Protecting the Shields -- The Nick Cafardo Thread

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shaggydog2000

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Maybe it's because *some* in the media made his difficulties in playing baseball a proxy for his character.



Can you "not speak" and "say" at the same time?
Outcome is purely a result of character and moral/mental fortitude. Dirt dogs. David Eckstein. A scout told me. Blah blah. Here's a trade I've been told is possible that will never happen.....
 

E5 Yaz

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In a shit-against-the-wall Sunday column about the relief pitcher trade market, Cafardo makes note of the Blue Jays picking up Jason Grilli, then inserts this paragraph:

Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski passed on Grilli, feeling it was too early to get into any pitching market. Sox manager John Farrell has praised Grilli for being able to assume multiple roles in the bullpen.

Does Nick mean that Farrell would have liked Grilli? That was a difference of opinion between the team president and the manager? Or did he have two sentences that didn't go with anything else he wrote, so he just stuck them together?
 

E5 Yaz

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It will be interesting to see if Nick addresses his season-long pimping of James Shields soon given that Shields has been a total disaster for the White Sox since they traded for him. He's allowed 24 runs over his last 9 2/3 IP.

My guess is that he'll just ignore it.
 
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CoolPapaBellhorn

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It will be interesting to see if Nick addresses his season-long pimping of James Shields soon given that Shields has been a total disaster for the White Sox since they traded for him. He's allowed 24 runs over his last 9 2/3 IP.

My guess is that he'll just ignore it.
Considering he still thinks that the Sox should have signed Josh Hamilton, I'd say that's a sound guess.
 

joe dokes

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There's still Justin Morneau, who has now made it from the unemployment line to the White Sox DL.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I kind of hate the whole Cold Takes Exposed thing (it's fucking lame and no shit, journalists aren't the Oracles at Delphi) but man, the guys that Cafardo wants the Sox to get are pretty terrible.

- James Shield
- Josh Hamilton
- Jason Bay
- Justin Morneau

(Wait a second, I see a pattern forming here ...)

Hamels would have been nice but probably would have cost Bogaerts or Betts or probably both. The fact that Cafardo gets paid for writing about baseball is completely bananas.
 

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Hamels would have been nice but probably would have cost Bogaerts or Betts or probably both. The fact that Cafardo gets paid for writing about baseball is completely bananas.
No way he would have cost either of those guys, let alone both. Amaro was puffing out his chest, but the Phillies ultimately got no one anywhere close to that from Texas and reports from the Dodgers talks were that LAD had taken Seager and Urias (their closest equivalent value) off the table and Philly was saying "OK, then we want 5-6 other guys). BC had taken even Swihart off the table, so I'm not shocked nothing got done, but I don't think it was because PHI drew the line at X or Mookie. I'd be willing to bet that Swihart/Owens/Johnson/Devers/Lotto Ticket would have gotten the deal done. Debate can be had if that would have been an overpay but I think it's a little out there to think Betts or X, let alone both, needed to be part of the deal.
 

Van Everyman

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Nick doesn't ignore his mistakes -- he acknowledges them but in a goalpost-moving "It made sense at the time"-type way.

I'm still convinced he blocked me on Twitter based not on a Twitter exchange we had but the discussion about it here.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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No way he would have cost either of those guys, let alone both. Amaro was puffing out his chest, but the Phillies ultimately got no one anywhere close to that from Texas and reports from the Dodgers talks were that LAD had taken Seager and Urias (their closest equivalent value) off the table and Philly was saying "OK, then we want 5-6 other guys). BC had taken even Swihart off the table, so I'm not shocked nothing got done, but I don't think it was because PHI drew the line at X or Mookie. I'd be willing to bet that Swihart/Owens/Johnson/Devers/Lotto Ticket would have gotten the deal done. Debate can be had if that would have been an overpay but I think it's a little out there to think Betts or X, let alone both, needed to be part of the deal.
Peter Gammons got the word straight from Amaro. Seems to me, that's what he was asking for.

The fact that BC didn't do it means that he's smarter than Amaro. I'm not so sure that Cafardo is, which is the point.
 

Van Everyman

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Hey, Shields pitched a pretty good game against the Red Sox. Didn't have his best stuff but the feeling is that as he gets acclimated to the AL, he will be a quality contributor.

