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Post by beasleyrockah on Mar 10, 2013 23:09:37 GMT -5
Although I think JBJ is more likely to peak early, rather than late, I attribute this more to his advanced program in college, his position played and his body type but even I would start him in AAA ball. That said, I think Barry Bond's statistics alone at age 39 with 45 HR, 222 walks, .362 average and .609 OBP is probably plenty of data to indicate that steroids extends many careers. I would also postulate that early adopters probably break down earlier though, for example perhaps if one considers Junior and Arod as likely steroid users in Seattle. I think extended, long term use of steroids probably curtails careers according to data as I understand it. I don't feel compelled to have to take the time to prove everything in a recreational sports forum though. If others disbelieve it, they can certainly take the time to look it up if they want. This is the entire problem. Using a Barry Bonds season in isolation to prove a league wide effect is absurd. Barry Bonds is the outlier of outliers not named Babe Ruth, he was a baseball alien. It would be like citing Babe's stats in any single season to prove the effects of alcohol and borderline obesity on player performance. Gain an adequate sample size and let's talk, but Fenway's right, the narrative used to be steroids caused a flash peak and eventually made players break down. How would you explain Pedro's peak performance in the late 90s? PEDs? It was the outlier of outliers after all...
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Post by beasleyrockah on Mar 8, 2013 0:58:28 GMT -5
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Post by beasleyrockah on Feb 18, 2013 23:05:04 GMT -5
Hamilton is signed for more seasons than Victorino and Drew combined. Josh Hamilton looks great for one season, I'm sure the Red Sox would've given him $25-32m on a one year deal. That wasn't an option though, and you didn't even mention the long term commitment, you focused solely on 2013 which isn't the way contracts work.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Feb 6, 2013 20:19:10 GMT -5
The MLB needs to watch NFL Network/NFL Films and stop doing this kind of stuff. I'll admit I started laughing hysterically when they showed Flutie, I was half expecting Michael Bishop and Rohan Davey to walk in.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Jan 27, 2013 20:50:57 GMT -5
The comment was about a talent purge and you're talking about contracts.....what seems silly is to be confusing the two. Or to think that something falling into their lap would be praise worthy. Regardless, if you think the job that BC has done is praise worthy, you're more than welcome to your opinion. Just don't slam the opinion of others as "whining" simply because you don't agree with it. This is a message board, not a law review. Talent purge is a misleading and excessive description, no? I think you could make an easy argument that the Red Sox added pitching talent through this trade. I also think you can make an easy argument that the core (including Gonzo, CC, and Beckett) was fatally flawed until they added significant pitching talent. They lacked the payroll flexibility to add that pitching talent without a crazy lucky scenario or blowing by the luxury tax like the Dodgers. RDLR and Webster offer more talent than Josh Beckett does at this stage of his career. I can understand arguing they came out net negative in talent through this deal (ignoring salary), but purge is overstated. Gonzalez hasn't performed like an elite talent since the 2011 AS break and Crawford is coming off an injury and two lost seasons. The "purged" talent wasn't flashing much talent in Boston over a decent sample size.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Jan 25, 2013 16:34:53 GMT -5
Remember everyone being afraid of "blocking" Kalish earlier this offseason? That was fun. This is why you build depth and don't hand over jobs to people who haven't had success in years.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Jan 13, 2013 2:24:32 GMT -5
So your argument is that if Clemens and Bonds had been prescribed the steroids then they weren't breaking the rules? I feel confident in saying that both Clemens and Bonds illegally took steroids which weren't prescribed by their doctors (although this is a loophole that you could use to argue for some other players) I'm not a big fan fan of the whole ethical debate. I only have the following arguments against PED users getting into the hall of fame: 1. They broke the rules - period (unless they took steroids legally) 2. Their numbers, which everyone uses to support their candidacy, are purely a result of their PED use which wasnt shared with ALL of basesball as many players chose not to cheat or didn't have steroids of this caliber available to them in their time. 3. To elect known steroid users into the hall of fame sends the message to all players, children and whoever else is paying attention that: IT PAYS TO CHEAT. I'm not going to say it doesn't pay to cheat more often than not but I don't like it in any avenue of life when cheating is rewarded. 