Red Sox Reality Check

Red Sox fans have become something akin to those brainwashed to hear the rants of their favorite political party.  And one has to ask whether the Red Sox media coverage has become equally culpable. The Sox have made a lot of moves this offseason. But as John Wooden reminded us, "never confuse activity with achievement." The cornerstone move of the offseason was coming to an agreement with Mike Napoli . Napoli (when healthy) has been a productive player, received selection to one All-Star team, and among his 'similarity scores' has the immortal Duke Sims. All that being said, he's in medical limbo, as both parties work out contract terms after a hip issue appeared during his physical. In other words, the Sox "big" move is as yet not signed, sealed, and delivered. Beginning 'up the middle' the Sox have a platoon catching situation with hopes pinned on the apotheosis of David Ross . Sox scribes have been pumping Ross' tires hard...Kelly Sh...

(BOSTON) Boston Red Sox representatives continue to meet with the negotiating team of Texas Rangers  California Angels free agent outfielder Josh Hamilton. WAIT! Did the Sox get the message, or is this the continuing disinformation spin coming from Yawkey Way? The Sox, never to be outdone (or outspun) have concocted a Herman Cain-esque 13-13-13 plan, as if they don't have enough bad luck going to disparage triskaidekaphobia (spelling bee losahs groan here). The locals have negotiated with  Ryan Dempster  career 4.33 ERA with AL ERA over 5 last year, Shane "Better Days" Victorino, and Mike (My Aching Back) Napoli to low-term, high pay deals, although Napoli's is still pending. Google " career .500 pitcher ", and there's a great chance Dempster is your poster child. But is this off-season charade about reloading or posturing, as the posers hope for lightning in a bottle while drunk-dialing agents (fried chicken and beer being the near official foods ...

The Red Sox continue to cobble together a roster.  Only time will tell to what extent it works.  First, the record last year speaks for itself.  The team played poorly, trailing early and often and seldom showed any heart. The easiest approach is to blame the manager (V who must never be named), and nobody would credit him with anything except survival. But the word on the street described  a team lacking discipline, clubhouse disorder, a few disciples of Bacchus, and divas whose performance never came within shouting distance of underperformance. Look, we outsiders can't name names, and local scribes can't realistically do their jobs if they call out players. Some will argue that a bad team reveals bad men. Others note that the lack of character produces bad results. You be the judge. Additionally, too many players lacked 'respect' for the manager, and in fact, we hear that players (specifically pitchers) feared new manager John Farrell, and that the position ...

I haven't written anything about the Red Sox lately. That's probably certainly not much of a drag on society. First, we mourn the passage of Marvin Miller, who literally made today possible. By limiting the available supply of free agents via the '6- year rule', Miller and the MLBPA produced a supply-demand imbalance for free agents, leading to exponential baseball salaries. Can you blame players for being overpaid, or simply recognize the fruition of Richard Thaler's " The Winner's Curse? " But the baseball Winter Meetings have come, and the Red Sox unleashed a flurry of 'activity', reminding me about John Wooden. As you know, the Wizard of Westwood said, " Never confuse activity with achievement. " After trying to rebuild the Sox of yore with right-handed power, albeit base-clogging, with Jonny Gomes and Mike Napoli, they opened the vault to sign Shane Victorino today. Baseball-reference.com shows us who Shane Victorino i...

It's hard to know where to continue, because 2012 has been such an inglorious disappointment. More than anything else, players, for the most part haven't stepped up and accepted responsibility for exactly how terrible they've performed. Yes, a few players have performed above the call, David Ortiz when healthy, Cody Ross, and the unlikeliest trio, Pedro Ciriaco, Scott Posednik, and Junichi Tazawa. What exactly do fans want? My list isn't expansive: Thankfulness. Players play a child's game for ridiculous money and receive the adulation of young and old alike. Appreciate the game. Passion. Play hard and have fun. Do the right thing at the right time, and stop with the knucklehead baserunning.  Humility. Yes, we understand that many are called and few are chosen.  Servanthood. Players don't get much time off during the season. I remember going through medical training in the Navy working 185 days in a row.  There was no 'off day' dealing with p...

