The Poop Hits The Fans

According to the article, half the position players and all of the front office and ownership as well!

Clearly, if we accept the Bob Hohler article, there are only 2 or 3 people in the entirety of the Red Sox organization who care at all about winning.

No exageration. We read it in print so it HAS to be true!

Say what you like about Lackey, Beckett and Lester.

The bottom line is that at least they showed up and for most of the season, played to the best of their abilities. They didn’t “quit” so much as they were “demoralized”.

But the biggest “Primadona” is the one that Hohler refuses to even mention:

""In springtime, there proved to be regrettable irony in the entire starting rotation – Beckett, Lackey, Lester, Tim Wakefield, and Clay Buchholz""

The name that Hohler is concealing is the first pitcher that Terry Francona began to lose total control over due to interference from the brass;

Daisuke Matsuzaka.

And, no, this is not an innocent omission on Hohler’s part.

Wily Mo Pena for Bronson Arroyo? Nomar for Mientkiewicz and and Cabrera? Gonzalez for the entire top of our farm system (which really amounted to obtaining a free agent early with a few months of exclusive negotiation rights)? Those aren’t awful trades (well, except for Wily Mo), but they certainly aren’t good deals either.

The only trades Theo made that I can think of that were legitimately good were Schilling for Fossum and crap, and Byung-Hyung Kim for Shea Hillenbrand, but those happened many years ago.

It really smacked of ‘reaching’.

It’s not why the Red Sox lost.

What’s relevant is that this is the best dirt Hohler’s sources came up with to smear an outgoing Manager.

It’s kind of pathetic when you think about it.

No, the real decline of the Red Sox (not to mention their rotation) began and ended when John Farrell became extremely frustrated with his lack of control over certain pitchers (there was one in particular of course). Everything about Farrell’s departure can be traced in a semi-linear thread around the decline of the Red Sox.

In some sense, Terry probably could be faulted for not standing up to the Triumvirate of the Red Sox. But those issues were effectively taken out of his hands and as a result, Farrell languished and Francona shared the same fate.

That’s why owners assume authority from their managers – especially with regards to personnel – at their own risk.

Yes, the Triumvirate and their favored star may have escaped blame – nobody in baseball expected anything less.

But people in the business are well aware that Henry, Werner and Lucchino are a bunch of chumps who debased an iconic sportsteam.

This article made me laugh. Eating chicken and drinking beer? The 2004 team was doing shots in the clubhouse and the press called them “a loose bunch of winners.” If you actually read the article the infractions are all little dumb things-this only matters to people in retrospect-it is post facto justification for a massive failure that was much more complicated and fluky than could be explained by the behavior cited here. The team played better baseball over a 79-31 stretch than ANY Sox team over a comparable stretch in eons. I am sure that they were drinking beer and playing video games during that stretch. I also think there is some flat-out BS in this article. Lester did not look in any worse shape at the end of the year. All Lackey did was gain back the weight he usually has (as Sabathia did) as the season went on. Beckett looked as paunchy as he always does. And I saw these guys on the bench when they were not playing often.

Aren’t you leaping to a comfortable conclusion?

Its easy to try to single out Lackey here as “the bad guy” – but Beckett and Lester are grown men. And we have no idea if it wasn’t just a mutual f-up or indeed if one of THOSE two guys was the real Pied Piper who led the others astray. Indeed, many comments that have leaked out about this seem to point the finger at Beckett. Beckett is, by all accounts, the leader of this pitching staff that many of the younger pitchers (Lester included) take all their cues from. We give high marks to Lester’s ‘character’ because he seems like a likable guy and he gets kudos as a cancer survivor. But that doesn’t prove he isn’t capable of bad judgement.

We really have no clue about the true inter-personal dynamics that went on and I don’t think we should be too quick to let Lester or Beckett or anybody off the hook just because we ‘like’ them more. Lackey’s september sucked. But so did Lester & Beckett’s. And we depended on them more so in many ways they were the bigger let-down.

I think that “don’t let the door hit ya” attitude is more of the Boston media.

The same thing happens with every high profile player/coach/whatever who leaves, no matter on what true terms they may be leaving. The press here just loves to pile on with a smear-ya-later campaign so long as their target is headed for other pastures.

We saw it before with Nomar, Richard Seymour, Randy Moss, etc., etc. Yes, in some cases the individual was indeed flawed and deserving of SOME criticism. But in all cases, the magnitude of the piling on with negative crap has been unwarranted by reality.

Olney said on ESPNRadio that they have checked on “existing GM’s.” That’s gotta be Friedman, where they were probably told to take a hike. Maybe Avila is on that list as well.

I like Allard Baird, worth comparing to Cherrington at least. Hoyer/Byrnes/McLeod…..if you’re going to pick a Theo disciple, may as well take the one you’ve got in house already.

actions of including him in every meeting and making sure people know he was at those meetings whenever they talked about those meetings, indicates it’s every the greatest smoke screen of all time (I kid), or that it’s pretty much a lock that Cherington slides to the big chair. The manager search is already on hold because of this whole Theo situation and I don’t think they want to re-start the process by bringing in a new guy with a completely different list of candidates.

I wonder, now that he’s been “named” as a troublemaker in the clubhouse, how that would affect his desire to be traded.

Says who? Chris Jones?

The next god-like authority to assert just what is or isn’t good in team ‘chemistry’?

I’m sorry. I’m just sick of all these self-righteous, holier-than-though armchair f’ing psycho-analysts making stupid, insipid proclamations about a situation they really don’t know anything about more than tiny scraps of heresay and supposition. That quote sounds oh-so-witty and cleverly worded, but it means absolute crap shit nothing because the fundamental fact is that Jones doesn’t really know anything about what the internal dynamics of the team were. None of us outsiders do.

I read that grantland article ( here is the link ) and in this debate Jones sounds like an a-hole who keeps stretching and reaching, trying to rationalize his glee as he roles in the dirt while at the same time deflecting criticism of his view with a sprinkling of facetious self-deprecations.

Yes, this rant isn’t targeted specifically on Jones, but rather those like him who seem to revel in this feeding frenzy of insulting innuendo and baseless negative conjecture.

My ire gets fired up on a particular quote out of the Hohler article:

This article is based on a series of interviews the Globe conducted with individuals familiar with the Sox operation at all levels. Most requested anonymity out of concern for their jobs or potential damage to their relationships in the organization. Others refused to comment or did not respond to interview requests.

The absolute irony of the statement in bold kills me. The self-serving righteousness of protecting the jobs and relationships of these ‘anonymous sources’ while destroying the reputations of others is pathetic and absurd.

Gawd, I wish the NBA would resume so we’d have something else to talk about between Pats and Bruins games!

Rant off.

(Sorry, j-ace, this isn’t targeted at you. You were just the messenger here.)