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1. Textbook Editor Posted: May 11, 2012 at 10:58 AM (#4129157)Phew, I thought Edes might go overboard.
Well that's just shameful. Beckett never should have killed Carl Beane.
I mean, c'mon, that was just off the top of my head and I don't have a team that hires PR people to help me. In truth, as soon as the story broke the Red Sox should've had their PR person sit down with Beckett and tell him 'here is how you are selling it'. The fact they didn't speaks volumes about how poorly run they are becoming (as does last September and the aftermath of course, but this is just continuing it).
I wonder if it is the 'Maple Leaf disease' - a team gets every ticket sold, a die-hard fan base that won't stop obsessing and decides that silly things like PR don't matter anymore. The Blue Jays hit that point in the early 90's when they had sell outs every game for a few years in a row and it took years for them to figure out that it cost them big time long term. The Maple Leafs still haven't figured it out but their fans are super-diehards ($100+ a ticket, sell outs every game, miss playoffs for 7 straight years in a league where over 1/2 the teams make it - less than 1% odds of it happening randomly). The Red Sox fans could be in for a long painful stretch if the ownership decides 'screw it' now that they have 2 WS titles and they figure out it is more profitable to be mediocre than fighting for the title each year.
Beckett is making 0% of sense here right?
I don't think his position is unreasonable. As long as he isn't hurting himself on his off day I'm not sure why he owes anyone an explanation.
I think there are questions; did he exacerbate the "injury" and could he have pitched in the 17 inning game if not for the golf that are very fair. I think the question as posed is somewhat open-ended and not really a particularly useful one.
If he hurt himself (or exacerbated the injury) golfing he deserves criticism. Other than that I don't see why someone's off day activities are relevant.
My general feeling is that as long as a player is in shape and ready emotional and physically to play when he needs to I don't give a damn what else he is doing.
For all we know Beckett was "injured" because the Team had to call up Cook, not because he was actually hurt. I think it's safe to assume that Beckett wouldn't want to play golf when he's really hurting.
And the Carl Beane stuff is, at best, hypocritical and in ridiculously bad taste.
Given the historically accurate "25 Players, 25 Cabs" description of the Red Sox franchise, seems to me that Beckett's an eminently worthy torch carrier of their hallowed tradition.
To bring it back to everyone's favorite - the real world - if you call in sick to your job and they get undeniable intelligence that you were golfing, or at the mall, or at a ballgame, there'd be consequences.
I'll agree with this sliver - I don't think Beckett should answer to fans (or, by proxy, the media) about this, but I think his employer has every single right to dictate what he does not do on his offdays, within reason.
But that's not at all relevant. This is me going to the mall or a ballgame on a Saturday. Now, if I go to a Sunday night Sox-Yankee game and get hammered and have to call out the next day because of a deathly hangover, then it would be fair for there to be consequences.
So far there has been no evidence that Beckett's golf excursion has impacted his performance.
This is exactly what happened. Everyone has said that he was told to take a day off as a precautionary measure (reading between the lines: "You're a touch sore but could go out and pitch; however, we need to get Cook up here or we lose him for nothing. Let's push you back a turn.") and did not ask out of his start himself.
I think Beckett is in the right here, but he's handled it like a prickly moron. As you'd expect.
Because he didn't really have an off day. He had a start skipped due to injury. That says to me rest and rehab till your next start, not three days of rest, a day of doing whatever you want, then a few more days of rest. Its not like he was out partying or something, he was doing something that could have negatively impacted his rehab. Just because he won this game of russian roulette doesn't mean we can't criticize the fact he was playing it in the first place.
On the other hand, Bobby V should have said the other day "he wasn't doing anything that was against his rehab regimen" not "golf was probably not the best idea" or whatever it was.
Oh yea, if thats the case, we should mind our own business. Too bad this is the internet!
I'm not completely defending Beckett's off-day golfing, as it appears the country club around the Bosox is back (pardon the pun), but what a terribly stifling environment to play in.
