Tag: mannyramirez

Five Things I Don't Quite Get

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Brian Giles headed to third, originally uploaded by SD Dirk.

If there are five things that Peter Gammons doesn’t quite get, I figure it’s ok for there to be five things I don’t quite get. Because I know Peter Gammons (no, I don’t), and I know that I am no Peter Gammons.

  1. Why we claimed Brian Giles:
    Gammons explains it thus:

    The Red Sox did want Brian Giles. With Jacoby Ellsbury struggling, Giles could have led off and played some right feld, with J.D. Drew moving [to] center. And Giles could have been DH insurance should David Ortiz experience further problems with his troublesome left wrist.

    Still, I’m unconvinced. Unless they think Ells is struggling, like Bucky, enough that he’d have to go down. Granted, Giles’ .296/.389/.440 line puts Ells’ .269/.331/.373 to shame. And his numbers against certain AL rivals are less than awful: Angels (.394/.512/.758), New York (.275/.333/.488), Tampa (.261/.320/.565). And the last three years 05-07 he’s been a better hitter in the second half than he was in the first (.820 to .817 OPS). And…actually, never mind. I get this now.

  2. Why we didn’t claim for Chad Bradford:
    This one is more perplexing. As Neyer says:

    Speaking of waiver claims, the Rays made a nice one yesterday, picking up Chad Bradford, and I’m surprised that 11 teams — including the Red Sox, the Yankees, the White Sox and the Twins — passed on him. Bradford’s got a 2.45 ERA this season, despite a strikeout rate, 2.9 per nine innings, that’s well below what’s needed to pitch effectively in the majors. In his prime — his first three seasons with the A’s — Bradford struck out 7.2 per nine innings, which is excellent, especially for a guy who never broke 90 with his “fastball.” Bradford’s strikeout rate has plummeted since then, bottoming out this year. So how has he survived? He’s become exceptionally stingy with the long ball, giving up only five homers in his last 190 innings. In contrast, last year Brad Penny had the lowest home run ratio among ERA title qualifiers, and Penny gave up nine homers in 208 innings.

    With the Sox in 05, Bradford wasn’t stellar. He gave up 29 hits and 4 walks in 23 and change innings. And there’s the aformentioned strikeout rate problem.

    But the fact is that he’s been good this year, giving up a run more in 40 plus innings for Baltimore than he did in the 23+ he threw for us. He might not have fit into last year’s pen, but this year’s edition? Hell, who wouldn’t?

  3. Why we’ve underperformed our run differential so badly:
    Aside from the Cubs who are at +139, the Sox have the best run differential in the majors at +108. That’s compared to Tampa at +65, the Yankees at +41, the White Sox at +65, the Twins at +37, and the Angels at +62. Our Pythagorean record stands at 70-48 versus the actual 67-51. By contrast, Tampa’s expected record at 65-52 is seriously outperformed by their actual 71-46. Doubtless there’s no single explanation, but if we don’t revert to the mean – and soon – we’re going to have a serious problem.

  4. Why MLB would bother investigating Manny:
    Rumor has it – and yes that’s all I’ll call it, originating as it did with the Shank – that MLB is investigating both Boras and Manny for the events that preceded the latter’s departure. Is it possible that Boras and Manny conspired together in an effort to ensure that the options were dropped? Sure, it’s possible. But I don’t know how you’d prove it without a smoking gun email. His July line of .347/.473/.587 was the best he’d put up all season. Maybe he tanked, maybe he didn’t, but investigating is a waste of time without proof.

  5. Why it’s 2008 and the owners are only just poised to discuss the absurd, byzantine blackout restrictions:
    Seriously, this is just mind boggling. Or would be, if MLB’s business side wasn’t so glacially slow and backward.
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Upon Further Review, Dan Graziano Should Review Further

Don’t like the Manny Ramirez trade? Fine. I’ve come to terms, myself, but I’m sure you have your reasons. And I’ll respect them. The only thing that I ask is that they be better than Dan Graziano’s. Seriously. His reaction to his reaction to the Manny Ramirez trade leaves much, in my opinion, to be desired. With a thousand apologies to the experts over at FJM, a quick reaction to his reaction to his reaction.

Upon further review…the Manny Ramirez trade still stinks


I didn’t expect to be so dramatically in the minority on this. I wrote this column in this morning’s Star-Ledger, and while I never expect everybody to agree with me, I kind of thought a few people would.

But the e-mails this morning, and even most of the other columns on this topic, are so dramatically opposed to my central point (that the Red Sox blew the 2008 season by trading Manny Ramirez) that I felt compelled to re-think it.

