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Sox: Headed up or headed down?
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Post by ancientsoxfogey on Sept 10, 2014 21:33:16 GMT -5
I realize I'm probably older than a great majority of the posters on this board, so I look at things with a different perspective than most, perhaps. But I really get highly amused at the angst that gets thrown around here. So, the Sox took a chance with some prospects this season and a few of them haven't panned out. So what? They won the WORLD SERIES last year. Heck, I rooted for this team for 47, count 'em, 47 years before they won a World Series. And I count myself lucky, because the only championship the Sox won during the lifetime of my father, an avid Sox fan, was when he was 1 year old.
Give what has been an extremely competent organization a chance to tinker and figure out what the next generation team ought to look like. The O's get a chance to win the Division and maybe do some damage in the playoffs this season. Good for them. In the greater scheme of things, the recent struggles of the organization is a small blip in its history, interspersed with a championship. And for its struggles the organization gets a terrific consolation prize - a high draft position in the first round AND IN ALL ROUNDS next year for a franchise that has done a very good job of drafting in the last decade +.
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Post by soxfan1615 on Sept 10, 2014 22:12:13 GMT -5
I realize I'm probably older than a great majority of the posters on this board, so I look at things with a different perspective than most, perhaps. But I really get highly amused at the angst that gets thrown around here. So, the Sox took a chance with some prospects this season and a few of them haven't panned out. So what? They won the WORLD SERIES last year. Heck, I rooted for this team for 47, count 'em, 47 years before they won a World Series. And I count myself lucky, because the only championship the Sox won during the lifetime of my father, an avid Sox fan, was when he was 1 year old. Give what has been an extremely competent organization a chance to tinker and figure out what the next generation team ought to look like. The O's get a chance to win the Division and maybe do some damage in the playoffs this season. Good for them. In the greater scheme of things, the recent struggles of the organization is a small blip in its history, interspersed with a championship. And for its struggles the organization gets a terrific consolation prize - a high draft position in the first round AND IN ALL ROUNDS next year for a franchise that has done a very good job of drafting in the last decade +. I agree with you, but at the same time, with the financial advantage the team has, there is no excuse to ever have a year like this. They should compete every year
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Post by jmei on Sept 10, 2014 22:17:00 GMT -5
Honest question: if they miss the playoffs, does it matter if they miss by one game or by twenty games? I understand that "competing" creates entertainment value for the fan base even if they ultimate miss the playoffs (or, for that matter, if they lose in the playoffs), but if the mentality is World-Series-win-or-bust, it shouldn't really matter. Indeed, in that lens, it may be better to miss the playoffs by a lot, since that way you at least get a higher draft pick and a protected pick.
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Post by zimmerdown on Sept 10, 2014 22:25:38 GMT -5
I love the angst. I'm with fogey and jmei, but I love the guys screaming about ownership not being committed to winning. I'm not as old as ASF but i was around for the Jean Yawkey/John Harrington era. You guys are funny......waiting for godot
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Post by FenwayFanatic on Sept 10, 2014 22:28:13 GMT -5
I realize I'm probably older than a great majority of the posters on this board, so I look at things with a different perspective than most, perhaps. But I really get highly amused at the angst that gets thrown around here. So, the Sox took a chance with some prospects this season and a few of them haven't panned out. So what? They won the WORLD SERIES last year. Heck, I rooted for this team for 47, count 'em, 47 years before they won a World Series. And I count myself lucky, because the only championship the Sox won during the lifetime of my father, an avid Sox fan, was when he was 1 year old. Give what has been an extremely competent organization a chance to tinker and figure out what the next generation team ought to look like. The O's get a chance to win the Division and maybe do some damage in the playoffs this season. Good for them. In the greater scheme of things, the recent struggles of the organization is a small blip in its history, interspersed with a championship. And for its struggles the organization gets a terrific consolation prize - a high draft position in the first round AND IN ALL ROUNDS next year for a franchise that has done a very good job of drafting in the last decade +. I agree with you, but at the same time, with the financial advantage the team has, there is no excuse to ever have a year like this. They should compete every year I disagree. I think there are a lot of valid excuses for having a year like this. The Giants also had an awful year after winning the World Series and they haven extremely high attendance and payroll as well. Then they bounces back this year. The smartest thing to do is to keep a level head and not panic.
