Following Former Red Sox 2021 Edition

sean1562

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Sep 17, 2011
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Signing bonus of $1.3 million, earned $557k in 2019, and whatever he got paid for last year. Not a bad start financially for a 28 year old guy.
 

LoweTek

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Such an interesting moment. You just gotta tip your cap. Obviously he and his wife, family and friends have been involved in the discussion. Seems crazy but he wasn’t happy. I have a friend who pitched 8 years in MLB and he couldn’t care less about baseball now. Good luck Ty.
I know a guy who was rocketing through the Royals minor league system in the early-mid 90's. He was on his way to the big club or AAA at worst after a dominating AA season as the closer. They told him after the season they wanted to raise his FB velocity a few MPH and put him "on a program" (PDEs). He refused. They released him and he couldn't get another gig, apparently black balled as a result. He is deeply bitter to this day and barely pays attention to baseball. Very successful independent workman's comp plaintiff's lawyer though. Probably doing almost as well as he would have in the 90's with the Royals who God knows, could have used some good pitching.
 

barbed wire Bob

crippled by fear
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Such an interesting moment. You just gotta tip your cap. Obviously he and his wife, family and friends have been involved in the discussion. Seems crazy but he wasn’t happy. I have a friend who pitched 8 years in MLB and he couldn’t care less about baseball now. Good luck Ty.
It’s funny but we fans always think the players love the game as much as we do. The reality is that most professional athletes look at it as just a job. Good lick to Ty and all of his future endeavors.
 

InsideTheParker

persists in error
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Jul 15, 2005
40,371
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Mitchy Two Bags loped a single into the RCF gap to plate the winning run in the A's first victory of the season, a 4-3 win over the Dodgers in the 10th.
I just came here to post that. Guess who had just worked a walk to get on first? Jed Lowrie. I didn't know he was still playing.
 

Remagellan

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I just came here to post that. Guess who had just worked a walk to get on first? Jed Lowrie. I didn't know he was still playing.
That surprised me as well. I remember the Mets signed him last year and he had season ending injury early on. I assumed he was forced to retire because of it, but there he was today working a walk after a good at-bat. Good for him!
 

nattysez

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Sep 30, 2010
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That surprised me as well. I remember the Mets signed him last year and he had season ending injury early on. I assumed he was forced to retire because of it, but there he was today working a walk after a good at-bat. Good for him!
Believe it or not, the Mets signed Lowrie two years ago. His former agent, acting as GM of the Mets, paid him $20m over two years for 8 plate appearances. But I guess their rehab department was solid, as he's now back and serving as the starting 2b for the A's (being paid $100k).
 

allmanbro

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Jul 19, 2005
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It’s funny but we fans always think the players love the game as much as we do. The reality is that most professional athletes look at it as just a job. Good lick to Ty and all of his future endeavors.
I'm sure the standards of loving the game are very different: it's one thing to watch and read about it obsessively as a fan, it's another to spend 6 months of the year constantly on the road, beating up your body every day, and knowing that it could all fall apart instantly with one injury or a few bad outings. I respect the self-awareness that Buttrey shows there, though the note is so starkly worded, it sounds like he's bitter about things. Hope it works out for the best in any case. He really was underrated for a couple years in LAAA.
 

nattysez

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That's great work if you can get it, I suppose.

I pray Jed has better luck with his health going forward, but given his history that might be a lot to hope for.
Sorry to go down Lowrie rabbit hole, but this is pretty quirky:

Average games played in the seven seasons when he was not on the A's: 61.5
Average games played in the five seasons when he was an A (not including this year): 137.4

So he's in the right spot to have another healthy year.
 

Remagellan

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Sorry to go down Lowrie rabbit hole, but this is pretty quirky:

Average games played in the seven seasons when he was not on the A's: 61.5
Average games played in the five seasons when he was an A (not including this year): 137.4

So he's in the right spot to have another healthy year.
Good pull, I did not realize that! Unless the A's have the best training staff in all of sports, that is one absurd coincidence.
 

sean1562

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Sep 17, 2011
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Short sample size but Benintendi has not had a good start to the year. .530 OPS through 14 games, 16 ks to 5 walks. Really starting to feel bad for the guy.
 

Van Everyman

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Apr 30, 2009
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He's BAAAAAAACK:

“I shouldn’t have taken that job to begin with,” he says. “I should have stayed at ESPN, where I was making $2.5 million and didn’t have a care in the world, instead of working my ass off and not being appreciated for seven months of my life.”
In a mid-April interview with Channel 7, Valentine was asked why Youkilis was not playing like his usual self, striking out and not walking.

“I don’t think he’s as physically or emotionally into the game as he has been in the past, for some reason,” Valentine told Joe Amorosino.

The comment created a firestorm.

“I don’t regret saying that,” says Valentine. “I was one of the only people that was Youk’s friend. I was the one trying to protect him.



“He wanted to do anything but be a Red Sox, and his back bothered him. He didn’t want to stay here. So everyone — the front office, the agent, and Youk — seized an opportunity to get him out of town, and it made my life miserable.”
“What was written in the papers was that I said David quit playing. I never used the word ‘quit,’ ” says Valentine.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/04/21/sports/catching-up-with-bobby-valentine-who-says-he-shouldnt-have-taken-that-job-manage-red-sox-2012/
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Jan 23, 2009
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You know, I was just saying the other day, I wonder what Bobby Valentine is up to and what he really thought about his season at the helm of the Red Sox. No, wait. I was wondering what it would be like to hit myself in the head with a ball peen hammer. The same thing, really.
 

joe dokes

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Jul 18, 2005
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Oddly enough, his (unstated) conclusion that Youk was just about cooked was one of the few things he was right about.
 

trekfan55

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Oddly enough, his (unstated) conclusion that Youk was just about cooked was one of the few things he was right about.
That, and I believe he was not on board with making Bard a starter.