4. The 'he would have made it even if he hadn't cheated!' argument is far worse than the argument of guessing who cheated. Catching a cheater is tough - knowing when a cheater began cheating and exactly how good he would have been if he hadn't cheated is next to impossible. As far as we know Barry Bonds may have taken steroids in high school. We just never know. You do have a point to your amphetamines (greenies) comment; obviously this is where we run into a grey area. Greenies and Steroids/HGH are like apples and oranges. Completely unalike in so many ways as the effects of steroids/HGH are far beyond those granted through greenies. But at the same time, they are both fruit. The problem with greenies is determining how much of a benefit they are over caffeine. Is caffeine a performance enhancer which should be illegal? (a devout Mormon would likely say yes) It's all a slippery slope and we have to figure out where to draw the line. My vote is that the line should be drawn at a level more strict than: 'let everything go - everyone was doing it'. No. Barry Bonds was not a pure creation of PED's, no MLB player is a creation of steroids. It's not even worth debating when the base assertion is this extreme, but unfortunately this view point seems to be the majority opinion from writers and fans. Even if you claim it's cheating, players/managers/owners who've cheated in some way have been inducted into the HOF. The writers who automatically dismiss the players who've been rumored to PED's from consideration are making a personal choice that is baseless and defies precedent.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Jan 11, 2013 13:55:25 GMT -5
Again, Tom Yawkee is in the Hall of Fame. Multiple commissioners and owners who are in the Hall of Fame systematically discriminated against players based on race, which obviously effected the baseball product (substantially decreasing the possible talent pool). There is no rational argument to stress the morality clause now after essentially ignoring it from the jump. It's the internet era, kids walking into the HOF will know the PED connection to Bonds and Clemens.
The most baffling part about this to me is Rickey Henderson. Clearly Piazza and Bagwell were hurt by the era they played in, neither had any real evidence against them. How did Rickey Henderson get a pass when he played in the same era and did things that are out of his world? Or Nolan Ryan for that matter...people talk about Bonds hitting 73 HR's, but um is it normal to pitch forever like Nolan did? We can play this circumstantial evidence all day, but I'm pretty confident at least one person who is already in the HOF at least dabbled in PED's at one point. It's too late for the morality police, they've already lost.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Jan 9, 2013 20:55:30 GMT -5
Was Tom Yawkey's integrity discussed when he was inducted? There are straight up bigots in the hall of fame, sorry, I don't find taking steroids a bigger morality/integrity issue than executives who systematically discriminated against people based on race. The hall of fame has plaques of many bad people, picking this issue to stress the "morality" clause is inconsistent at best.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Jan 5, 2013 13:41:19 GMT -5
Now that we've seen the impact the new CBA has had on free agency it seems more and more likely that Ellsbury plays the full season for the Sox. Any team trading for him at the deadline would already know that he is a playoff drive rental because he is a Boras client lowering his trade value. Add to that the fact that he cannot be made a qualifying offer by the acquiring team because he did not spend the full season with that club. That would seem to lower his value even more since the acquiring club wouldn't be able to recoup the draft pick to partially offset the loss of minor league talent in the trade. Now more than ever, the best time to move a player in his type of situation is a year and a half away from free agency. The acquiring team would get two playoff drives out of the player and potentially draft pick compensation. At this point from a Sox perspective his value is maximized by keeping him the full season and giving him a qualifying offer. Odds are he'll be here at season's end if he opens the season with the club. The Sox should have tried to move him right after the Punto trade before he was missing time due to injury.Ellsbury suffered his injury way before the Punto trade was being discussed. The Punto trade was post-trade deadline, even if the Red Sox wanted to deal Ellsbury it's questionable whether he would've passed through waivers. For the sake of discussion, let's assume