The Fenway Experience

This isn’t really about the Sox as much as it is about going to Fenway Park.  I have had the good fortune to have season tickets for the last seventeen years and there has never been a time when I regretted it.  Fenway has its flaws but there are very few, if any, places I would rather be on a nice summer evening than the self-proclaimed “America’s Most Beloved Ballpark” (I don’t know how to add a little trademark symbol there). 

Anyway, last night I went to the game on what was a close to ...

Let’s All Overreact!

With their victory on Monday the Red Sox are 1-0, on pace for the first undefeated season in MLB history.  I will assume this is statistically meaningful and expect it to happen.  For now a few stray observations and opinions based on the first 0.61728395% of the season.

- So that outfield is kinda good.  That really was the blueprint for how this team wins.  JBJ made a wonderful catch off Cervelli in the triangle and Benintendi’s grab in the 7th probably was a game saver.  Both players made ...

Last Minute Thoughts

So 26 hours and change is all that is left.  I have a few final thoughts about the 2017 Boston Red Sox;

- Honestly I’m a bit concerned about how this season will start.  The rotation is in flux with injuries to Price and Pomeranz, Hanley has looked good but as we’ve seen with shoulder injuries there is no sure thing.  My biggest worry is the bullpen.  As others have noted the presence of Ben Taylor, while a feel-good story, highlights the lack of depth in that area.

Beyond that I think John ...

Musical Interlude

With apologies to The Nails;

Mookie was a superstar
He came through in the bitter end

Dustin was a unique type
He got out what he put in

Chris was the brand new guy
Hitters were afraid of a guy like that.

Hanley’s new position was sitting down
Just like the Papi sat

Pablo was a guy with no aim
And his own gravitational pull

Steven was a knuckle-freak
Pinch running was a misery

Sandy had this special way
Of turning metal into gold

Christian couldn’t hit
But stopped the steal and ...

Sox Therapy Predictions?

With just over 144 hours until first pitch I have a few items rattling through my head.  Presented with some comment are some over/unders on the coming season (over/unders generated from the warped and often wrong mind of Jose);

Hanley Ramirez Homers - 25.5 - UNDER - We have seen Hanley play with a bad shoulder and it did not go well.

Sandy Leon Most Starts as Catcher - UNDER - I am not sure who winds up with the most but I don’t think it’s Leon.  If Vazquez hits even a little bit I think he ...

The Roster - Third Time’s A Charm

13 days peeps, 13 days until actual competitive baseballing by the Boston Red Sox.  The roster is a work in progress and I think it’s worth an update;

Position Players:
1B - Mitch Moreland
2B - Dustin Pedroia
3B - Pablo Sandoval
SS - Xander Bogaerts
LF - Andrew Benintendi
CF - Jackie Bradley Jr.
RF - Mookie Betts
C - Sandy Leon
DH - Hanley Ramirez
IF - Brock Holt
IF - Marco Hernandez
OF - Chris Young
C - Christian Vazquez

So far so good on the positional front.  Everyone has stayed healthy ...

Springing Into Action

Hey everyone!  Some pretty rough weather yesterday, a bit windy and cloudy it was rough. I had to break out the sweatshirt last night. Oh did I mention I’m at Spring Training? No? You thought I was talking about the foot of snow and bitter cold you were dealing with? Hey, it was rough here too.  For some reason no one seems interested in extending me any sympathy.

Anyway I’ve made my way to a couple of games so far and I’ll be going to a couple more.  I thought I’d share some observations ...

Early Spring Overreactions

The AL East champion Red Sox are back at it and of course spring training is a time to hear a story and wildly extrapolate nonsense from it.  And when you need nonsense, you need your man Jose to step in and fill the breach.  Thus the breach shall be filled.

Sam Travis - Great Hitter or Greatest Hitter - The righty has picked up where he left off before getting injured last season and has already slugged a couple of homers.  Admittedly one of them (against Northeastern) doesn’t count in ...

The Roster - Part Deux

With pitchers and catchers officially in camp, winter transactions pretty solidly wrapped up and health issues starting to clarify I figured today might be a good day to run through the roster again and see where we are.

