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Post by homerdante on May 19, 2022 12:48:06 GMT -5
Agreed but: - Cassidy CAN be better than he is - Sweeney isn't as bad as everyone makes out aside from hitting on McAvoy, and not doing something completely boneheaded--trading Marchand or Bergeron in their early prime--what has Sweeney done on the pros side of the pros/cons sheet?
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Post by homerdante on May 17, 2022 21:43:15 GMT -5
Two weakest parts of Tatum's game:
Mental--don't call a foul he thinks should have been called, he won't even run down the court, and whines for the next 3 minutes.
Ball-handling--his handle is terrible for such a good shooter.
both on full display today, along with Jalen's mental lapses. Ugh, the worst of the team. Spoelstra out couching Ime like crazy right now.
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Post by homerdante on May 15, 2022 19:59:35 GMT -5
I get the importance of challenging the process going forward, but in hindsight I'm very pleased with the Bruins organization. In the past 12 years they have won 1 Stanley Cup, been to 2 others, won the Presidents Trophy in 2 other years. It's been a great run with Chara, Bergeron, Marchand, Rask, etc. It could be worse, at least we're not Maple Leafs fans. Feels like it could have been better though, and like an all business do well in up economies scenario--i mean, With Bergeron here, Marchand, core, they weren't going to do worse, i.e. it's very hard to mess that up. I'm not saying the management made them collapse in the final games of the Stanley cups, but they have not identified talent well consistently. They put pieces around the core that were worse than JAGs in most cases, negative WAR types (whatever the hockey term is for it). Feels like Bergie and Marchand won despite poor management. I wanted 3-5 cups from this core, not barely one.
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Post by homerdante on May 15, 2022 16:35:13 GMT -5
I never thought Grant Williams would turn into this kind of shooter. Many of you who are greater basketball minds than I am probably did, but wow is he impressive.
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Post by homerdante on May 14, 2022 22:24:02 GMT -5
I think Neely/Sweeney are pretty average at their jobs. I think Cassidy is actually pretty good but didn’t really have the horses. He’s also been here for a bit now and if they do ultimately want to rebuild I would start anew everywhere Probably all depends on what Bergeron wants to do Right, it's the having the horses thing I'm talking about, more specifically, can the leadership even identify the horses? They seemed to think every veteran was going to miraculously resurrect their career here. Where's the Theo magic, or the Chaim Bloom Magic? Is that even a thing in the NHL? All questions... Also agreed regarding Bergeron. Without him it looks like it's time to blow it up. However, do you honestly trust these guys to draft well enough to rebuild? McAvoy is their only hit in a decade? Time to bring in new leadership is my guess.
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Post by homerdante on May 14, 2022 18:37:09 GMT -5
Repost from last page of season thread:
Are Neely and Sweeney the guys? I don't know, do you:
I'm asking myself some questions today about the past dozen or so Bruins years where Neely and Sweeney have been running the ship.
I'm asking myself:
Was Taylor Hall the answer?
Was the package for Seguin at all good?
Was Coyle the right acquisition?
David Backes was clearly NOT, and hamstrung the team financially for years.
Letting Krug go? No quarterback on the powerplay?
It SEEMS like they're good at running a good program in Providence. Great at identifying possible AAAA players to make a really good AHL team.
Was the 2015 draft their fault?
Final question in light of the above: Are they any good at evaluating talent?
Maybe it was not poor talent evaluation, but poor coaching evaluation?
I honestly don't know, but there's a real apathy and lethargy with this team that surfaces again and again. Something hasn't been right, what is it? (this isn't the final game, or the final series, this is a resurfacing problem, over and over again with the core of this team.)
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Post by homerdante on May 14, 2022 18:07:33 GMT -5
I'm asking myself some questions today about the past dozen or so Bruins years where Neely and Sweeney have been running the ship.
I'm asking myself:
Was Taylor Hall the answer?
Was the package for Seguin at all good?
Was Coyle the right acquisition?
