jung

I would not have Gonzo captain this team under any circumstances. It is Peddey's team now thank God. However I hope they either get rid of the whole captaincy thing or at the very least get rid of that stupid C. This is not Hockey.

Ortiz has already started negotiating....that is the point. "Gosh you guys got to pay me to stay here. Ya' gotta' pay me to stay because this is just too much drama for me and ya' gotta' pay Wake so he can break the all time win record." Get the hell outta here Dave or stay but if you are going to stay... for now...just shut up.....can ya' just shut up!

This tonight from the guy that crashed his manager's press conference to moan about his lost RBI: "There is too much drama on the Red Sox this year. I don't know if I want to be part of this drama next year" "Dave would you consider going to the Yankees if it were possible" "I realize there is a lot going on between these two teams. I have a great deal of respect for the Yankees. I hear it is a great situation over there. Who would not want to be part of a great situation where everything goes right" Ya' know what Dave, unless you are making some comment like Peddey just made (basically, "we did not get it done, we need to come back strong next year") you David are adding to the drama. So just shut the F*** up *******. I am so sick of these whinny Sox vets that just cannot keep their mouths shut right in the middle of Armageddon. I am at the point where they just make me sick.

The perception problem that the Sox have at this point is that they have missed the post season two seasons in a row and look like a basket case that needs to resolve a number of issues in order to get past the teams like the Yanks and Rays to get into the post season next year. The Yanks don't appear to be getting better at this point but you cannot think they will sit still. There is always the possibility that the Yanks will buy there way back into contention. The Rays are getting better as are the Rangers for that matter. The Sox are a potent team but they need so much fixing over so many dimensions of the team.

I have little doubt that the part of the collapse story that basically suggests the possibility that Tito was a drug addict that allowed his personal problems, health issues and excessive use of pain killers to interfere with his job performance is a management spin job prompted by Tito's comment about feeling like he was unsure about support from the FO this year. As I have said before, these guys live to spin. They are obsessed with issues that relate to the Red Sox brand and anything that they think has an impact on ticket sales, shirt sales, anything that generates revenue. Remember Tito had his press conference and raised the "unsure of support from FO" issue. Clearly Tito was referring to the fact that the Sox had not picked up his option for even one year leaving him a lame duck manager. As soon as the big three took the mics, they were asked about Tito's comment and Lucky Larry could not stop himself. He immediately said that he "was perplexed by Tito's comment", as if we were all supposed to forget that they had not picked up Tito's option. Spin is taking something that happened in fact and putting your slant on it. The fact is that the Sox did not pick up Tito's option. Sorry Larry and sorry John, you can't press some magic button and erase that fact from everybody's memory banks. In fact since it was a fact, I don't think Tito really thought he was stepping over the line commenting as he did in his press conference. However it really pissed the Sox brass off because now they felt like they had to "spin" that so they would not take any blame. I should also point out that other than making the one support comment, Tito has taken the blame for everything, I mean everything. So what we are seeing here is the Sox ownership and upper management just unwilling to let this go. They must win every spin battle. They are incapable of accepting any blame in any respect even when confronted with a bald faced fact. So they spit out the story that Tito was abusing pain killers, allowing health issues and marriage issues to have an impact on his job performance. I have no doubt that the Tito part to the collapse story either came directly from Larry or from somebody in the Sox organization at Larry's insistence. Obviously this is a very ugly road to go down and speaks volumes to where management's heads are at. Here is an instance where the Sox and their insistence on spinning everything makes them look strident and makes them look petty and vindictive which I think at least Larry is by the way. I don't blame the writer of the piece for putting it in because if he did not he would have seen it in print from a competing media source and he would have looked foolish given the nature of his piece and he did allow Tito to respond. However the fact that Sox management will not let this issue go tells you how absolutely focused they are on spin and style over substance. This ownership group did not start this way in my view but once they figured out how they wanted to manage this business, what they wanted it to look like they have been very single minded in that regard. The Sox did not even have to make excuses for not having picked up Tito's option. They own the team. All they would have had to say was that they thought they needed a change....end of story. But since they are absolutely obsessed with spin, they instead end up going down this road looking obsessed with appearances while the team is reeling from having blown itself up, suffering the worst collapse in the history of baseball. There is the chance that changes made for purposes of appearances can be sufficient enough to change the actual result but rest assured if there is one thing you can take to the bank it will be that what changes are made will be made for appearances sake first and foremost. This is also why I actually do worry about what comes next because the guys at the top of this organization have always exerted their will on it and refuse to give up much in the way of control. I don't expect them to give control to anybody coming into Theo's position whether from within or from outside of the organization. Here the Sox are struggling to pull things together after a historical collapse with player issues all over the place and they absolutely refuse to change their propensity for style over substance. It will be dumb luck if we get changes that actually have a positive impact on how the team performs on the field.

