Given the Yankees’ offseason spending, is there satisfaction in being ahead of them after a winter in which the Sox spent their resources on short-term contracts and extensions for homegrown players?
They are definitely two different approaches. No question about that. We don’t rule out the significant free-agent signings. Make no mistake about that. We were out there trying to sign Teixeira. We look at the best free agents to come onto the market every year. It’s just not our primary course of action. It’s not the preferred way to operate. But you should never, and we never, foreclose any options to make our team better.
I do like the fact very much that we have a different approach. The Yankees seem to do things one way. We try to do them another. They’ve built the eighth wonder of the world as a ballpark, as a grand stadium, a grand edifice. We just have a nice little ballpark here. They’re also in the largest market in the world. We are in the most avid or passionate market in the world. There are real differences between us, and I like to be reminded of those from time to time.
Would you be surprised if a team with the resources of the Yankees made a run at Jason Bay in free agency this winter?
They have a track record of doing exactly that: signing the best players to come onto the free-agent market…Jason has the kind of track record that will establish him as one of the better free agents on the market as a position player. I think that it’s quite likely that they may do that, as a general rule. But who knows? I don’t know how rich their farm system is in terms of coming outfielders, but that doesn’t seem to deter them in most years.
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Question #1: Are you surprised that the Sox do not have a lead of more than 2.5 games?
Question #2: If you were a team that had spent almost a half-billion dollars in the offseason, would you be upset not to be in first place?
Question #3: Given the Yankees’ offseason spending, is there satisfaction in being ahead of them after a winter in which the Sox spent their resources on short-term contracts and extensions for homegrown players?
Question #4: The trillion-dollar Yankees just plain bought Matsui and Igawa, isn't that unfair and disgusting?
Question #5: Don't you agree that pinstripes look douchey?
Question #6: How hard did you laugh when Thurman Munson died?
You forgot to include the sportswriters & journalists. The rivalry is perpetuated by the media as much as it is by anyone else.
As much as I love Boston and love my Sawx....boy, am I glad I am no longer confronted with the likes of those two guys.
If you look at the Americna League, it is increasingly clear that the three best teams in the league are NY, BOS, and TB. You could even make the argument that Toronto is the 4th best team in the league (they're only two games out of the 4th best record, they're getting Halladay back, and they have to play the other AL East teams more than anybody in the Central and the West). By definition, the third and fourth-best teams in the league probably won't make the playoffs, much less get to the World Series. This means the correct benchmark for the Red Sox also happens to be the team we hate the most, anyway.
How will the Red Sox compete, over the long haul, with the Yankees, the team with overwhelmingly the most resources? I think the Red Sox have exactly the right formula, which is:
1) Leverage the rabidity and relative affluence of the team's fan base, and the affection for the ballpark, into maximum revenues. The Red Sox can never eliminate the gap between #1 and #2, but they can close it - and make sure they can out-spend and out-invest anybody other than the Yankees in the AL.
2) Do a better job of developing talent from within than anybody else. This makes your money go further, as all research shows that investments in your minor-league system pay off at a much higher rate of return than most free-agent signings. It frees up the money to go after a few high-dollar free agents every year. When you think about the money spent on subpar free agents (Julio Lugo, I'm looking at you, and your $36 million), then think about how little a team has to spend on scouting and signing young players relative to that. Pedroia, Youkilis, Ellsbury, Masterson, Delcarmen, Bard, Paplebon, Lester, Lowrie, Buchholz, Bowden, Ramirez (to get Lowell and Beckett)...this is what allows the Red Sox to go after Teixera last winter.
There is nothing the Red Sox are doing in 2009 that either 1) limit their ability to cmpete this year, or 2) handcuff the team's ability to go after a big free agent this winter. The biggest challenge facing the team over the next few years is improving their abiblity to develop position players, particularly middle-of-the-order position players. Lars Anderson is their best shot today, but he is not a sure best, by any means.
D + C aren't part of RS nation, and they were the ones asking the questions... i guess that's hilarious?
True...Lucchino & Henry hate talking about the Yankees unless they are directly asked about it. This was just a one time thing.
