Comments on: Five Red Sox Topics to Discuss

By: afrascati

afrascati — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:43:19 +0000

From the barely baseball literate I am delighted to hear that “eddy” and “el rif” agree that Drew was a 14 million dollar travesty who did NOT redeem himself in the post season. I can only applaud should he depart.

By: el rif

el rif — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 22:32:18 +0000

alright firstly, i definitely agree with the prevailing sentiment on here that manny will have a quality season. im thinking he’ll post equal to better numbers than our big papi by the all-star break.
the coco-ellsbury fight for center-field is nothing more than a little show for the benefit of a veteran like coco, to assuage his ego a bit and keep him calm. the sox will run through the motions, pretend there’s a competition going on during spring training, then, assuming ellsbury can catch and doesn’t get injured (knock on wood), magically declare ellsbury as the starting center fielder. this boy has way too much talent/skill to be riding the pine, especially since he’s MUCH BETTER than coco. whether we trade coco or dont, i really don’t see much coming our way in return.
as for dice-k, he needed a season to acclimate himself to this country and culture. he’ll be a better pitcher this year, more refined, more conditioned, and uh, more used to the size of the baseball. he’ll lower that era, post 16-18 wins.
jd drew is a mystery wrapped in an enigma..or something like that. he earned his keep in the postseason where he drove in around 14 runs. so he found his stroke at least to some degree when it mattered. but yes, his regular season was, one might say, piss-poor. i expect at least some of the 07 playoff jd drew, and less of the 07 regular season-embarassing jd drew, this season. i mean, he can’t fare much worse than he did for those 160-odd games…and i think we still won the world series….
i’m not as concerned with our rotation as others might be, but there are always lingering issues. but beckett is a non-issue. he’ll be money. the aformentioned dice-k should be a competent no.2. as for wake, hes a knuckleballer, so there’ll always be a question mark on a pitcher who relies on the weather conditions of the day as much as his own prowess. but hes proven reliable, and should continue to do enough. lester and bucholz are our young’uns. to many they’re still green and considered works in progress…which is weird considering the former threw a no-hitter last yr and the latter won us a world series game…these guys are formidable and will progress so long as the innings they see are kept to a reasonable amount. seriously the red sox should be in fine shape this season.
…and in summation, the yankees suck.

By: eddy

eddy — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 03:04:48 +0000

excellent points. you are right about many things. for personal (and contractual) reasons manny will have one of the most impressive seasons of his career. coco will be what he was last year which is trade bait, and francona will OBVIOUSLY get an extension. question marks remain for dice and jd drew. on the whole i’d say people are too critical of dice and too forgiving of drew. dice went (not sure on this) 15-12 but with at least 6 of his losses getting two runs or less of support he could easily have won the 18 games people were dreaming about a year ago. Dice will get more comfortable and has the stuff to be one of the game’s best pitchers. drew on the other hand got paid far too much to shit the bed all season. as for the so called 14 million dollar grand slam, drew could have grounded out to first like we all expected him to and we still would have won the game 8-2. the rookie carmona choked and the sox pounced on it. drew was a-rodesque in his ability to come up big in a not big way, and yet red sox nation pulled a flip flop john kerry would have been proud of on the “hero” of the postseason. he has not redeemed himself, and until proven otherwise is the greatest blunder theo has made. my question is how will the pitching staff do? i like our bullpen alot but am i the only one who worries about wake, lester, bucholz, and tavarez making up the back end of the rotation? isn’t there a risk of bucholz getting hurt (physically or emotionally) if he throws too many innings or goes through a bad stretch? tavarez and lester can be unreliable, and wake is on his last legs. looks like we will trade for a 3rd starter. i’m sick of having conversations with myself on this site so someone post something.