It would be generous to categorize Wake as a $10M per player. Wake actually made a pretty smart move for a guy in his position at the time. I think he recognized that the best way for him to go forward given that the team had to carry a catcher for his knuckler, and given that he really only had one very good year amongst many decent years where in the main he ate mucho innings. $4M is a good deal of money and I think Wake knew that it was way better for him to take a home team discount and allow the Sox to factor his innings eating characteristic and willingness to pitch anywhere against $4M instead of testing the water looking for max money every year. If Wake had gotten onto the treadmill of switching teams regularly he might easily have been bounced out of baseball long ago. There are very few knucklers out there anymore and this whole thing of carrying a catcher for a guy like Wake gets old. The Sox had him, knew how to use him and both parties got a benefit for it. Don't kid yourself. Wake was not doing anybody any favors with that $4M forever deal. That was very shrewd on his part particularly since a proposal like that must come from the player. The FO will never come up with an idea like that.

Well for one thing the Yankees made the post season. While we can point to their failure there with some satisfaction I do think that from a performance of the GM perspective, making the show is a major benchmark. While we may not understand it I do think that the GM is under more of a spotlight over the issue of constructing a team that makes or does not make the post season and the players and coaches take more of the spotlight around the topic of winning in the post season. Nobody ever thinks they have enough pitching going into the post season and as a result that is probably the place where GM's get more scrutiny regarding post season play. Did they or did they not bring in an arm or two for purposes of shoring up the post season pitching staff? But that is still taken in light of the fact that the team they constructed did get there.

Even cleaning house may not resolve this mess. Ya' can't get rid of 25 players which is usually one of the reasons that Managers are let go. However the entire team save one or two guys got pulled into the abyss along with the rest and there are some enduring problems here that may not go away. The simple fact that the players felt entitled to pull the plug over doubleheaders and road games is mind boggling. While I have often commented in this forum regarding ownership's propensity to be overly focused on the Sox brand, marketing and the business aspects of owning a professional sports franchise but players using that as an excuse for not playing ala' ownership "cares more about making money than winning" is disgusting. "Ownership cares more about making money".... No s*** Sherlock. Grow up. The owners are not playing with Monopoly money. Maybe they should start paying these Bozo's with Monopoly money and see how how they like THEM apples. As for the $300. headphones and a day on the Good Ship Henry, while hindsight is 20:20 I think it is an example of a bit of detachment from this mess. Obviously the players threw that right back in his face. However, I cannot convince myself that was going to have a positive impact. I do think given the uproar that a discussion with the players that suggested ownership's commitment to winning and reviewed the effort involved for the players had they chosen to somehow break up those games and play them in some alternate fashion would have been worthwhile. It sounds to me like trying to play those games some other way would have been at least as painful to the players as the doubleheader was. What do the players expect? Henry is not God and he cannot buy good weather. I am not saying that Henry or LL should have addressed the whole team but maybe a discussion with the team "leaders" and asking them to get the right message to the rest of the team might have done a number of good things just when they were really needed or asking them if they thought addressing the whole team was in order might have opened the door to a much needed clearing of the air. Maybe playing it that way would have had no impact but we already know the result from what they did do. Anybody like how that worked out? I do think it is time to move Beckett at this point. He has value and he is a good candidate for the get something for this the guy while he has some value move. That is not something we do well here but based on the overarching circumstances this one might turn out to be easier for the Sox to figure out than most. Gammon's is on EEI right now talking about not being able to move Beckett because of his contract and how he thinks Beckett can be turned around but boy, I just don't know how you go into another season depending on his "leadership" of the staff given what happened. Unfortunately if Beckett is there he is going to be the guy the staff is going to turn to.

