jung

One thing I should have added to my post about Bard and closing.....I view comments about Bard not being "ready" to close as the same as saying he simply will not ever be a closer. He has been prepped and preened long enough to have at least made more progress toward being a closer. In my view he was not ready to be a closer because he was not pushing himself to be a closer. In point of fact, I think he better figure out how to start because if he does not, in my view he will just become one of the many many ballplayers that never lived up to their potential. If he does not figure out how to start Bard in my view will wallow around in middle relief roles having had a very undistinguished career until it just ends one day. If that happens it won't even be a rare or unusual occurrence. It really happens quite often at all levels of baseball.

I can't see how you could draw this conclusion. There were huge question marks voiced from all quarters about Bard's inability to be a closer and Bard does nothing to lead one to conclude that he can close. He does not have the mind set of a closer and at this stage in his career I don't think he will ever have it. While I don't think he will ever admit it, I don't think Bard wants anything to do with closing. That is not a great recommendation for handing somebody the ball in the 9th inning. Now he has a long way to go in my estimation to have the presence and the mind set of a starter but at least it is something he wants to do, it appears to be something he may be able to do very well and all things being equal I think he is far more likely to figure that out than he is ever going to be with regard to the role of the closer. Saying Bard is not closing because he wants to start is very much like saying there is nothing to closing other than taking the ball and throwing it. I am sure that is not what you mean 700 but in reality Bard is not a closer between his ears regardless of whether he might be from his right shoulder to the end of the fingers on his right hand.

It appears to me that ST was a go/no-go. It was a go/no-go to continue the effort to develop Bard as a starter. I suspect they will continue at least until dice comes back and then decide at that point what to do for the remainder of this season. I can see the Sox telling Bard that dice will finish out the season in some capacity as a starter but that Bard will begin 2013 back in the rotation. I can see something like that happening. On the other hand I can also see, Bard outpitching Doubront and Doubront being the odd man out when dice comes back. If that happens Doubront probably gets traded. In my view the only way the Sox will not continue along the lines I have suggested above is if Bard goes out there and gets creamed maybe 5-7 times in a row....I mean really lit up.

In my view the FO is going to vet the idea of developing Bard as a starter. Even with recent injury developments there is no better year or time for them to do that than this year and they are committed to doing that. You might not have seen Aceves comments from his presser. He said "it does not matter how I pitch. They want Bard in the rotation." If Aceves has concluded that it is what it is, I think it is about time that we do the same.

UN is right. Keep Bard in the rotation. Look folks the entire reason Bailey is here is because Paps was let go and it was determined that Bard is not a closer. He was not a closer then and he is not a closer now. Worse than that as UN points out, he is prepped to start now. Sox are likely going to have to get an arm if the 6-8-12 week scenario on Bailey is what is in the works. In addition you would have to have blinders on not to recognize how committed the FO is to having Bard in the rotation.

The term "you can never have enough pitching" is based on the premise that it is possible to on occasion go through every arm you have got and still be screwed!

Well in all honesty, considering how up in the air the staff in general and the rotation in particular is, I just don't they could have convinced themselves to trade Beckett unless somebody of similar pitching talents came back in return...something of a "change of scenery" deal.

Put Bard in the pen to do what? He is no closer and if anything we might need a closer pending the term of Bailey's problem.

Well if you are referring to Josh and his penchant for not pitching at all well unless he is confident that he is in perfect health then I can understand that. If you are saying that he is faking it, I don't think that is the case. However, he does not pitch well unless he is fully confident in his health as in nothing wrong at all. I have always thought this sort of odd but I guess I would prefer he go get checked by somebody he has some faith in than just sit there and stew about it or go out and pitch poorly. Since V is "confident" he is going to pitch how well he pitches if he is dinged a little could be interesting. Wonder what V will think of that.

Besides, Bard is not a closer and if Bailey is gone for 6-8-12 weeks at least in my view the Sox will have to go get a closer somehow. Amazing how Bailey just cannot stay healthy. It is not like he has a chronic injury that keeps coming back. All of his injures have been one offs of this that and the other thing.