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Post by nationinthesouth on Sept 10, 2014 23:00:50 GMT -5
I agree with you, but at the same time, with the financial advantage the team has, there is no excuse to ever have a year like this. They should compete every year I disagree. I think there are a lot of valid excuses for having a year like this. The Giants also had an awful year after winning the World Series and they haven extremely high attendance and payroll as well. Then they bounces back this year. The smartest thing to do is to keep a level head and not panic. Wow has the "Pespi" generation of Sox fans become a little entitled.
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Post by soxfan1615 on Sept 10, 2014 23:06:06 GMT -5
I disagree. I think there are a lot of valid excuses for having a year like this. The Giants also had an awful year after winning the World Series and they haven extremely high attendance and payroll as well. Then they bounces back this year. The smartest thing to do is to keep a level head and not panic. Wow has the "Pespi" generation of Sox fans become a little entitled. Im sorry, but we the fans should be entitled. We give the Red sox much more money than the majority of the teams in the league. With that amount of money to spend, a bad year just means extremely bad luck or a bad job done by the FO. And if they're this bad, its not bad luck. Look at 2010, we had horrible luck, yet we still won 90 games. The sky is not falling or anything but seasons like this are not acceptable for this team to have
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Post by johnsilver52 on Sept 10, 2014 23:08:27 GMT -5
Nah. Yawkey was one of the richest owners in the game, yet his teams throughout many of his period (decades) of ownership, as Ancientredsoxfogey, myself, Dan Norm and several older Sox fans here know.. Were pathetic. They would barely finish .500 in the .60's, until the Impossible dream team. In the 70's they would lead everyone.. That is until the June Swoon came along and then come back and fall again come September.
Having one of the richest ownerships (or groups) doesn't ever guarantee winning. It also requires General managers more adept at putting winning teams on the field better suited than Dick O'Connell, Haywood Sullivan. Possibly Cherington? Not dicing on Cherrington here, he's accomplished the feat, though some here are forgetting he has done the job and has done well so far both at the Milb and MLB levels. More so than the 2 aforementioned names.
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ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 10, 2014 23:10:25 GMT -5
The notion that this season was ruined by a whole bunch of bad off-season decisions just doesn't hold water.
Every projection system in the world had JBJ hitting well enough to be a perfectly fine replacement for Ellsbury (in fact, an upgrade, I think, when you include the defense). You would have had to be psychic to foresee what happened.
Giving WMB another shot at 3B was very defensible. They had reason to expect good things from the rotation, with hopes that someone in AAA would take Peavy's spot from him. Buchholz being terrible and Doubront sliding backwards: again, you'd have to be psychic.
They needed to find a catcher to play half a season, until Vazquez was ready, and they picked a guy who was not only below replacement level but not a good clubhouse fit, and it was a move roundly criticized here. I wanted to trade for Ryan Hanigan, and had other things broken in their favor, the 3.3 wins they would have gained thereby might have been huge. As it so happens, though, the prospect(s) it would have taken to get Hanigan (perhaps Brian Johnson) would have been wasted.
We went back and forth about the backup OF situation, and in retrospect the folks who wanted to sell high on Mike Carp and get someone better as insurance against an unexpected Bradley offensive struggle and/or an expected Victorino series of injuries were right. But add the WAR difference of that mistake and we're still not in contention.
They should have started Sizemore at Pawtucket and been more patient with Nava and given Gomes less PT early in the season. Still don't think we're in contention yet.