The caveat here is that the Sox have built a very complicated business model. It has worked very well up to this point but it is not what it used to be and while many sports franchises have moved in the direction of the Sox, I don't believe many or maybe even any has been as focused as the Sox have been in that regard. You can't say on the one hand that the Sox have made all of these FA and other moves to placate the "entitled" fan base and then say that the Sox ownership is as dismissive as you suggest. The Sox are already more spin and sizzle than substance anyway. They just happened to get caught at it which they did not expect....nor did we. Having the "boy wonder GM" was as useful to the Sox to a point as paying a $60M posting fee to get dice-k and then having his interpreter there in the dugout was. That was so much BS. Did dice-K ever once look like a pitcher worth $60M up front plus his contract plus whatever other concessions they had to make while making PR hay out of them at the same time? Heck, the Sox treated getting dice-k as if they had found the dalai-lamma's nephew in some Tibetan temple and discovered that "Gosh golly gee, the kid has a hell of a fastball"! Again the Sox have built a very complicated business model for a professional sports franchise. It will be very interesting to see what they do next but I do not believe that they are anywhere near as dismissive of the Sox fan base (if you mean fan base to be paying customers that buy tickets or player duplicate jersey's) as you think they are. Past owners have been fairly dismissive but I do not believe this bunch to be, not watching how they react to everything, the way they allow no opportunity to pass without spinning it, the way they have regularly picked sizzle over substance. I think they could keep Theo here if they announced that they were going to allow him to interpret his marching orders as he saw fit and let the cards fall where they may which would be the same thing as falling on their sword for the performance of the last couple years and letting Theo off the hook. I for one would not believe that one but enough folks might believe it to make a difference.

Well there is no formal announcement on Theo yet right so this is the media with a story in hand at the moment. I think the Sox will ask for compensation from the Cubs but I don't think it will amount to much. I don't think this is some sort of Theo bluff ala' him feeding the media some story to get LL's attention. I don't think Theo will be in a position to turn down the Cubs if they make him an offer as they will surly offer him multiple years at bigger money than he is making now and I really don't think the Sox are ready to offer him multiple years. In a perfect Sox world what likely would have happened is the Sox grooming Theo to move eventually into LL's job. Unfortunately events this year and last sort of blew that plan up and it is really not possible for the Sox to either give him LL's job now nor keep him at his current job with other teams offering him what are likely to be more interesting jobs than continuing as Sox GM. I suspect that there is little panic at least at the very top in that organization as they likely believe that as long as "The Wizard" stays behind his curtain pulling the stings, things will work out like they want them to. That said they have built a more complicated business than it used to be and they have to play their cards carefully to get the result that they want. This is probably the biggest hiccup this ownership group has faced and it will be very interesting watching how it plays out. Heck, this could end up more interesting than watching the Sox was at least for you business fans out there. Even with the Sox vaunted reputation for second half slumps the last thing they probably expected was "the worst el-foldo in the history of baseball" and the very public scrutiny that has resulted.

Gotta' hand it to the Sox FO, they are spin doctors supreme and very high order marketing geniuses.

