Peter Pat said:
First off Pedro was only 33 when he signed his Mets contract, and he was suppose to breaking down than. All he did was throw for over 200 innings. get over 200Ks, That season alone gets the sox at least the AL east last year. And that is the Boston Globe spin on how Pedro will break down, well 4 years from now, when he is still one of the best pitchres in basbeball, than it would have been a bad contract not at 33. And what do the Sox care if they have to carry a bloated contract of a player who breaks down a year before his contract . Last year they carried Shillings and Foulks contract for a year. because you only have so many shots at the brass ring, so if you have to pay for an extra wasted year you did. There is no cap in basbeall, the team makes more money than god, and its not like ticket prices werent going up for the fans anyways.
Sorry for my Cordero comment, I think you know I ment Cabrera, this is a message board, so I am sorry for not proofing my post. The fact that Edgar replaced him was dumb enough, especially when they knew of his fragile mental makeup, and what a city like Boston would do to him.
I noticed you didnt bring up the complete lack of a 1st or 2nd baseman last year that never got addressed, the horrible bullpen signings, and bringing in no starter help. They replaced Pedro with Fat Wells, Clement, and Wade Miller.
How about trading your 4th outfielder in Payton for a horrible reliever coming off an injury. I know Payton cried and made Franconas life miserable. But the sox have as fragile as glass right fielder in Nixon (who I hate), who you knew was bound for the DL eventually. A center fielder who runs into walls, and has broken down in the 2nd half 2 seasons in a row, and a left fielder who likes to take days off. The 4th outfielder on the sox is practically a starter, and they traded him away, headache or no headache, at least replace him with a warm body that can help you.
Yeah the farm system is great until it bears fruit I will hold my judgement, I remember the sox in the early 90s had the best farm system in the league, with a bunch of can't misses, that all missed. Right now there are no home grown Red Sox on the team outside of Nixon, who was drafted in 93. I lhink Pabelbon will be a good pitcher, but who knows.
To say anything but he is a bad GM, you are just drinking the cool aid. Not to mention he has the easiest job a GM has, he can spend more than twice as much as his competitors, yet did he get a 1st or 2nd baseman or pitching? he has 120Mil payroll, any idiot GM can run a team with a payroll like that, when 2/3 of the league have payrolls half that much or lower. he is poor GM bottom line.
Sorry Pats fans, this is why too much sox talk, onto a real sport, played by a real team, with a real GM.
You are right about first base, but how was theo going to know millar would be garbage, he got worse in every offensive cat. from the year before. It wasn't that he dropped off slightly, it was a radical change, fewer hits, fewer homeruns, he was just bad
Jay Payton - while he is a solid player, he had some issues, and if he were patient, he would have been playing a lot more. he was promised to have 300-400 ABs by sox brass. He would have had them easy if he relaxed for a few more weeks, and he would have gotten them with the sox. You cannot ignore the fact that Chad Bradford was one of the best set-up men in baseball from 2002-2004 and he was coming back from an injury...obviously he was not as effective, but nobody could have known that
Cordero, i checked, and he was in the sox system in 2002, and he was playing shortstop, so how is it stupid to think you meant somebody else? There are Will Cordero homers out there...
The System - in the 90s they had people like Nomar, who was nothing short of amazing before his wrist injury. They had Carl Pavano who was drafted in 2003 but went on to trade him for pedro, and imo that was a great trade for the sox. They had Adam Everet (SS for the Astros) who has had a decent career. We all know about trot nixon. And Jeff Suppan is a solid pitcher in the NL, even though he cant pitch in the AL. And lastly, Dernell Stenson, who was amazing, he was drafted in 1996 then he got murdered. So that shows that while the system was good, they just traded all there prospects away for players in the majors which was basically the policy of that regime. Looking over the prospects from the early 1990s there are a lot of solid players there...but many of them ended up on other teams because they got traded away.
2nd base was not awful - Graff was a good 2nd baseman, and theo got him for pretty much nothing, chip (the guy we traded to get him) has a high ceiling, but the likelihood of him getting there is pretty slim, the sox needed a 2nd baseman who could bat 2nd and that is what they did. Graff was one of the better 2nd basemen in the league when he was with the sox, he hit something like .313 for them...your not going to get much hitting from your 2nd basemen and hitting wise, i think theo could not have done better. How can you argue that he should have know MB would be soooo bad and only hit .230 and hit for no power? He had one of the better OBPs in the majors in 2004, one would think it would be there for 2005 right?
Bullpen – Foulke was an ace in the pen in 2004 but sucked in 2005. Those types of radical drop-offs can not be predicted, it was thought by annalists that he would not have done as well as in 2004, but to have like 6 blown saves in like 24 appearances is kind of ridiculous. You would have to be a seer to predict that. Matt Mantei was a high reward low risk signing, he was given an incentive deal so if he was good, he would be rewarded, and if he sucked, he would only be paid like $700,000. It was the same situation as wade miller. The kids were good in the pen, and Hansen looks pretty nasty.
To say baseball is not a real sport is just childish…you shouldn’t say something like that because obviously it is…have you ever played baseball, if you have, you would know how physically difficult it is. To say that it is not a real sport is pretty ignorant. SP is one of the greatest GMs in the game, im not taking that away from him either, im saying theo is above average...