Just so I'm clear, did Beckett actually say anything to mock the Sox announcer who recently died? Or was that just a really cheap shot by the author of the article?
I hope Josh enjoyed his 10 day vacation - although I guess they don't count towards his 18 days off a year.
...and if I'm Cook, I'm furious. Shoehorning him into a token start is not the point of that particular contract clause.
He said "year", but I think he meant "season". In the four or five (and the smart money is on five this year) months that the Sox don't play, I have a lot of trouble believing that the team has much control at all over its players.
Cheap shot.
If he hadn't gotten his knee torn up and then pitched like crap, he'd probably have grounds to be annoyed. As it is, if he'd pitched better he'd probably be taking Buchholz's spot in the rotation after tonight.
Right, he was saying the 18 days in which they don't have a game. But that is a part of the problem. He is a starting pitcher! He has way more than 18 - maybe 100 off-days if we are giving him credit for his side session days.
And if he wants to count non-starting days as work days, that ####### has to get himself into that 17th inning game instead of letting an outfielder pitch.
I don't understand what you mean. The point of the clause was to get him called up - and it got him called up. Do you think he would rather have been called up and buried at the back of the bullpen as a mop-up guy?
Isn't the issue his lat muscle not his dick?
If the Red Sox are more concerned with a minor league free agent than with Josh Beckett, then their front office is more dysfunctional than I had realized.
So you're saying that he wasn't hurt and therefore they skipped their only effective starter so they could bring up a guy that anyone in their right mind knows will suck? If you want to say that he was just a bit sore and they wanted to rest him some then that's fine but claiming that he wasn't hurt at all defies logic.
The real problem for Beckett of course is that you can't do something that looks bad and then bomb in your next start. Whether you really put yourself at risk or not you still look like an ass.
I suspect that he'd have rather not been called up, released, and then caught on with a team that lets him start in the majors.
It's not either/or - they give Beckett a little extra rest and get to see some of what they have in Cook (who was pitching great in AAA).
(A) Lester is their only effective starter - Beckett has a 6.00 ERA. (B) Where the hell are you getting the certainty on Cook? He was pitching well in AAA and has a history of MLB success.
It seems like the Sox would be a team that "lets him start in the majors" seeing as they let him start in the majors.
*If* by rest you mean recuperation, then how is golfing doing that?
If Beckett is ailing in some significant way, then that's one thing. But losing a minor league free agent should be 100% secondary to how you deal with Beckett. That is to say, yeah, the golf thing is a problem.
Once. Giving their regular pitcher a midseason golf vacation. The man likely doesn't want to be an emergency starter, making five appearances in the bigs each year.
Beckett: Defiant Sportswriter doesn't get it.
And so it goes.
DB
They dealt with Beckett having a sore lat by telling him to skip a start. My guess is that if he had not been sore, they would have told Buchholz to sit one out with a sprained ability to keep the ball down and had Cook take that start instead. Luckily for the Sox it worked out such that Cook could come up and pitch like dogshit instead of Beckett while the latter rested his sore (but not injured!) lat on the links.
Then he should have tried not being a lousy pitcher at some point in the last two plus years. Aaron Cook is not in a position to dictate how he's used. Otherwise he wouldn't have been on a minor league deal.
They called him up and he immediately started - you think he should be mad for future grievances that he can see thru a time machine? It's pretty obvious the Sox starting pitching is a mess; Cook probably has a better chance of getting starts with Boston than anywhere else.
He could very well have opted out, but he chose not to. He knows how this stuff works. I don't understand why we should feel bad for him. There are lots of baseball players who would like to be playing in the big leagues.
I thought he did opt-out, but the Sox had 48 hours after that to purchase his contract.
If that's true then we're all arguing about nothing, because once he gets back from the DL he'll be on the major league roster anyway. I think. I don't think they can send him down again.
He still has to come to the park on the days he doesn't pitch. He'd have to get a ridiculously early tee time if he wanted to play 18 holes on a game day!
