As someone tweeted…“Bobby V should just cut to the chase, save us 13 months and resign during the post-game show.”
In one of the most dramatic bullpen collapses by their team in years, the Red Sox saw a 9-1 lead in the top of the seventh inning turn into a 15-9 loss, as the bullpen was charged with 14 runs (13 earned) in just three innings of work.
It was a horror show rarely matched in scale. Vicente Padilla came on with a 9-1 advantage in the top of the seventh. He recorded just one out while allowing five runs, four on a Nick Swisher grand slam. Matt Albers followed and, with the aid of an error by shortstop Mike Aviles, allowed two more runs without recording an out. That led to the entry of Franklin Morales, who got out of the inning, but then was lifted after a leadoff single by Eduardo Nunez in the eighth.
The Sox turned to Alfredo Aceves for a six-out save. Instead, he recorded none, allowing a pair of hits and four walks while being charged with five runs. He was followed by Justin Thomas, the left-hander whose only outs came courtesy of a missile of a line drive double play. When the dust had settled, the Sox had given up a second-consecutive seven-run inning, and a dizzying 15-9 deficit.
It was the largest blown lead by the Red Sox bullpen since June 30, 2009, when the team saw a 10-1 advantage turn into an 11-10 loss in Baltimore in the seventh and eighth innings. At 4-10 and with a full-blown bullpen disaster now on their hands, the Sox appear to be a mess.
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This is apparently the worst bullpen of all time. Pretty impressive job by Cherington to assemble this crew.
Seriously, though, the booing of Valentine over and over and over again means the fans have already given up. He doesn't make the All-Star break.
It was over.
Okay, you're hereby forgiven for your next 50 posts on global warming.
And I swear on this turnip I hold in my hand that I'll never, EVER give up on a Fenway Park game again. I should have learned my lesson on Opening Day.
I'm not blaming him; I'm saying his position as manager will be untenable by the All-Star break, and he doesn't make it past then. If he's lost the clubhouse and lost the fans and the scene at Fenway gets uglier and uglier, not even King Larry will be able to decree his manager stays on.
I have no idea who rights this ship, and that's a scary thing.
Phil wasn't there long. I think I picked up the slack nicely and went off the rails pretty spectacularly. I'm hopin in a couple of weeks my insane rantings look stupid.
Other than the Youkilis kerfuffle, have the players said anything to indicate they don't like Bobby V? I wasn't a fan of the hire, but it seems a lot of people are reading way too much into a piss-poor start.
From 1918 to 2012, (requiring game_score=64)
Games found: 5,773.
From 1918 to 2012, Team Lost, (requiring game_score=64)
Games found: 1,848.
Number of games lost by 6 or more runs: 24 (0.4%)
If they're a good pitcher. The clowns that appeared in this game are not good pitchers.
I don't care about clubhouse nonsense or believe for a second that it has any effect on the team, but as far as this stuff goes, for those who care about it, the Youkilis thing was pretty idiotic of Valentine. And it happened just a few games in.
That said, I was no fan of the Valentine hire, but you can't screw up a team in two weeks, and no manager in history is bad enough to cost his team a game after being up 9-0.
At the start of the year, the team looked like it has a good offense, a good rotation, and a bad pen. Losing Ellsbury and Crawford hasn't helped. (Cody Ross?)
I'm sure some Boston scribe can dig up an anonymous quote and give some legs to this story. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, a slow start under a blowhard manager just asks for this story to be written.
Hey - no I didn't - I'm fine - the pitching just isn't there - even talking to a mate before we were both shocked at how little we were upset.
I wouldn't worry too much about the Yankees running away with anything, not with this sort of starting pitching:
Yankee Starters - Game Scores to Date
Sabathia - 40, 46, 64
Kuroda - 31, 76, 23
Hughes - 49, 24, 42
Nova - 56, 46, 55
Garcia - 42, 36, and probably about a 12 for today's fiasco
"Other than the Youkilis kerfuffle, have the players said anything to indicate they don't like Bobby V?"