David Backes was clearly NOT, and hamstrung the team financially for years.
Letting Krug go? No quarterback on the powerplay?
It SEEMS like they're good at running a good program in Providence. Great at identifying possible AAAA players to make a really good AHL team.
Was the 2015 draft their fault?
Final question in light of the above: Are they any good at evaluating talent?
Maybe it was not poor talent evaluation, but poor coaching evaluation?
I honestly don't know, but there's a real apathy and lethargy with this team that surfaces again and again. Something hasn't been right, what is it?
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Post by homerdante on May 11, 2022 20:41:02 GMT -5
I could care less about the foul calls. The Celtics choked this game away with lazy, unengaged play down the stretch. Smart drive off the ATO was abhorrent, losing the offensive rebounds abhorrent, just an embarrassment to choke this at home. 100% accurate. Worst choke job in years. Why they tried to slow pace after dominating earlier in the game with faster pace is beyond me, looked like a crap football team going prevent for zero reason. they 100% deserved to lose that game.
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Post by homerdante on May 9, 2022 20:25:46 GMT -5
It's also not fun watching Tatum implode and forget how to even shoot an open shot.
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Post by homerdante on May 9, 2022 20:22:02 GMT -5
This series is absolutely unwatchable. The referees have never been worse.
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Post by homerdante on Sept 25, 2021 18:19:04 GMT -5
There's the definition of shitting oneself, or shitting all over oneself.
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Post by homerdante on Sept 13, 2021 23:42:59 GMT -5
That homerun looked catchable???
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Post by homerdante on Aug 30, 2021 18:00:56 GMT -5
My memory is that he didn't make the rotation one year, then he fell into the closer role after they gave up on Foulke after like one game and then they didn't want to mess with him after he was a stud in the role. He had a shoulder subluxation in late 2006. The next year they were thinking about working him out as a starter but he basically told them he'd prefer to close, IIRC, so they scrapped the idea. Exactly, Chris. I remember there being a lot of discussion about how the cadence of pitching in one role vs. the other role impacted his shoulder condition, so rather than trying to push more volume in a single day per 5 days, less pitch volume spread out over more days worked better for his shoulder condition, so they decided that was the way he should be slotted moving forward due to his shoulder condition.
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Post by homerdante on Aug 29, 2021 17:19:19 GMT -5
This kid might be Bregman at the dish, sheeeeeesh I'll never stop hearing the Vandy coach when asked about if he was surprised how well Yorke had started out: "No. We had him as the best high school hitter in the country." Love to see it!
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Post by homerdante on Aug 24, 2021 22:28:56 GMT -5
Agree on Kimbrel. Foulk sure had his moment too, though. C’mon. Show Paps some love! I even liked Lee Smith. in 2008, Paps was on a whole other level. Every time he looked into get the sign, dude looked like he wanted to kill the hitter. Legit, kill him. It was a really effective look.
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Post by homerdante on Aug 24, 2021 22:23:24 GMT -5
Padres recently fired their pitching coach--lack of message getting through.
...thinking...
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Post by homerdante on Aug 21, 2021 21:46:25 GMT -5
The radio guys post-game comments - "Yankees losses were painful, but tonight's game was the worst game of the season, and so ugly. "The five errors, the baserunning blunders, plays that were not made. "Worth talking about - starting rotation has been good, gave the team chances to win - was set up for ERod to get the team on a run, and this is a step in the wrong direction, though the D let him down. Also - some lack of effort moments - CVaz missing the tag lazily - key play that set the tone for the whole game. Ready to move on from CVaz too...so apathetic. At this point he should be a leader.