Of course, teams do make starting pitchers do stuff much more dangerous than golf on days when they aren't pitching. Like shagging flies (and taking BP in the NL).
Don't get either side of the Aaron Cook part at all. Like Mattbert says, he's not in a position to dictate how he's used. And once he's up, he has to stay up or they lose him, right? I doubt that he's got options left.
This.
Have you ever heard of night games? or is my sarcasm detector broken?
Actually the Sox are not doing that this year. Valentine put a stop to it along with the beer and chicken.
The results have been a smashing success.
Also, if he was pitching better, he could juggling knives on his off days, and most fans wouldn't care.
Man, this team is hard to root for...
You can make up any narrative you want here. Assume he pitched well tonight, well then it goes, "Golf on off day helps Beckett refocus" or some crap like that.
This is why the print media is laughed at by non-media and Internet types.
If you're not using your lat muscle, you're doing it wrong.
I came here to type exactly this.
Or maybe he really does not give a single ####.
Wrong Beckett
I keep reading about how Beckett has been really good since the Detroit game and it was just that bad start that made his overall numbers look good. Looking it up that was true, he was good in the four starts between Cleveland and Detroit. Looking at Lester's logs he has had more good starts this season than I realized but that just changes it to one of the two reliable starters. As for Cook having a soft tosser put up a 13/11 K/BB in 33 AAA innings isn't exactly an endorsement of his major league capability.
This was an issue before he went out and tossed the worst start of his career. After he tossed the worst start of his career you would think he might at least understand the criticism.
I dont understand how anyone can defend Beckett on this. He was too hurt to pitch for a team that DESPERATELY needs someone to get their act together and just go 6. He didnt make his start. So one of two things is true:
1. he told the team he couldnt pitch, which calls into question why he wasnt too hurt to golf, or put another way, why he felt golfing was more important than pitching.
2. the team told him he was being skipped, in which case he's basically telling the organization to #### off
And his reaction to the whole escapade did nothing but reinforce the general fact that he just doesnt give a damn about the team or about how the city perceives him.
Look, I watched the press conference, and when he was asked if he could understand how the fans might be upset, oh man, if I had been present I would have punched him in his squirreled up condescending mouth.
How can anyone root for this team at this point?
Look, I was mostly just joshing (see what I did there?), but do you think they get to show up half an hour before first pitch? Home team takes BP something like three hours before game time. That means the players are probably getting to the park between 2 and 3 PM if game time is 7.
I'm under the impression that SP who are not starting that day's game can get there much later than 2 or 3, but I admit I don't know.
Well, that's different than everyone being certain he will suck as you said earlier (and someone else in this thread implied that other teams would want to put him right in their rotation). He might be effective in the majors and the Sox are in a position where they should find out.
Whether or not it was the right thing for Beckett to golfing after missing a start due to injury is a debatable question. But it's not an unreasonable question. Beckett acted like a dick in response and put his employers in a bad position.
Perceptions matter, often alot more than whether someone is "right".
I think 3 hours before game is the reporting time, so ~4PM.
In any case, at the ritzy private clubs a guy like Beckett can play, a weekday round is going to be under 4 hours. He could easily have a 10AM tee time and get to the park by 3. He could also have a noon tee-time and just play 9.
As I said, a team that is run by people who know they will sell out every game and get crazy good ratings if they put a team of little leaguers on the field as long as they wore the Red Sox uniforms.
Unless he golfs as well as he pitched yesterday.
I don't think that's true. I would guess that the NESN ratings are trending downward. They still sell almost all their tickets, but I think that will change next year when people realize they don't have to buy them so far in advance, and when the amateur scalpers won't buy as many tickets after taking a bath this year. And even now as the sellout streak continues, there are tons of tickets for tonight's game available directly from the team (I just checked at redsox.com) and most of these won't be sold. They stand to miss out on a lot of money over the next few years if they field a bad and unpopular team (but still have a monster payroll).