They made an incredibly bad panic move in re-signing Drew. Guys who hit something like .319 / .394 / .506 over 282 PA routinely toss in 50 to 80 PA into the middle where they hit something like .147 / .193 / .212 -- Manny used to do that about twice a year. What's truly odd is for that slump to last 250 PA, as it did for Xander. You will never convince me that the extraodinary duration of that slump was uncorrelated to his simultaneously trying to play a largely unfamiliar position he had every reason to believe he shouldn't be bothering with, and butchering it to the tune of -29 UZR / -32 DRS.
Get that right, and maybe now you're in contention -- but I bet you're still missing the playoffs. And if we're going to miss the playoffs, I want what else happens to be in our best long-term interests.
None of the things that ruined this season seem likely to have long-term negative impact. They didn't struggle because they had tried to upgrade CF by trading Billy Conigliaro for Tommy Harper and had tossed in George Scott essentially for nothing, and then tried to fix that hole by trading Sparky Lyle for Danny Cater. They didn't struggle because the manager had buried Ferguson Jenkins or Bill Lee the previous year because he didn't like their recreational habits, so that we had given them away for nothing. They didn't struggle because they had traded Cecil Cooper to get George Scott back. Any veteran Sox fan could go on like this for a good while.
They struggled because they rolled the dice a number of times, almost all of them reasonable gambles, and came up snake-eyes every time. I'm not going to bitch too much about that given that the previous year they did the same thing and got almost a complete run of 7s and 11s.
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Post by soxfan1615 on Sept 10, 2014 23:10:51 GMT -5
Honest question: if they miss the playoffs, does it matter if they miss by one game or by twenty games? I understand that "competing" creates entertainment value for the fan base even if they ultimate miss the playoffs (or, for that matter, if they lose in the playoffs), but if the mentality is World-Series-win-or-bust, it shouldn't really matter. Indeed, in that lens, it may be better to miss the playoffs by a lot, since that way you at least get a higher draft pick and a protected pick. Sure, this is true if you can tell the future, but thats not the case, and a team with a true talent level of 1 game out will make the playoffs and win the WS a decent amount. A better phrasing would've been should make playoffs every year. Of course shit happens like all those injuries in 2010, but this team was not a result of that. Look at the sox in the 2000s
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Post by soxfan1615 on Sept 10, 2014 23:12:56 GMT -5
Nah. Yawkey was one of the richest owners in the game, yet his teams throughout many of his period (decades) of ownership, as Ancientredsoxfogey, myself, Dan Norm and several older Sox fans here know.. Were pathetic. They would barely finish .500 in the .60's, until the Impossible dream team. In the 70's they would lead everyone.. That is until the June Swoon came along and then come back and fall again come September. Having one of the richest ownerships (or groups) doesn't ever guarantee winning. It also requires General managers more adept at putting winning teams on the field better suited than Dick O'Connell, Haywood Sullivan. Possibly Cherington? Not dicing on Cherrington here, he's accomplished the feat, though some here are forgetting he has done the job and has done well so far both at the Milb and MLB levels. More so than the 2 aforementioned names. Yes, which is why i was saying it was unacceptable that the FO cant put together a winning team every year
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Post by soxfan1615 on Sept 10, 2014 23:19:12 GMT -5
The notion that this season was undermined by a whole bunch of bad off-season decisions just doesn't hold water. Every projection system in the world had JBJ hitting well enough to be a perfectly fine replacement for Ellsbury (in fact, an upgrade, I think, when you include the defense). You would have had to be psychic to foresee what happened. Giving WMB another shot at 3B was very defensible. They had reason to expect good things from the rotation, with hopes that someone in AAA would take Peavy's spot from him. Buchholz being terrible and Doubront sliding backwards: again, you'd have to be psychic. They needed to find a catcher to play half a season, until Vazquez was ready, and they picked a guy who was not only below replacement level but not a good clubhouse fit, and it was a move roundly criticized here. I wanted to trade for Ryan Hanigan, and had other things broken in their favor, the 3.3 