Local baseball fans have a long and passionate relationship with our baseball team. After wandering in the baseball desert for eighty-six years, the Red Sox delivered a pair of World Championships using pluck, pitching, and "Moneyball". Somewhere, amidst ballpark restructuring, expanding the Fenway sports empire to include NASCAR and soccer, signing overvalued players to enormous contracts, and the death of player accountability, Red Sox Nation became a house divided.  Even players like the redoubtable Dustin Pedroia chirped "that's not the way we do things around here."  Well, in Parcellian fashion, "you are what you are." Post All-Star break the Red Sox are 17-23, eleventh in the AL, eight games behind Seattle during that time, and the Red Sox are closer to last place than the Wild Card. OPS, the Holy Grail of "Moneyball" has dropped to .733 during that time, the province of Minnesota and Kansas City.  With concerts, Socce...

Come in from that ledge. "It's only a game. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. The Sawx just won a championship in 2007." And so on. Ten years in the Navy taught me the value of pomp and circumstance. There's the initial excitement of commissioning on the U.S.S. Constitution. The military has bands to play at graduations and retirement ceremonies, and multiple orders of important functions. The Red Sox have adopted the same posture, raising it to an art form. Forget about Opening Day or championship rings, or Jason Varitek or Tim Wakefield day. The locals have Frozen Fenway, Futures at Fenway, concerts, Picnic in the Park and valuable charitable work like Run to Home Base and more and more. Unfortunately, what got left behind, amidst the applause and the endless events is a miserable baseball team. The team quit on their "beloved" manager last September and part of the exorcism ultimately included the exile of Kevin Youkilis to Chicago. ...

According to Buster Olney of ESPN.com, the Red Sox clubhouse is an unhappy place. Can we hazard a guess why? First, baseball players work off the 'individual achievement' approach, if you recall Al Capone in "The Untouchables". They get paid via individual performance, not collective performance. You must not only perform well, but often and well to put up numbers. Who could possibly count the players who MIGHT be unhappy? Also, no matter how you slice it, the Sox are a last place team in the Division. Last. Bottom. Fifth. The fans get soaked, the players and owners get rich, and we have to listen to excuses. C - Shoppach. Has done well enough in limited appearances and surely wants more time. Saltalamacchia has beaten him out, after starting in the pole position. 1B - Adrian Gonzalez can't be HAPPY about playing right, and it must be affecting his hitting. See YOUKILIS. 2B - Dustin Pedroia is playing hurt and may not be as comfortable with Bobby Valenti...

Is the glass half full or half empty? After a dysfunctional start and injuries to key players, should fans be relieved or disenchanted with a last place team? Guys like Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Will Middlebrooks, and Daniel Nava have overachieved. But with OPS .612 (Marlon Byrd) and .732 (Ryan Sweeney, no homers) the outfield looks more like Amateur Hour than Dancing with the Stars. The Sox erstwhile ace, Jon Lester hasn't found a groove and seems moody and disaffected. Conversely, Josh Beckett has stepped it up with an ERA less than 2.25 during his last five starts. Yes, there are sources of irritation. The Bobby Valentine circus sideshow has died down, probably more because of his bullpen management than anything else. And the cheerleading from NESN and the 100 Years of Fenway mantra doesn't compensate for the on-field mediocrity. The Sox collective defense may not be making so many 'errors', but it feels like a steady stream of defensive miscues constantly stre...

I don't have time for any exhaustive review of the first quarter of the season. But if you want answers, simple and painful, they can be distilled into two charts. You must click to see the full charts. The first examines Red Sox starting pitching. Forget about no Daisuke or Lackey and focus on what is here. First, the Sox are next to last in ERA. They have allowed almost a run more than the league average. Granted the defense is worse than advertised. But look at the best predictor of future ERA, K/BB ratio. With the league average at over 2, the Red Sox are about 1.66 to 1. This also implies that Toronto is living on borrowed time with their staff. Within the team, you can see where the problems have been, specifically Daniel Bard and Clay Buchholz. Both BARELY exceed parity (1:1) on K/BB. It's easy to understand the K/BB ratio as a ratio examining power and command. So as much as the apologistas want to blame injuries to Ellsbury, Crawford, and Youkilis for the Sox m...

