Papelbon Blows the Save, Red Sox Streak Broken

Even though he is a douche.

Just trade him and let his primadonna douchebaggery be someone elses problem.

I doubt they’d be able to stretch him out to where he’s effective before all of our other starters are healthy

Good never comes out of losses.
Except now we know Bard is the closer.
Or should be

Put the winning run on first? Not a good idea.

BTW, I’ll be at the game tomorrow night. First Sox game in a while. Do it Dice.

There was no way we could have guessed you would have popped up after two losses, after winning or drawing 10 straight series, where was that positive post you claimed you were going to write once? There wasn’t a lack of opportunity.

You pitch to him and his .206 BA with .753 OPS because he is a shadow of the player he once was. It was clear that Papelbon didn’t have his best stuff last night, but you go with him because Bard was already out of the game and there isn’t anyone on the staff left that would be anymore reliable than a bad Papelbon. You don’t keep Bard out there because his arm will blow out before the end of the season, he’s leading the league in appearances, and then Papelbon is the only reliable reliever left, and you saw what he just did.

So Francona doesn’t have much if any answering to do. He was winning and he put his closer in for the ninth the way any other manager would. Tonight he blew a save. Closers don’t often have perfect seasons, he’s still one of the most effective closers in the game going 16/18 in save opportunities this year. It so easy to go “well bard did this, he should have stayed” in hind sight but Francona couldn’t have known Paps was going to suck last night. It’s a little cheap to call him out on something he had no control over, unless he can read minds or see the future, in that case, complain away, but I doubt it’s the case.

Fact of the matter is that Giambi is a relatively easy out on most occasions.

Paps should have struck him out easily.

He is too afraid of being hurt so now he pitches like he is too afraid. With this mindset, he will never get his power stuff back consistently, and also now he has the big bucks to sit back on the DL and live the good life without doing anything! Dah.

who is completely and totally done with reading people’s dumb plays on words with Lackey and Lack? I mean, for real.

Yes Lackey has been bad.

Yeah, sure we can trade him away. There are TONS of teams out there looking to trade for a 31 year old pitcher who is doing badly and is signed for 4.5 more years at over $16 million a pop. TONS of them.

And there’s only 4 teams in baseball with less losses than us, not bad after that horrendous start.

But you have to look at how his ERA got there. He’s allowed 14 runs (12 earned) so far in 29 appearances. 7 of them (more than half of his ERA) comes from just 2 bad games. When he’s on, he’s on and as affective as any other closer in baseball. When he’s bad, way less often that he is good, he’s bad.

Trade him and do what with our bullpen? It’s already bad, why trade our second most effective reliever and move our most reliable pitcher into a spot where he has less impact on a game?

That’s not to say that Papelbon is still great, he is declining obviously but I think he will still be effect by the end of his contract and we let him walk.

I don’t necessarily agree with everything I just said and any claims to the contrary will be met the most stringent denials as well as the possibility of a class action lawsuit.

He can’t spot on the corners anymore, and his secondary offerings have gone to hell. You can throw 95 all day, but it doesn’t make you effective by itself.

The job was his to lose. In my opinion, he’s done enough to have lost it.

Jonathan will be the one getting the call to the bullpen and being asked to get back up on the back of the horse without getting bucked off. Can different results be expected?

why is Youk out again?