Bellhorn04

Let's face it, it's all about "ace" being a cool word...

What strikes me as amusing here is that you spent 5 lines responding to a 2 line post that you called "over analyzing"...

That's what I'm saying. And in saying it I realize how silly it is. We used to get in arguments about whether Lester was an ace, or Beckett was an ace, etc. And I finally realized you can only be safe calling guys like Pedro or Verlander aces.

Sorry about those pesky facts.

The Renfroe trade all the way.

Here we agree.

Read the above, Nick, from the book you excerpted, and learn the truth.

Here's some more from the same book, about that same column by Shaughnessy and the aborted Larry Bigbie trade that led Theo to temporarily leave the team: "Either Lucchino or Steinberg, Epstein felt sure, had prompted the column. The two men were, after all, the heroes of the piece, and both had said lines almost identical to some Shaughnessy had used. Where else could Shaughnessy have gotten the incorrect notion-repeated in the column as fact, without any attribution-that Epstein had asked Lucchino to shoulder the blame for the Bigbie trade? It was actually Henry and Epstein who had decided to nix the deal; Lucchino had never been part of the conversation." "About a week earlier, several sources confirm that Steinberg had a conversation with Shaughnessy and another reporter in which he said many of the things that ended up in Shaughnessy's column." "Over the next several months, Shaughnessy repeatedly insisted that neither Lucchino nor his allies within the organization had urged him to write the October 30 column. But on November 1, Shaughnessy wrote that the version of the Bigbie trade he wrote as fact was 'the version held by Lucchino's camp (three sources)'. Wherever he got the information, it simply wasn't true. 'I vetoed the trade,' says Henry. 'It was me, after Theo and I talked about it. It was never Larry. He had nothing to do with it.'" So in essence, Lucchino lied, and Shaughnessy repeated the lie, and Henry went on record to call it a lie.

Yes, I just read that myself. Nothing but opinions from Shaughnessy. No quotes from anyone.

So that's two facts everyone knows and an opinion. I'm not doing research on your bogus claims, thanks.

Their record is worse this year than it was in 2019. That's a simple fact.

Tell you what, Nick, show us one credible source that confirms every move Theo made in those "early years" was approved by Lucchino. Just one.

I know plenty, and I know you don't mind making stuff up.

Nope. Rays were 96-66 in 2019. They're 69-55 in 2022.

Nonsense.

You know this how?

Seems like a meaningless comparison to me. They didn't get under the tax line at the deadline because they thought the team still had a shot with Sale and Wacha coming back.

Nice gibberish.

Way to gloss over the point about Theo. You're good at that, I find.

To me the Story signing seems like a case of "you can't win". People beeched about the lack of big signings and when they finally did one, they beeched about the signing.

Theo had no experience as a GM when the Sox hired him either. If you always go with experienced guys you basically have to get someone who was just fired by another team, like DD.

The other aspect of this is everyone sees what Friedman has done with the Dodgers. Friedman was part of the Rays Way and now he's Rays Way Plus Money. I think Henry likewise envisioned the Red Sox could be Rays Way Plus Money.

There's no question that a lot of the support for Bloom comes from the belief that the Rays Way Works. I'm pretty sure that's why Henry hired him, too.

Amazingly I've never encountered that acronym until now. It's a good one all right.

Nope, nobody thinks that.