S5Dewey

A few notes from the past few days... Say what you will about Chavis @ 1B but he and Bogearts combined for one of the slickest 3-6-3's I've ever seen. Chavis not only got back to the base but they had the runner by two full steps. Put no faith in the scores you've seen over the past couple of games. There's been a steady "breeze" (Hah!) of 15-20 mph blowing in from center field holding everything up. Today's game ended with a 450' HR being caught 400' from the plate after the wind got done knocking it down... or up. I've seen it all over the past couple of games. I've seen fly balls get into the wind and go straight up, I've seen a routine fly ball clank off an outfielder's glove on what should have been a routine play, I've seen infielders stagger around like a group of drunks trying to figure out where a ball is going to come down and who's going to field it, and I've seen a SS head back on the OF grass for a popup, then come walking in, then start sprinting in, and eventually diving for a ball that eventually fell between the mound and 3B. He made the play, BTW, after juggling it into, out of, and back into his glove. JDM continues to hit the ball well when he's not trying to dink the ball to RF. He put a dent in the wall today on a ball that was hit so hard the wind didn't have a chance against it. As much as I had to admit it since I've been critical of JDM's defense he made a very nice play today on a ball hit into the LF corner. (Don't ask me why he was in LF...no idea) holding the hitter to a long single. Speaking of outfielders, Pillar hit a line drive double off the LF wall today 2B continues to be manned by a revolving door of players I've barely heard of. Eovaldi is looking very good in every outing. I know, I know... injuries..but I refuse to vulture around waiting for an injury to happen. I'm confident that if he stays on the field this year he'll be the ace of the staff. I can't be critical of Perez. He gave us five (I think) scoreless innings today and I didn't find his pace to be noticeably slow. Brazier continues to look good as does Workman. Things were breezing along nicely (see what I did there?) until Matt Hall and Chris Mazza did their best to let an easy win slip away. JBJ got another hit today (1 for 2 IIRC) by not pulling the ball. He hit a shot up the middle that almost hit the bag. He also hit into a DP today that's worth mentioning only because I don't think I've ever seen a player sprint as hard in ST as he did in trying to beat the throw. Under the heading of "something nobody cares about", the coveted Mayor's Cup goes to the winner of the ST series between the Sox and the Twins and the Sox kept themselves in the running with their win today. They play 5 games this year and the Twins had a 2-0 lead going into today's game. As a final bit of trivia, the Twins had a late game replacement today named Joe Cronin. Thanks to a700 for joining me for a few games earlier. It's always a pleasure to share baseball conversation with him. And @ Slasher.. If you need more material for your avatars come to Ft.Myers & bring your camera. The Sox are on the road tomorrow. I'll be back with more viewpoints and inconsequential happenings and complete irrelevancies sometime during the middle of the week.

I've often thought that many colleges offer a Freshman course called "Anti-logic 101" where anyone who takes the course gets stripped of every bit of common sense they might have ever had.

I don't understand all the shock and awe over this. We should have seen it coming. We're all fairly astute baseball people so didn't we see from the beginning that Sale's motion fairly screamed "Elbow Trouble"? I certainly did and I don't even have a medical degree from the University of Phoenix so I have to assume that our "crack medical staff" could see it too. My thought is that the FO decided to ride this horse as long as it could run and deal with the problem when it happened. Now it's happened but it shouldn't be a surprise.

Isn't there a word for that? And doesn't it start with the letter "t"? ...which is why I only skim his posts until I find out if he's posting something worthwhile. "Consider the source", I always say.