wins they would have gained thereby might have been huge. As it so happens, though, the prospect(s) it would have taken to get Hanigan (perhaps Brian Johnson) would have been wasted. We went back and forth about the backup OF situation, and in retrospect the folks who wanted to sell high on Mike Carp and get someone better as insurance against an unexpected Bradley offensive struggle and/or an expected Victorino series of injuries were right. But add the WAR difference of that mistake and we're still not in contention. They should have started Sizemore at Pawtucket and been more patient with Nava and given Gomes less PT early in the season. Still don't think we're in contention yet. They made an incredibly bad panic move in re-signing Drew. Guys who hit something like .319 / .394 / .506 over 282 PA routinely toss in 50 to 80 PA into the middle where they hit something like .147 / .193 / .212 -- Manny used to do that about twice a year. What's truly odd is for that slump to last 250 PA, as it did for Xander. You will never convince me that the extraodinary duration of that slump was uncorrelated to his simultaneously trying to play a largely unfamiliar position he had every reason to believe he shouldn't be bothering with, and butchering it to the tune of -29 UZR / -32 DRS. Get that right, and maybe now you're in contention -- but I bet you're still missing the playoffs. And if we're going to miss the playoffs, I want what else happens to be in our best long-term interests. None of the things that ruined this season seem likely to have long-term negative impact. They didn't struggle because they had tried to upgrade CF by trading Billy Conigliaro for Tommy Harper and had tossed in George Scott essentially for nothing, and then tried to fix that hole by trading Sparky Lyle for Danny Cater. They didn't struggle because the manager had buried Ferguson Jenkins or Bill Lee the previous year because he didn't like their recreational habits, so that we had given them away for nothing. They didn't struggle because they had traded Cecil Cooper to get George Scott back. Any veteran Sox fan could go on like this for a good while. They struggled because they rolled the dice a number of times, almost all of them reasonable gambles, and came up snake-eyes every time. I'm not going to bitch too much about that given that the previous year they did the same thing and got almost a complete run of 7s and 11s. But the problem was they had a team full of question marks and only 1 legitimately great hitter. Last year we scored so many runs because we had only 1 weak spot in our lineup, not because of star hitters. We didn't add any star hitters and counted on everyone to be above average again while adding 2 hitters who many people could've seen failing in AJP and JBJ. You could've predicted every player to do what he did before the season and the only guy i would be shocked by would be Xander, and even then, hes a minor leaguer. Vic's injuries were forseeable, JBJ, WMB and AJP sucking was forseeable. Nava was surprising but hes turned it around. Agree on Drew though
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 10, 2014 23:27:05 GMT -5
Honest question: if they miss the playoffs, does it matter if they miss by one game or by twenty games? I understand that "competing" creates entertainment value for the fan base even if they ultimate miss the playoffs (or, for that matter, if they lose in the playoffs), but if the mentality is World-Series-win-or-bust, it shouldn't really matter. Indeed, in that lens, it may be better to miss the playoffs by a lot, since that way you at least get a higher draft pick and a protected pick. Sure, this is true if you can tell the future, but thats not the case, and a team with a true talent level of 1 game out will make the playoffs and win the WS a decent amount. A better phrasing would've been should make playoffs every year. Of course shit happens like all those injuries in 2010, but this team was not a result of that. Look at the sox in the 2000s You're being very unrealistic. If it was as easy as just throwing money at the problems why haven't the Yankees won more than one championship the past 14 seasons? Because even when you throw money at the problem and it works swimmingly - say Teixeira and Sabathia for 2009, that doesn't mean it's going to work perfectly every freaking year - see every year since for NY - and on a smaller scale, see Victorino's deal in 2013. It worked great for the Sox in 2013. Not so much in 2014. That's the nature of spending all this "advantage" money you're talking about. It buys some great years but it also sticks you with the decline years as well. Some years just about everything goes right - see 2013 Sox. The next year everything declines, which would explain this