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While trading Beckett may not seem to be a specific cure to anything related to the Sox it may end up being addition by subtraction...it may be the only cure for Beckett himself who seems to have worked himself into the classic "needs change of scenery" spot. I just don't think he wants to be here for one thing and I also think he has figured out how to make even more money out of his departure under less than ideal circumstances than he will make if he stays. Lets face it, his money is guaranteed so anything more he makes is all gravy. While Beckett may not be Carlos Zambrano at the end of the day when everything comes out in the wash, we may "MAY" well end up saying that Beckett was one of the most calculating and devious players to come through this place since...since...well I don't know who....He may surely end up making the other Red Sox Texas Tough Guy Roger Clemens look like a boy scout when this is all said and done. Surely I am speculating here and I will not claim it to be more than that. However the signs are not good. One of these days we might end up drawing comparisons between Beckett, Lackey and Clemens with interesting results with regard to their differences and their similarities.

I would consider it a victory if it is still a game after the first three innings!

Well at this point Agons is headed for Wade Boggs in a bigger suit size with questionable plate discipline. They did not hire him to be Wade Boggs.

For anybody interested apparently the NY Times group has sold its last remaining stake in Fenway Sports and is completely out as a part of the ownership group. Timing is certainly interesting.

I have not seen the piece yet but I guess one of the Boston scribes mused today that Beckett was trying to get the Sox to pay him to drop his 5/10 trade status making it easier for the Sox to trade him. 5/10 status is just another means for the players to hold team hostage. I absolutely despise the owners and the players association, mainly the owners for having been stupid enough to have signed one of the most lopsided agreements in sports history, for having secured what at the time was little league representation when compared to Marvin Miller which was the start of this process of one lopsided agreement after the other. While I have no love for the Players Association, you can't really blame them for trying to get the best deal for the players that they represent.The owners have been dumb as doorknobs in this regard and the result is players with long term contracts at big money that the team cannot control in any way shape or form. They sign these monster contracts totally at risk that the player is going to maintain a high standard of performance and more importantly will want to play at a high level. Good luck with that!

If Agons gets a hit....IF.....but by insisting on focusing on the outer half of the plate and swinging early in counts at anything close to the outer half of the plate, he gets behind in the count quickly, and sets himself up for getting put away once he gets to two strikes. Agons does not protect the plate with two strikes and is still for the most part focused on the outer half of the plate even then. That makes him vulnerable to pitches on the inner half of the plate and very vulnerable to pitches on the inner third of the plate. In fact the traditional power stroke pitch for left hand hitters is low and on the inner half of the plate. While for most LH hitters that is a green light. go deep pitch, for AGons it is typically an out pitch because he is still focused on the outer half of the plate. On the one hand you can say that it is one of the reasons why his HR numbers are down. More importantly, by not protecting the plate any pitcher that can hit that inner half and especially that inner third of the plate with a two strike count on AGons has a pretty easy time putting him away. Remember by swinging early in counts AGons is helping the pitcher get to two strikes in the first place. Swinging early in counts is no guarantee that he is going to hit the ball on those swings. In fact, the last two big hits he has gotten were in at bats where he allowed the first pitch to go by. However if the first pitch of any at bat is on or near the outer half of the plate, unless it is so clearly a ball that he can't reach it, he will be hackin' at it. As for his reluctance to try to elevate the ball, that is for me the least objectionable of the things that he does at the plate. In and of itself, playing wall ball by attempting to pluck line drives off the green monster at Fenway Park is not a bad thing. However, his home run numbers are not likely to ever improve with the swing AGons is using now unless major league ball parks lower the fences to about two feet off the ground. And Agons can play wall ball at Fenway Park as many left handed hitters have done. However he needs to make smarter plate appearances while playing wall ball and I actually fail to understand why he still plays wall ball insisting on going to left field even when he goes away from Fenway Park. Nobody else has the equivalent of the green monster.

In truth we neither have enough good starting pitching nor enough offense.

Well I would agree we need a 1. However we don't have a great team to begin with. Where do you want to begin? This is a team full of selfish self-centered *******s surrounded by a precious few solid team players, some of them young guys that are cost controlled, some of them role players and a few of them that are actually making a good deal of money but still have the heart and the love of the game to play hard.

