33 replies to this topic

[Bernard Gilkey baby]

I thought E5 Yaz brought up a great recurring question in the locked thread:

E5 Yaz, on 30 June 2012 - 07:13 PM, said:

I think we'd all agree the trade makes no sense. But I guess Cafardo's wet dream raises a couple of questions that are being touched on here:

- Do the Sox actually lack and/or need a No. 1 starter?

Snodgrass's answer

This depends on how you define "Number 1 starter" though. If you mean a top 30 guys in the majors, I think the answer is definitely yes. If you define it as something more exclusive like top 10 in the majors, then probably not. It's too subjective to get a definitive answer. A better question is do they have a rotation capable of matching up against other contenders? To that It think the answer is yes.

Me:

I think the Sox need a top 10 guy. We need a stopper. We need a guy that electrifies Fenway. For almost two decades, we had a pitcher that you counted out on the schedule when buying tickets in hopes that you would see him. We don't have that guy anymore. Can we afford to lose some blue chips? Xavier Bogaerts? Lavarnway? Middlebrooks? I don't see a team with a hitting problem on this team, I see some number 2 starters, some number 3 starts, a lot of acceptable 5 starters and no one to put the brakes when we go into freefall.

[PrometheusWakefield]

I think the Sox need a top 10 guy. We need a stopper. We need a guy that electrifies Fenway. For almost two decades, we had a pitcher that you counted out on the schedule when buying tickets in hopes that you would see him. We don't have that guy anymore. Can we afford to lose some blue chips? Xavier Bogaerts? Lavarnway? Middlebrooks? I don't see a team with a hitting problem on this team, I see some number 2 starters, some number 3 starts, a lot of acceptable 5 starters and no one to put the brakes when we go into freefall.

Sure, but we never won a World Series with Clemens and we've won as many in the seven years since Pedro left as we did in the seven years Pedro was here. It's pretty awesome that for 17 of my 26 years as a Red Sox fan we had one of the ten best pitchers in baseball history in our rotation, but it's not like that is a strategy that guarantees championships.

So I'd say no, we don't need a "true #1", although we sure as hell need a starting pitcher with an ERA better than 4.14, which we currently don't have.

[TFisNEXT]

Sure, but we never won a World Series with Clemens and we've won as many in the seven years since Pedro left as we did in the seven years Pedro was here. It's pretty awesome that for 17 of my 26 years as a Red Sox fan we had one of the ten best pitchers in baseball history in our rotation, but it's not like that is a strategy that guarantees championships.

So I'd say no, we don't need a "true #1", although we sure as hell need a starting pitcher with an ERA better than 4.14, which we currently don't have.

2007 Josh Beckett (esp when the playoffs started) was that guy. He stopped the bleeding in the ALCS down 3 games to 1. Won game 1 of every series that post season.

But if you have a top 30 pitcher, any one of those guys could be an '07 Beckett come the playoffs.

[Rasputin]

You can't answer the question of whether they need one without the rest of the question. Need one to do what?

If you want to stop losing streaks, this team hasn't really had a losing streak problem. The longest losing streak is six games which is only two games longer than had they had a guy guaranteed to stop it.

What this team has lacked, frankly, has already been addressed with Buchholz coming around and Bard being replaced.

Sure, there's no guy you can point to and say we're 90% to win the night he pitches. And yet, in Lester's 16 starts he's held the opposition to three runs or less in ten and four runs or less in thirteen and for Beckett the numbers are eight and ten respectively in twelve starts.

The real question, though, is whether this team needs that guy to win the World Series because, frankly, that's the only goal that matters.

And everything needs to be in context. And the context is there's a grand total of one team in baseball that's outscoring the Sox and that's with the Sox having Ellsbury and Crawford essentially missing the entire season.

I don't think you can afford to lose the top prospects in order to marginally increase your already good chances of winning this year.

[Rasputin]

By the way, just as an interesting note, take a look at the Sox runs allowed and runs scored by month so far.

RS RA (per game)
April 5.64 5.64
May 4.86 4.34
June 5.15 3.65

Now some of that June number is interleague play but if you score around five runs per game and allow less than four...you're gonna win a lotta games.

[dbn]

I think the answer is obvious: no, but it'd help.

Year / WS winner / had a top 10 in ERA (in AL or NL) pitcher?