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Post by homerdante on Aug 21, 2021 21:29:07 GMT -5
At the risk of being unpopular, let me be the first (maybe?) to call for Cora's job. Team has played poorly for nearly a month. I don't like the way he manages the game and if the player's manager of all player's managers can't get his team to show up then I don’t know what he’s doing managing a team. I'm with you. He LOST this team. Totally and completely lost them this year. This was something Terry mentioned once. When you're friends with the team, at some point there is a danger of becoming too close so that the team stops listening to you. I don't think his style is a fit for the long term. He ended up losing the '19 team too--not to the extent of this '21 team, but it was clear he lost their ear. I also don't understand why we would do anything now but let at bats go to players who are going to be with the team moving forward. Let Duran start every day, or 5/6 or whatever.
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Post by homerdante on Aug 21, 2021 19:31:15 GMT -5
We currently have the 22nd pick in the 2022 draft. How far can we conceivably move up still?
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Post by homerdante on Aug 17, 2021 20:56:14 GMT -5
Their offense needs to breakout. You can't keep wasting good starts from Eoavaldi the past month. Just when the rotation is rounding out, their offense plunges. They just blew up on our friendly neighborhood AAAA, Baltimore over the weekend. They had that breakout, and today they went right back to ZERO plate discipline. That's NOT the answer currently. Someone needs to be able to say something in that locker room, but they lost their Pedroia. Who else has the ear of the room?
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Post by homerdante on Aug 17, 2021 20:54:41 GMT -5
Problem with viewing rest of the season as Draft Position is that we play in the same division as a AAAA team. So we either have to be worse than them significantly like last year, or we're stuck picking in the teens for years we're even marginally better.
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Post by homerdante on Aug 17, 2021 14:15:35 GMT -5
The first half of the year looked a lot like a team believing in one another, and they kept being able to get examples of a guy doing well. The flaw with this leaning on one another business is that when they start faltering they all falter. This has been going on since early July now. One guy in the bullpen screws up, the next guy seemingly lacks the ability to keep their own act together, and screws up as well. The bullpen looks like a psychological mess out there. Our implosions haven't been one offs, they're 3-5 guys wide everytime. Our slumps aren't one guy, they're nearly teamwide.
Similarly, as someone pointed out above, our lack of place discipline against Montgomery today was absolutely mindblowing. HE threw so much crap outside the zone, and very little in the zone, and we're swinging all over the place, after a year long mantra of controling the zone.
Cora seems to have lost this team right now unless we're playing AAAA teams. Is this 2019?
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Post by homerdante on Jul 29, 2021 4:33:12 GMT -5
There’s so much I find fault with in that post I’m not even going to get into all of it. He didn’t choke a couple years ago. He was the only reason they were there. Can’t say the same about line 1 tho Get your takes from somebody other than Felger The most wrongfully disrespected athlete in Boston sports history. He’s had to deal with fools that know nothing about hockey complaining about him for a decade now, I’m glad he can take a little break. Ask an NHL player what they think about him, and not a talk radio hack whose 4th sport is hockey I thought Felger's "take" was humorous, because it's hard to imagine Rask having dirt on the front office, clearly we're in hyperbole land--or it should be clear. Where I have "issues" is that if there is clearly a young goalie to start grooming (based on extremely strong recent performance, and past performance that led us to selecting him very highly in the draft) it's Swayman. How exactly that transition happens is certain debatable, I don't claim to have the definitive method on this, however, signing Ullmark for as large of a contract as we gave him, does SEEM on the surface to preclude this transfer of starting role to someone who looks worthy of being given the chance to take it. The savings on a starting goaltender that Swayman appears he might become, could have been leveraged. I think others felt similarly--there was a bit of a glimmer here for us to bolster a roster for a big run this year with money saved on goaltending and spent elsewhere. It is, however, strange to see Sweeney defer to how Rask is doing in his comments summarizing the decision to get Ullmark: www.nbcsports.com/boston/video/don-sweeney-explains-rationale-behind-linus-ullmark-signingRask may catch too much flack in this town because he's a dispassionate