Ha ha, look, this FO ruins everything it touches, and as for Bard, as you can see in Fred's post above, he, Elk, Pumpsie, Muggah and Brennan called this.
Fair enough. I've been watching the Sox a long time, though, and I haven't seen many players have a better on-base stretch than he is having for this long.
I think a guy who could help Bard is Varitek. Bard had amazing success throwing to Varitek.
Career IP ERA OPS K BB K/BB
Varitek 80.1 1.79 0.523 95 20 4.75
Salty 75.1 4.66 0.690 64 45 1.42
Vmart 51.1 3.16 0.669 51 23 2.22
2011
Varitek 31.1 1.44 0.472 33 5 6.60
Salty 39.2 4.54 0.579 40 19 2.11
Youk was a huge contributor for several years and an integral part of the 2007 championship. I'd like to see him get traded to an NL team and have some more productive years.
The one I mean was in the 6th inning.
I dunno, fellow poster 700 Hitter has put forth a pretty solid argument why Pedroia should stay in the lineup. I think it might be time to move him down in the order until he comes out of this.
IRT 'best players of all time', winning the Finals MVP isn't necessarily the best measure of that, of course, but basketball does seem to be a game where the best players dominate in the big moments. They've only been awarding Finals MVP since 1969 so obviously this list of winners is omitting Bill Russell and other greats.
Non-bigs
Michael Jordan 6
Magic Johnson 3
Larry Bird 2
Kobe Bryant 2
Bigs
Tim Duncan 3
Shaquille O'Neal 3
Kareem Abdul-Jabaar 2
Hakeem Olajuwon 2
I saw Pedroia on the bench a couple of games ago with nothing covering his head, and I noticed an unnerving resemblance to Les Grossman.
http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/columns/ketchup/les_grossman.jpg
Not saying there are excuses for putting up one run, but this guy has a career 3.5 ERA. He has had success at the major league level. Let's see how he does his next few starts against other teams.
I honestly don't think our own personal work experiences have any bearing on Bard's situation. There are countless examples of work environments where employees' input is encouraged and countless more where it isn't. There are different schools of thought on which is more effective...etc. etc.
The question that hasn't been answered is, why would they let Bard have this kind of input when they haven't done it with any other pitchers? The only logical answer is that they thought it was the best way to handle this particular player.
The offensive outburst against the Marlins was nice, but overall the offense has sucked for the month of June. The team slugging pct. for June is down to about .400.