AGons gets heat in the main because he is stubborn about his at bats. Pedey for example makes some mistakes at the plate and so does Ortiz. But when they make mistakes at the plate it is mainly because they are trying to take to much of the responsibility for generating offense for this team on themselves. For example tonight with the bases loaded, Pedey was insistent that he was going to try to jack something over the monster and tried to pull a ball that was on the outer third of the plate and low. There was no way for Pedey to pull that ball. However he is a terrific hitter and could have dumped that ball into right field scoring two runs in the process which would have gotten the Sox to within two at that point with Ortiz coming to the plate. That was not a smart piece of hitting but at least you could look at the intent and see where Pedey was coming from. AGons has determined that it is in his best interests to go the other way (in his case to left field) in every at bat and hit line drives to left. He swings at any pitch that looks like he could take it the other way. It does not matter to AGons weather he is in Fenway Park or not. It does not matter what the count is...it does not matter that it would suit the Sox general purposes to drive up the opposing pitcher's pitch count, it simply does not matter. It does not even matter to AGons if he was two strikes and should be looking to protect the plate. He is meat for any pitch on the inner third with two strikes because even with two strikes he is looking to go to left field and does not protect the plate. Why....because he thinks that is the best way for him to generate stats. Don't even try to suggest to me that he thinks that is the best way to help the team because in so many of his at bats, the best way to help the team would be take the first pitch he sees, something he will not do if it is a pitch that he might be able to take to left...to protect the plate with two strikes something he will not do because even with two strikes he is still looking for something on the outer half that he can take to left field, to occasionally try to elevate the ball, something that he no longer seems to try to do ever. That is why AGons is taking heat.

You know I am really beginning to wonder if this whole ML baseball thing as it relates to players, the collective bargaining agreement, expectations that the team has and things that the players now expect and seem to take for granted has truly gotten out of control. Beckett did not just pitch poorly tonight. He had nothing. He had no velo on his FB. None of his off speed stuff was worth s***. He was tossing batting practice out there, much like he was against Detroit a few weeks ago. Yet, he is (according to him) OK. He has no physical ailments. He talked about needing to get his pitching hand over the top of the ball. What the f*** is that? What, he suddenly now has lapses in concentration so deep that he can't remember how to grip the ball. While he very easily steps to the microphone and admits that he pitched like s***, who cares that he admits to pitching like s***. We have eyes Josh. We can figure that much out for ourselves. I said before tonight's start that Beckett has been the Sox most consistent and best starter and that if he had another good outing tonight that he would distance himself even further from Lester and Buch. I also said that if he had a poor outing, he would fall right back into the clutches of Lester and Buch and that you really then could throw a blanket over all of them and not be able to tell the difference one to the next. The way Beckett pitched tonight is totally unacceptable. You can see Lester struggling when he struggles and while it is not pretty, you can see how he could work to a higher standard. When you see Buch pitch, you can tell that he is not the pitcher he was and while it is more difficult to see how he will work his way to a higher performance standard you can at least see what is going on. Beckett has these starts where he completely falls apart and cannot pitch at all. Then he gets off the mound and is just sort of glib about the whole. thing "Ya' I sucked." There seems no acknowledgement that he was a complete train wreck. Beckett has completely melted down now twice in his five starts. He has fallen completely apart in almost half of his starts. Does anybody have any confidence that he won't completely fall apart again and if you do have confidence that he won't, why???....based on what???? He has missed one turn in the rotation so he has had one complete no show. I can't any longer find any rope to give Josh. While before tonight it looked to me like Buch was the guy that needed to be sent down so he could work out his problems somewhere else besides Fenway, I cannot rationalize giving Josh Beckett more starts unless we now truly give up on the season and begin to make preparations for 2013. That may be fine at this point. There appears to me to be just to much momentum going the wrong way this season. I am getting to the point where I do not want to see the Sox make decisions designed to recover this season if it means that they will not be as prepared as then can be for 2013. I do know that Beckett is done in Boston. He is now the classic needs a change of scenery guy. He is as done as a pitcher as Tito was as a manager here. If there is to be anything left to his career it will be somewhere else. So now we have at least two guys if not three that we have to give playing time to as a means of rehabilitating their stature so that we might could get something for them at the trade deadline. We will be sellers this season. To much has gone wrong for there to be any reasonable suggestion that this can be fixed in a few months of a season.