/Cafardo
 

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This was a pretty rotten column for Nick this week. He listed a bunch of guys who might get traded, two of which (Andrew McCutcheon and Joe Mauer) he doesn't think will be dealt, but put them on the list "for fun". Because you read the Boston Globe's Baseball Column for chuckles. Remember that time that Peter Gammons said that Jim Rice was going to be traded for Matt Young? What fun! And Larry Whiteside's knee slappers about the Red Sox signing Dave Winfield. Ho, HO! What a corker. And who could forget the belly buster that Gordon Edes wrote about Aaron Sele and Mo Vaughn for Ron Gant and David Justice?

Of course none of those writers ever wrote those rumors, but Nick Cafrd-LOLZ just loves to through bullshit against the wall to make his readers smile.

The interesting (not really interesting, actually) thing was that in his "Nine to Watch" sub column had three players that he really thought could be dealt. But he didn't include them in the main column of who he foresees as being moved.

5. The Padres are really bad, so why do teams want to acquire so many of their players?
Then he added the above quote! They don't. You do, fuckface. YOU'RE THE ONE THAT'S LITERALLY MAKING RUMORS UP! Argh. After I read his column today, I put it down and sat there for two minutes wondering what the fuck I'm doing with my life. Why am I reading this collection of word vomit? Nothing is true. I may as well just read a baseball trade subredit.

This fucking guy. Jesus.
 

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Cafardo mentioning names the Sox could trade to acquire some pitchers from Braves:
The lefty-righty thing (he made a similar mistake about Austin Jackson a couple of weeks ago) really speaks to two things: Cafardo's laziness and the lack of time for a fact-checking copy desk to do its job. The Globe is pounding out a lot of copy for Sports, and Cafardo's Sunday column now regularly hits the website on Saturday morning; but, in the rush to get the material "in and up," mistakes of this type continue to sneak through.
 

Snoop Soxy Dogg

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Then he added the above quote! They don't. You do, fuckface. YOU'RE THE ONE THAT'S LITERALLY MAKING RUMORS UP! Argh. After I read his column today, I put it down and sat there for two minutes wondering what the fuck I'm doing with my life. Why am I reading this collection of word vomit? Nothing is true. I may as well just read a baseball trade subredit.

This fucking guy. Jesus.
I chuckled at the bolded, having asked myself pretty much the same question, in pretty much the same terms. This is like an episode of "how I got two minutes of my Sundays back so I could get my groove back". I used to buy the Sunday paper specifically for the baseball notes. A few years back, after another insipid column, I asked myself the same question and I stopped torturing myself. Today, it literally takes me 30 seconds to 1 min to glance through the baseball notes. Anything that looks like a list, I skip (players likely to be traded, teams that must do "something", coaches on the hot seat, "Updates on nine" (some of the worst drivel in the Sunday paper, along with "A propos of nothing"), etc. ). Since those take at least half of the column every week, that's a quick one. Only thing that looks mildly interesting is that "extra innings" section at the end, with a few sentences on unusual trends, stats or events. It takes five seconds, and these days, I just skip to it.

I use to have a Sunday morning ritual; the paper came, and my wife would set up the paper while I cooked breakfast, reserving the sports pages to me. She doesn't do that any more, because she got tired of me mumbling expletives at Cafardo under my breath with two little kids at the table. I voted against renewing our Sunday Globe subscription because just seeing a page dedicated to Cafardo's notes annoyed the heck out of me (I lost that vote to the wifey).

Now I fight the wifey over the front section, and the funny thing is, I've actually gotten to enjoy the Spotlight stuff, Metro, Opinions and Movie sections a bit more. By comparison to Cafardo's notes, those sections are pure Sunday morning bliss. Then I come here for chuckles to see what Cafardo nonsense I had the good fortune to miss. You guys are performing a public service by subjecting yourself to it.
 

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Dombrowski: “I think the thing you have to remember is that it takes two clubs to make a deal, and most clubs, as I’ve said all along, really aren’t prepared to move toward 2017 and be in a position to move. There are probably five clubs looking at that.”