Pedroia's petulant "He'll learn that's not how we do things around here" response to Valentine's dopey comment almost did the impossible and made Bobby V into a sympathetic figure, lol.
Red Sox starters are 2-7. They've left 3 games tied and the Red Sox are 2-1. They've left 4 games with the lead and the Red Sox are 2-2. (Melancon was able to preserve a 10 run lead)
They have the exact same record after 14 games as they did a year ago, when they ended up winning 90 games.
I guess if you're saying everyone in Boston will overreact because of last year's September implosion and make this team worse, then yea, I guess that could happen.
But damned if they're not doing everything they possibly can to make me say I'm ready to write this season off right ####### now.
I think that the Cardinals bullpen was still worse than the Red Sox at this point last year. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel.
Red Sox Position Players Pitching, 2004-2011: 6.75 ERA, 2.10 WHIP (6.2 IP)
Red Sox Bullpen, 2012: 8.44 ERA, 1.81 WHIP (43 IP)
So ... they're definitely going to win the World Series?
It can...but GD, not like this!!
Oddly enough, that's a little larger than the Sox's chances of making the playoffs,
I would say that they have at least a 1 in 30 chance of winning it all.
Actually they won 89.
Nobody is real strong in the East at the moment. The Rays have their own bullpen issues with non-Shields starters being pretty unimpressive thus far and the Yankees rotation is thoroughly non-threatening without Pineda in it.
They also had the MVP runner-up in CF and Papelbon in the BP. They have a stronger rotation now but it doesn't matter when you're 2-2 in games that you've 9 or more runs in.
That's the silver lining. No one's running away with the East, and the Angels, a key potential WC competitor, have also limped out of the gate.
90 last year, 89 in 2010.
Honestly (and I will get crucified for this) - in my little opinion , he is just not a closer. He was just doing a little mop up here and there last year until everyone else's arm fell off and went pretty good in the latter months. I just don't think he has that "closer mentality"
/ducks
I'm going to wait a while before I throw this team under a bus - but I really ####### hate everyone in the bullpen.
1. Closers have to have closer mentality.
2. Momentum is real
3. Managers have more effect than you think.
4. Teamwork, chemistry and clubhouse issues affecting on-field play is real.
Now I believe 2-4 to a small extent, but this team is Joe Morgan and Mitch William's wet dream.
Exactly - that's why I am fully preparing to be crucified for my comments above!!
As good a place as any to point out (for those who haven't noticed) that after 15 games, the Rangers are +51 runs. Somebody forgot to send them the deadball memo although, to be fair, they're trying by giving as much PT as they can to Torrealba, Moreland, Gentry and Andrus.
Nothing really to do with the Sox, just pointing out the Angels deficit isn't cuz the Angels suck but because the Rangers are playing like Godzilla on a skyscraper bender.
Apparently my memory doesn't work.
The Angels are 6-9. They're this year's version of last year's Red Sox: the team that made 2 big offseason acquisitions and was crowned WS champs in February, but have started the season with a losing record. And they haven't even faced a tough schedule either: they opened vs KC at home, then played the Twins on the road, Yankees on the road, then home vs the A's and O's. In their 5 series so far, they've had to play 1 good team.
New York: 10/17
Boston: 14/14
Tampa Bay: 13/15
Detroit: 8/14
Texas: 4/14
Angels: 3/15
The West teams have had it easy (so the Angels have no excuse at all for the poor start) but for everyone else the schedule has been stacked. 4-10 is bad no matter how you look at it but Boston is going to look a lot better and gain some confidence back once they start playing the lousy teams on their schedule; after this Yankees series they have 16 straight games against teams projected below .500. The Rays are just looking forward to the end of April, the month features only four games against non-contenders and 13 of 23 games are on the road (all against contenders).
Walt, I will try to remember to give you credit the first 20 or so times I steal this one. - Brock Hanke
It's April. Of course the team looks terrible, they're playing terribly. And in a month when they're playing great, they'll look like a machine.