Here’s what I came up with:

They’re all wrong, and I’m right.

Raise your hand if you’re shocked that a columnist is convinced he’s right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Right, so, some bad news: those of you raising your hands are idiots.

The most common defense I’ve seen is that this trade is similar to the 2004 deadline deal that shipped very popular shortstop Nomar Garciaparra out of town. But it’s not, and the differences are where Boston’s mistakes shine through:

I’m listening. Talk to me Goose.

1. The Nomar the Red Sox traded on July 31, 2004 was a diminished Nomar. Sure, he could still hit, but he couldn’t stay healthy (he’d played just 38 games for them over the first four months of that season), and his defense at a crucial position had tailed off dramatically enough that it was costing them runs on a regular basis. They didn’t like having him in the clubhouse anymore, but the good reasons for getting rid of him were on-field reasons, not off-field ones.

Manny Ramirez is not a diminished player. He’s still one of the very best hitters in the game.

Apparently my definition of what constitutes one of the “very best hitters in the game” differs from Graziano’s. Ever so slightly. Foolishly, I expect “very best” to equate to something like top five in the league. Maybe ten.

Manny’s rankings? Well, he’s 11 in OBP, which is good. Not quite making the cut for my personal “very best” rating, and behind his own teammate JD Drew, but still good. How about slugging percentage? Oh. Oh dear. 26th? Really? Well, how about average? Thirty-seventh? Are you sure? How is that possible? He’s one of the very best hitters in the league!

Or at least he was four years ago, when he was OPSing 1.009. But because he’s done that in the past, he must carry that definition indefinitely, apparently. The fact that Man-Ram is 36 years old surely isn’t relevant to this discussion.

Nor the fact Xavier Nady is OPSing .930 to Man-Ram’s .927.

And his defense, while horrible, is no worse than it’s ever been. So it’s not as if he’s costing them any more runs than he did in 2004 or 2007, when they were champions of the world. The only reason they got rid of Ramirez is because they didn’t want him around anymore,

If by “they,” you mean his teammates, then yes, that’s true. That is, principally, why we got rid of him.

and that’s not supposed to be good enough when you’re an organization that prides itself on impartial reason — the organization that ignored cries that J.D. Drew was soft and brought him in because of his on-base percentage.

I’m not sure how you assert that that Drew somehow being “soft” would be equivalent to Manny sitting out key games of the season, but hey, I’m not a columnist.

2. When they dealt Nomar and Matt Murton in 2004, they got Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz in return. Cabrera was a good, clutch hitter

Let’s assume, for a moment, that there is such a thing as a clutch hitter. Yes, most of the evidence contradicts this assumption, but the absence of proof doesn’t itself amount to it, and I’ve seen Big Papi win too many games to discount the notion entirely.

Instead, let’s examine the idea that Cabrera was a good clutch hitter. What would that mean? Driving runners in, presumably. O-Cab’s average in ’04 with a runner on 3B? .167. Bases loaded? .091. Guy on third, less than two out? .111. Runners in scoring position? .257. That’s not clutch, you say? Clutch is hitting with two out? Ok, how about runners in scoring position in that situation? .254.

If the evidence doesn’t prove that Cabrera wasn’t a quote unquote clutch hitter, it certainly doesn’t prove that he is.

and a stellar defensive shortstop, and Mientkiewicz was the very best defensive first baseman in the game. These additions allowed the Red Sox to claim that they were making an adjustment to their organizational philosophy — that they’d improved their team defense and roster flexibility and that the deal had a benefit beyond addition-by-subtraction. Cabrera and Mientkiewicz helped prevent runs, and there was value to this. And on the same day, they made a separate deal, acquiring Dave Roberts from the Dodgers for someone named Henri Stanley. Roberts would go on to steal a somewhat significant postseason base.

There’s nobody out there who can compare this trade:

Garciaparra/Murton/Stanley for Cabrera/Mientkiewicz/Roberts

to this trade:

Ramirez/Hansen/Moss/$7 million for Bay

and reasonably claim they’re similar.

Ok, I’ll buy that. But how about tackling a non-strawman argument, such as, oh, the one that says Ramirez’ teammates had spoken to the front office and requested that he be traded. And that the same front office, unconvinced that he would be in the lineup when he was needed, deemed it necessary to replace him? I mean, how valuable can “one of the very best hitters in the game” be if he’s, you know, not actually hitting?

The Red Sox got absolutely fleeced in Thursday’s deal.

Keith Law doesn’t think so. Joe Sheehan doesn’t think so. But then they were stuck dealing with those frustrating “facts,” rather than outdated, blanket assertions about players’ abilities.