Those five teams are likely Atlanta (with Julio Teheran, Bud Norris, and Arodys Vizciano attractive to other teams ), Minnesota (Ervin Santana), San Diego (Drew Pomeranz), Milwaukee (nobody), and Cincinnati and Philadelphia (not much there).


http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2016/06/26/time-for-red-sox-bring-outside-help/tSoG1PKZbGXkJnovvQGJZO/story.html
 

GreenMonster49

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This was a pretty rotten column for Nick this week. He listed a bunch of guys who might get traded, two of which (Andrew McCutcheon and Joe Mauer) he doesn't think will be dealt, but put them on the list "for fun". Because you read the Boston Globe's Baseball Column for chuckles.

[From Nick's febrile mind] 5. The Padres are really bad, so why do teams want to acquire so many of their players?
Then he added the above quote! They don't. You do, fuckface. YOU'RE THE ONE THAT'S LITERALLY MAKING RUMORS UP!
You forgot to mention that Nick listed four Padres on his list of trade targets, out of fifteen total, including a couple just for fun. Either he's totally making up the rumors, or he had no idea what his column is about. (Or both! Why pick just one?) And he certainly shows no real understanding of why a struggling team might decide to trade some of its better and costlier, players for prospects. (Or why Pittsburgh, 4.5 games out of the wild-card, is not hopelessly out of it. Or why Florida will want full value for its excellent and cost-controlled starter.) Nick is not the only media person in Boston who can't put any thought into what trades make sense for each side in a transaction, but he is the most likely to contradict himself in his own column.
 

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Dombrowski: “I think the thing you have to remember is that it takes two clubs to make a deal, and most clubs, as I’ve said all along, really aren’t prepared to move toward 2017 and be in a position to move. There are probably five clubs looking at that.”

Those five teams are likely Atlanta (with Julio Teheran, Bud Norris, and Arodys Vizciano attractive to other teams ), Minnesota (Ervin Santana), San Diego (Drew Pomeranz), Milwaukee (nobody), and Cincinnati and Philadelphia (not much there).


http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2016/06/26/time-for-red-sox-bring-outside-help/tSoG1PKZbGXkJnovvQGJZO/story.html
There are so many things wrong with those two paragraphs. The inability to count to five is just the tip of the iceberg.
 

joe dokes

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Nick writes about Bogaerts saying he could use a day.

Although he pointed out that such an admission is rare in the macho world, Nick doesn't exactly praise him:
In no way does Bogaerts want to be considered a guy lacking fortitude. In fact, he says he loves to play every day. But the fatigue is something he can’t hide. It shows up.

What it should say:
"Bogaerts is well aware that washed-up, one-note writers stuck in the past like me regularly criticize players for their fortitude, based on things like getting days off. Indeed some baseball people are critical of today's 'soft' players who take time away from the team to attend such formerly off-limits "events" as the birth of a child or a parent's funeral. Says one former assistant to a former GM's former assistant, "If a guy's teammates can't be sure whether the guy's all-in for his teammates or for his family, how can they trust him with anything. And more than talent or numbers, teams win with players who trust each other."
I guess we'll have to see how the season goes to decide whether Bogaerts is hungry enough to be a successful major leaguer and, more importantly, a team leader. And when fans do, this day might matter to them. Or maybe it won't."
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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"Ugh. This guy is so selfish. He plays EVERY DAY! Won't he think of his teammates?"

"Ugh. This guy is so selfish. He takes a day off every time he gets an OWIE! Won't he think of his teammates?"

Where can these guys win, Nick*? Is it 160 games a year? 159? 161? Weren't we just slobbering over guys like Ripken, Rose, Garvey and Gehrig, men who are like the regular, working man who punches into work every day, no matter if they're hurting? Now we don't want guys playing 162 games**? When did this change?

* I know Nick doesn't read this, but I like writing to him as if he does. I fear I'm losing my mind.
** On one hand I like that guys play every day, but I knew even back when Ripken was doing it, he probably should have had a day off now and again, just to rest.
 

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This vicious circle the Red Sox find themselves in has been created by various reasons, but how do they solve them? Why do starters get kicked around in the first inning? Is there a pregame routine that has to be changed? Should there be a different focus in pregame bullpens so they start the game off right?

“It could be they’re not warming up right,” said one veteran American League scout at the game Monday night. “Sometimes guys come out and like to attack the strike zone and so the opposition gets more aggressive with their approach. It’s a battle of who executes their game plan better. And lately it looks like the opposition is winning.”