year. That's the mystery of baseball. Did the Red Sox make mistakes? Sure. In 2014 it stinks not to have Ellsbury, although he by himself certainly wouldn't make up for all the other crap that hasn't worked out, but by 2015 it might be a better thing having Betts or Castillo in CF. Who really knows? I didn't care for the Lackey deal. I like Cespedes, but hate the idea that Lester is probably not coming back in 2015. I like the return in the Miller deal, and would love to see Miller return, too. Right now the Sox are transitioning to a younger team. Not all rookies are going to hit like Mark McGwire circa 1987 or Freddie Lynn and Jim Rice circa 1975. Usually the prime of players' careers are from ages 25 - 29. The Sox have some youngsters coming up that are actually below that part of the curve and they certainly have more than their fair share of players older than that curve which they're transitioning from. You're not going to have everything line up just perfectly every year and sometimes in the long run you're better off with a step back to take a step forward. Think of the last truly great dynasty. It was the 1996 - 2001 Yankees. How was that team built? They were built because the team with the most money in the world took a grand tumble down the stairs and their impetuous owner was suspended allowing Gene Michael to draft wisely and use their resources to supplement their great young core. But it took struggles to make that happen. So if you were a Yankee fan and complained from 1989 - 1992, did that mean you didn't enjoy what became of it? For me personally, as humiliating as it is to go from Champs to last place Chumps, I'd rather be dead last two years out of three and have a Championship in the other season. I've been a fan since 1980 and after the '86 World Series, had zero expectation they'd ever win in my lifetime, so I'm not going to complain after seeing three of them. I'll take the past three years over the seasons they had from 1977 - 1979 when the bottom line is they won absolutely nothing. If I was building a team, I'd say the building job was more impressive because they were consistently great, but even that doesn't guarantee a winner. All I can say is if 2014 leads to a strong young team from say 2016 - 2020, then it's well worth it. 1967 wouldn't have been so damn special if 1959 - 1966 didn't precede it. I don't know how young you are, but if you're a johnny come lately, then you're acting like a spoiled Yankee fan. Down seasons happen every now and then. It's baseball. There is no perfect formula.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 10, 2014 23:30:29 GMT -5
The notion that this season was undermined by a whole bunch of bad off-season decisions just doesn't hold water. Every projection system in the world had JBJ hitting well enough to be a perfectly fine replacement for Ellsbury (in fact, an upgrade, I think, when you include the defense). You would have had to be psychic to foresee what happened. Giving WMB another shot at 3B was very defensible. They had reason to expect good things from the rotation, with hopes that someone in AAA would take Peavy's spot from him. Buchholz being terrible and Doubront sliding backwards: again, you'd have to be psychic. They needed to find a catcher to play half a season, until Vazquez was ready, and they picked a guy who was not only below replacement level but not a good clubhouse fit, and it was a move roundly criticized here. I wanted to trade for Ryan Hanigan, and had other things broken in their favor, the 3.3 wins they would have gained thereby might have been huge. As it so happens, though, the prospect(s) it would have taken to get Hanigan (perhaps Brian Johnson) would have been wasted. We went back and forth about the backup OF situation, and in retrospect the folks who wanted to sell high on Mike Carp and get someone better as insurance against an unexpected Bradley offensive struggle and/or an expected Victorino series of injuries were right. But add the WAR difference of that mistake and we're still not in contention. They should have started Sizemore at Pawtucket and been more patient with Nava and given Gomes less PT early in the season. Still don't think we're in contention yet. They made an incredibly bad panic move in re-signing Drew. Guys who hit something like .319 / .394 / .506 over 282 PA routinely toss in 50 to 80 PA into the middle where they hit something like .147 / .193 / .212 -- Manny used to do that about twice a year. What's truly odd is for that slump to last 250 PA, as it did for Xander. You will never convince me that the extraodinary duration of that slump was uncorrelated to his simultaneously trying to play a largely unfamiliar position he had every reason to believe he shouldn't be bothering with, and butchering