The return they got on their end of the Ramirez trade is pitiful and insufficient.

Assume that Manny was not going to be back in ’09. Would you trade Hansen and Moss for Jason Bay? If you wouldn’t, please write a column on that. No one will destroy you for it. Promise.

It doesn’t even matter if Bay turns out to be an All-Star left fielder for them for the next eight years –

You know that Bay’s a free agent after next year, right?

– they’ll still have given up far too much to get him. And in terms of immediate impact, there’s no way Bay will upgrade their team defense as much as Cabrera and Mientkiewicz did in ’04. He plays left field, not shortstop. He’ll be better than Manny, of course, but not by so much that his defense will justify this deal.

Some numbers would be nice. No? Ok.

3. On July 31, 2004, the Red Sox were 56-45, 7.5 games behind the Yankees in the AL East and a half-game behind the Oakland A’s in the wild-card race. They needed to make some moves to get themselves into playoff position. They’d missed the World Series by an inning the year before, and the thought of missing the ’04 playoffs was incomprehensible to the Sox and their agonizing fan base, which was in its 86th straight year without a World Series title. They were treading water and had to do something to change things up.

On July 31, 2008, the Red Sox were 61-48, three games behind Tampa Bay in the AL East and a game up on the Yankees and the Twins in the wild-card race.
They were coming off a 2007 season in which they broke the Yankees’ nine-year run as division champions and won their second World Series in four years. They had no reason to believe they could not repeat as division or World Series champs with the team they had (maybe plus a reliever or two), and no need to break up the league’s best lineup (especially without a good baseball reason to do so).

On July 13th we were up a half game on Tampa and six on the Yankees. In 18 days we gave up three and a half games to the Rays and five to the Yankees. You don’t see a problem there?

The Red Sox did this trade out of anger and spite, because they decided they were sick of Manny’s antics and couldn’t stick it out for two more months after putting up with him for nearly eight full years.

You’re right. They should ignore the fact that he pushed down a 64 year old man, punched his first baseman in the dugout, declined to run out a ground ball in the midst of a game in which we were being no hit, and declined to take the field in games against a key divisional rival.

It’s all petty anger and spite in our front office. I hear the reason they signed Drew was to get back at the Dodgers front office for not returning their calls promptly enough at the Winter Meetings.

It may make them feel better that they don’t have to see him in their clubhouse anymore, but it doesn’t make them a better team in any tangible way. It makes them worse. And the Nomar deal in 2004 didn’t do that.

But I’ll bet you thought it made them worse, didn’t you?

I, For One, Welcome Our New Left Fielder

First things first: it’s been a while. I know that, you may know that, and WordPress here definitely knows that. But let’s set that aside for the moment, as I think I have a fix for the intermittency around here. More on that tomorrow.

For now, we’ve got a much bigger fish to fry, as one of the most talented and perplexing talents ever to don a Red Sox uniform is currently en route to the left coast. Along with seven or so million dollars, better known as his pay. Headed south a few hundred miles are two of the products of our farm system: Brandon Moss and Craig Hansen. Playing left field tomorrow night, meanwhile, will be one Jason Bay.

Just how did we come to this point? It’s an excellent question, and neither I, nor even those you might read in the print media, are likely to have all of the answers. Theo might. Tito might. John Henry might. But I do not.

Still, I’ll give it the old college try. Here are the questions I have and my answers to them. Before you ask, yes, this is me asking myself questions. It’s weird, I get it, but it’s quicker. Bear with me.

Q: What is the deal, finally, that was agreed upon?
A: It’s a three-way trade, as most of you have probably heard. We ship Rmirez to the Dodgers along with cash to cover his salary. We also ship Hansen and Moss to the Pirates. Meanwhile, the Dodgers send Andy LaRoche and Bryan Morris to the Pirates. In return for all of the above, the Buccos give us Jason Bay.

Q: How did you feel about the deal when you first heard it announced?
A: Well, let’s back up. Heading into the deadline, I was convinced that M-Ram should be traded. Not at all costs – Bay or Kemp from the Dodgers were the acceptable returns I could have lived with – but ideally traded. Sitting at Byrnes’ Pub in Bath, I was more than a bit disappointed when four o’clock rolled around and not only had Manny not been traded, we’d done nothing, period. Worse, MLB.com was reporting sometime around 3:30 (according to NESN) that not only had we not acquired Bay, but that Tampa had at the cost of Jeff Niemann and Reid Brignac, Tampa’s #3 and #4 prospects coming into the 08 season according to Baseball America.

