Mookie redux

luckysox

Indiana Jones
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Apr 21, 2009
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I'm not interested in any of the rational arguments for or against trading Mookie. It's been done, done again, re-done and I just don't want to read any more of it.

I am less of a Sox fan today than I was when Mookie was on the team. I still watch them - am right now, in fact - but man I loved watching Mookie. And I miss watching him. And there is not anyone on this team that I love to watch in the same way I loved to watch him. The emotional part of me - and baseball and emotion are wound together completely for me - is disappointed that he is not on this team, my team. It's that simple. I still love the Sox. But just a little less than when Mookie was here, and they get the blame because it was a trade.
 

Cesar Crespo

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I'm less a fan of a lot of things post 2019. It's almost like we as a whole are all depressed and getting less joy out of things.
 

Bob Montgomerys Helmet Hat

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Of course ALL Red Sox fans are going to be good with that, but nothing about being a fan is rational. Baseball is entertainment that I watch on my TV, Don Orsillo is by FAR my favorite baseball voice so to me he was just as big of a part of the Sox title runs as anyone else. Why wouldn't I be upset that they got rid of him for seemingly no reason? I LOVED him paired with Jerry and anyone else the Sox brought in. After he left I enjoyed watching the Sox on TV less. I'm incredibly thankful and spoiled as a Sox fan but I still can't help that I miss Don and actually watch San Diego games to hear him.
I agree with everything you said about Orsillo, and I, too, sometimes watch some Padres games just for him.
And I think O'Brien sucks.
But I still rarely miss a Sox game, and never will. So I guess our opinion is similar but reactions are very different.
 

moondog80

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Sep 20, 2005
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...and those cheap, no-spend, uncommitted to winning Red Sox have just won 90+ games in 4 out of the last 5 full seasons. Same as the Yankees. Imagine if ownership cared? Or if Chaim Bloom's approach actually worked outside of Tampa?
 

soxhop411

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Dec 4, 2009
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I had more time to kill this evening, but I find it funny that some people here think that just by virtue of having a payroll the size of a small countries GDP, it would guarantee success every season,
from the link I posted earlier here is the Top Payrolls (1-30) from 2004-2019 which is the last year the site has data on)

View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TbP8mANAYydCnE-sSkX2Slw0GFALxwzMHJE05s_KNjE/edit?usp=sharing


http://www.thebaseballcube.com/topics/payrolls/byYear.asp?Y=2019


take a look at some of those top 15 payroll teams and their records+ highest paid player
 

MtPleasant Paul

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Dec 28, 2015
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Let's talk to 2002 us...

Ok, so we're gonna win one in 2 years, beating the Yankees on the way. Greatest comeback in the history of earth. Then 3 years later, another one. Then 2 more with mostly different players and managers by 2018. Downside though, some exciting kid (think Fred Lynn) that you don't know yet will be a key player in one of those. We'll have to trade him away to get ahead of draconian salary penalties that don't exist yet. Oh, and this guy Orsillo from TV that you just met, he only lasts 15 years, and they move onto a different TV guy. You good with that??
Brilliant.
 

RG33

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Nov 28, 2005
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I honestly have almost forgotten that Mookie was on the team, and I live in LA and catch Dodgers games occasionally. I don’t mean that as any sort of slight, but I guess it is just indicative that I root for the laundry like my Dad does, my Nana and both grandfathers did, etc. I don’t enjoy Sox games any less. I want them to win almost as much as always (post-2004 benchmark). Mookie was awesome, as was Fred Lynn and Carlton Fisk and Roger and Wade and Mo and Nick Esasky (I kid, I kid) and Pedro and Manny Etc.

Go Sox.
 

brs3

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I was pretty burned up about Betts being traded. After I got over it, I became worried that I shouldn't invest too much in Devers, because if modern team history shows anything, the Red Sox will trade him before 2024. Rooting for the laundry is a pithy statement that belongs to MFY fans, tbh. I like rooting for the same players for years on end, regardless of their flaws. I like when the team acquires players to compliment these flawed long term players. Going from worst to first was fun once. As a business model of fandom, where very few players stick around, doing this repeatedly is tiresome.