Your browser does not support iframes. They call it 'professional baseball', the major leagues, 'the show'. Unfortunately, our lying eyes tell us that, despite efforts to standardize umpiring, MLB is falling short. In the video above, you see Brett Lawrie "lose it", en route to EARNING a four game suspension. The umpire, Bill Miller, has received neither sanction nor public reprimand for his role. Clearly, Lawrie overreacted, but Miller gives the appearance of injecting himself into the action, quite probably retaliating against the volatile Blue Jays third baseman. MLB, while celebrating the human element (making bad calls is evidently integral in baseball), has introduced boundary call replays , precisely because umpires (like all of us), make mistakes and fans (aided by replays) demand a higher standard. Every MLB stadium has a tool, Pitch FX, designed to analyze pitch location, speed, type, and more, but becomes a tool to study both player and umpi...

Here's the problem, Sox fans. We care too much. Walking around time in your Fenway tees and Red Sox caps, we're billboards for sorry obsession. Sure, you love baseball in the fashion of Bart Giamatti and Bob Costas, the smell of green grass and money in the air. Maybe you should pause to reflect upon what Giamatti actually said,  “[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”   In other words, what we're feeling is normal. Really, why should we care, when the feeling isn't mutual or at least universal. Sure, players bask in the re...

As fans we are outsiders. The saying goes, "what you see here and what you hear here, stays here." That is, baseball players must respect the sanctity of the clubhouse. Of course, sometimes we get the tiniest glimpse of what happens there. Chicken and beer isn't as important as the will to prepare, leading to success on the field. Preparation might be mental or physical, watching film or lifting weights, spending ten minutes a day on sports psychology.  One Red Sox employee told me, the all-too-common attitude migrates from "whatever it takes" to "I've got mine." And that doesn't translate to winning baseball. New players on the Patriots talk about doing whatever it takes to contribute to winning, to working toward a common goal, to get to the Super Bowl. Is that what we SEE with Ye Olde Towne Team? Currently, the Red Sox have one of the worst records in baseball. WYSIATI. What you see is all there is? Fans want players who care as much a...

It's hard not to comment about the mediocre defense the Red Sox are running out there lately. Even worse, the announcers either have been instructed to downplay it or simply choose to. First, nobody chooses to fail. I remember the Steve Lyons mantra about earning the right to fail. But over the weekend, Saltalamacchia's defense led to Aaron Cook's injury via the passed ball, and Salty dropped popups on consecutive days. After all, this is the Big Leagues. Tonight, Marlon Byrd misplayed a long fly to the track into two runs, and Will Middlebrooks turned a routine grounder into a three-base error (no way was it a single). At least Middlebrooks hits the ball. Yes, the errors are worse than the whistling past the graveyard approach to announcing. But when the Royals leftfielder misplayed Shoppach's fly ball into a triple, Eck was all over it. "He's gotta catch that ball". It wasn't that long ago that "run prevention" was to become the Sox...

I can't focus on solutions today. The problems are overwhelming. Hope and pageantry have morphed into predation, with the Sox as prey. The Red Sox announcers regularly tell us about the Red Sox fielding percentage and how they're at the top of the league. Anyone who watches the games recently sees: 1) We see mediocre but not average outfield defense (even routine plays look hard), weak throwing arms, and very few 'good' plays. Ask Daniel Bard. 2) Concern about the catching situation. Not only did Saltalamacchia struggle catching Aaron Cook, he contributed to Cook's injury, and missed a popup. We keep hearing about Lavarnway's limitations...and we keep seeing the Red Sox battery running low . 3) The day-to-day lineup, courtesy of injury, gets exposed. Role and platoon players forced into starting positions has gotten ugly . The Orioles look like the 1966 Orioles on the mound. Are they that good or are the Sox simply making them look good? With Ortiz and ...