Q: So you were disappointed.
A: Definitely. The Yankees have substantially upgraded their club – at a relatively low cost, for the most part – adding an outfielder, a lefthanded reliver, and a starting catcher. And as I write this, they’re one and half games in back of us, despite losing their best starting pitcher, their second best young pitcher, their starting left fielder, and their starting catcher to injuries.

Tampa, meanwhile, leads us by 3 games, with a young club that doesn’t have all that many holes.

So not doing anything, to me, would have been a blow. Maybe that’s right, maybe that’s wrong, but that’s the way it was.

Q: And when you heard the trade announced?
A: Initially, I was pleased. As I said, I was ready for Manny to be gone, and now he was. Ask and ye shall receive. But as the news trickled out, however, that not only was Manny gone with his salary, but Hansen and Moss too, I was less pleased. Particularly since the rumor last night was Manny for Bay and Grabow; not Manny, Hansen and Moss for just Bay.

Then I thought about it a bit, and became resigned.

Q: Resigned why?
A: Because the only conclusion that one can draw from this afternoon’s trade is that things must have been worse – far worse – than we realized. As a friend of mine said in a text, it’s

“almost as if they were anxious to get rid of him. it really makes me wonder if there was more behind the scenes toxicity that we were not made aware of.”

That, in a nutshell, is the situation as I’ve come to see it over the past few days. Denton from the essential Surviving Grady had it right two years ago when he said:

I do believe that once Manny finds a new home, RSN is going to start to get the whole story. The “Manny being Manny” and overall quirkiness were barely tolerable with the information we had. We were willing to overlook a lot in return for Manny’s production. But what about the stories we haven’t heard yet? I think there has been a lot more going on behind the scenes that’s been hidden from the media.

Exactly. Things are almost certain to be a lot less rosy than we’re generally made aware of.

Q: How do you come to that conclusion?
A: Mostly from what I read. I don’t mean the stock media reports; while I’m not inclined to defend Ramirez, as has Allan over at the Joy of Sox, I do agree with him that Manny has been regularly tilted at by a media that didn’t seem to care for him much. Allan calls out Gordon Edes (who is leaving the Globe for Yahoo, incidentally) for this bit of snark:

He’d been sent to Massachusetts General Hospital during the game to have an MRI of both knees, the Sox evidently taking no chances that their slugger might have gotten confused about which one hurt.

Which is appropriate. Edes – whom I like and respect apart from his treatment of Ramirez (far more so than his colleague Cafardo, as you might know) – has been like this for a while.
So the reporters opinions on Manny, well, they don’t mean a whole lot to me. Much more important has been the silence from the rest of the club. Just as in the past, no one apart from the embattled Lugo has come to Manny’s defense. Schilling, in fact, positively killed Manny this afternoon. Maybe, you think, that’s just Schilling being Schilling. WEll, Pedroia and Youk sound a little lukewarm to me.

And frankly this bit from Olney pretty much sums up the relationship Manny has with his manager – who for my money, is the best the Red Sox have had:

Think about how nutty this situation is: In the last five weeks of the 2006 season, reliever Julian Tavarez — who became Manny’s Tony Snow, his spokesman — knew more about whether Manny was going to play or whether he was available to pinch-hit than Boston manager Terry Francona, general manager Theo Epstein and owners John Henry and Larry Lucchino. Absurd.

When was that written? December of 2006. Seriously. We’ve been dealing with this – codepending, if you will – that long.

Throw in the fact that this year’s incidents have been different, and it’s been pretty clear that Manny was not a good fit going forward.

Q: What does “different” mean in this context?
A: In the past, Manny seemed less angry than goofy. There’s the possibly apocryphal story that he had his tailored clothes embroidered with MBM – Manny Being Manny – and my all time favorite, his decision to cut off Damon’s throw from center…while he was in left. I still laugh when I tell that story.

But this year’s MBM incidents have been less harmless than in years past. Pushing Jack McCormick to the ground after he was unable to come up with 16 tickets to the Sox/Astros game? That’s not the happy go lucky Manny we know, and usually, love. Likewise the bizarre Youk/Manny fracas. I can understand if Manny’s frustrated with Youk’s tendency to fling things around the dugout, but fighting in the dugout? Seriously? Or how about telling ESPNDeportes that the “Red Sox don’t deserve a player like me?”

No, the public incidents, anyway, paint a much different picture of Manny than we’ve seen in the past. One that told me he had to go.

Q: But at what price?
A: That, I think, is the point. Think of it this way: the Red Sox front office is generally regarded as being intelligent, diligent, and creative. They’re not perfect – I will never understand their pursuit of Lugo – but they’ve generally been very, very good. Even the Yankee fans agree will grant us that.

