We Don’t Need No Stinking Trades - Papi does it again…

No trades for the Sox, but yesterday was still an insane day.  Maybe more insane than if they actually made a trade.  Lot’s of stuff in the rag sheets today lets touch on some of it.

Nick Cafardo has a pretty thorough article up for the Globe “deadline passes as do sox”.  He talks about some of the potential deals that were out their including a Crisp for Buehrle trade, two of Lester, Hansen, Delcarman for Roy Oswalt.  Sox were apparently never really in the Lugo hunt, and the Jones rumors were one call and done.  Not being able to move Nixon caused them to balk at Abreau, and Kip Wells injury history was enough to keep them away from that stud.  In this quote Theo sounds a lot like Primate Sam M… of course Theo isn’t talking about a glorified AAAA team (/snark)

``That was pretty much everything,” said Epstein of not wanting to give up prospects. ``We have a long-term plan, and as much as we desperately wanted to do something to help our big-league team, it would have been shortsighted to sacrifice that long-term plan in order to incrementally increase our chances this year.

``We were asked over and over again for a lot of our good young players—good young players at the major league level who are part of our long-term plan—and it just wasn’t worth it.

Kelsie Smith has a bit of a puff piece with tons of quotes from the players who are staying including Lorretta and Lowell.  The most interesting quote from our Boy Uncle Lester:

``[What Epstein said is] just a big confidence booster right there,” Lester said, ``that he believes in us as a young group, that we’re going to do something special for this organization.”

Leave it to Tony Mazz to play contrarian. 

Let’s be candid here for a moment. Since the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, all of New England has gone as soft as a sneaker full of Barbasol. Red Sox fans have grown alarmingly complacent, accepting most everything the club does with glazed eyes and a stupid smile. Yes, Theo. Of course, Mr. Henry. Certainly, Mr. Lucchino. Some of us are starting to wonder if anyone will ever awaken from the trance.

Somewhere along the line, the Atlanta Braves became the model franchise for major league baseball, an amusing development for one simple reason. The Braves don’t win championships. Atlanta has qualified for the playoffs for an amazing 14 years running, but its only World Series title came in a strike-shortened 1995 season that also marked the Red Sox’ last division title. 

Not only was Tony Mazz negative, but his stable mate Silverman(the one who doesn’t sound like Mickey Mouse) did too.  To paraphrase (he doesn’t even get a quote):

Wells sucked - check. 
Epstein is a smitten fanboy with no melons- check.
Pitching 95% of Baseball.  Sox are doomed - who cares about Papi, Ortiz or whomever - check.
Yankees are winners and made moves - they didn’t stand pat - they have melons - check. 

I’m surprised he didn’t mention Tek went down.  It would have been clever based on the headline… I guess clever is too much to ask when the sky is falling. 

Sean McAdams at the Projo has a little different spin on deadline.  He claims the sox were trying to get Andruw to then flip him for Roy Oswalt.  Also the snag in the Abreau deal was the Sox wouldn’t pick up all of his contract since it would put them over the luxury tax threshold next year (I didn’t believe one was in effect next year.)

The CFBcontributes the type of article he actually is really good at, one of the best actual, memorializing greatness, and at this point I just don’t know what else we can describe this Papi guy’s antics as.  Yeah we know, random… blah blah blah all I say to that is MVP, MVP, MVP (which the packed Fenway crowd was chanting for 15 minutes after Papi’s 37th titanic shot of the season:

This was Ortiz’s third walk off homer this year, his seventh regular-season walk off homer with the Red Sox, and the eighth regular-season walk off homer of his career. He has two postseason walk off homers. He has 15 regular-season walk off hits and five walk off hits in the last 51 days.

Jeff Horrigan in the Herald gives Papi some credit for some other RedSox team records:

The homer was also Ortiz’ 14th of July, establishing a new club record. Jimmie Foxx (1939) and Clyde Vollmer (1951) shared the previous mark of 13. He finished the month with 35 RBI, which was also a club record for the month. Nomar Garciaparra drove in 33 runs 1998.

Papi’s homer wasn’t the only one that caused good memories according to Julian Benbow as Wily-Mo put a guys lights out.

Kelsie Smith also has an article about last nights winning pitcher Kyle Snider, whose family was in attendance and who deserves more than a little bit of credit for his performance last night after Fatso pitched a Wasdinesque performance.

``This is the most important performance to me, personally, that I’ve ever been a part of,” he said. ``I can’t describe the feeling. It’s overwhelming. To be able to come back, and keep the team in the game, and to be able to come back with a W like that. To watch David Ortiz do what he does. It’s totally beyond me.”

Steve Krasner has his usual look at the game, and like always is the best in the region. 

From the Notebook- Nixon is out about 3 weeks.  Tek twisted a Knee and needs an MRI (Josh Bard where are you?) .  Jason Johnson will get the call tonight.  Maybe he can step up versus his old club.