Protecting the Shields -- The Nick Cafardo Thread

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joyofsox

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Back in the late 70s or whenever, did announcers complain about lazy players using bullpen cars? I don't recall. (Of course, salaries were much lower then.) They'd sure as hell make that comment now, though. Pampered, entitled, blah blah.
 

Humphrey

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"Ruben Amaro Jr. said he wouldn’t rule out managing or becoming a general manager again"

Geez, Nick, what a revelation. I would have thought Mr. Amaro, a highly intelligent Stanford grad; had uttlerly lost confidence in his mental abilities and was content to be a first base coach the rest of his baseball career.
 

richgedman'sghost

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You know what, I won't rule it out for myself either! Throw us both in that same bucket, Nick.
Where have you coached before? Do you believe in good old fashioned scouting or that New fangled sabermetrics thingy..If it's the latter then Nicky cannot recommend you..if it's the former Nicky will talk bout you in every column...
 
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joe dokes

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The Yankees are the best team ever. Nobody beats Buck. Bautista will lead the Jays. The Rays are always tough because of the smart residue Joe Maddon left behind.

HOUSTON — The Yankees are falling, the Orioles are struggling, the Rays are a straight line, the Blue Jays are trying to get to .500. The division is vulnerable.
 

Granite Sox

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Often forgotten on a list of possible pitcher acquisitions simply because he hasn’t been that good...
One of the most Cafardoian sentences ever composed about perennial binky Big Game James Shields.
  1. He's old
  2. He's owed a lot of money
  3. He's not any good
Other than that... what's not to like!
Scouts will be watching
Including my buddy Scouty McScout!
 

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon

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Ah, the venerable Boston Globe, where "forgotten" is now a synonym for "purposely not included after even the barest of due diligence."

I've noticed in the news pages, for example, that North Korea is often forgotten on a list of democracies simply because it is not a democracy. Also, in features, steak is often forgotten on a list of great vegetarian meals for the summertime, simply because steak is meat.

The story ideas are endless, really.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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My favorite part of Sunday's column was that all of the people he spoke to about the amount of catcher's visits gave him a lot of rather valid reasons as to why catchers should have unlimited visits. He listed them all out and his last sentence was pretty much, "Yeah, fuck all that. They still suck."*

* This is the one thing that I do agree with Cafardo about, there are a ton of catcher's visits to the mound. But, I wasn't aware enough as to why there are more. While I'm still more on the side of less is better, I at least understand why catchers are always going out to the mound. It was oddly educational for a Cafardo column, though probably not in the way that he intended it to be.
 

joe dokes

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My favorite part of Sunday's column was that all of the people he spoke to about the amount of catcher's visits gave him a lot of rather valid reasons as to why catchers should have unlimited visits. He listed them all out and his last sentence was pretty much, "Yeah, fuck all that. They still suck."*

* This is the one thing that I do agree with Cafardo about, there are a ton of catcher's visits to the mound. But, I wasn't aware enough as to why there are more. While I'm still more on the side of less is better, I at least understand why catchers are always going out to the mound. It was oddly educational for a Cafardo column, though probably not in the way that he intended it to be.
Ignorance bomb leaves traces of collateral education.
 

jungleboy

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My favorite part of Sunday's column was that all of the people he spoke to about the amount of catcher's visits gave him a lot of rather valid reasons as to why catchers should have unlimited visits. He listed them all out and his last sentence was pretty much, "Yeah, fuck all that. They still suck."
He does that remarkably often - he proposes some idea and then quotes people shooting it down. He must have a maximum quota of people to interview for the column. If they all disagree with him, he just runs their quotes anyway.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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He does that remarkably often - he proposes some idea and then quotes people shooting it down. He must have a maximum quota of people to interview for the column. If they all disagree with him, he just runs their quotes anyway.
I know, it's incredibly strange. To me, it seems as if he types up his notes, reads them over and thinks, "Oh shit, I forgot to call anyone for the Notes column." Then he calls a bunch of people, yeses them to death and then dumps the quotes into his story without context.

There's not even a transition sentence from what Varitek said to his final though which is, "Catcher visits are destroying the game."

Some of his synapses just aren't firing.
 

Humphrey

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One of the most Cafardoian sentences ever composed about perennial binky Big Game James Shields.
  1. He's old
  2. He's owed a lot of money
  3. He's not any good
Other than that... what's not to like!

Including my buddy Scouty McScout!
Shields got shelled again yesterday
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I don't think that I've read Nick Cafardo as fired up as he was yesterday about Brian Butterfield not being a manager.