And yet they decided that it was in the club’s best interests to ship Manny, the rest of his salary for the year, and two prospects – albeit not elite ones – out the door to get a player of lesser ability.

The fact that that calculus alone made sense tells me everything I need to know about just how bad things were.

Q: So you don’t think this is just a product of a front office / journalist collaboration?
A: No. Is it possible, even likely, that the front office was intentionally leaking to reporters for the purpose of swaying public sentiment in their favor? Sure.

But I have a hard time believing that Gammons’ outrage at Manny is merely him playing the role of front office stooge, as Allan implies. Not simply because I think it unlikely that a reporter of Gammons’ experience would allow himself to be so simply and basely used, but because Gammons has generally been a guy that gave players a chance to be heard. When Roberto Alomar spit on an umpire, Gammons gave him the chance to explain. When John Rocker disparaged virtually every minority on the planet, Gammons listened.

Maybe Gammons doesn’t have the story exactly right – nobody on the outside could – but I think he’s far more right than wrong here. Regardless of what the front office did or did not tell him.

Q: Enough of the muckraking, what do you think of the deal in baseball terms?
A: It’s a good deal for the Dodgers, though they’ve got quite the logjam in the outfield, and it’s an excellent deal in my view from the Pirates perspective. Keith Law says that Morris is the only high upside player in the deal, but in Hansen, LaRoche, and Moss they have some very usable, more or less MLB ready players. And the high upside arm. Maybe they’d prefer to have Niemann and Brignac, but this is a far cry from the days of Littlefield when they’d covet their own assets and get either nothing or nothing of value in return for them.

Q: And for the Sox?
A: A lot of it depends. How does Bay – who’s accustomed to a small market and weaker NL pitching – adapt to Boston? What do Hansen and Moss end up doing? But I’m fine with the deal, ultimately. One, because as discussed above I think it needed to be made. But also because it has potential upside for us, both this year and next. As Law explains:

Bay will really improve the 2009 Red Sox. Boston was almost certain to decline Ramirez’s $20 million option for 2009, which would have left the Red Sox with an offensive hole to fill for next year. Bay is under control for next year, so the hole is already filled, and he’s signed for an amazingly cheap $7.5 million. Even considering the $7 million Boston sent L.A. to pay Manny’s freight for this year (because the Dodgers told teams they could not add any payroll this season), the Red Sox are getting a $15-20 million bat in Bay without the headaches Ramirez had caused lately. And they managed to do it without depleting their strong farm system or committing to a four- or five-year deal they’d regret by the middle of the second year.

Instead of having to find a left fielder for next year, we’ve got one. At $7.5M. Which is $12.5M less than Ramirez’s ’09 option would have cost us.

Is it ideal? No. Ask Anaheim, or LA of Anaheim, or whatever they’re called now, if they’re happy to see Manny gone after they couldn’t get him out during last year’s postseason. No, this was about as well as we were going to do. Which is itself a sad comment.

Q: Let’s talk about Bay: what are we getting?
A: Bay’s a good player, or at least he has been in small markets in the NL. He is not Manny Ramirez, but then no one is. A quick comparison:

BA OBP SLG OPS+ HR
Bay .282 .375 .519 135 22
Ramirez .299 .398 .529 140 20

A slide-in replacement for the lineup? Not quite. But as close as we were going to get, I’d think. And Bay, by all accounts, is a significant defensive upgrade: he’s got the range to cover center, and his arm is reportedly average. Meaning that our outfield, defensively, with Bay in left, Crisp/Ellsbury in center, and Drew in right, should be one of the best in the big leagues.

Other interesting items from his splits:

  • As others have noted, he has a bizarre reverse platoon split. That is, he’s a right handed batter that, this season, is hitting righties well (.307/.387/.566) and lefties poorly (.190/.333/.345). Indications are that this year is a fluke, however, as his three year 05-07 trend shows nothing of the kind: .296/.405/.543 against lefties, .276/.368/.493 against righties.
  • He tends to wear down slightly in the second half: .283/.388/.505 pre-break against .279/.369/.506 after.
  • He’s hit best in the cleanup spot in the lineup: .286/.386/.516 in 790 ABs, compared to .278/.377/.510 in 679 ABs hitting third.
  • He’s hit well with runners in scoring position, .282/.400/.502, and with runners on, .282/.388/.486, but poorly close and late – .205/.333/.373.
  • He’s played three games in his career at Fenway, and put up a .250/.357/.417 line.
  • Though he’s .257/.278/.429 career against the Yankees, he’s .362/.412/.532 against their current staff.
  • Though he’s .391/.429/.739 career against Tampa, he’s .200/.283/.425 against their current staff (1-18 off Wheeler).
  • He hits .257 off fastballs, .290 off curves, .269 off sliders, .244 off changeups, and .111 off everything else.