"The worst part: the ownership does. Not. Care. There's so much onus on selling commemorative bricks, Red Sox Nation (TM!) cards, and maintaining the sellout streak that the actual product on the field is secondary. But hey, who cares about winning another WS title when we can all sing Sweet Caroline after coughing up a 9 run lead in the 7th? Make sure to buy a commemorative program on the way out!"
I did think it was odd to play SC at that moment, and to hear so many singing it.
Anyway, the Red Sox are one of the premier franchises in sports and obviously people are overreacting a bit right now.
BTW, didn't we have a thread at the top of the week about how Mark Teixeira was "through"? I guess the Sox didn't get that memo...
There's something about the first 2-3 weeks of the new season that seems to compel folks into these premature proclamations.
As for Aceves--paranoids might want to remind you guys that he's an ex-Yankee, which conjures up images of The Manchurian Candidate (a slightly more upscale movie than the one Walt reached for).
Yeah, it's like these idiot Sox fans are worried that the Red Sox will actually miss the playoffs. What a bunch of rubes.
Not only that, but he's singlehandedly introduced us to the virtue of PPiTTS™**. It sounds best when spoken by Daffy Duck, but we can't deny its value in Hall of Fame discussions.
**Proactively Pitching To The Score
Reminiscent of Ramiro Mendoza in 2003, or as I called him, "Agent Ramiro." Of course, Agent Ramiro was not the nominal closer.
Melancon is also a former Yankee. I wonder what their trigger words are.
"Sweet Caroline"
Now that's funny.
Also, anyone who has ever played anything competitively knows that momentum is real.
"Genius's", huh? It's another fourth grade level grammatical error in a post mocking the intelligence of others; I love it.
I thought grammatical corrections are off-limits here? Whereas not rounding to even when calculating that 15th decimal place brings excoriation from the masses.
They ###### the good cop up the ass last year and might be whining because Bobby V. is the bad cop. Time for management to back up Bobby V. so the players know that whining gets them nothing.
The most sabermetric study of managing that I've seen is Chris Jaffe's, which concludes that managers absolutely do have measurable effects on teams.
As much as I've disliked Bobby V as a tactician so far, this is absolutely true.
The comma should be inside the quotation marks, thusly:
"Genius's," huh?
Also, "fourth grade level" should be hyphenated when used as an adjective before a noun: "fourth-grade-level grammatical error."
Thirded. Though as a Yankee fan, I am, of course, rooting for a full melt-down.
I don't think I want to know what a "full melt-down" is when, as we speak, Fenway is sitting in Tiananmen Square.
As I'm mocking the Red Sox and Joe Morgan types, neither has intelligence.
Also...suck my dick.
edit: responding to 73.
"Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"
??????
!!!!!
The "Fire Bobby V" movement is like one of these internet memes. There really is a mob mentality in America right now.
Same as it ever was.
Nah, only if you're in America and a slave to rules that don't make sense.
If you've even seen a Ken Macha press conference, you know that managers have no affect whatsoever.
There always was. Social networking websites just make it easier to see it unfold in real time. And America isn't unique in this way at all.
I've played a lot of things competitively, and momentum, at least on a game-to-game basis, is pretty much horseshit, as far as I can tell.
I'm talking intragame. There often is that point in a game when both sides realize that this thing is over and there is nothing you can do about it. That feeling of total lconfidence in the outcome, warranted or not, is hard to beat.
It may be a cliche, but it gets attributed as an Earl Weaver quote.
Time to run out another Earl Weaver quote:
A manager's job is simple. For one hundred sixty-two games you try not to screw up all that smart stuff your organization did last December.
The problem is that most people aren't maniacally confident that each day is a new day and do need some success in order to move ahead. Either that, or they must be able to use visualization techniques that draw on past incidents or apporximate the game situation to make them feel like they have already successfully faced the batter or pitcher.
It is probably more important in an individual sport like tennis or golf, but can be applied to something like free throw shooting.
Or, in the case of 2012 Red Sox, try to make up for all the smart stuff.
For example, the feeling of going up 9-1 on your hated rival at home with only nine outs to go.
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