he would've been able to be traded. If dealing him now constitutes a sell low, dealing him last August would've too. He was coming off a significant injury and not playing effectively at that point. I don't see how dealing him late last August would've given him significantly more value than this offseason, where the Red Sox reportedly never came close to considering a deal. If we're playing the hindsight game, the clear time to deal him would've been after 2011. Ellsbury is either going to have an elite year (which would put him in position for a top of the market deal and probably give him trade value > the comp pick) or have a decent/injury plagued year and be in position to take a pillow contract to reestablish value. He can't simply put up his career averages or less next year and command some huge deal, people speak on the market but Michael Bourn had a great recent track record and is still sitting there. Ellsbury is looking at BJ Upton money without a monster 2013 season imo.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 29, 2012 19:43:50 GMT -5
So two things I've noticed 1. if the sox didn't want to give up a second rounder this year for either Greinke or Hamilton then how many players are there that you think they'd give up a first rounder for? Keep in mind the chances of us getting a protected pick again aren't that great. I suppose other things could factor in like how close we are to being a major competitor instead of just having an outside chance and what the possibilities are of us getting other picks from players we made a QO to but still I think there are very very few. 2. There seems to be a lot of hostility this off season. Even members that I've never seen "lose it" have been seemingly very irate this year. The second round pick for Greinke and Hamilton was a minor consideration within the entire acquisition cost. It's not like the Red Sox liked them for the market price and simply passed BECAUSE of the compensation attached. If they could've signed them at the value they set, I'm sure they would've been willing to part with the pick, regardless of their current talent. I just don't see any evidence that would suggest these guys were off limits strictly because of the compensation, if anything the Red Sox reportedly ruled out Greinke a while ago and were involved in Hamilton if he was willing to sign a shorter contract.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 28, 2012 23:15:18 GMT -5
Calm down, Consuela. This team isn't making the playoffs next year, so they could equally miss out on October without paying over $120M in contracts to a bunch of players in their early/mid 30's whose best years are behind them and will provide little improvement and won't be around when the team is ready to be relevant again. Guess they need to l ook like they're trying so they can keep the pink hats in the seats and the so important "sell out streak" going, but that still is money spent poorly for a team that is in obvious transition.Give Kalish, Nava, Iglesias, Lavarnway 500 at bats and see what they got instead of spending millions on marginal players to take AB's from them. Heck, get JBJ a cup of MLB coffee to start the season. I rather see what Morales and Dubront can do starting 25-30 games rather than give innings to a 35yo Dempster who has no long term future with this team. Working with what they already had doesn't mortgage the long term health and keeps the precious picks, but these signings are spending money for the sake of spending it. To me that's a poor offseason considering where the team is now and where they're very likely to finish next year (watching the playoffs from their couch). Right, the Red Sox signed Victorino, Napoli, Drew, and Dempster to get the "pink hats", as we all know the casual bandwagon fans will love those names. The "real fans" talk in absolutes about how this team has no chance at the postseason, anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly a pink hat. Perhaps the most baseless part of this is how they've spent the money poorly, as if they've had better available options. The new CBA restricts allocating tons of money to IFA and the draft. They either had to trade for guys on bad deals/sign non elite free agents (like they've done), sign a risky big ticket guy, or pocket the majority of the savings and field a noncompetitive team. You can argue they've overpaid on AAV for a few guys, but the worst case scenario is the team is completely noncompetitive the next 1-2 years and the wasted cost isn't going to impact the long term future regardless.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 26, 2012 20:25:09 GMT -5