Remember though ownership had to give the Cubs authorization to talk to Theo at all. If they wanted him here they simply would have denied the Cubs the authority to talk to him. Whether Theo had outlived his usefulness to ownership this year or not, there is no way this ownership was going to be willing to give Theo something like a four year extension to his one remaining year. The only possible out for ownership that kept Theo here longer was probably something like an additional year extension so that he would not be a lame duck. I don't even think that was considered optimal from ownership's perspective. In my view this does work out the way ownership wanted it to work out given the situation they find themselves in and Theo gets a get the hell outta' dodge with a new big contract in tow. The only thing that is a bit of a wrench in the gears is that Boston will have to come up with a new GM fast enough to then come up with a new Manager making the promote from within scenario some are proposing even more likely in my view. By the way, if we don't think Theo's current owners thought he was doing a good job for them based on their parameters (not ours) then it would be harder for Chicago to want him. I believe Theo kept his owners happy here in Boston and they have no reason to think otherwise in Chicago. In fact, giving Theo more elbow room probably makes even more sense to his new Chicago bosses.

Well I think the issue is a little bit one of chicken and egg. The Sox have in my view had a grand strategy with regard to their brand and that includes the number of seats available for sale, the cost of those seats, the amount of expenditure on FA signings and the nature of those FA signings. In my view Theo does bear some responsibility but I would be willing to bet he followed his marching orders to a tee and now provides a convenient scapegoat for ownership. Ownership will likely tweak its perspective so that they can look like they are being responsive to their customers and as a means of making sure that as much responsibility for recent setbacks leaves town with Tito and Theo and the players that will be leaving behind them. It seems to me that more than ever ownership is running around with its pants around its ankles and will likely try to do something indicative of a change in perspective and market strategy.

Wakefield being allowed to hang around long enough to generate enough 12-8 victories to achieve most career wins would be an embarrassment. That isn't a good reason to cut him away but hopefully the FO will be smart enough not to need more than their own eyes at this point. Ya' never know though. The Sox have a terrible time cutting away guys that should be just gone. Even with all his years of service it is time for Tek as well. I don't see why that is such a hard decision either. It is time for Tek's couching career to begin.

Another item that is probably stuck away in some people's memory banks was that Buckner had a really bad ankle at the time and had been really gimping around on it. In fact there where times when I would wonder if they were dragging him into the clubhouse on occasion to either freeze it, retape it, hit him with some local pain killer or all of the above because he would be out there in some innings clearly struggling to put weight on it and would come out in another inning moving around better. I think Buckner came to the plate either the inning before or two innings before the error in the field and I remember thinking that he should be pulled for Stapleton not because I envisioned one going right between the wickets but because I thought Buckner would have trouble making the crossover step to get to a foul base to his left and there we would be giving the Mets an extra out and talking about how Buckner should not have been out there in that situation. I think I remember Shea Stadium having a fair amount of room for foul balls as well.

No Wake should not be asked back. As others have said he is an example of one of the problems with this FO. In fact I wish he were the only player falling into that category but he is not.

Has there been some physical disability news on Lackey? Normally rehab refers to a physical disability. The only thing I saw was that he came into came in decent shape and gained weight through the season as many of them did. Lackey has problems dropping down and it appears to me that he must throw over the top. When his arm drops down it puts his slider in a very good place to hit it. However I really can not blame fatigue as he would do it from the windup from the stretch, early in games, late in games, sporadically within games....more like a lack of concentration thing. I don't think you could reliably depend on Young to come out and tell him he was dropping down either. In fact I don't think I can recall Young coming out to help Lackey when his mechanics seemed to go off.

Like the list. My only glitch would be Ortiz and money but if he could be had for decent money I would resign him. I don't want to see them pay him big bucks because I am tired of seeing them backed into the dedicated DH thing. Martinez is my first choice for skipper. If CJ pitches regularly like he has pitched tonight, that would be a big deal for the Sox. I think the pub on him has been that he has been a little erratic but maybe expected coming out of the pen to the rotation. His performance tonight was the best Strike 1 performance I have seen in the playoffs so far and we all know the importance of Strike 1.