2011 / St.L / no
2010 / S.F. / no
2009 / NYY / yes
2008 / PHI / yes
2007 / BOS / yes
2006 / St.L / yes
2005 / CWS / yes (2)
2004 / BOS / yes (2)
2003 / FLA / no
2002 / LAA / no [aside: BOS had #1, #2 and #4 that year... and missed the playoffs by 10.5/6 games (Div/WC).]
2001 / ARI / yes (2)
2000 / NYY / yes

[Plympton91]

I think they should be looking for an opportunity, which probably wouldn't arise, to make a quantity for quality trade. And one in which they sell high on some assets.

They have too many major league quality pitchers to be able to protect all of them. If they don't make a trade of 2 of their bullpen depth guys on their terms, they're going to end up DFAing somebody and getting hosed. Find somebody desperate for a proven veteran and get the equivalent of a Derek Lowe or Jason Varitek c,1997 for Padilla.

Also, the Red Sox have minor leaguers they're going to lose in rule 5 if they don't do something on their terms. So package what you get for Padilla and Atchison with Kalish (who will be replaced by Bradley and Brentz on the depth chart) and somebody else.

What will that get? You won't know until you ask.

[Eric Van]

It's not physically possible to post one message twice, is it?

Edited by Eric Van, 01 July 2012 - 02:09 AM.

[Eric Van]

The thing is, there's only one certain #1 starter pitching for a non-contender, and that's King Felix. Zack Greinke maybe, but you'd have to look into both his high BABIP and his psyche before you went after him.

BTW, I thought that Cafardo's story was idiotic even by his own microscopically low standards, but pretty much for the opposite reason that people in the locked thread did. Why would the Red Sox suffer the massive downgrade in CF in order to moderately or even mildly upgrade Lester's slot in the rotation? Given a healthy Ellsbury, it obviously makes the team worse. Or, looked at another way, you're swapping the best position player in the league for not quite the best pitcher in the league, and position players are always more valuable. And, oh, yeah, you're also giving up a #2 starter. It only makes sense of you have some psychic foreknowledge of another Ellsbury injury or a huge regression.

And what would Jack Z. do with Ellsbury and Lester? Immediately spin them for more in prospects than King Felix would fetch alone, that's what. Lester = 2 years of control at $12.3M a year plus 2 draft picks, Ellsbury = 1 more at c. $10M arb plus 2 draft picks, Felix = 2 years at $19.75M plus 2 picks. There is so much more excess value in Lester and Ellsbury that it's almost comical.

Having said that, as I started to work out in another thread, some deal with Bogaerts and probably Bard as the centerpieces, and probably with us taking on the Figgins contract (in exchange for Lillibridge), is probably the only trade worth pursuing. At the same time, you're dealing Matsuzaka, Cook, Sweeney, and Albers, all for B and C prospects, and then it's just a matter of finding a B/C prospect or two as sweetener, from among our own system and what you get for those four guys. It ought to be doable, if you think it's wise.

-- Based on Davenport Peak translations, X is a better prospect now than Hanley was at the time of the Beckett trade, and I think he has a very good chance of topping Hanley's #30 BA ranking at year's end.

-- Figgins is a bigger contract dump than Lowell was.

-- Beckett had one year of arbitration left and thus probably had more excess value than Hernandez has now, at two expensive years.

-- Bard would seem to be about as valuable as Anibal Sanchez.

-- The rest of the Beckett trade was two C pitching prospects going, Mota coming.

[Rudy Pemberton]

How high is Bard's value right now? He's making $1.6M. He is obviously having some major issues right now, so there's some level of risk in acquiring and questions about where and how he projects, at this point I question how much value he has, I don't think it's close to comparable to what Sanchez's was. Hanley was BA's #10 prospect prior to trade, is Bogaerts that high?

Felix is also better than Beckett, and there aren't the financial issues that would influence a trade, as there were in FL.

Edited by Rudy Pemberton, 01 July 2012 - 08:01 AM.