For those who only care about titles, this is the way, and that's great. Just accept that others enjoying long term favorites is okay, too.
 

scottyno

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Dec 7, 2008
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I was pretty burned up about Betts being traded. After I got over it, I became worried that I shouldn't invest too much in Devers, because if modern team history shows anything, the Red Sox will trade him before 2024. Rooting for the laundry is a pithy statement that belongs to MFY fans, tbh. I like rooting for the same players for years on end, regardless of their flaws. I like when the team acquires players to compliment these flawed long term players. Going from worst to first was fun once. As a business model of fandom, where very few players stick around, doing this repeatedly is tiresome.

For those who only care about titles, this is the way, and that's great. Just accept that others enjoying long term favorites is okay, too.
Why does modern team history show that? Because they traded 2 guys in the last 7 years?
 

Hank Scorpio

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That is unreal to me. The guy was an AL MVP, only the second player to ever go 30-30 for the Red Sox, and had a huge home run that iced the World Series and you don't remember any of his heroics?

That's on you guys. My God. I'm going to stroke out here. He was the most dynamic player this team has had since Fred Lynn.
We've been so insanely spoiled with postseason heroics over the past 20ish years, that it makes all of Mookie's heroics seem smaller.

1999: Down 0-2 to the Indians, come back to win three straight. In the clincher, Troy O'Leary hits a grand slam to flip the score from 7-4 to 8-7, and then a three run home run to break an 8-8 tie. Meanwhile, Pedro comes out of the pen in an absolute bloodbath of a game, and tosses six no-hit innings while injured, and without a real fastball.

2003: Down 0-2 to Oakland, we win the next three in dramatic fashion, followed by an incredible series against the Yankees... until Gump spoiled it.
2004: Schilling's bloody sock. Ortiz being Ortiz. Damon crushing the Yankees in Game 7. Lowe clinching all three series. Foulke sacrificing his career.
2007: Compared to 2004, I remember very little about this one. JD Drew hit a grand slam against Cleveland. Pedroia owned Jeff Francis I think. Mike Lowell had an insane series.
2013: Ortiz's grand slam. Lackey's redemption. Lester's starts. Victorino's grand slam. Napoli's solo shot deciding a 1-0 win over Verlander. Gomes. Uehara. Ortiz's insane world series.
2018: Benintendi's catch. JBJ's ALCS. Eovaldi saving the bullpen. Steve Pearce! Mitch Moreland! Price owning the World Series. Sale striking out Machado to end it.

Mookie was a great regular season guy. Didn't stand out in the playoffs like the others have. When I think back of great Mookie moments, I remember the HR off J.A. Happ, and the catch to save Rich Hill's shutout.
 

grimshaw

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To those of you convinced Mookie could have been re-signed, what contract would you have offered him and/or what makes you think he couldn't have done better than the Sox' best offer or would have just agreed without testing the market?

If the Dodgers unloaded his contract for free tomorrow would you take it?
 

teddywingman

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To those of you convinced Mookie could have been re-signed, what contract would you have offered him and/or what makes you think he couldn't have done better than the Sox' best offer or would have just agreed without testing the market?

If the Dodgers unloaded his contract for free tomorrow would you take it?
Probably not.

The Sox should have gone above any other offers during the arbitration years. (I have no idea of the inner workings; and neither do you.) But it seems to me that the tone was set.
 

Average Reds

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That is unreal to me. The guy was an AL MVP, only the second player to ever go 30-30 for the Red Sox, and had a huge home run that iced the World Series and you don't remember any of his heroics?

That's on you guys. My God. I'm going to stroke out here. He was the most dynamic player this team has had since Fred Lynn.
I am among those who have turned the page, so I don't spent a lot of time dwelling on the fact that he isn't here. That doesn't mean I don't ache for the player he was and will be.

In that vein, this post expresses my thoughts just about perfectly. My God, this is fucking Mookie we are talking about ...
 

mauf

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This year’s Red Sox would be worse with Mookie Betts and David Price, assuming the same overall budget. I am highly skeptical that any of the folks who aren’t watching this year’s team would be tuning in to watch a worse team so they could watch Mookie muddle through his worst season since 2017.

The Sox traded Mookie Betts to the Dodgers on February 10, 2020. Something else happened around that time too. I think folks are ascribing shifts in fan interest (including their own interest) to Mookie leaving that are, in fact, due to something much larger.
 