No one seems immune.

Are the Red Sox throwing too many pitches down the middle in the first inning? Are they throwing their fastball too much? Remember when Daisuke Matsuzaka was getting predictable and he’d start a game by throws 20 straight fastballs? Josh Beckett fell into the same routine for a while before he had to change things up. Maybe Sox pitchers are getting into a first-inning routine that other teams are exploiting. Maybe they all need to become more unpredictable.
Maybe you should stop being a galactic asshole?

Seven consecutive unanswered questions in a row, with the obligatory scout/buffet buddy anonymous quote spewing reckless speculation.

Good grief.
 

Curll

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"Not warming up right"? The fuck does that mean?
This could be a fun game, actually.

I suppose he could mean overthrowing in the BP, not warming up with off-speed and breaking pitches, and having a bad arm action/muscle memory by the time they are at the mound.

He could also mean the heated blankets are broken.
 

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The one thing I really learn from reading Cafardo is that the vast majority of scout-talk (which Nick endlessly and breathlessly repeats as if it's holy baseball gospel) is unmitigated nonsensical bullshit.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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The one thing I really learn from reading Cafardo is that the vast majority of scout-talk (which Nick endlessly and breathlessly repeats as if it's holy baseball gospel) is unmitigated nonsensical bullshit.
It really is. You can understand why Billy Beane was always so pissed off at his scouts. It's all double-talk and gobbledygook. It's no surprise that Cafardo loves it.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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And bullshit psychology. Lots of that. These fuckin' guys don't know anything. They can observe, and record what they observe well, but they don't KNOW anything.
Seriously. Have you ever met a scout? They know baseball players, there's no doubt about that. A majority of them know more baseball than I will ever know. But anything more from these steak heads is pure crap. Some 65-year-old guy knows what's happening in the head of a modern-day teenager? Okay. Ask the scout what Snapchat is or how to send a tweet, see what kind of answer you get.
 

shaggydog2000

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It really is. You can understand why Billy Beane was always so pissed off at his scouts. It's all double-talk and gobbledygook. It's no surprise that Cafardo loves it.
It reminds me of the parts in Ball Four were Jim Bouton talks about how useless his pitching coaches were, even before he became a knuckleballer and they completely avoided him like he had some sort of communicable disease. Now I assume their job involves a lot more video scouting and tendency work, both with their own pitchers and other team's hitters, but back then they were just throwing out nonsense advice. I assume as bullshit has been replaced by actual research and statistically provable ideas, the old guard has a lot of time on their hands to call Nick and complain about this new-fangled crap that ain't real baseball.
 

Curll

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Playing a wee bit of devil's advocate:

Xander was always highly praised coming through the minors as being "highly coach-able" and having a "natural feel" for baseball. Those may very well be intangibles, but scouts likely do "see" something in players that fans don't. Some people just have an innate ability at something; beyond athletics, beyond learning, something just works differently. Dustin Pedroia can't dunk or tackle a tight end, but he can hit .300 -- for whatever reason and the Red Sox' scouts picked up on that innate ability when others passed due to size.

He would've been drafted anyway, cream rises to the top, etc, etc. Point is, Cafardo and others fawn over "special" players -- but there's no way to quantify that until they've played their entire careers out.
 

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Aren't terms like "highly-coachable" just scout-speak for players who aren't outwardly arrogant? I'll have to check, but I'll bet no one ever called Bryce Harper highly-coachable, even though there's zero evidence he couldn't be coached.

That term strikes me as a snap judgment of character based on a guy's outward appearance.

Pedroia could always hit. In college he hit. In the minors he raked. I saw him play in Portland a few times, it's no exaggeration to state that he hit every single ball hard, even his outs. A scout might be able to tell me if he can't hit a curveball, but the results speak for themselves.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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Sure, it's foolish to think that scouts and fans see the same things when they look at a player -- I admitted as such in above comment. But they also have their own biases and prejudices too. For example, scouts were also very lukewarm on Pedroia because of his height. They didn't think that it would translate well to MLB.
 

shaggydog2000

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Aren't terms like "highly-coachable" just scout-speak for players who aren't outwardly arrogant? I'll have to check, but I'll bet no one ever called Bryce Harper highly-coachable, even though there's zero evidence he couldn't be coached.