[YTF]

Never been one of those guys that been too hung up on the pitcher's position in the rotation. I know that many see that positional match up of pitchers as important (#1 vs #1, #2 vs #2, etc.....), but honestly after a couple of weeks that mostly goes out the window with teams not being in sync because off days or guys being on the DL. I do think you need an ace on this staff and right now it's lacking. Beckett has been mostly good this season, but not ace like. Lester has been far from that and Buchholz largely a disaster despite winning 8 games. With an offense that has been able to produce better than many thought possible considering what they've gotten from Crawford, Ellsbury, Youkilis,, Pedroia and Gonzales and a bullpen that has been pretty damn good for a while now, it's the starting pitching that needs a boost. Doubront's done more than any of us thought he might as a "number 4" to this point, Morales a pleasant surprise, an impressive outing by Cook, more of the same from Dice-k......... So I ask, where do you think the team needs improvement if they are serious about not only making the playoffs, but advancing? It would have to be a top of the rotation type of guy wouldn't it? Beckett's been decent, but not the guy many of us want him to be (or want to think that he is), Lester's even further from that and with a couple of exceptions recently, the Sox have been very fortunate to get 8 wins out of Buchholz's 14 starts. That's your "Top 3" and as a group it's less than mediocre

[OttoC]

This club has three pitchers who could be a number one: Lester, Beckett, Buchholz. What they need is for one (or more) of them to step up.

[Toe Nash]

In the regular season the team staff should be fine even if they have three #3s rather than a true #1. I don't really buy into the concept of a "stopper" considering losing streaks are, barring a 2011 style collapse, pretty much just random chance. If your 2-5 are playing poorly (or are just poor pitchers) they're not going to suddenly get a magical boost from having a guy like Pedro pitch -- heck, look at the rest of our staff in '99 or 2000 for an example of that. Yes, a guy who goes deep in games even when he doesn't have his best stuff can help out the pen, but Lester is probably that guy and we have enough relievers we've shuffled around that I don't think anyone is getting burnt out.

The other concept of a #1, and one that I think is important, is a guy who can be dominant in the playoffs against top competition / with high pressure a la Pedro or Schilling or Beckett 2003/07. But:

1. Those guys don't come around often. And even when you think you may have one they may not pull through: Justin Verlander had a 5+ ERA in 4 postseason starts last year, CC Sabathia has been pretty mediocre / bad outside of 2009, and so on. It's a long season and guys are tired from getting to the postseason, plus teams have been scouting them probably for months and they're facing the best teams in the league.

2. i'd argue that the Sox have three pitchers who have the ability to go on a dominant run in Beckett, Lester and Buchholz. It just comes down to whether they can do it or not. But they don't need to go out and acquire an ace when it's far from a sure thing that it will pay off in the playoffs. Unless Randy Johnson 2001 is available.

[someoneanywhere]

If by "marginal upgrade" we mean 1-2 wins, and if those 1-2 wins are the difference between a wild card and a division title, then I lean into the necessary camp. I would rather play a postseason series than a coin-flip playoff game, and I would rather have my top guy lined up to go in that series than burn him up in a one-game playoff.

Otherwise I lean to deep and strong, with the potential for a run by any of the big three, than top-heavy and dominant.

[Al Zarilla]

2007 Josh Beckett (esp when the playoffs started) was that guy. He stopped the bleeding in the ALCS down 3 games to 1. Won game 1 of every series that post season.

But if you have a top 30 pitcher, any one of those guys could be an '07 Beckett come the playoffs.

Not sure you can throw that out there with a casual "could be". It would be more like an "it can happen". He was epic, even outrageous that postseason: 0.7 WHIP, 1.2 ERA, 2 BB, 35 K. Some recent examples of very top pitchers during the regular season who failed in the postseason in at least one game were CC Sabathia in '07 and Cliff Lee in '10. But, yeah, like KG said, anything is possible. I will give you that there is a remote chance of it happening in a short set of, like, 4 games. Still, the 26 - 30 pitchers today in fWAR are Darvish, Dempster, Anibal Sanchez, Ian Kennedy and Lance Lynn. I can't see any of them pulling off an '07 Beckett. The best we can hope for is for Lester, Beckett and Buchholz to all get solid because I don't see the Sox dealing for a "top 30 pitcher".

[Savin Hillbilly]

I think it's kind of a silly question. Of course we need a #1! Every team needs a #1! But if we're talking about acquiring one, then immediately it becomes a much more specific and less silly question: do we need a #1 more than we need (to use a recently proposed example) Ellsbury and Lester? Or do we need a #1 more than we need [insert system-decimating package of top prospects]?

And I think the answer is no. We don't need a #1 as much as we need the things we already have that we'd have to give up to get one.