Starters:
1B – Mitch Moreland
2B – Dustin Pedroia
3B – Pablo Sandoval
SS – Xander Bogaerts
LF – Andrew Benintendi
CF – Jackie Bradley Jr.
RF – Mookie Betts
C – Sandy Leon
DH – Hanley Ramirez

Bench:
IF – Brock Holt
IF - Marco Hernandez
OF – Chris Young
C ...

Third Aid

First aid is immediate help given for an injury that will suffice until full medical treatment can be given. I don’t think second aid is actually a term people use, but let’s say it’s the full medical treatment that was sought after first aid was administered. That should be the end of it, right? Well, yeah. Third aid shouldn’t exist because full medical treatment should solve the problem.

Truckin’ Along

So with the truck (or The Truck) having left Boston for its glorious reappearing in Fort Myers today I thought it might be time to start thinking about spring training.  Because I know you are all worried I leave in 32 days for the Sunshine State.  With that in mind I was thinking about what I am looking forward to at the four games I am going to be attending;

Pablo Sandoval – Hey why mess around?  My father was at the house Saturday night and he said “I want a picture of Sandoval as soon ...

Sox In The Hall

I have to admit, I have lost a lot of interest in the Hall of Fame over the years.  I find that where once there were fun arguments about who belonged and who didn’t it now largely comes down to one set of people making it the Hall of Guys That Weren’t Mean and the other set making it a Hall of WAR.  Neither of those things particularly appeals to me.

As happy as I am for the three very deserving inductees I’ll leave it to others to talk about them and I want to touch on a few memories of ...

The Kids Are or Are Not Alright

Two time division winning and one time World Series champion manager John Farrell chatted with Rob Bradford and John Tomase at WEEI on Wednesday.  In the course of the conversation he talked about a couple of things that I thought were fairly interesting;

President Dave Dombrowski recently told Buster Olney that Drew Pomeranz and Wright are penciled in to the last two spots in the rotation. That doesn’t mean there won’t be competition, however, because Farrell wants that culture to ...

2017 in Review

It’s that time again, time to fire up the ol’ Sox Therapy time machine and take a look back at what happened in 2017;

January 18 – Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Ivan Rodriguez are announced as the 2017 Hall of Famers.  Things get a bit confusing when Bagwell refuses to attend the ceremony unless his plaque has him wearing a New Britain cap.

January 21 – At the Winter Weekend festivities David Price misunderstands what the craps table at Foxwoods is all about and gets in a bit of ...

Musta Got Dealt

It’s ain’t supposed to be sad though you might feel it that way. It’s a song about desperation. Every now and then we do get desperate.

- Peter Wolf, Intro to “Musta Got Lost”, J. Geils Band

Should Boston have waited to trade Clay Buchholz until a team got desperate late in spring training?

Y’know, it seems on this site we often talk about this very scenario, maybe every year. Hey, maybe a team will suffer an injury in the rotation. If a team gets desperate before opening day, or before ...

The Magnificent Seven

Barring a major move at Designated Hitter it now appears the one significant off-season question for Dave Dombrowski and the Boston Red Sox is what to do about the starting rotation.  As currently set the roster has seven Major League starting pitchers;

David Price
Cy Young
Chris Sale
Eduardo Rodriguez*
Steven Wright
Clay Buchholz
Drew Pomeranz
* - I remembered him this time!

By all accounts Double D’s phone started ringing roughly nanoseconds after the Sale trade.  With pitching being scarce ...

The Roster 1.0

So, how was your Tuesday?  Villageidiom was touching on the Sox’ roster situation a bit before everything went insane with the Sale acquisition and I think it is something that warrants some consideration.

With that in mind, here is version 1.0 of the 2017 roster with assorted thoughts, notes, comments and random musings;

Starters:
1B – Hanley Ramirez – age 33
2B – Dustin Pedroia – 33
3B – Pablo Sandoval – 30
SS – Xander Bogaerts – 24
LF – Andrew Benintendi – 22
CF – ...

Wintry Mixing

With the winter meetings kicking off it is likely that we will see some activity on the Red Sox roster front.  This will of course come with a whole bunch of really stupid rumors being kicked around and probably at least one rumor that seems really stupid but actually comes true.  For now I have a few thoughts about potential moves and activity.

The Incomings;

Edwin Encarnacion - If he is getting a Yoenis Cespedes type deal, sign me right the heck up.  I realize the arguments for not signing ...