Average Reds

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This year’s Red Sox would be worse with Mookie Betts and David Price, assuming the same overall budget. I am highly skeptical that any of the folks who aren’t watching this year’s team would be tuning in to watch a worse team so they could watch Mookie muddle through his worst season since 2017.

The Sox traded Mookie Betts to the Dodgers on February 10, 2020. Something else happened around that time too. I think folks are ascribing shifts in fan interest (including their own interest) to Mookie leaving that are, in fact, due to something much larger.
I completely agree.

When I said that I’ve more or less turned the page, I meant that I’ve come to terms with the fact that Mookie is gone and that the trade (on balance) is a net positive for the team. I still miss the player he was and will be and wish the Sox could have found a different way forward.

I also recognize that the biggest single impact on my dedication as a fan was the COVID-driven faux-season of 2020, which felt like a bad joke from start to finish.
 

TFisNEXT

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We've been so insanely spoiled with postseason heroics over the past 20ish years, that it makes all of Mookie's heroics seem smaller.

1999: Down 0-2 to the Indians, come back to win three straight. In the clincher, Troy O'Leary hits a grand slam to flip the score from 7-4 to 8-7, and then a three run home run to break an 8-8 tie. Meanwhile, Pedro comes out of the pen in an absolute bloodbath of a game, and tosses six no-hit innings while injured, and without a real fastball.

2003: Down 0-2 to Oakland, we win the next three in dramatic fashion, followed by an incredible series against the Yankees... until Gump spoiled it.
2004: Schilling's bloody sock. Ortiz being Ortiz. Damon crushing the Yankees in Game 7. Lowe clinching all three series. Foulke sacrificing his career.
2007: Compared to 2004, I remember very little about this one. JD Drew hit a grand slam against Cleveland. Pedroia owned Jeff Francis I think. Mike Lowell had an insane series.
2013: Ortiz's grand slam. Lackey's redemption. Lester's starts. Victorino's grand slam. Napoli's solo shot deciding a 1-0 win over Verlander. Gomes. Uehara. Ortiz's insane world series.
2018: Benintendi's catch. JBJ's ALCS. Eovaldi saving the bullpen. Steve Pearce! Mitch Moreland! Price owning the World Series. Sale striking out Machado to end it.

Mookie was a great regular season guy. Didn't stand out in the playoffs like the others have. When I think back of great Mookie moments, I remember the HR off J.A. Happ, and the catch to save Rich Hill's shutout.
Yep this sums it up. Nobody is saying Mookie wasn’t an exciting and crazy dynamic player....he was. I don’t think anyone will forget his 2018 season. But he doesn’t have those iconic moments in the postseason that others have. Even players who were less talented. It’s not the fault of his own. We all know playoffs can be weird with sample sizes. But it’s just why so many don’t think of him like a David Ortiz or a Pedro.
 

Van Everyman

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It’s kind of bizarre that for all the success they’ve had that they’ve churned through four different FO regimes and three last place finishes in the last decade. A big piece of me thinks it has a lot to do with Henry being a hedge fund guy – who wants to maximize every loss (trades guys in losing seasons to restock), doesn’t get too attached to his leadership team (cans BC and DD … and LL), is willing to bet on his team’s success (hires DD to maximize the window w the core), etc.

Mookie feels consistent with that approach.
 

Cesar Crespo

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It’s kind of bizarre that for all the success they’ve had that they’ve churned through four different FO regimes and three last place finishes in the last decade. A big piece of me thinks it has a lot to do with Henry being a hedge fund guy – who wants to maximize every loss (trades guys in losing seasons to restock), doesn’t get too attached to his leadership team (cans BC and DD … and LL), is willing to bet on his team’s success (hires DD to maximize the window w the core), etc.