[Toe Nash]

If by "marginal upgrade" we mean 1-2 wins, and if those 1-2 wins are the difference between a wild card and a division title, then I lean into the necessary camp. I would rather play a postseason series than a coin-flip playoff game, and I would rather have my top guy lined up to go in that series than burn him up in a one-game playoff.

I agree, but you won't know this on July 31.

[Plympton91]

I think it's kind of a silly question. Of course we need a #1! Every team needs a #1! But if we're talking about acquiring one, then immediately it becomes a much more specific and less silly question: do we need a #1 more than we need (to use a recently proposed example) Ellsbury and Lester? Or do we need a #1 more than we need [insert system-decimating package of top prospects]?

And I think the answer is no. We don't need a #1 as much as we need the things we already have that we'd have to give up to get one.

I think people are underestimating the depth of this system. You can only play 9 guys at once, for many you will have to put them on the 25 man or lose them for nothing, and many other the decision is put them on the 40 man roster or lose them for nothing.

Take someebody like Drake Britton. He's taken a step forward this year. He seems like he could be a good LH reliever if nothing else, so there's value there for somebody. Is it the Red Sox? He has one option left. The Red Sox all of a sudden have a deep, young bullpen.

The prospect fanboys would probably howl if you traded Britton. But, if you can get value now, then its probably more than Britton would get when he needs to be DFAed at the end of spring training in 2014, even though he's pitching decently and still has upside.

There's more talent than the Sox can protect. If they take too long to identify who they want to keep, they can squander it that way just as easily as they can in a "bad" trade. I think they're a point where overpaying for the right player makes some sense
.

[Buzzkill Pauley]

Otherwise I lean to deep and strong, with the potential for a run by any of the big three, than top-heavy and dominant.

Hear, hear.

I would think last season might temper some of this speculation -- as the Sox ostensibly went into the season with 4 aces in their hand.

Especially considering the Sox are known to be worried about staying under the salary cap. There are already 8 players on the 40-man roster due to make $10MM or more next season. Some much more than that.

So it's prospects like Middlebrooks, those who make the minimum yet can play at an above-average level either now or in the future, which would be demanded by Seattle or Chicago. When those are exactly the sort of prospects the Sox need to keep and develop.

[Rudy Pemberton]

Is a guy like Britton really going to bring back significant value in a trade? He's a 23 year old who hasn't had an ERA below 5.3 since '10. Every team has guys like that. I know we like I think the Sox are so unique in terms of minor league depth, but what kind of return can you get when trading these kinds of players? Guys like Aviles and Melancon, I suspect, not aces.

[Plympton91]

Yeah, I was tied of typing and stooped too soon. Britton isn't going to be a significant piece of a deal for an ace. But, he might be the 4th guy in a package that puts the deal over the top. Or, depending on how Aviles and Iglesias do over the next month, you might pair two pieces like Britton to get a better utility player than Lillibrige, or depending on the progress of Miller and Hill, maybe you want a bullpen lefty.

Think about Mark Brandenberg and Kerry Lacy for Mike Stanton. You can get useful players for lottery tickets. You just need to do a better job of pro scouting the the Red Sox have been doing over the past 3 or 4 years.

[JakeRae]

I think people are underestimating the depth of this system. You can only play 9 guys at once, for many you will have to put them on the 25 man or lose them for nothing, and many other the decision is put them on the 40 man roster or lose them for nothing.

Take someebody like Drake Britton. He's taken a step forward this year. He seems like he could be a good LH reliever if nothing else, so there's value there for somebody. Is it the Red Sox? He has one option left. The Red Sox all of a sudden have a deep, young bullpen.

The prospect fanboys would probably howl if you traded Britton. But, if you can get value now, then its probably more than Britton would get when he needs to be DFAed at the end of spring training in 2014, even though he's pitching decently and still has upside.

There's more talent than the Sox can protect. If they take too long to identify who they want to keep, they can squander it that way just as easily as they can in a "bad" trade. I think they're a point where overpaying for the right player makes some sense
.

Have you looked at the guys who are going to be Rule 5 eligible this year who aren't already on the 40-man? The highest ranked prospect (in my quick scan of SoxProspects rankings based on draft year, so I apologize if I miss someone) is Alex Hassan at #34. Dan Butler, Christian Vazquez, and Heiker Meneses round out the list of top 40 guys who are going to be Rule 5 Draft eligible if unprotected. There is no 40-man squeeze coming this year.

