24 replies to this topic

[bankshot1]

If this has already been posted my apologies in advance

yes its that time of year, as ST dwindles down to the last few days Murray has decided to take another shot at the Sox. Murray is being Murray, so that means hinting at deep dark ulterior motives of the Olde Towne team.
As many here may recall he has most recently charged the Sox and Boras with collusion regarding the J.D. Drew signing.

Today its the Sox motivation behind signing what many considered the best FA pitcher this off-season.

http://www.nytimes.c...ml?ref=baseball

Maybe the move will wind up serving as the catalyst that vaults the Boston Red Sox to their first American League East title since 1995, but when they began their pursuit of Daisuke Matsuzaka last fall, one of their main motivations was to keep him from the Yankees.

or maybe their primary motivation was to sign him and a secondary motivation was to keep him away from the MFY or any other competitor.

[The Big Red Kahuna]

In fairness, he does say it was just "one of their main motivations"... I don't disagree, and based on what you wrote, neither do you. He doesn't state (at least not in the part you quoted) that it was their primary motivation.

There's plenty of moments to ridicule Murray for the absurdity of what he writes - this doesn't appear to be one of those times. You're reaching.

[bmacfarlane]

The statement has zero credibility because Matsuzaka is signed and even if it were the case, isn't that what competitors do to each other.

[bankshot1]

one of their main motivations

IMO given the nature of the posting process-the winner gets exclusive negotiating rights-so by definition, a by product of winning those rights was keeping a Dice-k (or any other posted player) away from a competitor. And we all knew that would be a by product.
But there was no evidence ever presented by Chass (again with unamed sources) or by the Sox behavior they had any other intention of getting/signing this guy. IIRC a day or two after the posting process LL was on a plane to Tokyo to schmooze the parties, hardly a tactic of merely a blocking ploy.

Edited by bankshot1, 28 March 2007 - 09:59 PM.

[yecul]

Well, he's an idiot, so who really cares? But to be accurate, didn't their bid actually keep him away from the Mets, not the Yankees? Oh well, same town.

[GriffinDoerr]

Interesting analysis from firejoemorgan.

Look, the column is no good. Boring, stale, rehashed -- and the big revelation is an allegation by an anonymous source that gasp! the Red Sox wanted to keep Daisuke Matsuzaka away from the Yankees.

Well, no shit.

My issue is with this paragraph, which appears in an odd little below-the-dot addendum at the end of the piece...

Tim Wakefield's fault?

[gcapalbo]

The only explanation I can come up for this, other than the doctor changed the mix of Murray's anti-psychotic medication and it is not agreeing with him is as follows:

Murray had the already written the "See, I told you, the Red Sox didn't sign Matsuzaka because they never had any intention to in the first place, they were just keeping him away from the Yankees for a year" column hanging around on his desk from last November, and never got to use it.

Because of deadline pressure, he changed a few words and handed it in.

[satyadaimoku]

This is the really stupid paragraph:

The Red Sox, according to the account that Henry is denying, figured that they would get the negotiating rights to Matsuzaka but would probably be unable to negotiate a deal for him with his agent, Scott Boras, who can be particularly tough to deal with in high-profile bargaining.

As was said a million times in the old Matsuzaka thread, if you think about the position Matsuzaka was in, it's perfectly obvious he was going to sign the Sox contract as long as it was reasonable. Scott Boras had nothing to do with it. It's also bullshit because it appears that Chass inferred the above paragraph from this:

But in private, at least some members of their ruling triumvirate — John Henry, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino — have told a person who works as a consultant in Major League Baseball that had they been unable to sign Matsuzaka to a contract, they would still have considered the enterprise a success because he wouldn’t be on the Yankees.

So "some" of a group that includes three people told somebody affiliated with MLB in some unidentified way that we would have been ok with Matsuzaka turning down the contract because it meant keeping him from the Yankees. So what? That doesn't mean we didn't expect him to sign the contract.

[5belongstoGeorge]

But in private, at least some members of their ruling triumvirate — John Henry, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino — have told a person who works as a consultant in Major League Baseball that had they been unable to sign Matsuzaka to a contract, they would still have considered the enterprise a success because he wouldn’t be on the Yankees.

It would not have been just Henry, Werner and Luccino that considered it a success either. Every living soul on God's green earth that loves baseball and isn't a member of the cesspool that is the "MFY Universe" would be freaking ecstatic knowing that Matsuzuka didn't end up on the MFYs.

Do they actually pay this master of the obvious to write that stuff? There wasn't an original thought in that piece. There was hardly any thought at all.

Edited by 5belongstoGeorge, 28 March 2007 - 10:37 PM.