I imagined him angrily typing his paragraph as tears streamed down his face. "IT'S JUST NOT FAIR, YOU ASSHOLES!"
 

Humphrey

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Nick reported today that Cole Hamels has pitched 42 innings this year. No mention, of course, that the Sox should have paid any price a couple years ago to get him.
 

ifmanis5

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Nick reported today that Cole Hamels has pitched 42 innings this year. No mention, of course, that the Sox should have paid any price a couple years ago to get him.
Would have made a nice addition to the other guys he wanted to break the bank for- Josh Hamilton and Joe Mauer.
 

joe dokes

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Remember when John Henry cited a study about the downfall of giving big money to pitchers 30 and older as one of the reasons why the Red Sox drew a line in the sand on how far they wanted to go with Jon Lester? Price signed his huge deal at age 30 and broke down after one year. Greinke was 32 and broke down in his first year with the Diamondbacks. Kershaw was 26. Scherzer was 30. Neither have broken down except for minor injuries.
Kershaw, who didn't pitch for a period of 63 games in 2016, made 21 starts in 2016, suggesting that he missed 11 or 12 with his "minor injuries" that *didn't* cause him to "break down."
Price, who made his first start in Game 50 this year, has 10 fewer starts than the team leader, Porcello, suggesting that he will miss 10 or so in the season in which he "broke down."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2017/07/11/red-sox-have-chris-sale-bargain-price/vMxRrs8ueEudraF0NgWbTJ/story.html

Are these guys available to cover baseball?
 

scottyno

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Greinke made more starts than Kershaw last year yet Greinke "broke down" while Kershaw who had a serious back injury in June that nearly sidelined him for the rest of the year didn't.
 

joe dokes

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On Thursday, the Yankees acquired minor league first baseman Garrett Cooper from Milwaukee in exchange for lefty reliever Tyler Webb. Cooper is 6 feet 6 inches and 230 pounds. He was having a great year with Triple A Colorado Springs (.366 with 17 homers, 82 RBIs, and a 1.080 OPS)
442 .503 .829 at home.
 

Sir Lancelotti

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His Sandoval piece from today is just a steaming pile of hot garbage, poignant seeing as though Nick's Globe paycheck angers me a hell of a lot more than Sandoval's contract.

No team is going to trade for Sandoval because it’d be assuming his remaining salary. Will anyone take another shot with Sandoval? The Giants’ season is lost and they are going to sell off players, but their fans might get a kick out of their beloved Panda returning.
Seems like a rational way to run a ballclub that's at a crossroads, take on $40 Million of salary for an injury prone player that has no discernible skills to offer a baseball team. Fans will get a kick out of it, Saban might as well earmark $50 million for Eddie Gaedel.

One reason for picking up Sandoval is his exemplary postseason record.
Reason noted. Teams are allowed to sign players off the street to 10 day contracts in October so they can work their magic right? Mark Lemke may want to stay limber.

He never endeared himself with Red Sox fans as he had for so long in San Francisco, where fans would wear Panda heads and where his large stomach was considered “cute,” and where he was accepted as being out of shape. He was accepted because he produced.
El Guapo would gladly trade some of those cheers for roughly $90 million more in his checking account.
 

Jordu

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His Sandoval piece from today is just a steaming pile of hot garbage, poignant seeing as though Nick's Globe paycheck angers me a hell of a lot more than Sandoval's contract.
The sum total of reporting Nick put into the article is one phone call to an anonymous GM, who says something anodyne about how the Red Sox made the right move -- but remains anonymous. The rest is just rehash and speculation. It could not have taken more than 20 minutes to write. It told me nothing.

The Globe just gets less and less relevant.
 

E5 Yaz

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All you need to know about MLB can be found in the nation's best Sunday Sports section of the Boston Globe.great work by Nick Cafardo!
 

The Gray Eagle

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And Cafardo held up his end of the transaction in his Sunday notes, where he pushed Kaat's book:
"Thanks to MLB Network’s Jim Kaat for some nice comments he made about this weekly column on Twitter. His book “If These Walls Could Talk: Stories from the New York Yankees Dugout, Locker Room, and Press Box” is a must-read."
 

joe dokes

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Short of landing Kansas City’s Mike Moustakas, who would be an exciting third-base acquisition for the Red Sox now that Todd Frazier is gone to the Yankees?