I am not even sure we know enough about Bailey yet. Even though the report of a possible 6 weeks or longer was out by that time, WEEI was only willing to talk about the possibility of the 15 day disabled list. However they will have to get somebody I think if this is weeks, even 6 weeks.

I think for Aceves and the Sox it is still about how valuable he is in the pen more than anything else. The FO has been very mindful of the fact that it was not Bard that saved their bacon out of the pen last year and it was not even Paps who was fading by the end of the season. It was Aceves that saved their bacon out of the pen and I just do not think the Sox are willing to give up their security blanket. The Sox are also spooked by the idea of both Aceves and Bard going to the rotation and Bard just has more upside than Aceves has as a starter. It would have been interesting to see what the Sox would have done if Doubront had not pitched well enough to earn a shot. I think Doubront bailed their butts out of some tough choices.

Hopefully Josh will not get bad news from the doctors he is visiting in Texas today. The biggest problem with Josh as it relates to injury is that he won't pitch unless is absolutely 100% healthy. If he does pitch when he is not 100% healthy he tends to be lousy and the insignificance of an injury really has never been a factor with him. Anything at all is a problem for Josh. I happen to think that as far as the Sox pitching goes at least this year they are likely to be able to survive just about anything that happens outside of 1,2,3 in the rotation but can't really tolerate anything happening there. The fact that their chief rival in the east is already seeing some injury issues at least might level the playing field. What this should show us is that the idea that you can escape injury to your pitching staff is just nonsense. Injuries will happen over the 162. Heck these teams can't even start the 162.

That could be as well. The only reason I remembered it at all about Paps as this discussion progressed is because since he was the closer I would watch pretty carefully to see how he was handling multiple innings. You could really tell that at times he was often struggling with it. As hitters concentrated and focused harder (not unusual for late innings) they would foul off more pitches and I can remember instances where Paps was visibly tiring. His fastball would suffer for it. Can't remember much about velocity but the pitch definitely would flatten out some. To his credit he never shrank from the challenge. There is just so much somebody has got to give though and as much as he could be a wild man I did really feel for him in those instances. We all know what it feels like to have the strength just leak out of you. Not something I relish nor wish on anybody.

One thing I forgot about which may have been a factor for Paps is that as it got later in the season there were more instances where Tito used Paps for more than one inning per stint. Now that I remember it, I do remember how much his fastball seemed to flatten out in some of those circumstances. If Paps did get a bit tired at the end of last season, maybe it was a combination of factors including the number of times when he was forced to go multiple innings when he was really not prepared to do that.

This is the same Paps people are saying did not get it done at the end of the season.....No? Maybe that many appearances without a save opportunity did come back to haunt the Sox......maybe not.

So when do you try to resolve the issue of trying to vet the possibility of gaining a real deal starter out of Bard? This year they make him the 5 which automatically limits his innings and they have dice coming back mid season allowing them to decide at that time whether it makes sense to move Bard back to the pen for what remains of this season. If he performs well as a starter Bard will know that moving back to the pen will be as a consequence of dice returning so it is not like he will go into the tank because he goes back to the pen at that point. If that happens hopefully Bard will go back because for once we will have an abundance of starting pitching. The Sox are simply not going to be better set up to vet Bard as a starter than they are this year.

Of course it was hard for Paps to go 4-6 games with Tito around as once the 9th rolled around Tito only knew one thing to do....call Paps. "But we are up by 7 runs"....never mind...call Paps!

Neat write up....thanks for posting it UN. The only thing I did not agree with was the comment about the back end of the rotation. We should be so lucky. If the back end of the rotation does become a factor or the factor it will be because the front end of the rotation stayed healthy and performed. One reason I hope this all works out for the Sox is because they did not go out and make some big splash signing. They seem to blow up all to often and you end up with expectations that are so hard to meet. The Sox remained true to their voiced intentions this off season and I think they did get reasonable value for limited expenditures. Did not like the Ortiz thing but I have seen worse things unless this is the year that he ages before our eyes. I don't think that will be the case but there were other reasons I wanted them to move away from Ortiz anyway. Punto was not my favorite deal either but it is not like they paid a ton of money for him. I would love to see this trend continue. Maybe we will fall in line as well and not get sweaty palms every time some big name FA becomes available. I would definitely like to see a solid, maybe even big name pitcher signed in 2013 when there are a number of pitching candidates that come available.