Describing the Boston Red Sox as a franchise with the Death of Accountability misrepresents reality. The players have collectively never owned accountability. In 1967 and 1975, the Sox got beaten by better teams, those with Bob Gibson and Lou Brock and the Big Red Machine. Let's forget about late-season baserunning in 1972. In 1986, it's hard not to represent defeat as the ugliest word in sports, choking. 2003 had a unique form of torture, and since then it's been Shangri-La, even when it isn't. Collective failure always belongs to ownership, the general manager, or the manager. Terry Francona wasn't the first to take the fall. Does anyone remember Grady Little? It's never the players who are responsible for their play or their behavior. They're our guys, in psychology, cloaked in endowment effect ...the coffee cup that you would sell at a yard sale for two dollars is only worth a dollar if you had to buy it. It's our cup, and dammit, it's speci...

Let's face it...we must fight the addiction. Why show undiminished love to an organization that treats us as though we're Cinderella and they're the evil sisters? We need our own ' program ' to help us break free from this enabling. Here are our nine steps toward intellectual freedom. We admitted we were powerless over being a fan, that our compulsion needed to be beaten. We had begun with Boston caps, and moved on to jackets, to blankets...like Jimmy Fallon, only worse.  Came to believe that NESN would only lead us to self-destruction.  Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of alternative life choices, playing with our children, walking, reading, and not listening to sports radio. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to the highest living Red Sox charismatic figure, Johnny Pesky, that we needed to change...channels. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortstop and fix our bullpen and lack of player accountability. Made a list of all the times we had bee...

In the movie "Swordfish", John Travolta comments about the importance of misdirection. He couldn't be more right about the current state of affairs of the Boston Red Sox. It seems misdirection comes from all sides, players with an entitlement mentality, absentee ownership, and a manager struggling to imprint his brand on a wayward ship. Even the hero in our story, Dustin Pedroia, reduces himself saying "that's not the way we do things here." In fact, that's exactly how we got to this disturbing place, players dismissing the manager, and ownership bringing a 'task-oriented' manager instead of a 'relationship oriented' skipper. We hear how players are concerned about 'snitches'. In other words, professionalism matters less than protecting each others' reputations. Nobody likes to be criticized. And worse than criticism of performance, impugning one's attitude or "commitment" gets our attention. The mana...

The saying goes, "you win 60, you lose 60, and what you do in the other 40 matters." Tonight, the ball bounced (literally) the right way as a Ryan Sweeney single to right scored @MacDime54 on a bad bounce to J.P. Arencibia. No, I don't think the Sox are a powerhouse, but at least we'll put the total collapse theory to bed tonight. Daniel Bard is a starter. Whatever happened to "I'll do whatever's best for the team?"  Evidently, in a league where the AVERAGE salary is almost 3.5 million dollars, the team doesn't matter? Felix (the Cat) Doubront looked good, although with the relative failure of economical pitching with over 100 pitches in five innings. His curveball looks better than it used to be, and Toronto made him work. As for the slogan for the 2012 season, what it won't be is "Eat More Chik'n"...

(BOSTON) The Boston Red Sox continue to explore options in the compensation battle for departed General Manager Theo Epstein. In the wake of the Red Sox historic September collapse, Epstein bolted to the Windy City and the Red Sox received what many consider inadequate compensation. The primary chip in the deal was minor leaguer Chris Carpenter, who has recently undergone surgery in his throwing elbow. General Manager Ben Cherington has tried to no avail to identify "fair compensation" in the extend and pretend fiasco that the Sox have undergone. Cherington sought permission to throw one pie in the face of Epstein, but could not get agreement regarding the flavor of the pie. In preliminary talks, Epstein also agreed that only Carpenter could throw the pie, right-handed of course.  Looking slightly blue, Cherington threatened to hold his breath for ever-increasing times. This made him look slightly foolish in comparison with the constant chatter from manager Bobby Valent...

The Sox have appeared on NESN several times and last night I watched a few innings via an MLB channel on cable, the YES Network feed. Paul O'Neill and Lou Piniella couldn't have been more complimentary to practically everyone who ever wore a Red Sox or Yankee uniform. Of course, I can only watch a few innings of a Grapefruit League game at this point...with developing wandering interests, neck stiffness, and some blurred vision. You can't expect players to play nine immediately, and you can't demand that fans endure the ordeal that is the Red Sox and Yankees either. It seems as though every hitter is taking an extra pitch, or fouling off some, such that four innings of Felix Doubront seems like a whole game's worth of Denny McLain. His pitch count had to be at least seventy-five, and it's not Japanese baseball so I'm not expecting any eight inning, 150 pitch outings. So how did I watch the game anyway? First, I had to check the travel distance from For...

