Not if you throw a knuckle ball!
Is the pitching in the NL East that much better than the pitching in the AL East?
Is Shea Stadium really enough of a pitcher’s park to explain why he only hit six home runs?
Bay had a shitty year (he was hurt, too, but he sucked before he got hurt) and all evidence suggests Epstein got rid of him at just the right time.
Pitching is different between the leagues, friend. The pitches you get also depend on who else is surrounding you in the order, something that was very different for Bay last year, even if there’s no acronymic stat Bill James has come up with to describe it. And yes, his injuries hurt him badly, even after returning the lineup.
Nobody hits for power at Shea anymore, btw. 
It isn’t THAT different. Lots of players go from one league to the other and don’t go from being All-Stars to being fourth-outfielder-level hitters.
The idea that a change in leagues and “Different” pitching somehow turns a player’s bat to crap is especially ridiculous in this instance because Bay was a career National Leaguer. He played in the NL for years. He went to the AL for a season and a half and had no trouble adjusting to the new league; why didn’t this “Different” pitching kill his power numbers then, friend? And why did the pitching in the NL suddenly baffle him upon his return?
Indeed, none of your points make sense, really. Bay was surrounded by bad hitters? Well, he was surrounded by bad hitters in Pittsburgh. He hit fine there. What, is there something he forgot about how to hit with bad hitters around?
Bay did not just have some adjustment issues, he went from being a hero to a zero. We’re not talking about a guy going from 36 homers to 24, it was 36 to 6. Shea didn’t stop David Wright from hitting 29 homers. Bay had always been a good hitter in Pittsburgh, where he was surrounded by hitters every bit as terrible as the Mets’ lineup last year.
The problem with Bay was not his surroundings. The problem was Bay. Epstein made the right call.
So how did he do so well in Boston, then? Was all that a mirage? Or are you just trying to argumentative, in which case we’re done?
He was 30. Just about everyone gets worse in their 30s. Most players do so at a much more gradual rate than Bay did, though better players than him have dropped off suddenly and permanently around that age.
If they get hurt then, sure. Serious injuries have caused many a permanent drop-off or drop-out, and at any age too. But most players are in their primes at 30, come on now.
That doesn’t answer the question anyway, unless you claim as a fact that he’d have gotten hurt in Boston too.
Your posts make no sense. If Epstein really was committed to winning he would have had a better 7th outfielder available in triple A. He should have known everyone on his team was going to get hurt. If only he got this guy who ended up getting hurt instead it would have solved all the Red Sox injury issues. You really don’t deserve the Red Sox braintrust
So fans are going to flock to see Jayson Werth and the 75 win Nationals? Winning brings credibility, not spending money poorly.
I think you are vastly underestimating the importance of service time. Certainly there is risk that Lawrie’s development stalls, but there is also significant upside even if he merely becomes Marcum’s equal in value. The Blue Jays now control Lawrie’s first 6 years of major league service including three years pre-arbitration, instead only two more years of Marcum. And of course Marcum himself has had injury issues and is not without risk. A #2 starter in his 2nd year of arbitration for an A- prospect strikes me as a fair bargain. The question becomes whether it fits the two teams circumstances well.
To me this is the most fascinating move of the off-season thus far. For the Jays, I think I like it. They have starting pitching in abundance, and are in desperate need of some young impact bats. Perhaps, if they were in a different division it would make sense to retool and take a shot, but even with Marcum they were unlikely to catch the Yankees, Sox or Rays. However if they can build a young core around Lind, Snyder, Lawrie, and Gose, and continue to develop strong pitching, they might eventually be able to compete with the big boys.
For the Brewers the question is does Marcum make them a contender the next two years, and I’m not sure he does. Perhaps they will make other moves, but I still see a deeply flawed team. Then again the Brewers have some incentive to at least be respectably. They have vastly increased their attendance numbers the last couple years (see what happens when you stop complaining you can’t compete and start competing) and want to keep it up. I’d like to see the brewers add another player or two before feeling good about this deal for them.
Shea Stadium no longer exists, BTW. Bay is Exhibit A on how giving big contracts to non-superstars on the wrong side of 30 can often backfire badly, which is why I’m not worried (too much) about losing VMart and Beltre. We’ll see how much Detroit likes their signing when VMart can’t catch anymore and has a .750 OPS as a DH.
I’ve already made it clear that he is NOT committed to winning. Does that help it “make sense”?
He should be able to make a commitment to a proven performer he already has, instead of seeing somebody outside the organization as automatically superior. That’s why we have a carousel at shortstop, in the outfield, and now at catcher.
You’re claiming he somehow knew Bay was going to get hurt no matter what? And MY posts “make no sense”? As Cris Carter puts it so well, “C’mon, man!”
John, who gives a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut about how VMart will hit in 2015? He’ll still be a force in 2011, he’d have helped Boston win it all in 2011, and who the fuck, except those trained to accept loser status, wants to wait for a possibility of competitiveness in 2015 instead?