There is an active roster squeeze coming up right now which is also manifested in a 40-man squeeze. But, getting rid of prospects like Britton, Pimental, Anderson, etc. won't help with that. They need to sell the guys either taking up space on the active roster or with claims to being on it once healthy, not the prospects.

[bosockboy]

The thing is, there's only one certain #1 starter pitching for a non-contender, and that's King Felix. Zack Greinke maybe, but you'd have to look into both his high BABIP and his psyche before you went after him.

Gotta throw in Hamels here. The Phils are indeed, a non-contender at this point. I suspect he gets moved.

[Snodgrass'Muff]

I think it's kind of a silly question. Of course we need a #1! Every team needs a #1! But if we're talking about acquiring one, then immediately it becomes a much more specific and less silly question: do we need a #1 more than we need (to use a recently proposed example) Ellsbury and Lester? Or do we need a #1 more than we need [insert system-decimating package of top prospects]?

And I think the answer is no. We don't need a #1 as much as we need the things we already have that we'd have to give up to get one.

Something to consider is that by WAR, the Sox have a pitcher in the top 30 in baseball (Lester) and 2 in the top 15 in the AL (Lester and Beckett). They have 1 in the top 30 in xFIP (Doubront) and 2 of the top 15 in the AL (Doubront and Lester). And they have one in the top 15 in FIP in the AL (Beckett).

So looking forward, there's some pretty good evidence that they have one (or possibly a few) guys who can be that number one they'll need down the stretch.

[bosockboy]

Throwing this out.....does the dynamic of having a one game playoff as a possibility each October change the equation here?

If your season is gonna ride on one game, does that increase the need for an uber ace?

[MikeM]

To directly answer the thread title's question, no, i don't believe this roster needs an indisputable #1 to get us where we need to go. As others have already pointed out, i'll take the potential depth our current 3 is capable of offering over the course of a season, and in any multi-game series. That said though....

Beyond the media's attempt to seemingly default a potential Sox interest in pretty much everybody who pops up in an availability rumor nowadays, at this point i also believe it's pretty clear that the FO essentially gave their answer on this last spring, in the form of the two $20m/per contract commitments being made elsewhere. At least for the foreseeable future, and one that likely extends beyond next season at that.

The King Felix stuff makes zero sense beyond the surface "i'd love to have him in this rotation!" drool factor, imo. If it's not the contract that's too big to begin with, it's a presented scenario with too many moving parts, and/or one that involves trading prospects/cost controlled players that we already have a greater need for going forward just to make the previous commitments/dead money work. Same goes for this whole going out and trading/signing a Cole Hamels. Targeting established/top-of-the-food chain acquisitions, whether it be thru trade or free agency, is just not where we realistically are at as an organization atm.

Heck, i personally find myself questioning why people are so insistent on throwing around lesser names like Garza/Dempster/whoever atm, assuming one even believes there would be a real interest there to begin with. I mean given the financial crunch we saw this winter, the fact we are currently over the cap, and after just paying most of the remaining freight on Youk, the possibility that we'll see a substantial salary pickup at the deadline already seems pretty unlikely in itself imo.

Edited by MikeM, 02 July 2012 - 12:12 AM.

[Eric Van]

Gotta throw in Hamels here. The Phils are indeed, a non-contender at this point. I suspect he gets moved.

Yeah, getting swept by the Marlins probably pushed them off the fence into the seller column -- thereby adding three to the number of true aces pitching for non-contenders. And Hamels, who'll be a FA, would seem to be the obvious guy to move (whereas Halladay has 1/$20 or 2/$40M left and Lee has 3/$87.5 or 4/$102.5M).

However, now that traded players don't earn picks, the question is whether anyone will send them more value than the two picks they'd earn if they keep him. The new system really discourages such rentals. The only way to make it work is to trade two prospects for a guy and sign him to an extension, thus saving you a pick. That way the rental costs you one player, with the other player saving you the pick.