I cringed when I read the quotes from the assistant GM. He talks about how great it is to "add a two time All Star closer", how "those types of guys don't usually become available very often" (seriously that was the quote). Does he really believe that? Literally every year you can land a "proven closer" if you decide you want to allocate the resources to pay for one. It's just disappointing to read that type of analysis from O'Halloran, it's what Joe Haggerty would say on Sports Tonight. In all honesty what do you expect him to say though? He has a job to do and telling the truth about the situation isn't what people want to hear. The average fan could care less about the 40 man and all they know is a two time all star just got added to the team. I'd rather him give a good reason for the trade instead of catering to Joe Fan. I'm not asking him to call Melancon fragile or to criticize the guys heading out, but maybe talk about why Joel had a down year last year and how it will be better this season. Or he could be vague in a Belichickian way and just say they made the move to improve their team and not add fluff. His job isn't to convince causal fans they won a trade in December, if anything his job should be to convince the more passionate fans about a seemingly questionable trade. Suggesting Hanrahan is some rare commodity is either a tactic to excite casual fans, or a poor organizational judgement. O'Halloran shouldn't be worried about "selling" the team to fans, leave that to Sam Kennedy and Dr. Charles. If baseball ops executed better I wouldn't care about media quotes. Unfortunately they've had a poor run lately, so adding headscratching quotes to a headscratching move annoys me as a fan.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 26, 2012 18:33:57 GMT -5
I cringed when I read the quotes from the assistant GM. He talks about how great it is to "add a two time All Star closer", how "those types of guys don't usually become available very often" (seriously that was the quote). Does he really believe that? Literally every year you can land a "proven closer" if you decide you want to allocate the resources to pay for one. It's just disappointing to read that type of analysis from O'Halloran, it's what Joe Haggerty would say on Sports Tonight.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 23, 2012 19:42:50 GMT -5
Unless there are two deals worked out and the Red Sox are deciding which one to go with. Perhaps it is Sands, Pimentel and one or two lower tier guys for Hanrahan or Sands, Pimentel, Melancon, and another player for Hanrahan and Jones. If this is the actual scenario, isn't it a no brainer? The Red Sox would basically be deciding whether to deal Melancon for Jones, which would make sense even if they weren't getting Hanrahan. The bullpen is overflowing with righties and Jones could have a real role here.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 22, 2012 20:21:12 GMT -5
apparently we didn't learn anything from last year. weiland and lowrie for melancon. alcantara, reddick, and head for sweeney and bailey. sweeney was non-tendered last year and melancon and bailey each posted ERA's of over 6. hanrahan is good, but his walk rate was 5.4/9 IP. he had a whopping 1.2/9 hr rate in the NL East. that will go through the roof in the AL east. relief pitchers flame out all the time and they come and go. i would not be surprised if hanrahan posted an ERA over 6 next year. so now, assuming bard returns to from, we have aceves, tazawa, bailey, bard, hanrahan, uehara, morales, miller, breslow, and mortensen in the bullpen. that is way to many relievers. so you need to select three of these guys to not be on the MLB team next year. i don't think pimentel will amount to anything, but i really like sands and i think he has .280 and 20 hr potential. hanrahan better be worth it. dont be surprised if he flames out though. And? He had a .13 HR/9 the season before that. Single season HR totals for relievers aren't predictive, and this past season was a clear outlier, it's not who he's been for his entire career. The walk rate is the alarming element, I could care less about the home runs in 60 innings.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 21, 2012 18:30:30 GMT -5
K Law from his chat. Seems like more and more people think Xander can stick at SS. Law thought it could happen before but he's increased the odds. espn.go.com/sportsnation/chat/_/id/46518/mlb-insider-keith-lawTravis (Boston) Will Xander Bogaerts be a SS long-term? Red Sox seem to have doubled down on him being a shortstop Klaw (3:15 PM) I think it's 50/50 or so. He improved a lot there this year. I think the key phrase here is "long term". If Klaw thinks he has a 50/50 chance of sticking long term, he must think he's likely to at least arrive as a shortstop and spend some time there before either outgrowing the position or proving he isn't an adequate defender. Sticking long term is a lot different than arriving as a 21-22 year old before an inevitable move.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 20, 2012 2:38:40 GMT -5