[5belongstoGeorge]

This morning it occured to me that even though dude may be an idiot, at least he is a homer for his own team and directs his pathetically weak kung fu at his opponents. That sets him apart from many in the Boston media.

The Boston media, while equally pathetic, direct their venom at their own players and fans.

Point NYT.

[TheoShmeo]

"Maybe the move will wind up serving as the catalyst that vaults the Boston Red Sox to their first American League East title since 1995, but when they began their pursuit of Daisuke Matsuzaka last fall, one of their main motivations was to keep him from the Yankees."

Like 5BtG and others, I applaud the Sox if one of their goals was to keep a potentially valuable asset away from the MFYs. I'd be concerned if the Sox weren't thinking in these terms.

To me, the bolded part of Murray's sentence quoted above is funnier. Murray glosses over the fact that the Sox, you know, won the World Series during the Yankees' division title streak. This has been a consistent theme for Murray since 2004. He's written several times that 2004 somehow wasn't complete because the Sox eked into the post-season with the Wild Card, and it's classic Murray to use that throwaway line about the division titles and pretend the 2004 ALCS comeback and subsequent WS should not be mentioned in the context of the Sox-Yankee rivalry. Murray being Murray.

[redsox13]

Wasn't the Yankees' sole motivation, in signing Contreras, to keep him from signing with the Red Sox?

Edited by redsox13, 29 March 2007 - 07:52 AM.

[Doza]

Don't forget Pavano.

How's that working out for ya?

[flymrfreakjar]

But as the negotiating progressed, the Red Sox grew intrigued, and they offered more than the $5 million to $6 million a year they had originally planned as their ceiling.

It's stuff like this that makes me just stop reading (and I don't know why I even started...). It's like he's implying the Sox didn't know much about him, but through negotiating with Boras they decided to spend more. Why not at least mention the intense scouting that went on for years over there.

[The Gray Eagle]

"The Boston media, while equally pathetic, direct their venom at their own players and fans."

Exactly, the Sox and their fans get venom and hate from both Hugh Chass and the Boston media. The Chokers don't get it from anyone, except for a little from the NY media after their annual October choke. But then they sign a couple free agents, and the NY media is back to adoring them.

And that's just the team. Chokers fans don't get crap from either the NY press or the Boston press. Both cities media like to badmouth Sox fans. Why can't the Sox have a homer sportswriter in a major paper who always goes after the Chokers and their fans? The frickin' NY Times has their own little Sox hating troll, you'd think at least the lowly Herald would have their own version who hates on the Yankees.

[TomRicardo]

Exactly, the Sox and their fans get venom and hate from both Hugh Chass and the Boston media. The Chokers don't get it from anyone, except for a little from the NY media after their annual October choke. But then they sign a couple free agents, and the NY media is back to adoring them.

You obviously never read the New York Post or Daily News. Last fall they were calling for the public execution of Torre. Unless your name is Jeter, you are a target year round for these papers. The Mets are the ones that get less negative press in New York, believe it or not. Sports writers are always going to take pot shots at teams. It makes the reader think they can run the team better than the GM or at the very least makes for interesting reading. Look you all are reading Murray Chase, a hack from New York. Point Murray Chase.

Edited by TomRicardo, 29 March 2007 - 09:58 AM.

[missinpedro]

The Sox (and any other team) can only get two playoff spots, the division title or the wild card. For the past 10 years the prime competition for the division title has been the Yankees and vice versa. Thus one of the two potential playoff spots almost always comes down to a two team race between the Sox and Yankees (and the Sox have been losing for 10 years running.) So of course the Sox, and the Yankees for that matter, need to approach the division race with the other team in mind, especially now that the central is so strong and has just as good a shot at producing the wild card.

So of course getting a good player who might have gone to the yankees is valuable just for the sake of keeping said player off of the yanks. But so what? If there's a good player available for whom the Yankees and Red Sox are competing, then it goes without saying that getting that player is helps the team that wins by getting a valuable player and keeping a valuable player away from their most strategically significant rival. The sub 4 ERA and 15-20 games that Dice-K hopefully wins for us, is a positive because thats well above what we would get from a replacement player and its a positive because it keeps that above average production away from the Yanks.

But the way Chass states it, its as if we would sign Dice-K and just put him on the bench already having satisfied our insatiable desire to simply screw over the yanks. Whatever, he's a bitter moron and no one should take his nonsense seriously, except the Times who should not be pleased by it.

Edited by missinpedro, 29 March 2007 - 11:28 AM.