Quick take-away's from Wednesday's game: JDM has been off to a very slow start this year but don't be fooled by his numbers. As a700 & I discussed, he's obviously been working to go the other way without the HR power and it's still a work on progress. Yesterday he hit is first HR - a real towering shot to LCF and followed it up with another hit, also to the left side. Maybe he got tired of making outs? :-) What Springs did may not be a record but it's not something to be proud of. IIRC he gave up 5 runs using only 8 pitches to do it. I spoke to him while he was stretching (in fairness he didn't reply but he acknowledged my comment) and encouraged him to have a good outing because "We need a 'W' out there today". That's probably not something I'll do again. LOL OTOH, Ryan Brazier used only 8 pitches to get through an entire inning! Heath Hembree has looked pathetic both times I've seen him pitch but since it's only ST he may be 'working on something'. I hope. I learned why bringing up Castillo isn't a good idea. He may have to play defense and he got completely fooled on a tailing line drive off a RHH. He first went the wrong way, the tried to go back, stumbled and fell down while diving to try to get back, letting the ball get by him. B-R has JBJ with only one HR but I'm sure I've seen two off his bats, one to RCF and another to LCF. He's consistently going to the left side now with his hitting which is something he needs to do to be successful. A good sign. Don't be too disheartened by the score of Wednesday's game. The Sox were trailing by only 2 runs late when two of the-players-you've-never-heard-of-and-never-will-again committed two errors on the same routine play opening the floodgates. Getting that third out would have ended the inning. I'll be back with more sidelights soon. Where else can you get crap like this?

Just to be clear, it's not their one shot at making themselves and their families financially secure. It's their one shot at making themselves multi-millionaires. Theres a difference. People all over the country (world?) play games for the love of the game, the camaraderie, etc.. Too much of the joy of that gets forgotten when money gets involved. That's what people mean when they say that money is ruining sports.

At the risk of putting words in Kimmie's mouth, some players...like Mookie...are out for every cent they can get regardless of what it does to the team payroll while others.. like XBo & TB12...look at the bigger picture. They'd rather take a little less money, be surrounded by better players, and give the TEAM a better chance to win. As we are learning, it doesn't matter how much money an owner has. What matters is how much money he's willing to spend.

I think the word you were looking for rather than 'made' was 'hid'.

As the Chief Negotiator for the company I used to work for has said in labor negotiations, "No, but God bless you for askin'.

I've been patiently waiting for the investigation to be completed hoping that there would be no evidence of the Sox involvement but according to what Manfred said yesterday that timeline has now been changed. "He said that the report about the Boston Red Sox cheating in 2018 should be completed in several weeks..." This is looking more and more to me like Manfred realizes that he can't find any 'smoking gun' regarding the Red Sox and rather than admit that he's going to wait until the season is underway and fans are focusing on their own teams before releasing any report. Then MLB can release a report saying that they found only minimum Red Sox involvement in any cheating, "minimum" meaning that they found one person who's the second cousin of of someone's ex-brother in law who said that he has solid evidence that the Sox were cheating - but 'unfortunately' they were unable to follow that lead down. That's "minimum". C'mon, Manfred. If you've got something then spill it. If not say so, so we can put it behind us. https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/02/16/rob-manfred-believes-astros-players-will-be-punished-through-public-reaction/23928096/

Thanks, but at the same time that's a pretty low bar!

Can we please get real for a minute? Even during last season there were a lot of rumblings about something having to be done about Mookie's contract and impending free agency. Everyone who didn't think something was going to happen wasn't being realistic. Now, as to the issue of season ticket holders, the ethics of what you say depends on when the bills for the Season Tickets went out. JH made his famous "mandate-not-a-mandate' statement in September. If the bills went out before his statement I'll agree with you but if they went out afterward ST purchasers were given fair warning that the team could look much different in 2020. Anyone who purchased ST's after JH said that and didn't recognize the strong possibility that Mookie would not be with the team either wasn't using reasoning in their thoughts or believe(d) that this reset is good for the team in the long run. And for the record, I was in favor of holding off until mid-season and see how things were going but at the same time I recognized that the return on Mookie mid-summer may(or may not) be as great as it would be now. It was a gamble I was willing to take but it's not my team or money.