Mookie feels consistent with that approach.
It's smart. Better to move on too early than too late.
 

moondog80

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Sep 20, 2005
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I think folks are ascribing shifts in fan interest (including their own interest) to Mookie leaving that are, in fact, due to something much larger.
Certainly true in my case. I'm 49 years old, I went to the mountaintop in 2004 and have been back 3 more times, and I've scaled many other peaks as well (Pats, Celtics, Bruins). I'm also at a point in my life where a lot of energy is devoted to my kids' schooling and activities. 20 years ago when I was at my peak I could tell the lineup, rotation, and closer for every MLB team. But now, for the first time, there are teams (Marlins, Rangers) where I know zero players. COVID probably made it a bit worse, but this is a trend that was already going downward. Mookie was great, but players come and go; Pedro was far more iconic, left at (near) his peak and my interest didn't wane at all. Mookie just happened to leave at a different point in my life.

For whatever reason, my interest in the Pats and Celtics, while also past peak, has been able to sustain a bit more. I still like the Sox and all, but they are comfortably in 3rd place. I don't know why.
 

jezza1918

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Yep this sums it up. Nobody is saying Mookie wasn’t an exciting and crazy dynamic player....he was. I don’t think anyone will forget his 2018 season. But he doesn’t have those iconic moments in the postseason that others have. Even players who were less talented. It’s not the fault of his own. We all know playoffs can be weird with sample sizes. But it’s just why so many don’t think of him like a David Ortiz or a Pedro.
At what point is some of the fault his own though? I get the sample size thing with the playoffs, but just for the fun of it I looked up his career playoff gamelog - he's been in 43 playoff games where he had at least 4 plate appearances and has multiple RBI games in 2 of them (both games with 2 RBI). Verdugo has been in 5 playoff games and already has 2 himself, and one of those was a 3 RBI game. To compare Red Sox stats only, Verdugo has 6 RBI in those 5 career games, and Betts had 4 RBI in 21 games for the Sox.
Obviously it's pretty doubtful Verdugo keeps up a more than 1 RBI pace during his career...but what sample size do we need to say Mookie is underwhelming in the playoffs?
 

PedroKsBambino

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I did not like the Mookie deal and still do not.

In terms of post-season performance, which is a small piece of the overall puzzle in my mind due to its inherent eccentricities, Mookie has 198 PAs with a 263/343/400 slash line. He was as I recall injured at leaast one of those post-seasons and while the aggregate sample is decent-sized it is across five different playoff years, it is also less than you'd hope for. And likely less than he will do going forward, IMO.
 

AlNipper49

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Certainly true in my case. I'm 49 years old, I went to the mountaintop in 2004 and have been back 3 more times, and I've scaled many other peaks as well (Pats, Celtics, Bruins). I'm also at a point in my life where a lot of energy is devoted to my kids' schooling and activities. 20 years ago when I was at my peak I could tell the lineup, rotation, and closer for every MLB team. But now, for the first time, there are teams (Marlins, Rangers) where I know zero players. COVID probably made it a bit worse, but this is a trend that was already going downward. Mookie was great, but players come and go; Pedro was far more iconic, left at (near) his peak and my interest didn't wane at all. Mookie just happened to leave at a different point in my life.

For whatever reason, my interest in the Pats and Celtics, while also past peak, has been able to sustain a bit more. I still like the Sox and all, but they are comfortably in 3rd place. I don't know why.
I'm in a similar situation. I think the truth is that one of the beautiful things about baseball is that it's a sport that you can consume both actively and passively. It's both fun watching the game and having the game on the radio while doing something else. As we get older, and having been to that mountaintop like you said, it becomes more likely that you start leaning towards the passive aspect of consuming the sport. If you miss a game or two in a 162 game season it's not a biggie.

The NFL is once a week. The NFL also is setup to be a better fantasy sport, which has also helped me remain actively engaged. I do not like football better than baseball, but it's just easier to be an active fan of the NFL than it is to be an active fan of the MLB. It's easier to consume, but that does not mean that I like it more.
 

tims4wins

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At what point is some of the fault his own though? I get the sample size thing with the playoffs, but just for the fun of it I looked up his career playoff gamelog - he's been in 43 playoff games where he had at least 4 plate appearances and has multiple RBI games in 2 of them (both games with 2 RBI). Verdugo has been in 5 playoff games and already has 2 himself, and one of those was a 3 RBI game. To compare Red Sox stats only, Verdugo has 6 RBI in those 5 career games, and Betts had 4 RBI in 21 games for the Sox.
Obviously it's pretty doubtful Verdugo keeps up a more than 1 RBI pace during his career...but what sample size do we need to say Mookie is underwhelming in the playoffs?
4 playoff games this year. 1 RBI, 0 R, 0 XBH.
 