player. He's the Iceman to Top Gun's maverick. He just is, and Iceman is never the fan favorite, even if his efficiency rates are through the actual roof. He's unlikeable in some core way. I can totally get that, but that also those guys on the "lynch Iceman" side of things have one point, still at the end of the day. Rask did NOT deliver a Stanley Cup as a starter. That's the major fact they have that is viable at the end of the day. Other goalies stood on their head and delivered one. Hasek delivered 2 in a very long career, with 6 times as many Vezinas. As cool and focused as Rask seems to play a lot of the time, however, he also has these moments of loss of focus. I'm certain you could find at least one moment for every goalie in the world where this is true, however, with Rask, there seem to be these soft goals from time to time where you wonder if he's hungry, or something else temporarily distracted him, because his focus is NOT razor sharp when you think it would be for someone playing the Iceman style of goalie. The issue I have,really, is with Sweeney in all of this. His position might be justified in wanting some security and depth at the goalie position, ok, I'll bite. Several other goaltenders were available for this sort of veteran/Swayman tandem. However, the amount of money allotted to Ullmark was irresponsible in todays cap-confined league. The only scenario I can see where it works out, is Swayman ends up proving somehow he is what we saw last year or better, and then we unload Ullmark, who is also playing lights out as a major asset. However, I find this outcome to be a very low % likelihood outcome at the end of the day. What looks more likely is Ullmark is your starter, plays well enough that Swayman isn't getting enough starts, so you send him down to Providence so he can continue starting every day, however, this experience does virtually nothing for him. He needs to start against NHL talent at this point to be tested and brought along, the AHL isn't going to give him the experience he needs now. Rask is still available, potentially in any scenario to jump back into things if needed. His comments, by the way, are also what exacerbated this entire situation--he said he would not play for another team. That literally let you have a third goalie, effectively, sitting on your bench that you can sign whenever he's ready to play and the team needs him. That is such an additional luxury, it's almost unheard of in the game today. That paired with Swayman, and a serviceable veteran on a smallish contract, again, would have given really nice roster flexibility, the team seemingly decided to burn on fire like the joker in Nolan's Dark Knight. Just burn up that possible cap flexibility, who needs it anyway? The pendulum reaction from last year trying to go all youth movement to this year going, seemingly, all veterans for the bottom 6, is also a strange way to allocate funds. Some are anticipating JB is gone and that shoe just hasn't fallen yet, which at least gets you a little cash back for another need, but it's hard to see that this group of bottom 6 has-beens can produce any more than the kids did last year. The bottom 6 was mostly a black hole last year, and it's difficult to see that mediocre veterans is going to change that. I'd love to be wrong and see a resurgence from one of these guys. I just don't see a reason to expect it. Maybe a week here or there with one of them "feeling it" is worth stripping the playing time from a kid who might put something together from playing that week? I'm sure there are opportunity cost metrics for this stuff somewhere, I'm just not sure Sweeney would use them when there's cap money he could be wasting!
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Post by homerdante on Jul 28, 2021 23:22:05 GMT -5
www.nbcsports.com/boston/video/mike-felger-rips-bruins-they-are-petrified-moving-tuukka-raskHa, Felger on a rant after Sweeney's comments today about his thinking with Ullmark and giving Tukka (WHO IS NO LONGER ON THE TEAM CURRENTLY), time to recover. Does Tukka have dirt on the front office? Why the fear from moving on from a guy who--to be clear--never won you a Stanley cup. He did choke in two, but didn't actually win you one, Thomas did. Why are we afraid to move on from him?
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Post by homerdante on Jul 28, 2021 20:02:39 GMT -5
I'm also not sure why we're loading up on so many LWs. For an hour or two earlier today I was wondering if we were going to see some kind of blockbuster (Eichel?) built around Swayman and Frederic. Noticed that as well, I was wondering why the LW depth buildup, even though 3 of the additions are also listed as capable of center, and Foligno listed as RW too. I'm trying to imagine the plan is to have more veteran leadership in that bottom 6. A guy like Foligno brings that at least? Say Studnika comes up a lot and gets a lot of minutes, more mentorship in game on his line? Otherwise I can't make some of these moves add up.
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