That’s the Red Sox’ dilemma.
Yes. The Sox dilemma is how to get someone "exciting."

We are not sure why the Red Sox passed on Frazier, other than they weren’t sold on him.
Because surely, that can't be enough.

If the Royals don’t pick up the pace, they could make a late decision to trade away players and Moustakas could hit home runs at Fenway from the left side because he prefers to hit to the opposite field.
I could be reading this wrong, but it looks like all but 1 of his HRs were not opposite field.
http://www.fangraphs.com/spraycharts.aspx?playerid=4892&position=3B&type=battedball&pid2=4892&ss1=2016&se1=2016&ss2=2017&se2=2017&cht1=hangtime&cht2=battedball&vs1=ALL&vs2=ALL






https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2017/07/19/red-sox-continuing-explore-trade-options/DtYxqELK1vMUcI40ARMvHK/story.html
 

E5 Yaz

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Sunday column's first sentence:

Sometimes it’s as if baseball has become all about analytics. It’s good to know there’s still a human side to the game.
 

joe dokes

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Sale, who stuck around til the end of the all star game to watch his (new this year) teammate Kimbrel pitch, apparently is not a "character guy."
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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Sometimes it’s as if baseball has become all about analytics. It’s good to know there’s still a human side to the game.
Baseball, as are most sports, have always been about analytics and stats. What do you think winning percentage, batting average, ERA, games behind, TDs, shooting percentage, etc. are. What Nick Cafardo is finding out is that there are more advanced analytics and more people are understanding them, yet he will (or does) not and he feels dumb.

Therefore he has to attack stats and the thousands of people who use them, in a bizarre crusade to bring these folks down to his anti-intellectual level. In other words, Nick Cafardo is the kid in the back of the class screaming, "NERD!!!!" every time someone answers a question correctly. Only he's too dumb to take full ownership of it.

Fuck this clown.
 

E5 Yaz

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Baseball, as are most sports, have always been about analytics and stats. What do you think winning percentage, batting average, ERA, games behind, TDs, shooting percentage, etc. are. What Nick Cafardo is finding out is that there are more advanced analytics and more people are understanding them, yet he will (or does) not and he feels dumb.

Therefore he has to attack stats and the thousands of people who use them, in a bizarre crusade to bring these folks down to his anti-intellectual level. In other words, Nick Cafardo is the kid in the back of the class screaming, "NERD!!!!" every time someone answers a question correctly. Only he's too dumb to take full ownership of it.

Fuck this clown.

Oh yeah? .... Well, TAKE THIS:

These players not only do it between the lines but off the field. They generate good karma and help teammates relax, and act as mentors for younger players.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I know that I write this a lot, but bear with me here, this was a ridiculously dumb column by Nicky C. today (the "C" stands for Clown, because his words are laughable). We all got a nice preview of what today's Baseball Notes column yesterday. Basically, "Tell your statistics to shut up." Okay. Strap in because the logic in this piece was designed by MC Escher*.

* How is there not a guy in hip hop named MC Escher? It would be great. He could rap fast and make all these weird psychadelic twists and turns with his words. It would be dope AF. Sorry I'm getting off track.

The piece opens up by saying, I'm paraphrasing, "You nerds that are leading the leagues in stuff (Astros, Sox, Yanks) might know about numbers, but you need to have grit guys too! Fucking dorks."

He said that last year, when the missed the playoffs, the Yankees had two character guys: Carlos Beltran and Brian "Unwritten Rules RULE" McCann. They got rid of them and replaced them with Matt Holiday. Cafardo is in his third paragraph and already the wheels are wobbling because from my calculations, two is more than one. Last year, when NY had two character guys they missed the playoffs, this year they have one and would be in the postseason if the season ended today. But two is more than one, which should mean that the Yankees should have made the playoffs last year. Okay, I'm sure that this is just a shaky example, let's forget that it happened.

He continues by saying that the year the Red Sox won World Series, guys like Johnny Damon, Kevin Millar, Mike Lowell, David Ross and Ryan Dempster were all reasons why Boston won. Last sentence, they also had David Ortiz too. Forgot about that. This year, they don't have Papi and there's a hole in character AND performance. He's right, the Sox suck this year. So terrible. I mean, I can't even begin to tell you all the problems that the Red Sox have, I can't wait to look at the standings and see where they are. Oh, first place? Weird.

BTW, I don't think that losing Ortiz has helped the Red Sox in any way shape or form, but that's not adding anything to his point.