tims4wins

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17 PAs. To call this a small sample size would be a gross exaggeration.
How about this:
43 games, 2 with multiple RBI. 13 total RBI, 11 total games with an RBI. Not so small a sample. He has not been an impact offensive player in the postseason. It doesn't mean he's bad. It doesn't mean he's not valuable. It doesn't mean you shouldn't miss him, or lament the trade. But it's a fact, at least to this point in his career.
 

jezza1918

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4 playoff games this year. 1 RBI, 0 R, 0 XBH.
17 PAs. To call this a small sample size would be a gross exaggeration.
Totally agree that these 4 games alone barely register for me. Hearing those stats this morning is what prompted me to look up all his playoff stats. And I guess the question I'm trying to answer, and using Mookie as the lens in this case, is when (if ever) is it appropriate to start questioning whether or not a player's past playoff performance is at all indicative of his future playoff performance? I should note since I don't post too frequently that I love Betts and hope he crushes all the XBH and drives in all the runs (unless it's in the the WS against the Red Sox).
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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How about this:
43 games, 2 with multiple RBI. 13 total RBI, 11 total games with an RBI. Not so small a sample. He has not been an impact offensive player in the postseason. It doesn't mean he's bad. It doesn't mean he's not valuable. It doesn't mean you shouldn't miss him, or lament the trade. But it's a fact, at least to this point in his career.
He hits leadoff in the NL where the pitcher is generally batting before him. I started going through the logs of this year's postseason and he's essentially hardly ever up with runners on base.

RBI is a facile stat and I thought we can moved on from using it to prove anything many years ago. Players do not get equal chances to drive in runs.

As for not being an impact player in the postseason, in the World Series JUST LAST YEAR he had a .900 OPS with 2 doubles, 2 HRs and 4 SBs in 6 games that resulted in a World Series Championship for his team. Including 3 of those precious RBI. Come on now.
 

jezza1918

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He hits leadoff in the NL where the pitcher is generally batting before him. I started going through the logs of this year's postseason and he's essentially hardly ever up with runners on base.

RBI is a facile stat and I thought we can moved on from using it to prove anything many years ago. Players do not get equal chances to drive in runs.

As for not being an impact player in the postseason, in the World Series JUST LAST YEAR he had a .900 OPS with 2 doubles, 2 HRs and 4 SBs in 6 games that resulted in a World Series Championship for his team. Including 3 of those precious RBI. Come on now.
Totally fair on the RBI stat. Again, from my end it was more of a way to open up the question about past/future playoff performance. It actually stemmed from a convo with my brother yesterday who said before the game "you just can't count on E-Rod in the playoffs." And I said something along lines of "yeah, because the two previous starts he's had are a great barometer for what he will do going forward." And then we started the Mookie talk...don't want to completely sidetrack the thread though.
 

Max Power

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Totally agree that these 4 games alone barely register for me. Hearing those stats this morning is what prompted me to look up all his playoff stats. And I guess the question I'm trying to answer, and using Mookie as the lens in this case, is when (if ever) is it appropriate to start questioning whether or not a player's past playoff performance is at all indicative of his future playoff performance? I should note since I don't post too frequently that I love Betts and hope he crushes all the XBH and drives in all the runs (unless it's in the the WS against the Red Sox).
I don't know if a player who hits in the regular season but not in the postseason is a real thing. Given enough at bats, you'd expect their stats to approach their career numbers. However, if you struggle in the games when you're at the peak of your skills, any more at bats will come in the decline phase of your career and probably won't bring up the numbers.

Mookie has been disappointing in the postseason because of small samples and streakiness. I don't think it says anything about him going forward, but to this point he is what the numbers say he was.
 

jaytftwofive

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We've been so insanely spoiled with postseason heroics over the past 20ish years, that it makes all of Mookie's heroics seem smaller.

1999: Down 0-2 to the Indians, come back to win three straight. In the clincher, Troy O'Leary hits a grand slam to flip the score from 7-4 to 8-7, and then a three run home run to break an 8-8 tie. Meanwhile, Pedro comes out of the pen in an absolute bloodbath of a game, and tosses six no-hit innings while injured, and without a real fastball.