Q: Besides losing the kids in addition to the money, anything else bug you about this trade?
A: The fact that we didn’t get a reliever. Ultimately, that’s been our Achilles heel all season. Many have noted that we can theoretically add one before the waiver trade deadline in a month, but we need the help now. Bringing someone back this week would have been ideal, and it would have been nice, for example to have spun Moss into Mahay instead of folding him into Bay.

Q: Net net, what’s your take.
A: In Theo we trust. If he determined Manny needed to go, that’s good enough for me. He did well to get Bay, dealing as he was from a position of extreme weakness, and now we just have to hope we can patch up the bullpen and right the ship. Oh, and before I forget, best of luck to the kids: here’s hoping that Hansen and Moss blossom down in Pittsburgh.

Q: Will you miss Manny?
A: I’ll miss his performances. The Angels ALDS game that he won last year in walkoff fashion? I was there, and he absolutely crushed that ball.

But the player? Not really. I’m with Tim: he lost me this year.

Update: While I’m sure many will regard it as a post-exit character assassination, Sean McAdam reported the following last night:

General manager Theo Epstein was working with a mandate from within his own clubhouse. Following his team’s dispiriting loss to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Wednesday night, Epstein met with a handful of Red Sox veterans, all of whom delivered the same message: Manny had to go.

Buster Olney is reportedly saying much the same on SportsCenter this morning. Sad.

In Case You Haven't Been Keeping Up With Current Events

Well, I don’t even know where to start. You’re screwed. You missed 1.) a sweep of Tampa, 2.) a brawl with Tampa, 3.) a brawl between Manny and Youk (not joking), 4.) an injury to Ellsbury, 5.) progress from Schill, 6.) held breath on Papi, 7.) two more good starts from Masterson and so on.

Oh, and the draft was this week.

So good luck catching up on all of that. But I’ll tell you what, we’ll try for you anyway.

The Brawl

I’m with the SOSH folks on this one: I’m not sure I can defend Coco here. Maybe on the hard slide – that’s debatable, but not in charging the mound. Shields – to his credit – hit him in exactly the right way, not dialing it up and not shooting for the head. True, he was an idiot for doing it in the second inning, but he handled himself well, while Coco – in my view – did not.

Either way, I’ll take the sweep.

The Bullpen

One of the brighter spots in the past week to ten days has been – shockingly – Boston’s bullpen. Tito seems to be easing Hansen into a MDC-in-’07-like 7th inning role. The onetime bust out of St John’s is unscored upon in his last five apperances, and over 5.2 IP has K’d 5, walked 2 and given up just one hit. Speaking of MDC, you know who also has exactly the same numbers over his last five appearances? That’s right. MDC. Throw in the potential of Masterson down the stretch, and we may not have to do too much to reconstruct our once leaky pen.

One minor down note: Daniel Bard, he of the 100 MPH fastball, got lit up today against Akron. In 1.2 IP, he coughed up 4 hits – 2 of them homers – and 4 runs, striking out only one. On the plus side, he didn’t walk anybody.

The Draft

Lots of takes on the club’s haul in the draft, and obviously the signing process for these kids will be lengthy, but I’m encouraged not just by the reports but by the fact that it would appear that we’ll be ignoring the commissioner office’s slot recommendations once again. As we should.

Here’s Baseball America’s page (sub req’d, sorry), but, better, here‘s Keith Law’s take on our draft class:

Boston bet it all on red, taking one high-ceiling player after another. Apparently, they’re willing to worry about the signability of these players later on. Casey Kelly is a first-rounder as a pitcher or position player, but his bonus demands and commitment to play quarterback at Tennessee scared off potential suitors. Ryan Westmoreland’s bonus demands ($1.6 to $2.1 million) and commitment to Vanderbilt had him viewed as completely unsignable all spring, even though he was a top-40 talent and had performed well over the summer with a wood bat. Bryan Price was totally misused at Rice, and was one of the best reliever-to-starter conversion opportunities in the draft. Derrik Gibson and Pete Hissey are both athletic, projectable tools players with the chance to play in the middle of the field (Gibson as a shortstop/second baseman, Hissey as a center fielder); both also have commitments to strong college programs (North Carolina and Virginia, respectively). Even if the Red Sox don’t sign all four of those high school talents, signing Kelly and one of the others would be an impressive haul of talent — and we know the Sox have the resources to sign more than just two.