Hell ya' don't have to look in the paper to see the record. All you have to do is look at the scoreboard in left field. That was a terrible idea whoever came up with that one. Everybody including the players get to look out at the wall and see the that the Sox are firmly ensconced in last place.

Well there are a number of ways to try to achieve balance on a team. One way is to keep the number of long term, high money contracts on your team as low as possible and keep as many cost controlled players still playing for their first big long term contracts on your team as possible. That achieves a certain degree of balance that I think has become most critical in MLB because of the way the collective bargaining agreement is structured. In my view if your team is choke full of long term, heavy contract players, it might look good on paper, but good luck to you. That is what the Red Sox are and that is in large part I think, the answer to your question.

What really happened here is something very hard to accept and something we discussed on occasion in the off season. September should not have been treated like some sort of aberration. You are what you are and by the end of last year, they were a third place team. Did they make many changes in the off season that would improve the team?....No They did not make many changes and many hoped that there was no reason to because they wanted to define September as an aberration. Does September look like an aberration now? Are they playing much differently than they played in September? They have spent $180M and they don't have much of a team for it. Hard to accept but it will take some time to make up for the FO mistakes of the last few years. Please don't tell me I have to wait for Ells and CC. The problem this team has goes deeper than Ells and CC. They will play somewhat better when those two players get back but only because they add talent. They won't add cohesiveness and they won't add a desire to play intelligently and more importantly with a bit of humility. These guys think they can go out there and play anyway they please and win games. They can't!

It is not a very good team....I am sorry folks...we had all those threads and posts that were like mercury. Somebody would say "this is an issue"...somebody would retort "well yes but we have that to offset this issue and if we just wait it will all come together". This team has nothing. Starting pitching is everything in baseball and the starting pitching sucks. We keep thinking this is a great offense and it is not. Ya' know how you can tell that it is not. When opposing pitchers have to get somebody out on this team....they are an out. They collect a bunch of useless hits and useless runs but when push comes to shove they are an out! They are an out way more times than is acceptable for a team that basically has to live off its offense!

The only reason I mention the hitting at all is to point out that this is just not a very good team. Sure the Starting Pitching is likely the weakest part of it and since Starting Pitching is almost everything in baseball, there are not many ways to make up for that. However as I have been saying from before the season started, why anybody expected much from this starting pitching was beyond me. So what are you left with...offense....but you cannot go to the plate just insisting on doing what you want to do cause you are just playing into the pitcher's hands and that is what the Sox hitters do constantly.

The point is they are not smart hitters, not tonight...not most nights. That is something completely independent of Beckett.

What a jerk beckett is As for V I just expect him to recognize that the issue was not out pitches...Beckett was a train wreck pitch in and pitch out. There would be nothing wrong with saying that. So I have to believe that is not what V saw in which case he is blind. What would be wrong with saying "Josh did not have it tonight". nothing thats what. Instead V says most of his pitches were fine but he just could not finish off the hitters...please????

V what the f*** are you talking about...Beckett was wild in the strike zone with batting practice pitches his whole stint. What the f*** are you looking at V? V claims Beckett was healthy and good to go.

Jim Rice talking on post game about the Sox stupid at the plate...not taking Lowe the other way...don't I f***ing know it!

Buch is going to dazzle them with his new haircut.

The night this team looks anything like the Pats pink elephants will be circling a blue moon!

Honestly I just don't know how much more of this I can take. Every night the demons that haunt this team just come out in full force and ravage us. We try to cut Beckett a break cause what else are we going to do. Lets give him the benefit of the doubt....and....he just comes out and proves every f***ing hateful thing we think about him is true!!!! By the time he is done we are down 7 and I can see that card game starting in the corner of the dugout. Then we get treated to that awesome Sox hitting display which I am so sick of seeing that I am going to bust a gut.

Oh good lets bring in Fat Albers to really put the finishing touches on this one....he is sure to leave one right in the heart of plate.

Salty is going to send his shin guards to the HOF after this season...most dented shin guards in the history of baseball....since he blocks nothing and catches nothing...everything clangs off his shin guards.

That will teach you for bringing in Salty for Shop V