In Massachusetts, July 4 is about the earliest date people go on summer vacations. Not that everyone goes locally to the beach for a vacation, but most of your beach resort towns are nearly as empty in June as they are in the dead of winter. The water's still cold in most places.
Down here in DC/MD people talk about Memorial Day weekend as the unofficial start of summer which takes some getting used to.
Gerry Callahan spends an hour talking about how Obama is going to have the federal government take over the entire country and turn us into a soviet style Totalitarian hellhole.
GC spends another half an hour talking about how Deval Patrick is an affirmative action Governor who personally shoved dollar bills into Diane Wilkerson's bra.
GC rounds out the second hour by talking about how liberals hate themselves and their country and how Obama is going to start his own personal gestapo security force to round up conservative heroes like himself.
Hour three--Will Tom Brady be able to play this season?
Cue Dale and Holly
Not sure I agree with your premise there, but to the extend that it's arguable...sports talk radio is full of ignorant jackasses in every city. It sucks everywhere.
No one will ever confuse WFAN with NPR.
The water is always cold. The water on the cape stays cold until mid July. The water on the North Shore...you can swim by the first week of August if you are a hardy soul. Maine coast? Lay in the sand, get a tan, and forget about swimming in the icy north Atlantic.
I decided not to overgeneralize because I have little experience with either the out-facing parts of Cape Cod or the southern shores of the Vineyard or Nantucket. Maybe they're OK in June, I dunno.
I thought they were elected as state senators after the great redistricting controversy of 2004. Gerrymandering originated in Massachusetts and it's pronounced differently there than anywhere else. I know one of the descendents of the original Gerry.
I don't even live in the state, and the thought of that makes me queasy.
Hey, WJ and I agree on something!
Ah, the go-to Yankee fan's defense for his own obsession with the Red Sox.
This Red Sox fan pays attention to teams that make the playoffs.
Which is ridiculous. Sandwich picks should be eliminated, they just take away players who would otherwise go in the second round and give them to the rich teams that keep a player until free agency. But that's another story. Just pointing out what the front office is almost certain to be thinking.
Holliday and Bay will probably get similar contracts, there isn't much difference in projections once context is accounted for, and Holliday is probably the better defender.
gerrymandering!
My guess is the Sox will sign Bay and the Yanks will go after Holliday. Generally speaking the Sox have done a good job of bringing back players at slightly below market prices. I think there's always something to a player wanting to return to a situation he's comfortable in and I get the impression Bay is very happy in Boston.
Right. You don't have to bring in politics to make a case against him. Ordway turns me off too and he could have voted for Kodos for all I know.
You've got to be be kidding me. Pay attention to the last 100 years or so?
Most of the players they resign are guys who they already control for a number of years. How often do the Red Sox resign a premium player once he actually is eligible for free agency? Lowell, yes. Not Pedro, Lowe, or Damon. It doesn't make sense to brush aside the draft pick implications. This front office is quite obviously aware of them and does everything in their power to hoard such picks.
If things go according to plan, they'll make a show of wanting Bay back, hope the Steins decide they have to have him, get outbid, complain a bit about the Yankee money, sign Holliday for a similar amount, and then celebrate.
Yankees would be best served to just target Holliday instead and not contribute to the best interests of the Red Sox.
I would guess that the Sox would be fine bringing back Bay, but they wouldn't want to pay him more than what they're paying Drew. If Bay wants $17-20 mil per, no way.
Bay has been pretty bad for about a month or so now, so how he finishes the season will play a big part too.
Hmm...they signed Jason Varitek to 4/40 in the 04-05 offseason and got some flak from BP, inter alia, for it.
They would probably have signed Damon if the Yankees didn't offer the extra year.
I'm not saying the Yankee fans' reactions make sense. Just calling em like I see em. Any time a Yankee player is criticized by anyone--e.g. Joba's beanings--the immediate Yankee fan reaction is something like, "OMG JOSH BECKETT DID IT TOO!" It's always about the Red Sox. I guess that's what a decade's worth of frustrated entitlement will do to a fan base. Eighty-six years of frustration certainly did a number on Boston fans.