Here's what I don't understand about your position: As little as we like to acknowledge it baseball is a business to John Henry and he wants to make both short-term and long-term money on it. He's making long term money on it because AFAIK the franchise is worth literally millions more now than it was when he bought it, but that's like any 'investment'. You don't see the profits until you cash it out. In the meantime he has expenses to meet. Expenses like.. salaries, stadium upkeep & improvements, scouting, I'm sure a myriad of things that we can't imagine and a big expense may be the LT. If he can cut his LT obligations he can reduce his overhead allowing him to either invest more in the team or make more short-term money. And don't let it get lost in this that we don't even have knowledge of whether he's making or losing short-term money with the Boston Red Sox or what his profit margin is. The bottom line is that JH is a businessman and baseball is entertainment. He can do what he wants with his money and he has no obligation to provide a WSC team to the fans every year. I'm thankful that he's chosen to have the Boston Red Sox as one of his businesses/"toys" and we get to reap the benefits of it. If it ever reaches the point where the cost of what we're spending exceeds the entertainment we're getting we're free every years to spend less on this entertainment. Let me ask, how would you feel if JH sent a letter to your home saying, "Elk, I've heard that you're thinking of cancelling your NESN subscription and have decided to not attend games this year. I believe you can afford to be a Red Sox fan so who do you think you are to walk away from this obligation to me?" Not very good, huh? That's what's being said to him by his critics.

Gawd...that's awful. Sorry to hear it. Do what you need to, come back when you can.

Hey! Easy now. You're beginning to get too close to home!

Grrr... Unfortunately things don't always carry well on line. :-( What I meant to suggest is that Yasiel Puig is just an extreme version of Albert Belle. No thanks.. to either of them.

Isn't Yasiel Puig just Albert Belle on steroids?

Fans have a love/hate relationship with JBJ. When JBJ is on one of his 'tears' they love him, but being Red Sox fans they're always waiting for that other shoe to drop. When he's in one of his slumps, still being Red Sox fans, they're forgetting about the good times and screaming, "Dump the bum!" At the end of the day he's still a GG caliber CF with a career OPS >.725. In my mind that wouldn't cut it for a corner outfielder but since I'm a 'solid up the middle' guy I find him perfectly acceptable.

Oh, you people. Sigh. The writing is on the wall. Pillar was picked up to replace Mookie's defense in RF. Our outfield is now Benintendi, JBJ, Pillar.

No. Let's lump them in with the Braves instead.

No decision this week https://www.nj.com/yankees/2020/02/mlb-rumors-new-timeline-for-results-of-red-sox-sign-stealing-investigation.html

IMO the idea of having RHH over LHH in Fenway is overrated because it assumes every hitter is a pull hitter. Sure, RHH's are great when they pull the ball but The Wall is (or at least should be) very attractive for LHH's. They don't even have to hit it particularly well to have something good happen. What would be a routine FB out to LF anyplace else is off The Wall in Fenway. For a ML hitter it should be no more than a chip shot on a ball that's up and away. Even the word on Benintendi and the much maligned JBJ is that if/when they hit the ball the opp way they're successful. The problem with our LHH's isn't that they hit left handed, it's that they can't/won't hit to LF.

That was pretty obvious. Nobody is Mike Trout... but are you predicting that JBJ is going to flame out in just over 2 years?

With all due respect, that's a rather specious argument. When is the last time you heard someone say, "They traded so-and-so and I'm NEVER going to watch that team again!!" - and made it stick? JBJ may not be the second coming of Mike Trout but he's not the second coming of Billy Hamilton with his career .623 OPS either.

IMO that may not be far from the truth. We get spoiled watching some of those players out there and begin to think that anyone can do what they do. Well, they can't. And yes, they could have non-tendered him, offered him half what he was going to get in arbitration, have him sign with another team for more and then having what is obviously a fire sale. That should sell tickets... right? His offense is the Clay Buchholz of hitting. Feast or famine. The difference is that JBJ stays on the field and his defense alone makes him worth more than half what he's getting.