Running 2011 Baseball Thread, Vol. I: Dedicated to spnited

Feb. 20, 2011: “The 2011 Red Sox are the 1927 Yankees. They are Secretariat in the Belmont. They are the 1985 Bears and the 1996 Bulls. They are Nixon over McGovern in 1972.” — Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy.

 

That is so weak. What about the extra rest you get from Sat. to the Sunday night? Never thought that Adrian was one to make excuses. How about the fact that you got to end the season with 3 against the last place team? Lame.

 

That explanation wouldn't fly for his team's similar choke last season. If the Padres were on ESPN, maybe he'd have a case.

 

Last post, MLB.com has put together an outstanding 11-minute highlight package of the whole thing.

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=19789807

 

Adrian Gonzales is some ballplayer.

 

Shaughnessy is Ron Burgundy.

 

He sounds like Suzyn Waldman complaining about Sunday Night games.

 

And the Phillies and Yankees just keep buying their way along every year. And the Sox came within an out of still playing despite giving out two disastrous free agent contracts (Crawford and Lackey), which would devastate any small-market team.

But you keep pounding away at that strawman, the one that says low-revenue franchises can never win. The real argument is simply that the big-money guys have a significant advantage, to the point that they can even buy a championship every few years.

Please note that TSP ignored everybody's please to drop this shit. Thank you.

 

GODDAMNIT ONLY I MAY PASSIVE AGGRESSIVELY TWEAK OUTOFPLACE OVER SALARY CAPS FUCK

 

Getting back to (I think it was) Terrier's point, I think the Sox will do everything they can to shake things up. Even if they have to pay 50%+ of Lackey's contract, if someone wants him, they'll deal him. I'm thinking something similar to the deals that got Vazquez the eff out of New York a few seasons ago.

Varitek and Wakefield are probably both done. Lavarnway has shown he can be a good backup C at least, and Wakefield is a replacement level pitcher at this point.

The biggest mess is the starting pitching, which is such a volatile commodity, I'm not sure how you fix it. At the beginning of the year, the Yankees looked like a god damn mess, with Sabathia and Hughes the only decent guys, and a hodge-podge of crap (retread projects Colon and Garcia) and unknowns (Nova) behind them. It worked out OK for them though, and for the Rangers, who lost Cliff Lee and still sailed easily into the playoffs.

Given how tough it is to find starting pitching, I'm not sure what the Sox do. Buccholz apparently isn't going to give you 200 innings a year, between his various injuries. If guys with proven track records have failed (Lackey, Matt Clement), then who do you target in free agency? The guys out there this year are C.J. Hunter types. The Sox have drafted OK, but used their prospects to get Adrian Gonzalez and others, so the only SP prospects are Weiland (#4 or #5 at best) and Anthony Raundo (at least a year away).

 

C.J. Wilson will be a nice prize FA pitcher, but a lot of teams will be going after him.

 

You know, the biggest surprise of the entire season is that the Yankees got 310 mostly-good innings out of Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia. It's just fucking unreal. I wish I could see a probabilities chart on that. Garcia's ERA was the lowest it's been since 2004. Colon's was the lowest it's been in 2004, if you throw out the seven starts he made for Boston in 2008.