The loss of Edwin Encarnacion has destroyed the Blue Jays (good point, though I'd say it was his production more than anything) and that the Twins have rebounded nicely after their Torii Hunter-less hangover of 2016. Minnesota won 83 games in 2014 and fell to 59 the following year. I think that Cafardo is stating that Torii Hunter's character was worth 24 extra wins. Yup. 24. If that's remotely true, he's the new Captain Intangibles.

He talks about Scott Rolen being the man in Cincinnati in the early teens then jumps back to Damon and Ross for some reason. My thought is that he was cutting and pasting his column and either forgot to move this part up a bit or he's losing his mind. Again, with the MC Escher stuff. Nick Cafardo's brain is a freshman's dorm wall. I bet he thinks about Bob Marley a lot too.

He moves into Chicago Cub territory where Ross is the leader, Ben Zobrist provides leadership "in some way" (don't ask me to quantify this, nerd) but Jason Hayward "doesn't perform well enough to make a huge difference". Okay lots to unpack here, but I thought that leadership doesn't have anything to do with statistics? Hayward's performance shouldn't matter. At all. Also, Jason Hayward is/was a much better player than David Ross. He was. ALSO, during the rain delay in Game 7 of the World Series last year, when the Cubs just saw their lead evaporate who was the guy that gave the rousing speech that every Cub player said sparked them? David Ross? Nope. The fluid, amoeba-like, undefinable Ben Zobrist? Take a seat pointdexter, you're not listening. Jason Hayward. But he sucks, so the Cubs obviously lost.

Then to really drive his point home, Cafardo just starts listing baseball players: Adrian Beltre, Mike Napoli (which if he's such a strong leader why are the Indians in first place, but the Rangers are struggling?), Martin Prado, Dustin Pedroia, Paul Goldschmidt (he's quiet AND respected, which is amazing to me because I thought you had to be obnoxious to be respected. I'm doing this all wrong, apparently), Charlie Blackmon, Curtis Granderson, Josh Donaldson, Yadier Molina and Matt Carpenter (because, of course the Cardinals have TWO character guys. They do everything better there. Except win. Take that Will Leitch!)

Then he says that the Phillies, Padres and Brewers all don't have any of these types on their teams and all of their teams suck. Totally suck, you guys. Just the suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked. I know the Phils and the Pads are in last place, but where do the Brewers rank? Oh dear. My life is a lie.

Then he lists some more players ("CAFARDO! WE NEED INCHES TO FILL HERE!"): Adam Jones, Zack Cozart, Ryan Zimmerman, Miguel Cabrera, Albert Pujols, Clayton Kershaw, Justin Turner and phew Buster Posey.

So that's it. The Red Sox should trade for every single one of these guys, post haste. Because with these dudes on their team, they will win a million World Series in a row. ONE MILLION.

Oh yeah, this wasn't in his Baseball Column, but in another piece, but we all know how much Cafardo loves scouts and will take their word on anything and never, ever, ever push back, right? Well one scout said that the Red Sox should really consider taking Jose Bautista on. Okay you say, the Sox could use some adequate thunder. I sorta buy into this, where are they going to play him?

Third base, of course!

Joey Bats has already spent 11 innings there this year, but why wouldn't you trade for a 26-year-old guy who has played 22 innings at third base in last six years? I mean that's just good baseballing. Why don't we through George Brett there while we're at it or dig up Pie Traynor. Those guys were pretty good too. Hell, I manned the hot corner once or twice in Little League, I bet that I could do okay, if past performance is any sort of an indicator.

Honestly, put Nicky C. out to pasture. This time the "C" stands for cow. Get it? Cow? Pasture? HA! Now I'm the clown. Because I made you laugh.
 

joe dokes

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Bravo.
I started a post with the beginning of this. Then when I realized the idiocy just went on and on, I gave up.
Globe santa is the gift that keeps on giving.
 

Kliq

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I did like that he just started listing off random names without giving any examples of their clubhouse intangibles. The Dodgers are good because Kershaw is a great clubhouse guy. He's also the best pitcher in baseball by almost any statistical measure, but that doesn't matter because clubhouse skillz!!!
 

scottyno

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Encarnacion must be the best clubhouse guy ever if his loss caused the Toronto pitching staff to go from arguably the best in the AL to roughly average overnight
 

Humphrey

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So now he's on to waiver trade speculation, basically crossing all the guys off his list the guys who got dealt and continuing to list everyone else. Must have taken him thirty minutes to write this weeks column. He sucks
 
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