Leftover Turkey

Yesterday I had a turkey sandwich for lunch, after which our turkey leftovers from Thanksgiving were gone. That meant we could restock the fridge with new foods and look forward to the next meals. Although it was not a terrible sandwich, I am glad it’s in the past.

This seems like a good time to look back on the 2016 Red Sox season, dig out all the metaphorical leftover turkey - the bad plays, the bad games, the bad attitudes, the bad performances, the bad decisions - and dispose of it so we ...

Back In The Saddle

So after a bit of vacation (and returning to the first snow fall of the year last night) I am back with some thoughts on what has been a fairly quiet off-season so far.  Last year at this time the Sox had traded for Craig Kimbrel and the year before the Sox had signed Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval.  So far the Sox do seem to be living up to the reports that suggested they would take a more low-key approach to things.  That does not meant that nothing is happening or nothing will happen.  ...

Time To Make Decisions

So congrats to the Cubs.  Certainly as Sox fans we know the experience of breaking a long drought and I hope Cub fans enjoy it as much as we did twelve years ago.

But now it’s on to important things and that of course means the Red Sox.  The Sox return the vast majority of the team from last year but that doesn’t mean there are no decisions or moves to make this winter.  Dave Dombrowski has some work to do and it will be interesting to see how he does it.  Here are my thoughts on what I would ...

Half Full or Half Empty?

In a year of almost uniformly good news one of the most confusing seasons by a member of the AL East Champion Boston Red Sox! was had by one Xander Jan Bogaerts.  A 23 year old shortstop who posted 3.7 WAR and a career best OPS with career highs in a variety of categories is a guy who sounds like he had a great year.

But if you are a Red Sox fan you are forgiven if the shape of Xander’s season has you a bit unsettled.  After a blazing start Xander hit the skids in the second half.  To wit;

The Post Mortem Concludes - Not Players

Last and certainly not least let’s look at the non-player portion of things.

John Farrell and the Coaching Staff – I think it is a safe assumption that you have an opinion on John Farrell, everyone seems to and none of them are half and half.  I am admittedly a fan of Farrell for a couple of key reasons;

1. I think he deserves credit for the development of young players.  Between Bradley in 2013 and Shaw and Benintendi this year he has shown a willingness to shove a kid into the lineup.  ...

The Post Mortem Contines - The Bullpen

Continuing with probably the most interesting part of the off-season.  While it is likely that the Sox are going to make some moves elsewhere I would argue the one place they HAVE to make some moves is in the bullpen.

General Thoughts

Having said what I said above I like the raw materials here.  I expect Kimbrel to be better and I am hopeful/optimistic about Barnes.  I don’t trust Kelly but I do believe Scott will be a solid LOOGY.

The Return Certainties – Craig Kimbrel, Matt Barnes, Joe ...

The Post Mortem Continues - The Rotation

Continuing with the look back at the year, focus on the rotation today.

General Thoughts

I didn’t love the Pomeranz deal but even if he is just what we saw in 2016 that’s a good 4th/5th starter.  The Sox should head into 2017 with a lot of confidence that the rotation will be good and able to withstand some attrition.  The one concern is beyond the six starters there does not appear to be a lot behind it.  A Sean O’Sullivan sort that can be stashed in Pawtucket would be a good pickup. ...Read More...

The Post Mortem Continues - Outfield, Catcher and DH

We spent some time on the infield yesterday.  Today we look at the rest of the position players; outfielders, catchers and that DH guy;

General Thoughts

It’s hard not to love what exists in the outfield.  If the Sox do nothing but renew contracts they have a talented outfield in place through the 2020 season.  That’s a pretty useful situation to be in.  Add in the presence of Chris Young for another year as the almost perfect fourth outfielder for this team and you gotta feel pretty good. ...Read More...

The Post Mortem Begins - A Look at the Infield

One of the fascinating things about this team is that after winning 93 games and the AL East title they are set to return virtually the entire roster.  Save for Ortiz (and that’s not insignificant) there is a very good chance the April 3, 2017 Red Sox will look very similar to what the October 10, 2016 Red Sox looked like.

With that in mind I thought rather than laying out a detailed off-season plan I thought it might be worth just looking at the depth chart a bit.

Today, the infield.
...