it to the tune of -29 UZR / -32 DRS. Get that right, and maybe now you're in contention -- but I bet you're still missing the playoffs. And if we're going to miss the playoffs, I want what else happens to be in our best long-term interests. None of the things that ruined this season seem likely to have long-term negative impact. They didn't struggle because they had tried to upgrade CF by trading Billy Conigliaro for Tommy Harper and had tossed in George Scott essentially for nothing, and then tried to fix that hole by trading Sparky Lyle for Danny Cater. They didn't struggle because the manager had buried Ferguson Jenkins or Bill Lee the previous year because he didn't like their recreational habits, so that we had given them away for nothing. They didn't struggle because they had traded Cecil Cooper to get George Scott back. Any veteran Sox fan could go on like this for a good while. They struggled because they rolled the dice a number of times, almost all of them reasonable gambles, and came up snake-eyes every time. I'm not going to bitch too much about that given that the previous year they did the same thing and got almost a complete run of 7s and 11s. But the problem was they had a team full of question marks and only 1 legitimately great hitter. Last year we scored so many runs because we had only 1 weak spot in our lineup, not because of star hitters. We didn't add any star hitters and counted on everyone to be above average again while adding 2 hitters who many people could've seen failing in AJP and JBJ. You could've predicted every player to do what he did before the season and the only guy i would be shocked by would be Xander, and even then, hes a minor leaguer. Vic's injuries were forseeable, JBJ, WMB and AJP sucking was forseeable. Nava was surprising but hes turned it around. Agree on Drew though So coming off a Championship, what do you do? Get rid of the whole team? Because it is the whole team that stunk up the joint this year. Nine positions in the lineup had lower OPS than 2013. How do you fix all that? How do you tell your fanbase that you're going to blow apart a Championship team all at once because you KNOW that the whole entire team is going to tank? The only impact hitter available was Abreu and his timing was terrible. Still wish the Bosox had gotten him and sold the media on him being a 3b rather than a 1b - didn't need a Napoli controversy while the Series was still in progress. Other than that there wouldn't have been a helluva lot the Sox could do. Good year to break in young talent and let them fail.
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Post by Don Caballero on Sept 10, 2014 23:31:37 GMT -5
I really hope Workman doesn't enter 2015 as a starter. I really like him, but results and eye test tell me he should stick to the pen where he's more likely to make a career. Please.
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Post by soxfan1615 on Sept 10, 2014 23:40:33 GMT -5
No, im not being unrealistoc. Look at the sox from when Henry took over until those horrible Theo desperation moves. Made the playoffs every year except for 2, one was because of some poor decisions in thinking that the rotation was good enough plus awful arroyo trade and the other one was just some unlucky injuries. They also turned over the roster without having down years. 2 down years in 3 years would be completely unacceptable without the WS between them. Also they shouldve traded for an impact bat or signed Abreu
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Post by godot on Sept 10, 2014 23:43:03 GMT -5
I have been following them for over 60 years and like OSF I am approaching senility. What is Eric's and Jmie's excuse besides being educated into stupidity and living in a bubble. Egad, join me, eat a banana a day and watch the wars on TV. Don't worry if you miss an episode, they will be around perpetually.
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Post by nationinthesouth on Sept 10, 2014 23:53:27 GMT -5
Wow has the "Pespi" generation of Sox fans become a little entitled. Im sorry, but we the fans should be entitled. We give the Red sox much more money than the majority of the teams in the league. With that amount of money to spend, a bad year just means extremely bad luck or a bad job done by the FO. And if they're this bad, its not bad luck. Look at 2010, we had horrible luck, yet we still won 90 games. The sky is not falling or anything but seasons like this are not acceptable for this team to have That statement itself underscores the entitlement, The ownership has to charge the fan base more because the fan base would be up in arms if ownership ever moved out of Fenway and into a new park like most all our closest rivals have. We can't have it both ways all the time.