2003: Down 0-2 to Oakland, we win the next three in dramatic fashion, followed by an incredible series against the Yankees... until Gump spoiled it.
2004: Schilling's bloody sock. Ortiz being Ortiz. Damon crushing the Yankees in Game 7. Lowe clinching all three series. Foulke sacrificing his career.
2007: Compared to 2004, I remember very little about this one. JD Drew hit a grand slam against Cleveland. Pedroia owned Jeff Francis I think. Mike Lowell had an insane series.
2013: Ortiz's grand slam. Lackey's redemption. Lester's starts. Victorino's grand slam. Napoli's solo shot deciding a 1-0 win over Verlander. Gomes. Uehara. Ortiz's insane world series.
2018: Benintendi's catch. JBJ's ALCS. Eovaldi saving the bullpen. Steve Pearce! Mitch Moreland! Price owning the World Series. Sale striking out Machado to end it.

Mookie was a great regular season guy. Didn't stand out in the playoffs like the others have. When I think back of great Mookie moments, I remember the HR off J.A. Happ, and the catch to save Rich Hill's shutout.
2007 may have been the most complete talented team year round next to the 2018 team.
 

jaytftwofive

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I'm in a similar situation. I think the truth is that one of the beautiful things about baseball is that it's a sport that you can consume both actively and passively. It's both fun watching the game and having the game on the radio while doing something else. As we get older, and having been to that mountaintop like you said, it becomes more likely that you start leaning towards the passive aspect of consuming the sport. If you miss a game or two in a 162 game season it's not a biggie.

The NFL is once a week. The NFL also is setup to be a better fantasy sport, which has also helped me remain actively engaged. I do not like football better than baseball, but it's just easier to be an active fan of the NFL than it is to be an active fan of the MLB. It's easier to consume, but that does not mean that I like it more.
Agree. If it wasn't for betting the NFL would be way less popular. I like college football just as much if not more. Baseball will always be No. 1 with me. It's also embarrassing and sad that ESPN and the others lead off with football after a great baseball night and day and then talk about the NBA. Sad!!!
 

sackamano

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Hope the Sox get a chance to beat Mookie and the Dodgers in the World Series.

Do not miss Mookie any more than the dozens of other players who've helped the Red Sox win the World Series in my lifetime. Not nostalgic at all about Mookie. Not worried about how great or not great he may be in his Dodgers career. Ultimately him being resigned here was not in the cards. If people can't get over that, maybe they're Mookie fans first, not Red Sox fans.

I just don't get it. It just doesn't matter anymore. He's gone. Turn the page already.

We just witnessed a great playoff series in which the underdog Red Sox came out victorious. I'm feeling pretty happy today about the future and the present of this team.
 
Last edited:

E5 Yaz

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Hope the Sox get a chance to beat Mookie and the Dodgers in the World Series.

Do not miss Mookie any more than the dozens of other players who've helped the Red Sox win the World Series' in my lifetime. Not nostalgic at all about Mookie. Not worried about how great or not great he may be in his Dodgers career. Ultimately him being resigned here was not in the cards. If people can't get over that, maybe they're Mookie fans first, not Red Sox fans.

I just don't get it. It just doesn't matter anymore. He's gone. Turn the page already.

We just witnessed a great playoff series in which the underdog Red Sox came out victorious. I'm feeling pretty happy today about the future and the present of this team.
I'm E5 Yaz, and I approve of this message
 

tims4wins

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He hits leadoff in the NL where the pitcher is generally batting before him. I started going through the logs of this year's postseason and he's essentially hardly ever up with runners on base.

RBI is a facile stat and I thought we can moved on from using it to prove anything many years ago. Players do not get equal chances to drive in runs.

As for not being an impact player in the postseason, in the World Series JUST LAST YEAR he had a .900 OPS with 2 doubles, 2 HRs and 4 SBs in 6 games that resulted in a World Series Championship for his team. Including 3 of those precious RBI. Come on now.
I mean Stephen Drew had a homer and 2 RBI in the 2013 WS.

