Twice now in 3 games this complete and total drooling, shitfaced fucktard has left tiring pitchers in games where it is obvious to every baseball-knowledgeable person in the country, except himself somehow, that the pitcher in question is tiring, overmatched, and/or ineffective. I refer of course to the Sunday game against the Yankees, with a tiring Schilling facing Jeter in the 8th inning, having just given up a double off the Monster to Jason Giambi, and tonight’s Eric Gagne-induced fiasco.
In both cases there was ample evidence that the pitchers in question had lost it. In both cases much better personnel were available, fresh and ready, in the bullpen (and we’re talking about likely the best bullpen the Red Sox have ever had). In both cases there were 2 go-ahead runs in scoring position. In both cases, he leaves them in and watches them lose the game for him, on a homer and double respectively.
I’ve had enough. I know it is futile to hope for, but I’ll be wishing with all my might that they can his ass before the playoffs start, even tho such a move would be completely unprecedented and totally unconventional, and the timing awful. But I shudder to see this sad sack of worthless donkey shit mismanage my favorite team, one who arguably has the best talent in the majors, into the ground. They’ll only get into the playoffs because Detroit is too far back for them to lose the wild card.
It’s not just this tho. He’s also done other wonderful things lately:
Keep a young kid pitcher, Clay Buchholz, who just so happened to pitch a no-hitter in his last start, under wraps and inactive for virtually every game since the no-no. During this time their dreaded rival the Yankees have kept THREE kid pitchers, all of which are younger, active and involved in their efforts. He’ll be going tomorrow thank the Lord, but I’m sure Francona will find some way to fubar it all up anyway.
Despite a bevy of bench players in the expanded roster month of September, he continues to let worthless chunks of crap like Alex Cora and Julio Lugo bat in the late innings of close losing games, and not pinch-hit for them. Manny Ramirez was a complete no-show during the Yankees’ series, despite having taken batting practice for a week now. If Kirk fucking Gibson can do it…
I also pit Theo Epstein, Sox GM, on this one. The Sox have a SS phenom named Jed Lowrie at AAA, where he just so happens to have hit over .300, with lots of extra base hits and goodly numbers of walks. Despite being the same age as their rookie 2B, Dustin Pedroia, as well as CFer Jacoby Ellsbury (called up for the stretch drive, and currently hitting over .350 in the majors), Mr. Lowrie was inexplicably a non-call up for September, and instead a lot of his at-bats went to the aforementioned suckfaced Alex Cora, who has done diddly-squat in his games (and see #2).
This crap has to stop. Now. This I swear, or I don’t know what I’ll do.
Geez, you’d think that the Sox weren’t in first, or the Yankees were running away with it, or Francona hadn’t ever won nothin’ with the Red Sox, or that the lead had shrunk to two-and-a-half (wait a minute, that seems actually to have happened), or or or or maybe we’ll have to wait for the end of the season or sump’in.
Just because a team’s doing well ranking-wise doesn’t mean they can’t suck ass at the same time. The Chicago Bears did a spectacular job of that last season, for instance.
Sick of the phrase, yes. Sick of the concept, no. He’s a kid with electric stuff, the Yankees can afford to think about the future and be careful about not blowing his arm out for a stretch run. If this was another team, that doesn’t have the ability to contend every year, I might think differently.
Yankee fan here: as long as Joba keeps pitching like he has, I won’t tire of “Joba rules”*
*Except when uttered by the horrendous Yankees radio announce team, who grate on my nerves even when just giving the score. Every time they talk, I wish for White, Messer and Rizzuto to return.
Just to be clear, he is a great pitcher, and I would love to have him on our team. It’s just this phrase that got repeated to death due to the recent nationally televised games that I can’t stand anymore.
I know there’s a vociferous slice of Francona-haters among the ranks of Boston fans, and I’ve never been one of them. He generally seems like an okay manager, he’s had decent success, and God knows he knows more about baseball than I do.
That said, I would have yanked Gagne last night after the first of his two walks and put Papelbon in. There were already two outs, Papelbon was warmed up, and it’s not unprecedented for him to get the last out of the eighth. It seemed like a strange time to experiment with whether Gagne was able to handle that kind of situation. I mean, the guy has already lost – singlehanded – how many games?
The speculation in quiet corners amongst the hardcore Sox fans is that the Boston brass cares not one whit about the regular season, with a playoff spot pretty much sewn up. I.e. now is the time to set up the postseason rotation and see who can help in their roles, and who can’t. Many teams have won the Series when they were the wild card-c.f. a certain New England team in 2004…
Problem with that is one of morale. Thinking that your manager is tanking the regular season because he doesn’t care where the team finishes is dangerous in that regard, as is sitting out there on the mound tiring quickly and wondering when the hell the essobee will finally come and pull your ass. If a manager doesn’t inspire confidence in his players that he can make the right moves at the right times, he isn’t doing his job properly, and this feeling may very well carry over to the postseason.
In any event I’m not paying attention to anything until October. If Sox management doesn’t care about the remainder of the regular season, then neither should I.
He’d just come into the game.
He had not pitched the day before.
He was very effective in his previous two games, against the Yankees, a vastly superior lineup to the Blue Jays.
In his previous 7 appearances he had given up just one run on seven hits and two walks. He had not given up a home run in a month and a half.
Basically, he’d been carefully used and highly effective for a month before last night’s walkathon. It appeared as if he’d turned a corner and was effective again after his struggles in mid-August.
I’ll grant he should have been yanked after the Zaun walk, but at that point the game is tied and you’re in serious trouble anyway so bringing in relief might not have saved the day.
Lowrie is a poor defensive shortstop, so I can understand their trepidation. Bringing up a young player is something you don’t necessarily want to do right away unless you’re out of, or low on, contract options, or you have a full time job for him, because you don’t want to start the clock on arbitration/free agency too soon. You’d also have to drop someone off the 40-man roster to accomodate Lowrie. I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, but just pointing out that
I can understand not wanting to have a pooor fielding 23-year-old with little experience above AA at the 6 for a playoff run,
There’s probably a contractual/financial reason for it anyway, and
If you don’t want Theo Epstein, I’ll take him any time.
As to Jason, he has convincingly shown why he needs to DH/PH in the post season and why the Yanks need to play Doug M and live with one poor bat in the line-up. I suspect the Yanks can survive that one loss of bat more than Giambi’s lack of glove and missing throwing arm.
Joba Rules of course refers to the Rules on how Joe Torre is allowed to use Joba and not an annoying Yankee phrase “Joba Rulz Dudes”. I do understand how the overload of press has made this phrase annoying as all hell. That is the media’s fault.
The Rules are a good idea. I like Torre but I would not trust him to use Joba correctly without the rules. He has a tendency to over use a good reliever. I would hate to see a very promising starter (or future closer) overused and abused in pursuit of the playoff berth. The rules also protect Torre from second guessing from
The Media.
The Fans
The “Boss”
Boy I miss those teams, though technically, we only had one at a time on the radio and usually a stiff like Fran Healy. Bill White is the only one left now.
Detroit just lost again. It is really unlikely for Francona to eliminate the Red Sox. It is still not likely for them to lose the division. Any combination of 3 wins by the Red Sox or 3 losses by the Tigers will ensure a Red Sox postseason berth.
Mientkiewicz is hitting .462 since returning from injury. Just saying…
You could dig the two up, put them in a chair with a microphone, and they’d still be better than Sterling and Waldman. I’ve considered getting satellite radio simply to listen to the out of town game broadcasts.
