That's it for Boston, Big Ugly their best player by far..I don't like winning cause of other team's injuries, this weekend's set not as exciting without "Youk" to root against..

Red Sox = finished this season.

Lombardi? Is still fixated on Phil Hughes' velocity? I haven't gone to his site in about two years.

Beltre is taking up the slack nicely.

JD Drew in 4th season with Sox..never played more than 140 games, 11,19,24,12 (this season) home runs, good .OBP and defense, but still..that the statheads defend this guy as a great signing is mystifying to me..a dozen other OFers would take before him..and he just K'd looking!

[4] Really, a dozen others? I don't think so.

Although, if he just K'd looking, then yeah, I have to concede your point :-)

(My view about Drew is: his rate stats are great, but he's not a great signing because he doesn't play enough games.)

[6] Exactly..rate stats are impressive but if you can't average more than 125-30 games, then it's not a great signing. Though I hear he has great intangibles, and leads the clubhouse bible reading (seriously). That counts in the locker room even if you can't measure it!

Eeeeeew.
He is not well liked by the fans. They call him "Nancy" -- I'm sure you're not surprised. Of course, nowadays RSN is not overly enamored of Jacoby Ellsbury either -- they are very suspicious of his injury, desire, etc. So they feel they have a very unmanly outfield.

Anyway, as I think you were alluding to, Theo defends the signing like crazy, using advanced statistics, and thus making Drew even more unpopular among the great unwashed masses. "All I know is, he doesn't score runs or drive in a lot of runs, and the last time I checked, scoring runs and driving in runs is how you win baseball games." (You can cause their heads to explode just by uttering the phrase "run prevention", which is why I use it frequently here at BB.)

[8] Hahahah!

Jason Donald batting for Cleveland..I don't like people with two first names..does that make me a bad person?

7) leads the clubhouse bible reading (seriously)

Who cares about this one wqy or another. I think you're trying to be sarcastic or ironic, but this particular fact influences my view of Drew not one bit.

Now, looking at his contract: 14 million pwr year is a lot, no doubt. Probably too much. On the other hand, you sort of exaggerate his injuryness with the sox. He has played 140, 137, 109, and this year 95 out of 197 games. Except for one season, he has pretty much been a full time player.

His productio has been less consistent: two seasons of c. .800 OPS and two seasons of .900+ OPS. Still if you look at the average, it's not bad.

I bet if you asked most Yankees fans if they would have been happy the last four years with a corner OF (presumably he would be the LF on the Yankees?) who played about 130 games a year and hit around .850 OPS, most would be pretty happy with that even at 14 million per year.

So yeah, not a great signing...overrated...but his was not the worst deal by any stretch.

Who cares about this one wqy or another. I think you’re trying to be sarcastic or ironic, but this particular fact influences my view of Drew not one bit.

No no, that's why I put "seriously" in there. Like all locker rooms, there are cliques, one of which is the bible reading group. (When John Smoltz quit boozing, for example, he moved from the party group in Atlanta to the bible readers group.) Point being that JD may be hated by Boston fans, but not by his team mates (and yes, I think chemistry is oevr-rated, but not non-existent either.)

Also, a full-tme player in his prime without injury should be playing 150+ games, maybe one day off a month. A high of 140 means a lot of scrubs in the outfield..

Yuk...Indians not helping much tonight.

[12] awful team..but my eyes still burning from watching the orioles the other morning..pure putridity!

11) OK, I misinterpreted your tone. my fault.

Back to Drew. Yes, a full time player should play 150 or 160 games, but 140 games is not really an inordinate amount of time missed. That equates to one trip on the DL per season, plus a few off games. Or put another way, its more games than ARod played in 2008 or 2009, and yet no one would consider him anything less than a full time player.

So yeah, he's injury prone and overpaid, but he is also productive and by no means is his the worst contract out there. Like I said, given that the Yankees have trotted out some real zeroes in LF over the last several years, most would have been pretty happy with 130 or 140 games of Drew's production, even if he cost too much.

13) it's funny, I don't root for the Indians, but at the same time I do have a bit of a soft spot for the organization since my time in Ohio. They had such a nicely run team for several years...so much talent produced by the farm system...and they made some good, tough decisions ( letting guys walk, trading older players). It's too bad they are so awful.

I mean, their organization is not contemptable like the Orioles.

[15] I remember watching them lose in 97 to the Marlins, the Joe Table game (NOT the losing pitcher despite what people think, he only gave up the tying run..Charles Nagu got the L in the 11th) and being sad..I hated the idea of an expansion team winning so soon..(only to have that horror magnified by 20 kajillion in 2001..)

16) and magnified 50 zillion more dor me in 2003: being felled by an expansion and WC team. Blech!

[17] Hah, yes I can imagine that..you are a "bit" of a traditionalist..were you against the realignment + WC in the first place? I liek the idea, but the reality now is stupid..play 162 games, win your division and you get ONE extra home game as a reward?

18) realignment didn't bother me so much, although three division basically necessitated the wild card, which I always thought is a travesty.

I'd much rather see four division with no wild card. Or barring that, go the other direction: two divisions and take the top two teams in each...or one division and take the top X teams, however long you want to make the playoffs. At least then teams in the ssame division would be competing against each other for playoff positions. But yeah, given the choice I would kill the wild card in a second.

[2] He's moved on to all things A-Rod now.

[16] Yeah, Tony Fernandez (playing 2b) botched a ball, the runner eventually came around to score

[18] Not a big fan of the WC and realignment, but the reality is that MLB isn't going back to the way things were so I've accepted it for what it is.

20) wow..all things ARod. That's got to be fun and fresh.

[6] I don't think Drew is the type of talent the Red Sox should have danced the fine line of tampering over.

Anyone here can recommend a good mlb podcast? I usually listen to Baseball Today from espn, but the new co-host Seth Evrertt is shockingly annoying..some weird personal grudge against Ozzie Guillen and A-Rod ("Jeter is a better player than A-Rod, no question".) I tired FanGraphs but it was so stat heavy and the hosts were...lacking...

[21] He may be on to something since those entries get the most comments.

youk injury = couldn't have happened to an uglier guy.

i hope we bury the shit sox this weekend, though i'll be (somewhat) satisfied with a split of the wraparound series...

[23] "Shockingly annoying" is a perfect description of Seth. I miss the cranky fat guy . Anyway, the only other decent podcast I was aware of (The National Baseball Podcast) just stopped putting theirs out.