Meanwhile, I can tell you from personal experience and talking to other Sox fans that we're much more concerned with the Rays right now. They're a better baseball team and a more competent organization.
There does appear to be some difference in the styles of the ownership - Lucchino and Henry really can't stop talking about hte Yankees, whereas the Stein Spawn are more reticent about the Red Sox. I think with Lucchino it's all marketing - nothing the man does in public is genuine, everything is composed and rehearsed for monetary gain. With Henry, the man is just seriously weird dude, so I don't really know what to say.
But to argue that Red Sox and Yankees fans are differentially obsessed with the other team is simply silliness.
Oh come on. Let's not pretend these fellow sox fans are representative of most sox fans. That's just dishonest. It's like me saying most people think pavement was a better group than pearl jam, and I know that because of the people I speak to.
"Mr. Burns, your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?"
I have no beef with fanboy smack talk. It's fun. But you can't both jump immediately at any opportunity for such and then proclaim your superiority to it.
Also, WJ is absolutely right about Dennis and Callahan, except he doesn't go far enough. You can't really summarize that show, because Callahan doesn't even stick to a theme, he jumps from any topic to run the entire gamut of prefabricon grievances, a story about an accusation of racism in Boston public schools will become fodder for the discussion of Nancy Pelosi's lies about the CIA within three minutes, and then on to the fairness doctrine. It's surreal, but not in any way that could be construed as entertaining.
Dale and Holley are pretty ok, as sports talkers go.
Well perhaps, but the idea that NPR is the very definition of erudition is a stretch at best.
Yes we are.
Except that post #2 doesn't mock the Red Sox, or their fans, or their ownership. From the first word, it specifically cites the two radio boneheads responsible for the asinine line of questioning.
Wake me when we see the first-ever "TAMPA BAY SUCKS" T-shirt in either Fenway or Yankee Stadium.
COUNT DA RECORD SALEZ!!
How are you calculating the comparison to, for example, Newcastle United soccer fans? Not only do these people support perennial no-hopers, and not only do the male fans frequently not wear any shirts during Tyneside winters, but they proudly display those enormous guts on nationally-televised games.
Respect, if slightly nauseated respect, is due.
Nope, it really isn't. I've lived in both Boston and NY, and there is no comparison in the obsession that Boston media and Sox fan base have over the Yankees.
Don't know it it's lessened a lot since the Sox 2004 and 2007 World Series wins, but I would have hated to experience it beforehand.
And having listened to Dennis and Callahan - #2 is pretty much dead on.
I like your friends' thinking. That aside, there's always this rush to equate the Sox fans' views with those of the push-button-get-treat morons at 'EEI. Meanwhile, they're acknowledged as idiots anywhere you read Sox fans talking online. There will always be a degree of rivalry with the Yankees because of the geography, but do you really think that most Sox fans would say they're more likely to finish behind the Yankees this year than the Rays?
The Yankees are an amusing diversion, like the neighbors who get in screaming matches about infidelity. They're always worth talking about in terms of looking forward, because a major free agent like Bay will certainly be on their radar. But the sense of hoodoo that blossoms into obsession is now firmly in the Yankee fans' camp. That sense was cracked on the Boston side in '04, shattered in '07 when the division streak ended, and swept away last year when the Rays emerged.
The Yankees' myth-making marketing of the past decade or so has created the expectation in its fan base that everyone else will be obsessed with their legendary awesomeness. There's a Norma Desmond quality to the insistence that other fans, especially Boston fans, must be transfixed by whatever happens in the Bronx. But the show's largely moved on.
Well, if by passionate, you mean 100,000 people calling up WEEI to pose the hypothetical "say we trade Michael Bowden for Pujols" query - then you are spot on!
However, the number one baseball town with the best fans is St. Louis. And it's not even close.
Eloquently stated, but completely untrue.
Right now. But I don't know how long they can keep it up. It's great to have so many good young players arrive at the same time, and the Rays have even done a good job locking them up. But once they get to the point where those players have 4-5 years of experience, can they afford to keep all of them? Will the winning draw enough fans or will they have to make some tough choices?
