is neither terrible or good at it. Ross is clearly looking for a particular pitch when he goes to the plate but for the life of me I don't understand why he swings at low outside s*** with less than two strikes as he cannot hit it worth a damn. Salty is actually not that bad at selection but he does not have a very quick bat it seems. Does not seem to swing at that many bad pitches but swings through a ton of pitches. Shop is so-so. Ciriaco does not appear to swing at that many bad pitches but I am not sure he is as yet looking for a particular pitch when he goes to the plate...another young guy that is probably groping a bit.

The thing with WMB and what V said to him or didn't say or whatever is just ridiculous. I know the media has a function but this can't be it. It is things like this WMB/V thing that makes the media look ridiculous. They end up with no credibility at all and don't deserve any.

Dave Magadan has come out today and publicly commented the same way some of us have about the Sox having poor approaches to their plate appearances. Apparently, he is just fed up with it. I have to admit I am fed up with it as well. I even criticized Pedey a few nights ago for first pitch swinging at a pitch that was a really good pitch to hit which was wrong. Taking a pitch that is a really good pitch to hit makes no sense. A sign of my own frustration with how terrible they have become as a team with regard to their plate appearances. I do think that since the Stamford study leads one to conclude that the first pitch in all cases is the worst pitch to swing at, I would want to know that even if a first pitch was in a really good spot, that they went to the plate focused on a pitch in that location. "If I get this pitch in this location, I am swinging at it." I think there first pitch performance is so bad because even when they get a really good pitch to hit in that situation, they are not focused on getting that pitch in that spot. As a consequence, they do not do much with it. Brennan last night said something to the effect that the Sox looked like they were going to the plate with no idea what they wanted to do. I think the biggest problem they have is that they have built such solid books of ineptitude at the plate that pitchers are just pitching to their known weaknesses now. But in fact I should have also said more strongly that Brennan is also correct. The Sox hitters don't seem to go to the plate with a real idea what they want to accomplish against a particular pitcher. They don't seem to be going up there with a pitch they are looking for, willing to lay off if they don't get that pitch. Boy that is a bad bad combination. Hitters with no idea what they want to accomplish against a particular pitcher as they go to the plate and pitchers with really good books on what the hitters are going to do is a recipe for what we are getting for results. I don't think Magadan has spoken out like this since he has been here so he must be really frustrated.

I think it will take roster moves as well to bring this Sox team back. I know I have been grinding on this one for a bit but it is such a mismatched bunch especially for a team playing 81 games in Fenway. It has speed it can't use. It has little power left especially without Ortiz in a park that demands an offense with power. It's rotation lacks a leader, a true 1. It has almost no run prevention strong suits being weak on starting pitching and weak defensively in prime defensive positions like SS and Catcher. Although they may have their answer in Ciriaco at SS. I think it has been a long time since I saw a Sox team give the opponent so many extra outs to play with. Then their coaching, FO and Upper Management seems to be in such disarray. Although that might be overblown by the crazy local media. They have so many problems on the field that even if they did not have problems elsewhere it is hard to see how this team would be a winner. Maybe the single biggest problem that we can see from afar is that the focus of this ownership group is marketing the Sox brand. Generating revenue has got to be important for any MLB franchise. However you would expect more balance between maintaining the on field performance of the team and taking advantage of the value that has already been built into the brand. It is so so out of balance here. V is not the right guy for this job. However that is not the same thing as saying V is the problem with this team or with this organization. I have never claimed to be a V guy but I think he is getting a really bad deal here. Regardless of not being a V guy I have some sympathy for the guy for the mess he has walked into here.

Oakland is a big park and I think it has deeper dimensions in RF than the Sox RF. I know that Reddick was the asking price for Bailey but hard to not look at this as just another bad move by the Sox FO. The only good I see coming out of this season is that a number of questions should have been answered to their satisfaction for that FO and upper management. How they get out of this mess is another story but it is a mess that goes much deeper than the disaster of a rotation. I actually think there rotation moves will be guided by reality as much as anything else and the things they will not be able to do. I would say, getting a true 1 in here while being costly should be the prime concern. If they can't move Beckett, so be it. At least installing a true 1 will remove any doubt about whether we should be relying on Beckett or Lester in that role. I really don't think Buch is ready to assume that mantle either although he should emerge as the best starter of 2012 for this team. So if they do get a true 1 then whatever else they do in the rotation becomes less of an issue. Then they can turn their attention to the everyday players where they really have to come up with some magic. They really do have a bunch of guys they have to change out just to get this to be a team again, a team that does not mortally injure itself at every turn. Why do you think they lose so many games to teams they should beat handily? They lose by combination of opponent play and self inflicted injury.

We have other guys that can hit HR's but the best hitters on the roster by a long long way are Ortiz and Pedey at least as far as overall hitting skills and power. The rest of them have some pretty big flaws.