[Still, a prospect who's as valuable as a first round or sandwich pick is a stiff price to pay for a rental. Let's say you rent a 6 WAR player, so you get a third of a season = 2 WAR. If there's a 1 in 6 chance that the prospect you give up is a 2 WAR player (and hence worth 12 WAR during his controlled years), that's the break-even point. I think it works for superstars but starts to get iffy for merely excellent players. You'd have to be convinced that the upgrade has extra, multiplicative value for you as the make-or-break factor for the playoffs; you would not do it to ease a margin of error.]

Given that, it wouldn't be shocking to see Halladay moved instead; he'd fetch a lot more. They can then sign Hamels to an extension, and probably come out ahead.

The elephant that hasn't yet been mentioned: if you stand pat, you let Dice-K walk and then Lackey competes with Doubront for a starting job next year (assuming Morales stays in the rotation). If you trade for a Felix or Doc, on paper you have no room for Lackey next year.

[PrometheusWakefield]

So it seems pretty clear that Greinke is on the market. So, you know, there's your ace, at least as an arm, about to be traded, and it doesn't seem to me like it is widely recognized that Greinke is currently the second best pitcher in all of baseball by both FIP and WAR. Are we really at the point where we aren't even thinking about adding the best pitcher to come on the trade market in years with our current rotation?

[Red(s)HawksFan]

So it seems pretty clear that Greinke is on the market. So, you know, there's your ace, at least as an arm, about to be traded, and it doesn't seem to me like it is widely recognized that Greinke is currently the second best pitcher in all of baseball by both FIP and WAR. Are we really at the point where we aren't even thinking about adding the best pitcher to come on the trade market in years with our current rotation?

What's the acquisition cost going to be for him and can you afford to pay it? Can you/Should you lock him up long term when you have roughly $50M committed next year to four starters as well as at least two others under team control for cheap? Will his success in the AL and NL Central translate to the AL East? Should his past anxiety issues be a giant red flag in terms of his ability to handle Boston and its media?

It's not as simple as "there's the best pitcher, let's get him". If it were, wouldn't they have more vociferously pursued and acquired Santana, Sabathia, Lee, or Halladay when they were "the best pitcher to come on the trade market in years"?

[Al Zarilla]

Doesn't Greinke eschew really large market, high intensity cities because of his anxiety disorder?

[flymrfreakjar]

It's not as simple as "there's the best pitcher, let's get him". If it were, wouldn't they have more vociferously pursued and acquired Santana, Sabathia, Lee, or Halladay when they were "the best pitcher to come on the trade market in years"?

Yeah we would've been in trouble had we landed Sabathia, Lee or Halladay... There's always an element of danger when trading away young talent, but overall, those are some deals I wish the Sox had made.

[Buzzkill Pauley]

I don't know that he would eschew a city like Boston, but I'd bet he would eschew the mediots who cover the Sox.

[Red(s)HawksFan]

Yeah we would've been in trouble had we landed Sabathia, Lee or Halladay... There's always an element of danger when trading away young talent, but overall, those are some deals I wish the Sox had made.

I wasn't trying to imply that pursuing any of those pitchers would have been wrong or had disasterous results. I was more arguing the notion that the Red Sox apparent disinterest in "best pitcher to come on the trade market in years" Zack Greinke is somehow a new phenomenon.

[redsoxstiff]

I thought E5 Yaz brought up a great recurring question in the locked thread:

E5 Yaz, on 30 June 2012 - 07:13 PM, said:

I think we'd all agree the trade makes no sense. But I guess Cafardo's wet dream raises a couple of questions that are being touched on here:

- Do the Sox actually lack and/or need a No. 1 starter?

Snodgrass's answer

This depends on how you define "Number 1 starter" though. If you mean a top 30 guys in the majors, I think the answer is definitely yes. If you define it as something more exclusive like top 10 in the majors, then probably not. It's too subjective to get a definitive answer. A better question is do they have a rotation capable of matching up against other contenders? To that It think the answer is yes.

Me:

I think the Sox need a top 10 guy. We need a stopper. We need a guy that electrifies Fenway. For almost two decades, we had a pitcher that you counted out on the schedule when buying tickets in hopes that you would see him. We don't have that guy anymore. Can we afford to lose some blue chips? Xavier Bogaerts? Lavarnway? Middlebrooks? I don't see a team with a hitting problem on this team, I see some number 2 starters, some number 3 starts, a lot of acceptable 5 starters and no one to put the brakes when we go into freefall.

A number one has to do what Bernard says...As for 'electrifying the crowd'...wire the seats or get to the post season...