Right now attendance is up from 19.7K per game last year to 23K, they were probably hoping for more after a world series.
Edit: I think the table I was looking at on B-Ref was showing attendance through this point of the season. For 2008 as a whole, it was 22.3, and in 2007, 17.1
That kind of attendance gain can support an extra 20 million I guess. No idea how much merchandising or TV gain they'll have. Probably won't let them keep all of Crawford, Upton, Longoria, Pena, Shields, Garza, and Kazmir as the raises come in.
I'm a Red Sox fan, but declarations that I'm part of the most passionate fanbase in the world make me think about how nuts people in Glasgow and elsewhere are about Old Firm (i.e. Celtic vs. Rangers) matches.
but I doubt that that is the sole reason.
Witness the threads about contentious umpire calls. BTW, is there an area in California that is akin to Hartford County, CT when it comes to the Dodgers-Giants rivalries? Are their fights in San Luis Obispo watering holes when the two teams square off?
Not to mention "Red Sox Therapy," which does seem kind of weird for a team that everyone acknowledges is a model of both efficiency and marketing.
Not to mention "Krzyzewskiville," where Duke students camp out for weeks in advance just to get into a basketball game. When's the last time you saw that for any baseball game?
I don't think this means there are more Yankee fans here - I think it means more of the Red Sox fans have friends and lives - but the game chatters are not a good means of comparison.
Not sure about California, but I can recall watching one of the '99 ALCS games in the GWU dining hall. All the Red Sox fans, who were way outnumbered in the hall, gravitated towards two tables we had to ourselves. Most of us did not know each other prior to that.
Ah...I was wondering what happened to all the NYY fans and Game Chatter, but never bothered to ask.
Title of the blog (which obviously also serves as a play on words), predates the '04 championship, IIRC.
EDIT: and "Sox Therapy" was here when I started reading in 2001. It was subtitled, IIRC, "Jim and Gary obsess about the Sox." Ah, the past.
Then why does Sox Therapy have a direct link here, while RLYW doesn't? If there is, someone's sure done a good job of hiding it. Or is this some sort of a feud between Larry and BTF?
Title of the blog (which obviously also serves as a play on words), predates the '04 championship, IIRC.
Generally when a woman gets married she goes from "Miss" to "Mrs."
I have always found it strange that after the initial drying up of the Yankee chatters, some new folks didn't move in to fill in the void. FWIW, I miss BTF chatters becaues the other teams fans would be there. I like RLYW a lot, but the chatters aren't as fun as the mixed group chatters used to be.
2. He/We started posting Game Chatters during the time the BTF server was crap and people just never really went back to BTF (other than for Red Sox games)
3. When Larry basically stopped writing, SG kind of took the reins and ran with it, Larry didn't make him do anything. Larry let anyone who want to be a part of RLYW be a part and at some point, SG just kind of took the show over when the rest of us stopped writing.
4. I have keys over at RLYW as do several others, but it is, effectively, the SG show.
This. The RLYW blog posts are excellent. Unfortunately, the game chatters there and most of the comments on the posts are terrible.
I'll have you know my gut isn't enormous!
This. The RLYW blog posts are excellent. Unfortunately, the game chatters there and most of the comments on the posts are terrible.
I couldn't disagree more. There are a lot of great posters. I mean, jesus, compare it to any other gamethread on any site on the entire internet. Maybe it's not quite as fun as a mixed gamechatter on BTF, but it's still light years better than anything else I can think of. For that matter, compare it to DRays bay, a supposedly "statistically enlightened" blog whose gamechatters are a cesspool of racist retardation and whose statistical posts mostly consist of worshiping WPA.
Well, that does explain the unique look of the Fenway Park bleachers.
Too many Yankee fans that somehow read SG's posts and still have no understanding of baseball analysis and too many stupid reactionary comments. Also, no fans of opposing teams = echo chamber.
I guess we're reading different blogs. I think there's a pretty high ratio of enjoyable poster to braindead nitwit. The knuckle draggers will never be gone...it is the internet, after all.