I think the official "closer" until Bailey comes back will either be Melancon or Aceves. Aceves is not the classic closer but his command of a variety of pitches and the fact that he will not even see the lineup one time if he closes may make him the best temporary closer that we have. The fact that Melancon has closed before makes him a viable option as well. Melancon has having done it before going for him. Aceves has his incredible versatility and the likelihood that he would be unflustered by the role going for him. Bard is not ready to close. The entire reason Bailey was brought here was because Paps was let go and Bard is not ready to close. He may never be ready to close. Besides that, his one inning stints last we saw of them were not going so great. Nor do I think Bard is a versatile performer able to switch gears like Aceves can. So one half of the problem with bringing Bard to close is that he is no closer. The second problem is that it elevates Cook to the rotation now. Cook is not ready for the rotation at this point. He could easily end up getting lit up like a Christmas tree at this point. In fact if Miller were available I might buy bringing Miller into the rotation at this point but not Cook. That this is what I meant about not throwing a hand grenade into the plans you have made unless you have good reason to believe that what you are doing will help. There is no reason to believe that Bard can close at this point nor a reason to believe that Cook can start in the ALE.

One thing we are forgetting is that we no longer have a "formula driven" manager. V has had teams and seasons where he has gone to his closer to pitch the ninth as much an anybody has and he has had other teams and other seasons where he has not. If for example especially without Bailey, I am inclined to think that if V gets to the 7th inning with a lead and brings in Aceves, if he shuts down the opposition, for the 7th and 8th, I am not all that convinced that V will pull him for the ninth. I am not convinced that if he brings somebody in for the 8th who pitches lights out for the 8th that he won't leave him there for the 9th without Bailey. All by way of saying that just because the Sox may not throw a hand grenade in the middle of the plans they have made is no reason to suggest that they are not going to compete for games without Bailey. This is one of the things that kills me about the way we approach these issues. Guess what folks! There are games that can be lost because you threw a hand grenade in the middle of what you had established for your team. They may not be the first game of the season. They may be the first game of the season or may be the twentieth. But unless you can provide a definitive, no holds barred, dead nuts deal for the value of tossing that hand grenade then you could easily do as much harm as good.

We do need the season to start. I mentioned this earlier but while there are improvements to teams in the east, my larger concern is that there are now two pretty solid teams in the West that are going to win a bunch of games in my view. While we have grown used to fighting for WC spots with other ALE teams, I think the real problem is that it will be easier to envision the WC team coming out of the West because the West now has two decent teams but is not that strong top to bottom meaning one of those two teams could work its way into the WC easier than the Sox or the Rays for that matter. Best thing to do would be win the division. That would be terrific!

I wondered if that was the case once I knew he had pitched.

Well I had thought we had beaten Paps to death. I do think the most relevant aspect of Paps as it relates to the Sox was that they were not going to give a closer that kind of money over that kind of time. It just was not going to happen. To be honest I think that if somebody threw Mariano at their feet, they would think long and hard about giving him something like a Paps contract and after doing so would likely reject the idea. Lackey's money I think you have to consider sunk money. I don't think they would have been thinking about what it would take to sign Paps at the point when they signed Lackey. Crawford was and is such a joke that I cannot tell you what the hell they were thinking there. So, I can not draw any linkage or associations between Crawford and Paps cause I can't draw any linkage or associations between Crawford and anything! Ortiz might be justifiable criticism although again druthers aside, I just don't think the Sox were going to give a closer the kind of contract the Phillies made available to Paps and I think that was a unilateral decision. So while not moving on Ortiz would have triggered a whole host of changes to this team, I don't think keeping Paps would have been one of them.

Woooah Big Fella. Moving a whole bunch of pieces around the board because Bailey has an unspecified thumb injury does seem a bit excessive. I will say this much. If we do see the Sox move a whole bunch of pieces around the board and even bring more pieces in from Pawtucket or in trade then it will because the thumb injury is serious. I doubt that is the case and I am pretty much convinced they will do what I said earlier and move everybody up one spot that is in the current pen.