The Red Sox entertain Boston College and Northeastern today. In a gathering which should provide a lifetime of memories for players, families, and friends, the Sox get out of the box quickly. If only they could have beaten up on the Orioles so easily at the end of 2011. Speaking of beatings, we'll be getting an insufferable number of comparisons between Terry Francona and Bobby Valentine soon enough. How can the media extol the retiring Jason Varitek for his meritorious service marked by great preparation, and condemn (or even hint at) Valentine for excessive work on fundamentals? "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" might have been a popular book, but the players who don't give away an at-bat, who take the extra base, hit the cutoff man, play better positional defense, avoid collisions in the field, and hold runners on base might actually steal a game or more over the season. The clubhouse 'scrubbing' takes time. And everyone knows, had the Sox won a coupl...

It hasn't taken Terry Francona long to enter the fray concerning the free-for-all that has been the Red Sox clubhouse. He has the opportunity to wear two hats, his ESPN Commentator hat, and the jilted manager cap.  Everyone recognizes that with more freedom (alcohol, curfew, miscellaneous rules) comes great responsibility. Invariably, if one asks adults to behave in a mature, considerate, responsible manner, we sometimes err. Of course, the old saying, "it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission also applies." When we look historically at the adults called professional ballplayers, referencing timeless classics like Jim Bouton's "Ball Four", we know that baseball clubhouses involve not semantics, but some antics. “Throw him low smoke and we'll go pound some Budweiser.” As the new Skipper, you can't take the "boys will be boys" approach. Red Sox management made the traditional "managerial alternans" choice, of a 'ta...

Beergate simply won't die. I really hate the 'gate' suffix, but it fits here, because like it or not, it helped contribute to the perception that Terry Francona got the 'gate'. I'm not very sympathetic to so-called professionals whose immaturity or lack of discipline got exposed, and who then cry foul. Once again, it's not the behavior that's the problem, it's revealing it. I can't imagine that patrons would be happy to hear that their surgeon drank in the doctor's lounge during a 'case', even if it were unlikely that he'd get called into surgery. Rumors of pregame drinking (position player) still exist, although that player's no longer a member of Ye Olde Towne Team. Baseball, like many other professions, is a 'bottom-line' business. You can eat, drink, or carouse your way out of a team. If you have a problem with alcohol, then you'd better perform at a high level when you're not drinking. Sometimes char...

Tim Wakefield, author of two hundred career wins, the third highest win total of any Red Sox pitcher, and apparently a very good man, retires.  Other than dying, the best way to earn great praise is to retire. Make no mistake, examining Wakefield's entire body of work, from his illustrious beginnings in 1995 for the Sox, to post-season contributions, and charity work, he has a great, supportable narrative . But the past two seasons , he became more of a liability than an asset, especially when the Sox ran him out there time after time (eight) in pursuit of victory two-hundred. One can argue that the horrendous start, the Wakefield 200 tour, and the September collapse all had roles. Similarly, let none of us forget the Jacksonian "what have you done for me lately" attitude that baseball fans live. I never felt that he was out there just picking up a paycheck. Maybe that's harsh, in light of the 'good soldier' ethic that might have entitled Wakefield to a f...

It's never just about the Red Sox, because there's an equal concern about perception. This weekend, the New York Yankees went nuclear, acquiring Pineda and Kuroda to solidify their rotation. The Red Sox have responded recently with the "ten dimes equals a dollar" approach,  going to the dime store for the Cook, Germano, Silva, and Padilla bargain basement rotation builder plan. The AL East must be selling tickets to the bat rack. To be fair, the Sox had squandered spent a fortune on pitching including the Matsuzaka and Lackey deals, and are suffering the "once burned, twice shy" reaction, coupled with 'diversification'. You can't be spending all your dough on Ye Olde Towne Team when you've gotta support Liverpool, NASCAR, and whatever the next M&A play is. It's not as though the fans are screaming for a new right fielder or shortstop. A lineup of Ellsbury, Crawford, Pedroia, Gonzalez, Youkilis, Ortiz, Salty, Scutaro, and RF TBA...