Got to see Mantle bat more than Williams. Mantle did go up there hacking hard at anything within his reach. Of course one thing we forget is that none of those guys came to the plate with modern batting helmets and the battle armor bicep to wrist and knee to ankles in some cases that the modern ball player comes to the plate with and pitchers were not normally warned or ejected for throwing at guys. So while Mantle was not a guy that made you think plate discipline, he did not stick his nose out there over the plate and therefore really could not cover the outer 3" of the plate. Nobody did back then. You were taking your life in your hands if you set up in the batters box such that you were taking the outer 3" away from the pitcher. Pitchers did not care who you were. You were going down, hard and they were pitching from the original mound height back then. As a hitter you hoped it tailed outside or if you had two strikes you tried to foul it off and live for another pitch. Plus while being somewhat undisciplined, Mantle never liked the idea of hitting a weak grounder or a weak pop fly to the opposite field a common occurrence if you went after a pitch like that. That in itself instilled something of an enforced plate discipline on everybody. But if Mantle could reach it with his natural swing he was swinging hard at it. Berra was the guy that while not setting up so that he could reach the outer half naturally (as crazy as he was he still wanted to live past the current at bat), he would lunge out after a ball if he thought he could get the bat on it and he did have an uncanny ability to hit the ball hard someplace doing that even if the pitch was a tiny bit off the plate. There is maybe one guy or two guys that comes along in a generation of hitters that has the combination of hand/eye coordination and quickness in the wrists that Mantle had. Maybe you get one guy in a lifetime that has all of that AND the natural strength that Mantle had. Williams was the hand/eye coordination, quickness of wrists and plate smarts guy to Mantle's raw power. Makes ya' wonder who some of these guys (like Howard) think they are.....Mantle or Williams....NOT!!!!!

Man I know we look at our own Sox with more than mild irritation at their inability to come through in the clutch either at the plate or on the mound. However looking at these last several critical games of various division series, I am more inclined to indict the modern ballplayer that simply does not for one thing approach hitting with much intelligence. Even if you want, take Howard and his last at bat, the last gasp of the Phillies against Carpenter in the 5th and final game as it makes for a good example. Howard takes ball one and is up in the count 1-0. He then swings at the next pitch which started on the inner half and was riding in on his hands. It finished inside and had he let it go it would have left him up 2-0 in the count. There was a time when a batter would have laid off that pitch for no other reason than it was clearly either on the edge of the plate or off the plate and he was already up in the count. Howard swings at the next pitch which is a strike but is a pitchers pitch which I am inclined to think he felt he had to swing at because if he let it go by he would have been down in the count at that point 1-2 instead of up in the count 2-1 anyway. Actually there was a time when a hitter would even have let that one go by as well because there was nothing he could have done with it but hit it foul or worse simply ground to the left side of the infield. Hitters had enough bat control and enough intelligence at the plate to take the chance that they could foul off good pitches until they got something they could get through the infield or if they were lucky enough drive somewhere. This was especially the case with the better hitters in baseball. As I am sure you guys are aware, he was soon recorded as the last out of the game feebly grounding another pitchers pitch to second base. You could of course argue that Howard knew there were two outs and that his approach was homer or out. An argument that one could buy were it not for the fact that the entire Phillies team approached its plate appearances this night like a teenager on his first date with a high school cheerleader. I would be willing to bet that Ted Williams could not watch a modern baseball game without putting his foot straight through the TV screen in protest to the idiocy of the modern baseball player particularly in the way he approaches his business at the plate. It has gotten to the point where I don't wonder if it were possible for one manager and one team to play the game the way it was meant to be played, if they would not wear out opposing pitching staffs to such a degree that the rest of the league would be made to look silly in comparison. A guy takes one pitch these days and is deemed patient at the plate. I am not recommending that all first pitches should be taken. But all first pitches that are pitchers pitches should be taken and all second pitches when up on the count 1-0 that are not sweet to hit should be taken. In fact there was one element of tonight's Phillies/Cards game that was reminiscent of the old days, the way the Cards defended the plate against Halliday in the early innings. Maybe LaRossa is the answer to at least some of our woes.

