Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Friday, August 07, 2009
John Smoltz, who has struggled in his attempt to return from offseason shoulder surgery with the Red Sox, was designated for assignment by the club on Friday. Smoltz was knocked around by the Yankees on Thursday night, giving up eight earned runs in just 3 1/3 innings.
The Red Sox have called up Japanese pitcher Junichi Tazawa, presumably to take Smoltz’s spot on the roster. The 23-year-old is 9-7 with a 2.55 ERA between Double-A Portland and Triple-A Pawtucket this season with 94 strikeouts in 109 1/3 innings.
Will anyone pick him up (assuming he wants to continue)? And, no, I’m not asking if anyone will pick up Tazawa in Fantasy.
|
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. 1k5v3LThis must be pretty embarrassing to John Smoltz and to the Sox, given the offseason hype.
Who's next? Penny?
Wouldn't the Red Sox pay that?
Mets? Smoltz has had a better k/bb ratio than any Mets pitcher this season (yes, including Santana)
Smoltz has been Voros'ed!
On the other hand, if they thought Smoltz could or would work as a reliever I doubt the Red Sox would have designated him for assignment...
(Just kidding. He couldn't even pitch well against the Nats.)
In theory Smoltz would be low on the totem pole in the Red Sox bullpen. The pen seems less solid lately, though.
Just some good ol' regression kicking in. There was no way that Ramirez was going to post a sub-2.00 ERA all season or that MDC would go all season without giving a HR. When the dust settles, the bullpen will still have 5 guys that should be expected to put up ERAs in the low 3s at worst.
tazawa looks like he will be a star, whereas bowden looks like he might be, at the best, good.
Never have, never will. He's a #########. Maybe he's not as noisy a ######### as Schilling was, but he's still a #########.
EDIT: What, ######### doesn't pass muster with the nanny? You can say that on prime-time television, damnit!
I'm not one to name-call, but speaking of Schilling, it is somehow appropriate you can't spell that without "38".
Ditt0head?
He just did, in the 14th.
-- MWE
Hang him from the nearest tree! Hang em all who disagree with me!
You're right, it must be tough for Smoltz to be the target of such intolerance.
Good riddance. But mostly because he was throwing batting practice out there most of the time.
No sane team would want John Smoltz in their bullpen. And I'm including various independent league teams and that all-women's team, the Silver Bullets. John Smoltz is an embarrassment to the sport.
Because there's no difference between opposing something and describing it as akin to bestiality.
Like Barry and his trusted spiritual advisor, Jeremiah "the CIA created AIDS to kill the blacks off" Wright? OK, whatever.
Not much more to say.
His stuff is not major league worthy anymore; he's just too easy to hit now. His K:BB data is pretty good, and people looking for a silver lining, naturally looked there, but that doesn't help a pitcher if his stuff is too hittable.
(I assume most American team sport pro athletes are gay-hostile conservative Republicans until I hear otherwise about them.)
You're funny. If you want to talk about baseball, find yourself a sports site.
I wonder how many Red Sox fans would be venting about Schmoltzie's politics if Schmoltzie had come out of the gate with six straight wins. (/flight of fancy)
And since when are dumbasssed right wing political views all that unusual among professional athletes?
About as unusual as dumbassed left wing political views on BBTF or a college campus (not aimed at you Andy. I disagree with your politics, but you're not dumbassed :-)
And they would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you nosy kids!
top guy/semi-corrupt hack does not even support the sactioning of two dudes getting hitched. Talk to him. You've got
the f*cking wheel these days.
Wow! I'm a pretty strong believer in modern statistical thinking, but those guys are in Jonestown drink the Koolaid land.
That's mighty close to Baghdad Bob territory there.
So, Wright believes some crazy stuff. There's a big difference between that and the casino con-game Reed helped to pull. Only in America can stealing $500 from a convenience store get you several years in prison but stealing tens of millions in a white collar fraud scheme results in no prosecution at all.
Pragmatism, baby- gotta think about those battleground states for 2012. Don't worry, when you wake up for the first day of the second term, you'll be in a socialist paradise with gay marriage and free healthcare for all, as funded by our biggest allies Iran and Venezuela.
About as unusual as dumbassed left wing political views on BBTF or a college campus (not aimed at you Andy. I disagree with your politics, but you're not dumbassed :-)
Well, the dumbasssed political views on BTF are all over the spectrum....But that aside, my only point is that since Smoltz's views are so relatively commonplace in the world of professional jockdom, I can't see why anyone would get all worked up about what amounts to little more than one more example of it. And the other point is that I doubt if any Red Sox fans would be raising the issue if Smoltz had pitched like the Smoltz they'd hoped for, instead of like the Smoltz of the Leisure World slow pitch softball team. Do you really disagree with that last sentence?
There'd be no reason to shed tears for Smoltz if he were pitching well, so I never would have brought it up in that context. I might have mentioned it if Smoltz was pitching well and started to get the "What a great guy" label that Wakefield's got. On this site, also, MCOA has mentioned a few times his mixed feelings in rooting for Smoltz because of Smoltz's advocacy.
So some people are capable of being a bit more nuanced in their feelings than you give them credit for. Even if we are Red Sox fans.
I can't say I appreciate being likened to someone who copulates with dogs. That I'm almost used to hearing it from certain classes of people does dull the outrage a bit. It makes being happy he's off the team a little easier, but, given Thursday night, it's not like it was that difficult anyway.
There'd be no reason to shed tears for Smoltz if he were pitching well, so I never would have brought it up in that context.
That's kind of what I was getting at.
I might have mentioned it if Smoltz was pitching well and started to get the "What a great guy" label that Wakefield's got.
That's a different story, and at that point I'd kind of start to gag myself.
On this site, also, MCOA has mentioned a few times his mixed feelings in rooting for Smoltz because of Smoltz's advocacy.
I can appreciate that, too, but I do think that the intensity of this mixed feeling tends to be related to a player's performance on the field, at least among fans of the team in question.
And just to be clear, I don't find this phenomenon to exist only among Red Sox fans. Mariano Rivera was quoted with similar feelings several years ago, and I've never heard too many Yankee fans dwell on that, either.
--------------------------
I can't say I appreciate being likened to someone who copulates with dogs. That I'm almost used to hearing it from certain classes of people does dull the outrage a bit. It makes being happy he's off the team a little easier, but, given Thursday night, it's not like it was that difficult anyway.
All that makes perfect sense to me. I guess I wish that everyone shared my own enlightened views about everything (smile), especially people whose talents I admire, but I think I gave up on that around the time that I learned that Adolphe Menjou was a member of the John Birch Society.
I don't know who that is.
I was sad to find out that Beck is a Scientologist. (Turns out he was born into it, and I haven't ever heard him talk it up in public, so it could easily be worse.)
John Smoltz killed Vince Foster, and was actually born in Kenya. That's why he had to resign as Governor of Alaska.
And Smoltz' comments were ignorant, and bigoted, it's a pretty big distinction between mainstream views on gay marriage, such as those held by Obama, and McCain.
Found that out maybe a year ago. It's sort of nice to live in a world in which I no longer have to regard him as existing, not that I ever exactly dwelled on his words, thoughts or music anyway.
(As I've probably mentioned before, lunatics bother me [hence my vitriol toward the bug-eatingly crazed likes of Frank Miller & Dave Sim in the comics field], probably in large part because I grew up with one.)
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main