So the class is good. But good as in better than the Yankees? Law says yes:

Steve (Clemson, SC): Hey Keith, Sorry but I have to ask: Better 2008 draft, if they sign most of their picks, Red Sox or Yankees?

SportsNation Keith Law: Red Sox.

We can only hope.

The Fight

At the SeaDog brewpub down in Brunswick, they have HD. Which is good. They don’t have audio, which is bad. So I had no idea what the hell was happening when M-Ram and Yoooook had to be separated in our own dugout. Neither, I learned later, did anyone else, but still.

If the reports are accurate, and that this centered around the (potentially widely held) perception that Youk is putting his own concerns in front of the teams by tearing apart the dugout post an at bat in games where we’re up comfortably, then I’m glad this came out now. Better to let it out now, ugly as it appeared, then let it fester.

Besides, the guys are Surviving Grady are spot on, it was worth it just to hear Tito’s one line summary:

I think they were just exchanging some views on things.

The O’Brien Factor

I’ll acknowledge up front that this could just be me. I’ll also acknowledge that I don’t particularly care for Dave O’Brien (I’d prefer to have a Sox only play by play announcer), even while I’ll concede that he’s a well regarded national broadcaster. But there is one thing he’s doing that is making me insane: he’s ignoring, completely, generally accepted rules against jinxing games, performances or players.

Jon Lester’s no hitter? He was discussing it freely in the fifth. We’re poised to take the third of three games against Tampa? He’s calling it a sweep before the game is ended. Masterson’s the pitcher of record in a game we’re winning by a run? O’Brien’s word choice is “will win.” Not the conditional “would,” but “will.”

I’m not saying that this is anything but trivial. I’m also not saying I’m sane. But listen to a game he broadcasts and see if you notice: he has no sense whatsoever with his tenses or conditionals. None.

And it’s driving me crazy.

In Case You Haven't Been Keeping Up With Current Events


(link courtesy of Dan Lamothe over at the Red Sox Monster)

Manny hit his 500th. In a Red Sox uniform. Which given that he was placed on unconditional waivers just a few years back, probably qualifies as mildly surprising. Kudos to Manny for this achievement, it’s a real benchmark.

One that, frankly, makes me appreciate just how absurd it is for A-Rod to have passed the mark last year, while four years younger than M-Ram. And consider that Junior – who is 2 years older than Manny and has missed somewhere around a billion games since leaving Seattle – is sitting just shy of 600. Incredible. All three of them.

Anyway, we also we lost a bunch of games on the road. Like, lots of them. Enough so that we find ourselves, once more, looking up at that Tampa club I specifically warned you people about. But I suppose it’s not your fault. What with your lack of any ability to change anything or do something about Tampa.

Anyway, on to this week’s ICYHBKUWCE:

Bard’s Resurgence

Much has been made in many venues – this one being no exception – of Daniel Bard‘s transformation from a freakishly hard throwing walk machine to potentially useful bullpen piece. ESPN’s Keith Law had this to say about the reliever in a chat this week:

Bard’s been 98-100 with life, and he’s throwing strikes. Great move skipping him past the scene of the crime in Lancaster, too. Haven’t heard anything on Cox, although I know last year his velo was down.

As for the mentioned Cox, that would be Bryce. While he hasn’t quite matched Bard’s numbers – let alone his fastball – Cox has put up an interesting 21 K/3 BB/1.59 ERA line in 22.2 IP. Which he needed to do, because last year was not a good one for him, despite the talk early in ’07 that he was a potential closer candidate down the line.

Clay vs Masterson

With Colon safely holding down Buchholz’ spot in the majors, there’s not much opportunity at the current time for either Buchholz or Masterson to start at the major league level: Matsuzaka DL’d or no. Everyone’s favorite Clay, of course, came off his rehab and remained at Pawtucket, ostensibly to work on his fastball and secondarily – one would assume – to keep his innings down.

Masterson, meanwhile, had his PawSox start bumped up to put him in line for a start in Matsuzaka’s slot in the event that he had to be placed on the DL. Which he was, obviously.

All of which is causing some to question whether or not Buchholz has been passed by Masterson on the depth chart. Some, like the Portland Press Herald’s Kevin Thomas, who said just that:

It will be interesting to see how Justin Masterson does Tuesday at Fenway. If he has a third sold start, does he move ahead of Buchholz on the depth chart?

To which I’d reply, with all due respect to Thomas: that’s insane.

Obviously, I hope that Masterson throws the shit out of the ball in his third appearance. Hell, I’d even take a no hitter. But the fact is that in terms of projection, it’s still no certainty that Masterson’s future role with this club is as a starting pitcher. He has one potentially dominant pitch: a sinking fastball. His changeup was essentially unusable in his second start, and his slider is relatively average by all accounts. One pitch pitchers typically don’t fare all that well multiple times through the order, let alone multiple times through the league.