I actually think Sox management is pretty happy where they are. A good part of that sold out string is based on the Sox ability to squeeze out additional seat availability at exactly the rate they want to which keeps their advanced ticket sales very high. I wonder if there is any other team in baseball that generates so much of its ticket revenue before a pitch is ever thrown. From a pure business perspective it is just too sweet a deal to give up.

Sox management is pretty conscience of the Sox "brand". I can believe that they did not know about it, particularly John Henry but I can't believe they would just shrug their shoulders and move on without making some statement about needing to get an authorization for something like that particularly now that Henry knows. When I listened to it I got the impression that Henry did not know but that Larry did know. I would be inclined to think that in the other instances mentioned, those responsible did in fact receive authorization to use the Sox uniform in that way.

Maybe it is just me. I thought Lester would pitch much like he did last year but would have shown modest improvement and that this would be a year of consistent superior pitching from Buckholtz....sort of a breakout year for Buckholtz in that regard. Even in the year of his no hitter I did not think he pitched enough innings to call that a breakout year. To me at the start of the year there was every bit the chance that Lester and Buckholtz would compete for the position but that Buckholtz would emerge as the staff ace, the true stopper, even if the other guys had not stumbled and maybe he would have gotten there without the injury. I just did not think he was having that sort of season. Given how the rest of them pitched there is no doubt in my mind that we would have been saying that Buckholtz pitched better than the rest of them had he continued. But just to try to explain where I am coming from, if the other guys pitched to what we thought their potential was at the beginning of the season I thought there was every chance that we would have been saying Wow, Buckholtz was the best of them this year with emphasis on the Wow. I thought things were sort of set up that way for Buckholtz this year. I did not think he was pitching like that when he went down to injury. To be honest i have bee looking forward to something a little like the Braves had with Glavin and Smoltz and Maddux vying for the spot at the top only in our case with Lester battling with Buckholtz. Some years Lester winning out and others Buckholtz winning out. Oh well probably another of my Sox pipe dreams.

Well being the ace of the staff does usually mean you have more clutch performances than your mates. You are the stopper, the guy that stops losing streaks, bad runs of starts by the other guys etc. The Sox really did not have anybody doing that this season to any great degree which supports those that have suggested that at best the Sox had three number 2 starters. I would suggest they did not have a number 4 starter with no dice. They had a number 5 in Wake and a number 5.5 in Lackey. Wake is the only guy that performed close to expectation. We did not expect much from Wake and we got just about what we expected. I don't remember Buckholtz pitching up to expectation before he went down but he was probably closer than our other number 2s'. Beckett pitched reasonably well I thought under his particular set of circumstances but he still underperformed to expectation. Lester performed a bit less well than Beckett when compared to our expectations for him. Lackey was spectacular in his underperformance to expectation. But I would think the entire starting staff underperforming as this one did this year is pretty rare. You have five guys that span age brackets, have different throwing styles, different demeanors on the mound are at different stages in their careers and they all underperformed. Got to be something there that we are missing.

I can see being disappointed in Lester but the general collapse of the Starting Staff is so glaring in both its depth and its scope that I really do wonder if there was something larger at play here than any individual pitcher's record or performance. General conditioning has been tossed about regarding the whole team and certainly starting pitching has not escaped that particular concern. Aside from conditioning are there things they should have been doing that would have kept them sharper? Nobody has given Young high marks deservedly so I think. Lackey's performance was spectacularly bad. It might not have been as telling if we were not running him out there every 4th day. But none of the rest distinguished themselves either. Buckholtz got injured but I am not sure he was pitching up to par even before that. Beckett actually pitched pretty well when you consider that he has entered the transitional part of his career. He needs a new out pitch. I have not done the calculation but if you took his worst inning out of every game he could have had spectacular stats I would think. Now you can say that every pitcher would have better stats if you took his worst inning out of each game but Beckett had many very good starts where that one inning was not just marginally worse but was really a blow up inning with an avalanche of runs. He just could not get out of those single nightmare innings and he really did not appear to have a way out of them.