Shut him down for the year. Re-sign him for the next two. It really should not be this hard.
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Tag: red sox
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The Red Sox End of Season To-Do List
I agree with everything on this list, especially getting the young guys some playing time:
> With Crawford done for the year and the Red Sox playoff hopes long since faded to oblivion, there is no reason to keep playing Nick Punto or Scott Podsednik. We know who those guys are and we know what they can do. Put Daniel Nava, Pedro Ciriaco, and Ryan Lavarnway, and if he’s up, Iglesias into the lineup every single night. Yes, it might be painful. Yes, on occasion it might be excruciating, but then are Podsednik, Punto, Aviles, and a clearly tiring Jarrod Saltalamacchia going to do much better? And even if they are, to what end? Time to see what these guys can do with 100+ at-bats as starters. This is it, boys. Prove you should be a part of the 2013 Red Sox.
> To that end, if the organization deems that Ryan Kalish is ready to face major league pitching then throw him in there as well. If he needs to face Triple-A pitching for whatever reason, that’s fine as well.
The Red Sox need to make productive use of these next few weeks and evaluating their younger talent is on of the best ways to do that.
> All this is not to shroud Buchholz’s dramatic improvement in a cloak of luck. It would be far too simple to say Buchholz’s resurgence is due to luck, just like it would be foolhardy to point to his disastrous start to the year as all luck. The truth is that Buchholz was rather unlucky early on and has benefited from luck since, but the underlying changes are what are far more important and are what will matter to Buchholz’s future. He’s rediscovered his changeup, and in the process, discovered another weapon in a split-fingered fastball he can use to get batters out. In a season to forget, the Red Sox may all look back on 2012 as the year Clay Buchholz became the best right-handed pitcher on the Red Sox staff for years to come.
Excellent piece by Evan Brunell, who you can normally find on [Fire Brand of the American League](http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firebrandal/~3/9CziScn6fCs/).
Good thing they did not have him have the surgery earlier. Now, we get a whole 7 months of wondering if he’ll be ready for opening day.
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Red Sox Fire their Pitching Coach
Someone had to take the fall. I have a feeling he might be the first of many.
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Time to Call up Iglesias
> Three more hits on Sunday boosted Iglesias’ August batting average to .348 with a .423 on-base percentage. He’s doubled five times and drawn nine walks. It’s even better than the May he put together in which he hit .341 with a .364 on-base percentage with two doubles, a triple and a home run, a hot run interrupted by a back injury that sidelined him for a month.
Unfortunately, he suffered an ankle injury toward the end of the game. Assuming he’s healthy in another week, call him up to the Sox. There really is no reason not to let him get some time against major league pitching while the Sox play out this season. Though this season is over as far as the Sox playoff chances, they should use this time wisely to find out what they really have in some of these prospects.
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Arguing that Valentine Should Stay
Ian O’Connor for ESPN New York:
> Only the easiest available target, Valentine, shouldn’t be fired for failing to reach the postseason with a team that has been a physical wreck all year, a team that still suffers from the self-inflicted psychological wounds of 2011. In fact, it would be an injustice if Boston doesn’t give Valentine a second season, or at least the first three months of a second season, to tweak his approach and program in an attempt to stanch the internal bleeding.
> “I’ve done a lot of work; I couldn’t do any more,” Valentine said in a private moment outside his clubhouse. “I don’t think I could’ve worked any harder. I probably could’ve done some things differently, I guess, but I don’t know what they are. I’ll appraise it and I’ll look back on it.”
I see Mr. O’Connor’s argument, but I do not agree[^note]. Let Bobby Valentine be the guy who followed the World Series winning manager that no one will remember and start the search for the guy who can bring the Red Sox their next title.
[^note]: I am not alone. Even Mr. Valentine himself agrees [he is not doing a good job](http://blogs.providencejournal.com/sports/red-sox/2012/08/valentine-im-not-doing-a-good-job.html).
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Lavarnway gets a Start Behind the Plate
Good. Use this season to give the young guys experience.
I completely believe this. I mean, the Red Sox ownership would never smear someone just as he left town.
Let Carl Crawford get his surgery. Give Daniel Nava more playing time. Problem solved.
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Crawford to ask for Tommy John Surgery
Might as well get it done now and get ready for next year. Use the rest of the season to get Ryan Kalish more playing time.
*UPDATE: Ben Cherrington says [no request for the surgery has been made](http://blogs.providencejournal.com/sports/red-sox/2012/08/cherington-crawford-has-not-asked-for-tj-surgery.html).*
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A Bright Spot in a Dark Season
9 pitches, 3 strike outs. A feat that has only been accomplished 47 times in the history of baseball. Well done Clay. Well done.
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Who is to Blame for the Red Sox?
Peter Abraham with a sobering breakdown, including:
> John Lackey and Carl Crawford are obviously uncomfortable in Boston and it has affected their play. If Adrian Gonzalez was indeed the ringleader against Valentine — and he didn’t deny Passan’s charge that he was — that speaks poorly about his character, too. It is worth noting that Valentine was a staunch defender of Gonzalez in the spring when the first baseman was hitting .256 and going weeks between home runs.