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Post by soxfan1615 on Sept 10, 2014 23:57:01 GMT -5
Im sorry, but we the fans should be entitled. We give the Red sox much more money than the majority of the teams in the league. With that amount of money to spend, a bad year just means extremely bad luck or a bad job done by the FO. And if they're this bad, its not bad luck. Look at 2010, we had horrible luck, yet we still won 90 games. The sky is not falling or anything but seasons like this are not acceptable for this team to have That statement itself underscores the entitlement, The ownership has to charge the fan base more because the fan base would be up in arms if ownership ever moved out of Fenway and into a new park like most all our closest rivals have. We can't have it both ways all the time. uh what? The sox are one of the most profitable teams in the league because of us, and there's no excuse for a team with 189 million to spend per year to not be competitive
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Post by redsox4242 on Sept 10, 2014 23:58:09 GMT -5
The time off for Xander has surely paid off, He is batting 371 in September and has only struck out 1 in his last 8 games. That is progress and i am excited to see how he performs next year.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 10, 2014 23:59:00 GMT -5
No, im not being unrealistoc. Look at the sox from when Henry took over until those horrible Theo desperation moves. Made the playoffs every year except for 2, one was because of some poor decisions in thinking that the rotation was good enough plus awful arroyo trade and the other one was just some unlucky injuries. They also turned over the roster without having down years. 2 down years in 3 years would be completely unacceptable without the WS between them. Also they shouldve traded for an impact bat or signed Abreu The game was a little different a decade ago. Basically Tampa and Baltimore existed just to have their butts kicked by the Red Sox year in and year out. So they'd basically go 27-10 against these two teams and then when Tampa finally got good Toronto tanked. Teams aren't staying as bad for long and I think that's because there's more revenue sharing and TV money entering the game. The big free agent prize isn't as prevalent anymore. Unless you're a totally down trodden team like Miami or Minnesota teams actually have better shots at keeping their star players. The game evolves. Theo did an excellent job but it got harder for him as the times kept changing. And that, in addition to pressure from upstairs, probably lead to those panic moves, which eventually led to a cleansing which lead to a rebuild and a championship which lead into the crappy year they're enduring this year. All these seasons are interlocking events that cause chain reactions into the following seasons, both good and bad.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 11, 2014 0:02:05 GMT -5
That statement itself underscores the entitlement, The ownership has to charge the fan base more because the fan base would be up in arms if ownership ever moved out of Fenway and into a new park like most all our closest rivals have. We can't have it both ways all the time. uh what? The sox are one of the most profitable teams in the league because of us, and there's no excuse for a team with 189 million to spend per year to not be competitive This is not the specific case with the 2014 Red Sox, but $189 million guarantees absolutely nothing. If a team with its marquee players are devastated by injuries, then you have a ton of that payroll wasting away on the DL. And if you have the payroll that large that means it's probably filled with some declining vets, who are most likely to break down. Having money is an advantage. Not a guarantee as you make it sound.
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Post by soxfan1615 on Sept 11, 2014 0:13:19 GMT -5
They're first problem was completely wasting money on Drew. There were also other viable catchers that many people could've seen as better than AJP beforehand (Hanigan, Navarro, Salty, Kottaras) also having a player who hadn't been above replacement in 5 years as the only JBJ insurance was pretty dumb and forseeable
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Post by soxfan1615 on Sept 11, 2014 0:15:57 GMT -5
Money is almost everything too. I can't do this right now bc im on my phone but id bet 90% of teams with non amaro gms that spend as much as the sox did this year make the playoffs or at least come close
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Post by Oregon Norm on Sept 11, 2014 1:06:09 GMT -5
Money is almost everything too. I can't do this right now bc im on my phone but id bet 90% of teams with non amaro gms that spend as much as the sox did this year make the playoffs or at least come close The correlation has been getting weaker for a while. That's not surprising given the push for parity. I'll bet that trend continues.
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