They get shot down and/or ignored here much more quickly.
Larry started the blog a while back, as an entirely separate venture. I don't know the precise history, and I don't mean for this to be gossip, but by whatever means he got SG to start posting all his work over there, and then a couple years ago (2007?) they started posting game chatters. RLYW is not affiliated with BTF in any official way that I know, but it's where pretty much all the Yankee fans among the BTF regulars go for Yankee-specific discussion and game chatter.
Thanks, but that still doesn't quite explain why there isn't a direct link to RLYW here, as there is for both Sox Therapy and the Red Sox topheavy game chatters. The point being that the way it is now, in order for a Yankee fan to comment on an ongoing game, for the most part he has to go outside of the BTF network---which seems rather silly, given the similarity of the functions of RLYW and game chatter. Is this a decision that's strictly SG's, or is it just a function of Jim's and Sean's Beantown fandom?
Because Sox Therapy is part of BTF. RLYW is an entirely separate website. Count The Rings was supposed to be the answer to Sox Therapy, but since RLYW already does what Count The Rings would do, it never worked out (IMO.)
I think it would be pretty great if RLYW were under the BTF umbrella, but I assume it would require a huge load of unpaid work by Jim and SG to make it happen, even if they both liked the idea. Once the separation happened, it gained its own inertia.
In all fairness, if you're listening to talk radio, you needn't look too hard to find it, or general ill-informned nitwittery.
The people who call into sports talk shows can induce many a face palm no matter what city you happen to be in.
Well, I think RLYW isn't linked in the same manner as Sox Therapy is pretty obvious: it's not a BBTF-hosted blog. Ditto the RLYW chatters.
Why RLYW isn't linked somewhere else on BBTF, like in the "Other Blogs" section, I have no idea. For all I know it is linked somewhere and I'm unaware.
I think it would be pretty great if RLYW were under the BTF umbrella, but I assume it would require a huge load of unpaid work by Jim and SG to make it happen, even if they both liked the idea. Once the separation happened, it gained its own inertia.
I'm not sure what you mean by "under the BTF umbrella," but I guess this just shows my technopeasantry, since on my own poster website it takes my webmaster about fifteen seconds to add a simple link to it, usually if not always with reciprocity. I wouldn't think it would be all that difficult if both parties agreed to it, and I can't imagine why either of them wouldn't.
Why RLYW isn't linked somewhere else on BBTF, like in the "Other Blogs" section, I have no idea. For all I know it is linked somewhere and I'm unaware.
The first part of that I fully understand, and don't question. It's the second part that's a mystery to me. I've never been able to find any direct link here.
EDIT: even if there were links, what difference would that make? It won't be in the drop-down menu with ST or the rest, because it's a different thing, a completely different site. It'd just be a link.
Aren't ALL of the other blogs under "other blogs", direct BTF Blogs?
It might make sense to stick a link under "Friends of BBTF". There is already a link there to Hardball Times
I'll grant you that. It takes a special kind of person to call into radio talk shows.
As for RLYW, there used to be a blogroll at BTF a long time ago. Not sure what happened to it.
As part of the contract I have with my webhost, I can't update my link lists more than twice over a five year period, AND I'm required to not blog for at least six months at a time. Starting and abandoning new blogs gets me a discount on my monthly bill.
We sell out more, and have the higher TV ratings, IIRC. St. Loius is number 2, and if you factor in politeness, perhaps I'll
settle for a tie for first.
I'll settle for the most passionate fans in the USA.
I don't know much about the EPL, etc., but I'm for Liverpool.
EDIT: even if there were links, what difference would that make? It won't be in the drop-down menu with ST or the rest, because it's a different thing, a completely different site. It'd just be a link.
Well, yes, it would indeed be "just a link," without the wholly irrelevant BTF "official" designation. It would also mean that Yankee fans wouldn't have to go off the BTF site to be able to find a game chatter site with more than a tiny handful of visitors.
The bottom line remains: Why doesn't BTF just provide such a link? Is it really all that hard to do? Other websites do this sort of thing all the time without any trouble.
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