> …
> Dustin Pedroia is the de facto captain of the team. Plenty of players follow him whether he has a “C” on his jersey or not. That he was so tight with Francona was going to be a problem for Valentine. Both men needed to find common ground in spring training and it seems that never happened.
This line probably sums it up best:
> Somehow — and this is the crux of the matter — the Red Sox went from being a franchise of grind-it-out, hard-nosed players to being entitled, selfish and unlikable.
Can we just end this season now?
> Boston Red Sox players blasted manager Bobby Valentine to owners John Henry and Larry Lucchino during a heated meeting called after a text message was sent by a group of frustrated players to the team and ownership in late July, three sources familiar with the meeting told Yahoo! Sports.
This season just gets better and better. At this point, I just think the Red Sox should:
* Fire Valentine
* Sign Ortiz to a 2-year Contract
* Shut Ortiz down for the rest of the year
* Give Lavarnway reps behind the plate[^fn1]
* Officially shut down Middlebrooks for the rest of the year
* Use the next few weeks to get work on getting Beckett and Lester into a good place mentally.
They can use the offseason to find a new manager, but for now, just get Valentine out of there.
[^fn1]: This is made easier by the [Shoppach Trade](http://news.bostonherald.com/sports/baseball/red_sox/view/20220814sox_trade_kelly_shoppach_to_mets/)
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Evaluating NESN
What do you write about when the Red Sox are out of the playoff race this early in the season? The network that broadcasts their games.
> It has become a chore to listen to and watch NESN’s amateurish Red Sox broadcasts.
> Fans routinely misses pitches because NESN tries to cram an excessive number of commercials between innings, airs excessive replays, and lingers on irrelevant dugout shots. NESN gives us worthless “tours” of concrete hallways in other stadiums and asinine non-baseball segments. Worse than that, the network often fails to show the action on the field.
> Announcers Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy have become sad parodies of themselves. While Orsillo still calls a decent play-by-play, he also swamps viewers with waves of useless information between pitches and batters. Remy, ostensibly an analyst, offers no analysis whatsoever.
I have admittedly not been watching as many games this year[^fn1], however, I have always enjoyed the Orsillo-Remy broadcast team. I agree with Fangraphs, [who ranked them as the #5 best television broadcasting team in baseball](http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/broadcaster-rankings-tv-10-1/):
> **Three [Fangraphs] Reader Comments**
> • “The broadcasts feel appropriately ‘regional.’ (Accents help.)”
> • “They can be hilarious. Sometimes being hilarious is unprofessional. Sometimes being hilarious leads to unintentionally unrestrained laughter-squeaks and pauses in commentary due to breath-catching. Never have I seen/hear this from other broadcasting teams, so it’s pleasantly unique.”
> • “They don’t try to do too much, they’re comfortable with their audience, and they can be hilarious. They almost never tell me something I don’t know though, and tell me things I know are wrong not unfrequently.”
> **Notes**
> The comment about the broadcast being regionally appropriate is astute, I think. The accents, yeah, but also the nature of the banter between Ramy and Orsillo. My guess is that the sorts of things that readers dislike about Remy and Orsillo are the sorts of things they dislike about Bostonians, generally.
[^fn1]: I do not enjoy watching as much when things seem to always break against the Sox
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RIP Johnny Pesky
The best Johnny Pesky obituary I read today was from Gordon Edes:
> More than anybody else, Johnny Pesky embodied the Red Sox. More than anybody else, Johnny Pesky loved the Red Sox. More than anybody else, Johnny Pesky shared that love with anyone who ever asked for a picture, an autograph, a smile, a story. And often, you didn’t even have to ask.
Rest in peace #6.
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An Ode to Will Middlebrooks
> The way the ball leaves Will Middlebrooks’ bat after he hits a home run is something special. Like being launched from a cannon, as if the baseball was a tiny piece of metal rocketing towards some sort of super magnet looming above the Green Monster, a laser, a bullet, a sling shot from home plate. None of these are just right.
Can we just end this season now and start spring training for next year?
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Andrew Bailey to Be Activated Today
Only a few days after the season ended too.
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The Wrist of Will Middlebrooks
I woke up yesterday to the [horrible news](http://joyofsox.blogspot.com/2012/08/globe-middlebrooks-has-broken-wrist.html) that [Will Middlebrooks had a broken wrist](http://www.overthemonster.com/2012/8/11/3235416/will-middlebrooks-has-a-broken-wrist). I guess it is a positive that [he will not need surgery on that wrist](http://blogs.providencejournal.com/sports/red-sox/2012/08/middlebrooks-shouldnt-need-surgery.html), but I am still apprehensive about any wrist injury and its effects on the long term health of a player (*see, e.g.,* Nomar Garciaparra.)
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How Bad is the Red Sox Medical Staff
> Of course, it’s unfair to pin all of this on just the medical staff. It seems obvious that there was pressure from the front office to bring these players back earlier than expected, but even so, the last few years have to call some of the practices of both the front office and the medical staff into serious question.
> Obviously, all the blame for the mess this organization has become can’t be placed on just one group or branch of the staff. Yet, with this year’s team breaking the record for most games missed via the disabled list, the Medical Staff has to raise a few eyebrows.
I have been asking this question for some time. It will be interesting to see if this season results in ownership cleaning house with the medical staff this offseason.