That term strikes me as a snap judgment of character based on a guy's outward appearance.

Pedroia could always hit. In college he hit. In the minors he raked. I saw him play in Portland a few times, it's no exaggeration to state that he hit every single ball hard, even his outs. A scout might be able to tell me if he can't hit a curveball, but the results speak for themselves.
Scouts are very important at telling us about the quality of the process and not just the results. Like you pointed out when looking at Pedroia, a player could make great contact and have a low batting average due to luck. A scout should be able to tell you about quality of contact, and not just point to a stat sheet and tell you that a player is 0 for his last 23 or whatever. Or when looking at a player in the low minors the scout should be able to tell you about the type of swing a player has and whether it can translate to higher levels in terms of batspeed, fluidity, etc. The part where I see scouts over stepping their ability is where they engage in pattern matching, where players who look or act a certain way are going to be successes based on other players they have seen. Humans are really good at finding matching patterns, but we're very poor at doing it rationally and properly weighing non-fitting data. We like to attribute all sorts of qualities to people who look good, or "right" for a role. I'd love to hear about the break a pitcher has on a certain pitch translating or not to a higher level of competition. I don't want to hear that he's going to make it because his mom is a teacher, or that he has an impressively broad set of shoulders. Just like I want to hear that a player has a great walk rate over a large sample size, and not that he is 3 for 12 in late afternoon games against left-handers in may.
 

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Yesterday, Nick's scout buddy surmises that maybe the Sox' pitchers aren't warming up properly.

In today's tour de force, our intrepid reporter lobs the question at Carl Willis and gets this response:
We’re also looking at everyone’s routine. Some guys have good routines and are dedicated.
The Giants had the foresight to obtain two top pitchers
Neener neener.
If you’re capable of making a major league starting rotation, you should know how to fix things yourself.
So sayeth the Master (or at least that's what Gritty McScout told him).

What a dick. Like tattling to the teacher. I bet Willis and Farrell want to slap him.

He's just a schmuck... he shouldn't be this annoying. I gotta go take a walk.
 

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So, pitching coaches are completely pointless, as everyone in the rotation should be able to fix himself. SCOUTS, however, are very important and know more about pitching than the pitching coaches do. Which is why I asked a pitching coach what he thought.
 

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It appears team president Randy Levine has all the answers, because he said last week, “I don’t pay any attention to any of that [trade deadline speculation]. That’s for you guys with nothing more important to write about than to write nonsense. When we decide to become sellers, if we become sellers, or if we decide to become buyers, you’ll know. The difference is that most of you guys have never run anything and we have a lot of history here of knowing what we’re doing.”

Am I getting a whiff of arrogance?
No, you dope, that's a whiff of the truth.

Really terrible Notes this week. The Dombrowski section was a real piece of work. Not one quote from DD, Farrell, or the ownership yet he attributes many lines of thought to them. Very flimsy even for Cafardo.

Maybe that type of writing begets this type of access:

“Tis the season,” Cashman said when asked whether teams have approached him about his relievers.
That's why they pay you the big bucks, Nicky.
 

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2. Max Scherzer is the pitcher I most like to watch.
8. It will be interesting to see whether Pablo Sandoval gets to compete for the third base job next spring training. With the Red Sox bringing inAaron Hill because Travis Shaw is hitting .211 against lefties, it doesn’t appear Shaw will have the job outright. Of course, Sandoval’s weak side is righthanded, so there wouldn’t be a Shaw/Sandoval platoon. Sandoval could also be the DH.
Hill is a FA after this season, Nick.

10. Either players are delusional or there’s a real problem with how players are tested for steroids. The latest comes from former Cardinals catcherCody Stanley, who has been suspended twice for testing positive. “I will never apologize for something I didn’t do,” he said. “We will not stop searching for why all of this has happened.”
Believe this guy, NIck.
 

CoffeeNerdness

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Then in the offseason, some were scratching their heads when Oakland gave Hill a one-year, $6 million contract. But now we’re seeing why. His continued success will now result in the Athletics receiving good prospects for Hill at the trade deadline.
It's not like Billy Beane has been making moves like this his entire career.
 
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