I hate his guts but he knew some baseball, it was the perfect storm of a bad team, and a lousy fit. Valentine was basically forced on the Sox by ownership for some unknown reason.
 

bluefenderstrat

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Dec 16, 2002
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JBJ, Mookie, and Benintendi have combined for 5 HR and 9 RBI in 188 ABs (Mookie still has an OPS+ of 146, but he has 2 RBI on 2 solo homers in 55 ABs and is hitting .143 with men on; he has scored 12 runs in 14 games though). JBJ and Benintendi are both off to horrible starts with their new teams.
 

Max Power

thai good. you like shirt?
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Jul 20, 2005
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Alex Verdugo has an OPS+ of 147. He'll never be the defender and baseruner Mookie is, but they may be pretty similar hitters going forward.
 

sean1562

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Sep 17, 2011
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What do we think David Price will look like for the rest of his contract? Obviously in a bullpen role now but has had a pretty terrible start. 9.2 IP, 4 BB, 14 hits, 6 ER, 3 HR with 11 ks. The $16 mil discount on that 32 mil is looking pretty good so far?
 

Cesar Crespo

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Dec 22, 2002
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What do we think David Price will look like for the rest of his contract? Obviously in a bullpen role now but has had a pretty terrible start. 9.2 IP, 4 BB, 14 hits, 6 ER, 3 HR with 11 ks. The $16 mil discount on that 32 mil is looking pretty good so far?
That's one way to look at it. It worked out well for both teams.

He's on the 10 day DL atm. I'm guessing the rest of his contract is mired by DL stints and ineffective performance.
 

DeadlySplitter

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Oct 20, 2015
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Grade 2 hamstring strain at that, could be awhile for him.

I mean, Scherzer's contract aged great, but that is the exception. Price could have aged gracefully, but he has not. Big FA deals will continue to be onerous if nothing is done to the CBA.
 

Max Power

thai good. you like shirt?
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Jul 20, 2005
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What happened to him? He was good in 2017 and 2018 and excellent in 2019. Then he became awful.
He was kind of a trick pitcher in 2019. He just threw curveball after curveball and nobody could hit it. He walked a ton of guys but didn't give up runs because he didn't give up hits. If hitters are better able to deal with the curve because it's not as sharp, they have better video on it, or they simply don't swing at it anymore, he can't be a successful pitcher.
 

joe dokes

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Jul 18, 2005
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He was kind of a trick pitcher in 2019. He just threw curveball after curveball and nobody could hit it. He walked a ton of guys but didn't give up runs because he didn't give up hits. If hitters are better able to deal with the curve because it's not as sharp, they have better video on it, or they simply don't swing at it anymore, he can't be a successful pitcher.
He has apparently lost some MPH off the fastball. Perhaps he sold his velocity soul to the curveball devil.
 

Cesar Crespo

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Dec 22, 2002
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He has apparently lost some MPH off the fastball. Perhaps he sold his velocity soul to the curveball devil.
Wasn't there talk in 2019 about how him using his curveball so much would eventually lead to injury?

Not much different than selling your velocity soul to the curveball devil, actually.
 

joe dokes

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Jul 18, 2005
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Wasn't there talk in 2019 about how him using his curveball so much would eventually lead to injury?

Not much different than selling your velocity soul to the curveball devil, actually.
Curveballs for Algernon.

It's never fun to see someone like this hit a wall. He was fearless in 2013 and has already re-invented himself once. It would be nice to see him re-emerge yet again..
 

soxhop411

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Dec 4, 2009
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How the hell did Joe Kelly's injury stay hidden for this damn long?
https://www.audacy.com/weei/sports/red-sox/former-red-sox-reliever-joe-kelly-finally-reveals-injury
The most specific anyone had gotten regarding Kelly's ailment was identifying the issue as a shoulder ailment. But as he told WEEI.com Friday, "I don't think people knew how serious it was."

In this world of the internet and information, such a secret involving a key piece of a World Series-winning bullpen is a rarity.

"I guess when you win the World Series, whatever you say people just take it ... Everybody is on the World Series high," Kelly said. "Say one of your guys is hurt and they ask what is wrong and they say, 'Oh, he'll be back tomorrow,' and it becomes three months later, Dodgers fans aren't going to get too mad. It's easy to get overlooked, is what I'm saying. A lot of people didn't think it was going to be that serious, but it ended up being a pretty good thing."

What most didn't know is that the delay in Kelly's debut stemmed from fairly significant right shoulder surgery performed by Dr. Neal Elattrache on Nov. 10.

"We found some cysts," Kelly explained. "My shoulder hasn't been good since the end of 2019. But during my suspension after the thing with the Astros (early August) my arm was super weak. If I was laying on a table I couldn't lift my arm past gravity. They asked me how long it was going on for and I told them forever. I couldn't sleep at night and it felt like fire ants were eating my arm from the inside-out."

So during his eight-game suspension, the Dodgers set up an MRI for Kelly. It turned out a "massive" cyst was growing on Kelly's nerve, allowing him to pitch with 50 percent of the muscles in his shoulder.
The plan was to try and decompress it, but that wasn't working.

"I ended up pitching in the World Series topping out at 95 mph, not knowing where it was going because had these cysts on my nerve," said Kelly, who would pitch five times in the postseason, allowing one run over 3 2/3 innings. "They ended up putting metal clamps on my labrum and then they decompressed all the cysts. They sucked out some loose bodies from my rotator cuff. So it was a good little surgery."