There is something wrong with Napoli, otherwise the red sox would have made it official already. Morales had a good year versus right handed pitching. He should be fully recovered from that freak injury. I believe that if Morales would not been injured Pujols or Hamilton would not be necessary. Morales would be established as a great hitter. But now he's available for a trade and if costs the red sox any one of the Brentz/Cecchini/Swihart/Owens tier then so be it. Worse case scenario is we get a good year from Morales he is too expensive to keep and we get a high draft pick as compensation. By the way what was Napoli�s batting avg. last year? Nope. Nope.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 18, 2012 1:12:45 GMT -5
It's higher than I thought he'd get but not by much, and this is the offseason of not caring about $2m extra for the '13 payroll.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 12, 2012 1:37:11 GMT -5
As someone who really wanted to see the Sox make a serious push to aquiring Choo, I have to say that at that price, I am very happy that we did not. Alarming walk rates and possible bad attitude be damned, Bauer is an excellent get by the Indians. Agreed. I thought Choo would be a perfect fit on this team, but I assumed the cost wouldn't come close to a Bauer caliber pitcher, even considering the "attitude". If Ellsbury just stays healthy and plays to career norms, he should command a similar prospect around the deadline from some desperate team. I know the Beltran-Wheeler trade isn't necessarily the year to year norm, but human factors can make usually intelligent GMs really overestimate the value of a rental.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 11, 2012 19:13:43 GMT -5
If the Red Sox don't deal Ellsbury in the offseason, I'm afraid they'll be hesitant to pull the trigger at the deadline if they have any chance at contending for a playoff spot (which I think they will). Are they really going to deal Ellsbury at the deadline and roll with two of Gomes/Nava/Kalish/JBJ playing everyday for the remainder? I have my doubts, and if any of the outfielders get hurt or disappoint (which will happen), the depth gets even further effected.
More importantly, Swisher would be a significant upgrade for this team and would give the Red Sox the deepest lineup in the division. Gomes will still get his at bats, putting him in a more traditional bench role would theoretically allow him to be used better (almost exclusively against lefties or at Fenway). If they receive perfect health he might have a shortage of playing time, but I expect another year of injuries since it's baseball, and without adding one more plus bat I worry that he'll get overexposed. I recognize the Red Sox probably signed Gomes for a bigger role, but that's my wishlist. And Stephen Drew. And Anibal Sanchez or better.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 11, 2012 17:24:07 GMT -5
Assuming the cost is right, I'd sign Swisher regardless of what happens to Ellsbury.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 10, 2012 20:33:40 GMT -5
I just don't understand the consternation over being only a marginal contender. No prospects or draft picks have been given up and no long-term, potentially-crippling contracts have been given out. The FO clearly looked at the slate of "elite" FAs and decided neither Greinke nor Hamilton were worth the commitment (something I agree with), and this is the next-best option. The long-term prospect core of the team is still in place, but in the short-term the team is more competitive. What's the big deal? The 2011 Yankees were crushed by their fans for this. They only added Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon while the Red Sox became unbeatable. On paper. And to be fair the Yankees didn't win the WS, but trying to win can actually be good for a franchise. All those moves the Dodgers made in July couldn't win them their division. There is a difference between trying to win now, and trying to win now at all costs. Well said on all points Jmei.
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 10, 2012 20:30:39 GMT -5
It's funny, this team's talent level is always .500, unless they add Hamilton or Greinke, is which case they could actually contend. They could add 4-5 more quality but non-elite players, and the expectations will remain the same. It's like they can't possibly be good unless they fill the big name quota. I mean, where will all the RBI's come from?
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Post by beasleyrockah on Dec 10, 2012 20:25:03 GMT -5
Most free agents are signed for more than many/most other GMs would pay. Players tend to accept the highest offer.... And after 6+ years of team control, most of those guys are also on the wrong side of 30. But hey, if you're going to overpay for past performance over the decline years, you might as well go way overboard for the best player available, regardless of the situation. Shane Victorino couldn't possibly be a good contributor for a contending team...
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