The rot in the Boston Red Sox organization runs too deep ... clueless, defiant egomaniac ... poisoning ... beer-and-chicken ... utter lack of respect he has for the franchise ... drank beer and ate fried chicken ... He whines that it's a media creation, which, in some respects, it is. The media did report it. ... Beckett sure had gotten fat ... Popeye's and Bud Light ... with extra crispy on his extra chin ... He led the pitching staff like it was his fiefdom ... the conscience – or lack thereof – that guided the rest ... The beer-and-chicken incident ... by now it's obvious that Beckett cares about himself first ... the me-me-me thoughts that pollute his mind ... He just doesn't give a damn ... his infantile choices ... They might as well set up a Popeye's window and tap a keg in the clubhouse. The asylum is broken, and inmate No. 1, Josh Beckett, has no intention of letting the reins go anytime soon.
I'm tired of players like Josh Beckett and Morgan Ensberg and Albert Belle killing p.a. announcers.
Cannot believe it took that long for someone to write this. Well, wait, I guess I can.
I'm tired of players like Josh Beckett and Morgan Ensberg and Albert Belle killing p.a. announcers.
It's a shame Ensberg hasn't turned out to be a regular here.
Just wait for the inevitable Red Sox front office leak:
You know, a t-shirt with the three of them on it would be... well, that'd be a fun Threadless tee to see on the street.
From that description it sounds less like a medieval fiefdom than one of those Los Angeles jailhouse situations. Hope they've got enough condoms to last out the season, cuz I'd hate to see young Clay Buchholz get whatever that Alpha Dog's squirting out.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Maybe it's not you, but normally on Sox Therapy all I read is complaints about the lack of depth and the mediocre guys that they did lose. They are desperate for starting pitching and Cook was pitching just as they hoped in Pawtucket. He's not a K pitcher, and yes he has had success in the bigs getting less than 4 K's per 9. They should just give him away because an even-year Beckett start is priceless? he has a 6.00 ERA.
You guys are either misrepresenting me because you're afraid that your points don't stand on their own or reading something that is not visible to me.
There's a reason that they would have lost Cook, and it's because players with MLB experience don't want to be on the AAA shuttle to handle emergencies, as much as clubs would love to stash them there and leave them unused in case of emergency.
You don't need to feel any way towards Cook, and he wouldn't be winning the Cy Young award with anyone in 2012. But not all players simply exist for the glory of the Red Sox franchise; they are complex people with wants, needs, and ambitions of their own.
Except that this is almost certainly not an option for a player like Cook, since he almost certainly does not have any minor league options left. And even if he did, he has more than enough MLB service time to have the right to refuse a minor league assignment. So there's no reason to concern ourselves with the Red Sox putting him on the AAA shuttle, since he simply can't be put on the AAA shuttle if he doesn't want to be. Once he's added to the 40 man roster, he pretty much has to be kept on the 25 man roster or cut loose.
So what exactly is your point?
So if released, no one would sign him or do you think other teams would have signed him to be in their rotation? I don't know what you envision. He wants to be a starter in the majors but should be furious at the Red Sox because they gave him a start in the majors? I really have no idea what you think Cook's grudge should be.
EDIT: To make the point without snark, Cook can't be placed on the "AAA shuttle". Once he's on the 25-man roster, he has to stay there or be DL'd, he can't be sent to the minors again unless he accepts the assignment and no other club places a waiver claim on him. It's possible that the Red Sox would have asked Cook to pitch in relief rather than in the rotation, and it's reasonable to think that Cook could have been unhappy about that request. This isn't what you've been arguing, but it's the one angle where there's a possible disjunct between Cook's wants and the Red Sox' wants.
I don't really know what we're supposed to do about that, though. Someone is always the #6 starter, and usually he wants to be the #5 starter instead. Every team in the world has a guy like that, and I don't know why you think that just the one on the Red Sox is being mistreated.
"How the hell can Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire be 1 and 2 on both the HOT and COLD lists?? Man, Beckett just does not get it."
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