Actually I think it is the other side of that equation that is really hurting the Sox. Now that there are extensive books out on these hitters based on what they are doing this year, very few pitchers are making the kinds of mistake pitches to them that they need to hit. We have a bunch of hitters that chase the low outside slider constantly, from both sides of the plate and some that are even susceptible to the cutter or the change on the outer third of the plate.

Sorry, did not see that was where you going with that.

On the way to their sterling just over 500 record. And that last game was not vintage Verlander.

Hell, I would like to think this game is something of an anomaly but it is not. We have had four or five equally infuriating games this year. This is just not a good baseball team...there I said it. I have beat around the bush for months now talking about how poorly constructed they are and how ill matched these ballplayers are within a team concept and I think it is time to acknowledge that the result is that they are just not a good baseball team. Look at how all that speed coming back has changed the way the team plays....they are able to use that speed just about a tiny bit more than when they did not have it. That is what makes the combination of Ells and Crawford such a waste.

Work the pitcher over....like give him a massage...Is that what you meant? Sorta' looks like that.

Oh boy...Is this supposed to be the game that our pitching is supposed to help us or one of the games where our hitting is supposed to rake?....does not appear to be either one at this point. Now it is 3-0 which is much worse than 2-0.

Ii just think that between the two, Kalish seems much more comfortable in RF. We played him a bunch in CF his first time around this year and he did not look good there at all.

Sox being Sox...gotta love that killer instinct when they play these chump AAAA teams.

They did DL Sweeney already right or did they not do that yet?

I wonder if Shop would go up on waivers. I would bet they would pull him back if claimed. Not sure they want two totally defensive liabilities at this point and it would be hard to think of Salty and Lavs otherwise at this point.

I could see a few more guys going up on waivers....not sure if there will be a ton of them but a few....the more likely that someone will take a guy and the more likely that you are not going to pull him back the more sense it makes. Punto does fall into the we are not going to pull him back category and somebody might take him....Aviles maybe.....Sweeney might have gone up there if he did not basically end his season I guess. I don't know that there are obvious candidates after those guys.

I could see doing Punto also and I could also see not pulling him back in if he is claimed.

I know that OrangeJuiced but nobody is going to claim him. So all the Sox do in this instance is give up information. If there was even the tiniest bit of chance that someone would claim him them I would be fine with it...but nobody is going to claim him and there is no chance that someone will. At least to this point we they could claim that they would like to move him if possible. Now Carl falls into the category of full disclosure...the team he plays for does not want him....at all..... Even doing it with Manny a few years ago made more sense to me than this does. I thought there was at least the slim hope of somebody picking manny off the waiver wire. Again if there was a tiny chance of someone claiming him I would be fine with it. Without that tiny chance it does nothing positive and likely makes it even more difficult to try to do something with Carl other than hang onto him...get him his surgery and hope for the best....good luck with that also.

Sox are in my honest opinion a joke in their FO and Management. It appears that they will go out of their way to hide their intentions with a player and then drop their pants around their ankles in a different instance. Clearly now the Sox do not want Carl....at all.....please somebody take him off the waiver wire for us. That should make any future possible trade opportunities real interesting. I would not mind if there was a snowballs chance in hell of somebody picking Carl off the waiver wire but nobody is going to do that...nobody...so they give up information while getting nothing for it....sort of like giving up Youk to an AL team and getting nothing for it.

Not only has Lester been less than desirable but the Sox have yet to step up against these chump teams. They have no killer instinct at all. At the times when we should have and needed to hear the roar of the lion we have been treated to the meow....meow of the pussy cat.

Who even knows what they have for a rotation at this point. They have Beckett listed to start on Sunday against the Twins....I doubt that is going to happen.....However the way they have handled injury issues lately I don't think we will hear a thing or know a thing until Sunday. Assuming he is not pitching, the rotation is what....Lester...Buch....Morales...Felix and Cook??? Wow....scary...just not for opposing teams.

I am not saying that Iggy should not be on a ML team, far from it, just that he won't be on a Red Sox ML team. Funny thing about that is that this FO and management has already f***ed this team four ways from Sunday with misfit players like Crawford, the biggest misfit player of them all on this team. However, put a quasi-hitting utility infielder that could not field the position to save his skin at SS (Aviles) and the Sox are all in on that one. Stupid.....this organization is f***ed from top to bottom and it hardly matters what they do this year. They are still f***ed from top to bottom. At least Ciriaco fields the position and certainly can hit. But I don't trust the Sox on this turf toe business with Aviles. I think they are hoping that we forget that they purposefully brought Aviles in here and will quietly move him out while we are not looking. What an amazing bunch we have tied our hopes to.....lying....thieving.....carpetbagging, scalawags. Those are the guys that should be booed. The whole damn park should turn their eyes up to the owners box and boo their asses off.

Kalish looks much more comfortable in RF than he did in CF