I don't understand why this is a hard concept to understand. In his career to date, postseason offensive Mookie < regular season offensive Mookie. It's a fact, not an opinion. It doesn't necessarily mean anything going forward. I fully acknowledge that. But it's a trend and interesting one to watch, especially this year given that the Sox are actually in the playoffs, without Mookie, and winning games (series).
 

Minneapolis Millers

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He hits leadoff in the NL where the pitcher is generally batting before him. I started going through the logs of this year's postseason and he's essentially hardly ever up with runners on base.

RBI is a facile stat and I thought we can moved on from using it to prove anything many years ago. Players do not get equal chances to drive in runs.

As for not being an impact player in the postseason, in the World Series JUST LAST YEAR he had a .900 OPS with 2 doubles, 2 HRs and 4 SBs in 6 games that resulted in a World Series Championship for his team. Including 3 of those precious RBI. Come on now.
The Astros in particular would also likely (and bitterly) put in a good word for Mookie's defense in the playoffs. Some would call it game saving.
 

barbed wire Bob

crippled by fear
SoSH Member
I'm in a similar situation. I think the truth is that one of the beautiful things about baseball is that it's a sport that you can consume both actively and passively. It's both fun watching the game and having the game on the radio while doing something else. As we get older, and having been to that mountaintop like you said, it becomes more likely that you start leaning towards the passive aspect of consuming the sport. If you miss a game or two in a 162 game season it's not a biggie.

The NFL is once a week. The NFL also is setup to be a better fantasy sport, which has also helped me remain actively engaged. I do not like football better than baseball, but it's just easier to be an active fan of the NFL than it is to be an active fan of the MLB. It's easier to consume, but that does not mean that I like it more.
I remember talking to an old duffer on a golf course and he said his fondest memories as a kid were listening to the Dodgers on the radio while building model airplanes in the garage. As I am in my 50s, I’m finding I get the most enjoyment from the games by listening to the Red Sox broadcast while working on a model. I guess the ability to consume the sport passively is one of the reasons why this game has endured for so long.
 

reggiecleveland

sublime
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Smoltz said yesterday that, "despite the stats" there are guys who play better in the playoffs. I expect deep down he probably means him vs Maddux.

I, on the other hand, think Smolts idea is silly. WIth expanded playoffs, and rich teams getting there most years, we have enough at-bats to see, say the controversial Jeter was pretty much the same player in the postseason, as the regular season. So, not a clucthy clutch of all time, but not a 'chokah' either.

I hope once and for all we can stop elevating and denigrating players on 20 plate appearance samples.
 

Petagine in a Bottle

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Isn’t performing at your regular season career levels in the postseason pretty clutch though? The competition in the playoffs is of a much higher caliber than what you face in the regular season.
 

Buck Showalter

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Feb 26, 2002
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Smoltz said yesterday that, "despite the stats" there are guys who play better in the playoffs. I expect deep down he probably means him vs Maddux.

I, on the other hand, think Smolts idea is silly. WIth expanded playoffs, and rich teams getting there most years, we have enough at-bats to see, say the controversial Jeter was pretty much the same player in the postseason, as the regular season. So, not a clucthy clutch of all time, but not a 'chokah' either.

I hope once and for all we can stop elevating and denigrating players on 20 plate appearance samples.
Fair enough on the "small sample sizes"....

But (when isolating this topic towards hitters) there are certainly some that are better able / equipped to have success against good or elite pitching.

And there are some that simply 'feast' on weak middle-relievers (who you are less apt to face in the playoffs) during the regular season and disappear in October.
 

The Gray Eagle

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Aug 1, 2001
16,725
Alex Rodriguez had 330 postseason PAs, which is not that small of a sample. He hit 259/365/457 in them, which is good, but falls well short of his career slash of 295/380/550.

If you take out his 7 playoff games for the Yankees against the Twins, in which he hit .433 (which isn't fair, but come on, it's Arod and the Twins against the Yankees) his postseason numbers get pretty bad.

My only point is to remind people that Slappy McBluelips generally came up small in the postseason (except 2009 against the Twins, Angels and Phillies) and that's just one of the many reasons why nobody likes him.
 

Bob Montgomerys Helmet Hat

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Hope the Sox get a chance to beat Mookie and the Dodgers in the World Series.