[Kevin Jewkilis]

As frustrating as it is that CHB writes for the Glob, I can't understand how the Times editing staff lets Chass get away with that. It would be easier to write off if he weren't writing for the "paper of record." How do the editors let him get away with unfounded accusation after unfounded accusation? (This is especially true because the Times isn't having the same circulation problems the Glob is, and I don't think anyone buys a paper to read Chass.)

[sfip]

How do the editors let (Chass) get away with unfounded accusation after unfounded accusation?

He gets people to talk about his articles, like this thread is currently doing.

The best recommendation I can give regarding Chass articles is the same advice I give Red Sox fans on CHB articles. You'll be much better off not reading them.

Edited by sfip, 29 March 2007 - 11:13 AM.

[wade boggs chicken dinner]

I guess he couldn't really have written, "The Yankees bid over $30M with one of their main motivations to keep Dice-K from the Red Sox but failed miserably."

[GriffinDoerr]

It's stuff like this that makes me just stop reading (and I don't know why I even started...). It's like he's implying the Sox didn't know much about him, but through negotiating with Boras they decided to spend more. Why not at least mention the intense scouting that went on for years over there.

That's easy - he most probably has no idea that the Sox were scouting Matsuzaka so intently. I'd be willing to bet if you told him that Boston's top scout in Asia was the coach of the Australian national team, he'd say "They play baseball in Australia?"

Murray lives in his own little world, where newfangled statistics don't matter and the best players come from Oklahoma and play for the Yankees.

[Kevin Jewkilis]

He gets people to talk about his articles, like this thread is currently doing.

The best recommendation I can give regarding Chass articles is the same advice I give Red Sox fans on CHB articles. You'll be much better off not reading them.

While I agree with your advice, there's a major difference: CHB's articles tend to be among the most-read and most-discussed articles in the Glob. Chass's actual impact on the Times is miniscule compared to that.

[TheoShmeo]

While I agree with your advice, there's a major difference: CHB's articles tend to be among the most-read and most-discussed articles in the Glob. Chass's actual impact on the Times is miniscule compared to that.

I agree that what Murray writes is not a huge topic of conversation on WFAN and among NY sports fans, and it's undeniable that he's way past his prime as a sportswriter, but the fact remains that he's a baseball HOFer and there are times when what he writes gets national attention. His allegation that the Sox tampered with JD Drew was picked up and discussed by the national media fairly widely. Just the fact that Chass is a baseball columnist at the NY Times gives him a platform that is bigger than you are suggesting.

[bellyofthebeast]

Murray being Murray.

"...no member of the Red Sox has proclaimed Boston the team to beat in the A.L. East, but, with Matsuzaka aboard, why shouldn’t the Red Sox have that designation?"

"Unless Boston's moves for this season turn out as poorly as many of those they made before or during last season...trading away three good young players - the no-hit pitcher Aníbal Sánchez, shortstop Hanley Ramírez..."

You've gotta love this guy! Apparently, Beckett has no role to play in Murray's "team to beat" observation. It is so nice to hear the whines of crusty MFY fans!

More Murray, more please!

Edited by bellyofthebeast, 29 March 2007 - 08:11 PM.

[Resonance Wright]

These guys are becoming obsolete. It'll take years, still, but they've held a great deal of power over sports simply by being the guys who decide what's going to get talked about and what isn't. They've had an inordinate amount of control over the public dialogue about baseball, and a lot of things have happened to teams, to players, to managers and owners, as a side result of what these guys have chosen to write about, who they've championed and who they've dumped on... and remember, their purpose is to sell advertisements. You can't tell a story unless you can work an angle. How many useful things were we never told just because someone wasn't bright enough to figure out an angle on it?

Now? Now there's a ton of different ways to get a scoop on the Sox and more than ever the readers are deciding what they want to read, and more and more it isn't Murray's latest bilge, coughed up because the editor needs something on page C-5. Blogs, news aggregators like Google News, tag sites like del.icio.us and Digg, and, of course, SoSH... these are where I go first and second for my Sox information. We aren't selling ads here. We aren't faced with a deadline and a column to fill. We don't need some kind of angle to make the info stand out. We just want to know what's next.

There's always going to be a place for good sportswriters and sports reporters. Access gives them an edge. So does practice. But they aren't going to run things anymore... they'll only be as relevant as they can prove they're worth being, with good stories, insight, and that inside info that Joe Blogger in Poughkeepsie just doesn't have. They'll have to earn their place by the fire... and Murray and the CHB know they aren't up for it anymore.

So, yeah, they're hearing the footsteps. And it's getting louder, and it's coming from all directions...


... and it's about time.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to wander on over to 38 Pitches and see what's new.

Edited by Resonance Wright, 29 March 2007 - 10:21 PM.