You guys are on a futile mission, i’m afraid. Better to nod, smile, and move on.
Of course he couldn’t know Bay would get hurt, but it wasn’t exactly a shocking development. Unathletic players on the wrong side of 30 get hurt. He also couldn’t know that Beckett, Ellsbury, Cameron, Pedroia et al. would get hurt too and yet somehow you blame him for it.
G’day, mate.
This is what gets me, too. Boston had one of the most horrendous seasons conceivable, in terms of injuries. At some points in the season, they had a full, Major League-quality team on the DL. They still managed to win 89 games in one of the toughest divisions in baseball. If my team’s management could win 89 games with so many of their first-choice players injured, i’d be a very happy fan.*
- And i don’t just mean the Orioles here. I’m talking about any team that could have that much success with that many injuries. It’s something for the fans to be grateful for, and is encouragement for the next season.
Maybe you too are still not getting this one season vs. long term stuff. 2010 was indeed hopeless for Boston, who consequently did not make the playoffs. Even having Bay’s pop in the lineup wouldn’t have put them into the Series. And you know what? That wasn’t going to happen even if they’d all been healthy. They weren’t good enough as constituted, even coming out of spring training.
But I wasn’t fucking talking about 2010 only or even particularly, was I? :rolleyes: I’m fucking referring to 2011, 2012, 2013, and beyond, as well as 2008 and 2009, and for that matter 2007, which would also have ended without a Series title if Theo had had his way. Does it start to “make sense” yet, or are you too just being argumentative for the fun of it?
It is most strange to see someone claim they’d be “happy” if their team came in third, barely ahead of the hopeless O’s and Jays. It is even stranger to see someone claim they’d be happy if their team was always pretty good, but was kept by its front office from ever being good enough to win it all. It is incomprehensible that such persons, conditioned by years of hopelessness born of MLB’s failure to implement effective revenue sharing or a salary cap to be satisfied with losing, can claim to be fans.
Fess up. You’re Lou Gorman, posting under a pseudonym, right?
Bay had a bad year on a bad team in his early 30s. He may well bounce back and have a good year next year.
I thought the signing by the Mets was stupid at the time but not because I expected him to fail, I just thought they had more holes to fill and were better off trying to get several players for the money they had budgeted to spend.
I hope Bay does bounce back. The Mets need a little good fortune.
Gorman was part of the Sox’ historic problem, the Curse of Tom Yawkey. All that mattered for decades was being “a good baseball man”, as the cliche went, which in Boston meant being good at drinking and telling stories, while sharing the boss’s disdain for pitching and defense, his odd notion that Fenway’s power wall was left, and the attitude that it’s a small market and had to be skinflinted. It wasn’t even Yawkey’s bigotry that was the biggest problem, even that got fixed eventually even though the team still suffers from that image.
It wasn’t until a new ownership team took over, and got rid of the old thinkers, that the Series wins started coming. But the old thinking still comes back in occasional relapses, in the body of young Mr. Epstein. It’s more of a bipolar situation with him, though - he’ll spend when he’s in a manic mood, but cripple the team when he’s depressive and channeling the ghost of the drunken, bigoted miser who used to own the team.
Theo anecdote: He left the team in a tiff with Larry Lucchino when his contract expired on 10/31/06. That being Halloween, he was able to leave Fenway and evade the press by wearing a gorilla suit. He refused to mention it when he came back a few months later, the Beckett-Lowell deal he wouldn’t have made all done and the 2007 Series on the way.
He’s on the wrong side of 30. It’s surprising he was AS bad as he was, but not at all surprising that he got worse and that he’s not worth the lavish contract.
The absolute fact of the matter is that Epstein made the right move.
No, because you haven’t a shried of logic or evidence to support this claim. Epstein is the only Boston GM of your lifetime to win a World Series. He’s the architect of one of baseball’s most consistently excellent teams. The man puts winning teams on the field, teams that win World Series championships. If he’s not “committed to winning,” he’s doing an awfully good impression.
Incidentally, Epstein’s tiff with the Red Sox happened on Hallowe’en of 2005, not 2006. It took another year and an offseason under Epstein’s savvy management to put together the team that would win it all in 2007.
I’m very doubtful about this, but i’m willing to be persuaded that i’m wrong.
So tell me: assuming they didn’t suffer all those injuries, what was wrong with the Red Sox, back in March, that made them not good enough to make the playoffs this year?
Well, that would be strange if it constituted the whole of my argument. But of course you left out the important condition: i said that i would be quite happy to have 89 wins in a year when my team lost many of its best players to long-term stints on the DL.
But you’ve provided not a single piece of evidence that this is the case. And the most compelling pieces of evidence against your argument are the two World Series victories by the Red Sox under that very same incompetent front office. Not to mention the 6 playoff appearances in the past 8 seasons.
Ah, there it is again. I knew we’d get to it eventually. “People who disagree with me aren’t real fans of baseball.” You never disappoint.