Do not miss Mookie any more than the dozens of other players who've helped the Red Sox win the World Series in my lifetime. Not nostalgic at all about Mookie. Not worried about how great or not great he may be in his Dodgers career. Ultimately him being resigned here was not in the cards. If people can't get over that, maybe they're Mookie fans first, not Red Sox fans.

I just don't get it. It just doesn't matter anymore. He's gone. Turn the page already.

We just witnessed a great playoff series in which the underdog Red Sox came out victorious. I'm feeling pretty happy today about the future and the present of this team.
Amen. I loved watching Mookie on the Red Sox, and I don't give him a second thought now that he's gone. I'm enjoying the hell out of rooting for this really fun current Red Sox team, and I'm hopeful that someday I'll get to root for Mayer and Yorke and Casas, etc.
 

jaytftwofive

New Member
Jan 20, 2013
1,182
Drexel Hill Pa.
Hope the Sox get a chance to beat Mookie and the Dodgers in the World Series.

Do not miss Mookie any more than the dozens of other players who've helped the Red Sox win the World Series in my lifetime. Not nostalgic at all about Mookie. Not worried about how great or not great he may be in his Dodgers career. Ultimately him being resigned here was not in the cards. If people can't get over that, maybe they're Mookie fans first, not Red Sox fans.

I just don't get it. It just doesn't matter anymore. He's gone. Turn the page already.

We just witnessed a great playoff series in which the underdog Red Sox came out victorious. I'm feeling pretty happy today about the future and the present of this team.
Couldn't have said it better. We got over losing Fisk and Lynn and Burleson and Boggs and Mo and others. Mookie was on of my favorites, but I move on.
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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I was broken when the Sox traded Nomar despite his apparent "malcontent" status at the time. But around 3 months later I couldn't even remember who played SS before Cabrera. It took me another few years before I remembered that the guy was one of my favorite Sox players of all time.
 

scottyno

late Bloomer
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Dec 7, 2008
11,305
He hits leadoff in the NL where the pitcher is generally batting before him. I started going through the logs of this year's postseason and he's essentially hardly ever up with runners on base.

RBI is a facile stat and I thought we can moved on from using it to prove anything many years ago. Players do not get equal chances to drive in runs.

As for not being an impact player in the postseason, in the World Series JUST LAST YEAR he had a .900 OPS with 2 doubles, 2 HRs and 4 SBs in 6 games that resulted in a World Series Championship for his team. Including 3 of those precious RBI. Come on now.
He has a negative wpa in the playoffs. Whether that means he's going to continue being a bad playoff hitter is debatable, but there's really no argument that he hasn't been a bad one to date. That has nothing to do with him having a pitcher bat before him.
 

joe dokes

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Jul 18, 2005
30,243
I remember talking to an old duffer on a golf course and he said his fondest memories as a kid were listening to the Dodgers on the radio while building model airplanes in the garage. As I am in my 50s, I’m finding I get the most enjoyment from the games by listening to the Red Sox broadcast while working on a model. I guess the ability to consume the sport passively is one of the reasons why this game has endured for so long.
So when things go south mid-game and *you* say, "I picked the wrong time to stop huffing glue," we better listen.
 

lexrageorge

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Jul 31, 2007
18,099
Fair enough on the "small sample sizes"....

But (when isolating this topic towards hitters) there are certainly some that are better able / equipped to have success against good or elite pitching.

And there are some that simply 'feast' on weak middle-relievers (who you are less apt to face in the playoffs) during the regular season and disappear in October.
But many times those players don't become regular All Stars, simply because their overperformance against the weaker pitchers regresses closer to their mean ability.

There was something I read years ago; may have been in a Bill James abstract that tried to discern if there was any pattern to post season success at the plate. IIRC, the paper did find that pure power hitters were more likely to hit below their career averages in the playoffs than high batting average hitters. But I read this sometime in the 1990's, and both hitter and pitcher profiles have changed dramatically since then. The problem is still that projecting such trends towards an individual player is an impossible task due to the statistically insignificant samples sizes at the individual level. The predictive value of prior postseason stats is essentially nil as a practical matter.

Babe Ruth batted 0.148 (8 for 54) with 1 home run in his first 5 World Series appearances (3 with the No-No Nannettes and 2 w/ the Bombers).