Buchholz, on the other hand, has two 70 pitches: his curve and his change. If his fastball is even average, he’s a potentially dominant arm. As we saw last year against Baltimore.

So intending no disrespect to Masterson, who seems to be as good a kid as he is a pitcher, let’s not get carried away when projecting these kids. A couple of starts doesn’t alter the expectation that while both kids should end up being very good, useful pitchers, Buchholz could be an ace.

Cap’n Intangibles: Say it Ain’t So

From the non-Red Sox department comes an interesting little tidbit from Dan Graziano of the New Jersey Star Ledger. In a piece (via Buster Olney) discussing Jeter’s statistical improvement defensively this season comes the revelation that the sainted shortstop may have been a wee bit careless with respect to his defensive responsibilities:

According to two Yankees officials, who requested anonymity because they feared they were talking about things that might upset or embarrass Jeter, the Yankees approached their captain last offseason and told him they wanted him to work on his defense — specifically on balls hit up the middle to his left, where he has been particularly weak.

They also asked Jeter if he would please be more attentive to advance scouting reports when positioning himself. This has been a particular peeve of the Yankees’ regarding Jeter in recent years — that he was stubborn about not wanting to move a step or two to his right or left to account for the hitter, the pitcher or the situation. If the scouting report tells them that Batter A hits 80 percent of his ground balls at or to the right of second base, it would make sense for a shortstop with poor range to his left to shade that way to compensate. Jeter, it is said, did not pay much attention to this.

Even in a vacuum, this would not reflect well on the player. But when the player in question refused to put the team first and allow a better defensive shortstop on the roster (that’d be A-Rod) to play the position – well, it’s particularly inexcusable.

But of course, because it’s Cap’n Intangibles, the press found ways in the offseason to praise the shortstop for finding ways to “train better” as he ages.

Ellsbury’s Defense

As everyone is no doubt aware, when both He-Who-Is-Named-After-a-Cereal and my Navajo Brother play the same outfield, the latter is shifted to either one of the corners in deference the former’s veteran status and sparkling defensive play in ’07. But perhaps that shouldn’t be the case.

According to the Great Gammons, the A’s resident genius, our onetime would-be GM, said that Ells is “without doubt the best defensive center fielder in the game today.”

Either way, it’s a good problem to have, because with those two and Drew in right it’s about as good a defensive outfield as you’re likely to see.

Free Trot

From the bittersweet files comes an update on one of my all time favorite Sox, one Christopher Trotman Nixon. As the Times is good enough to tell us, Trot is, at the age of 34, toiling away for AAA Tuscon in the Arizona system.

Tell me something couldn’t be worked out with Arizona. I mean, seriously? The club admits in the article that Arizona doesn’t have room for him. Even if there’s not a spot on the major league roster for him now, and there is not, I have to think he’d prefer to bide his time in Pawtucket over Tuscon.

Free Trot!

Minor League Gameday Audio

From Senor Hartzell comes a wonderful discovery for those of you that are as baseball as insane as I am: the minor league guys have gameday audio available as well. Enjoy, and thanks for the tip, Noel.

Road Struggles

We’re not good on the road. You’re shocked, I know. But some of the numbers are just bizarre. Our OPS at home, for example, is a 113 points higher (.857 to .744). You know what the equivalent delta is for the Rockies, the club with perhaps the most notorious home/away split? 93 (.773 to .680).

The pitching issues are no less mysterious. While we’re actually allowing a lower OPS away from Fenway, our ERA on the road is almost a full run higher (4.40 to 3.50). And, obviously, the winning percentage is a bit different: .808 at home to .406.

If it’s any consolation, according to Buster Olney this is not unique to the Sox, it’s a league wide issue. He quotes Steve Hirdt of Elias as saying the following:

In recent years, baseball’s home-team winning percentage has been very consistent: In each of the past 15 years, it was never lower than .516 and never as high as .550. The past four years were .535, .537, .546 and .542.

But this year, through games of May 29, home teams have a combined .577 winning percentage. The last major-league season in which the home-team winning percentage finished that high was 1931 (when it was .582). Since then, the HTWP has finished as high as .570 only once (.573 in 1978).

Bizarre. And neither the people he spoke with, nor those contacted by Cafardo, can explain it.

Nor can I, obviously. But the one thing I do know is that it needs to change, and fast. Winning 40 percent of 50 percent of our schedule is not going to get us to where we need to go. Not at all.