Matt Dermody DFA’d (released 6/16)
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But that leaves only 12 pitchers on the roster. They need 13, unless they changed the rule again while I wasn't watching.
The first mention of Dermody on this board from the 9/5/2017 game thread says it all:
Ah forgot about that. Would assume Valdez goes down for….someone? Not sure how they get another pitcher in the roster or who it would be. Moving someone to the 60 day (Bleier) or they could just DFA Reyes. Hard to find another pitcher worth calling up though. Guess they cut Brasier too soon
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My 2 cents... First and foremost the handling of this is a black eye on Bloom and the organization. As for Dermody's response, I get the anger and outrage, but seriously what did we expect? The guy is who he is and as shitty as that is anything that seemed even remotely close to something that we might prefer would be rejected. Without moving this in a political direction, we've be disappointed, disgusted and outraged by recent behavior from other Sox players (Sale, Houck and Duran to name a few), yet as soon as these guys start performing all seems to be forgotten. Slightly different here as Dermody wasn't likely here for long anyway, but the team used him just as they used the others. Again a terrible look for the organization, but a choice was made just as choices have been made in the past.
The rule is that you can have no more than 13 pitchers, not that 13 are required.
Who? I legitimately forgot he pitched for the Sox in 93. That's 30 years ago. Somehow I don't think he's still pitching. Could you come up with a more recent option?
Not just in 1993. He was a rarely used guy for the Sox in a few years, up to 1996.
and that was the point: I’d rather have had a guy who was my age than this guy.
I know it's hindsight but given how he pitched last night how would having Kluber start have helped anything? And where would the innings have come from after he left early? We all could have predicted that having either Kluber or Dermody start was essentially sacrificing the game, by having them both pitch they saved the rest of the bullpen for the Yankee series.
One thing the Sox aren't short on is long relief -- Winck or PIvetta could have taken plenty of innings. My issue is that they seem to have punted on 1-2 winnable games against Cleveland (which is below .500) to save some bullets for much tougher games vs. New York. I'd have rather done the opposite.
With Crawford in the rotation and Schreiber hurt, I think it’s a lot harder to use Winckowski in a long relief role, though.
The bullpen is kind of a mess right now. You’ve got Jansen as closer; Martin and Winckowski as set up. Then you’ve got the lefties in Bernardino and I guess Jacques, Garza, and then Pivetta and Kluber.
That’s not a lot of guys you really want in a close game. Made more difficult by the endless parade of short starts. There’s not much that looks like it can help in the minors, so not really sure what they can do.
The bullpen is kind of a mess right now. You’ve got Jansen as closer; Martin and Winckowski as set up. Then you’ve got the lefties in Bernardino and I guess Jacques, Garza, and then Pivetta and Kluber.
That’s not a lot of guys you really want in a close game. Made more difficult by the endless parade of short starts. There’s not much that looks like it can help in the minors, so not really sure what they can do.
For all the reasons stated above, the handling of this really raises red flags for me regarding Bloom’s judgement and competence. The predictable shelling was not in anyway worth the black eye for the organization. I’ve mostly been a supporter, but combining this debacle with on field performance since opening day of last season, I’m starting to question whether he is the person to lead baseball operations long term.
Is this front office worse at finding and developing pitching or at media/PR? The Dermody debacle was the worst of both sides.
Well, Dermody is like 33, so the development thing isn't really on them, but that kind of makes the PR piece of it worse, IMO.
Oh I don't count him as a pitching development failure; that he was even an option though is a black mark on the state of the homegrown pitchers and on the people in the FO whose job it is to find adequate and useful depth.
One question I have is for the supposedly hard hitting Boston Media: Why did it take his call up to the Red Sox to highlight what an evil person this guy is? I went to Spring Training this year and don't remember a single story being written about this fool. All it took was literally 5 seconds of Twitter "research " to find out that Dermody should never ever have been an option to have signed with the Red Sox.
Why wasn't Chaim Bloom questioned when he signed Dermody? The really sad and infuriating point is that if Monday's game was not played, then the Red Sox don't need a starter for last night's game and Dermody continues to pitch at Worchester and we are none the wiser.
Why wasn't Chaim Bloom questioned when he signed Dermody? The really sad and infuriating point is that if Monday's game was not played, then the Red Sox don't need a starter for last night's game and Dermody continues to pitch at Worchester and we are none the wiser.
He doesn't ooze self-awareness, let alone any idea who he's talking to. But I'm sure it plays back in the sticks, where he should return to.
Yeah. It's all the media's fault for not combing through three years of social media posts on a--at best--fringe arm. There are like 50 guys at camp, a media member can't look into the background of every single player in ST. There's just too many. However when the dude gets called up, you have a little bit of time to do your due diligence and try to figure out this guy's story. Maybe he was a lion tamer when he was younger, maybe he's super interested in ham radios, maybe he's a bigot. Who knows. But unless he pitches lights out in ST and is going to make the team out of Florida, there's no need to waste time on inconsequential March flotsam.
Why? He was a nobody non-prospect. I don't see why any journalist would waste their time investigating him.
or what JMOH said.
Evil? Christianist homophobia is truly shitty, don't get me wrong, but we've got far bigger fish to fry than some anonymous doofus' twitter feed. And as noted above, if we are going to round up all the christianist homophobes in BASEBALL... we might not be done for a while.
On a baseball level, this was a perfect choice. We need someone to eat a start and then disappear. Who won't embarrass us on the mound for a few innings that we will never care about again?
Some of us were poking at this in the rotation thread once Sale went down. It was pretty predictable.
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Bloom knew about the twitter thing before he pitched last night. He found about it in spring training and talked to him about it then.
Bloom said that Dermody knew he made a mistake. However, now people have found a lot of tweets that Dermody “liked” which shows that Dermody apparently didn’t realize the extent of his mistake.
That post may have been an overreaction but your justification for why it is is completely incorrect
It's too much to ask Bloom to know and care about the fact that one of Matt Dermody's previous employers already had to apologize for him? Really?
And frankly, the decision to to start Dermoddy is only one part of the problem. As pieces like this lay out, the Red Sox in general and Bloom in particular have handled the whole thing terribly:
Chaim Bloom Doesn't Know What The Word 'Inclusive' Means
Pitcher’s tweets and poorly timed call-up create Pride Month problem for Red Sox
From the first one:
It took 5 fucking minutes for someone else to find all the other crap he’s endorsed online. Vetting social media activity is basic part of the job in a business as public as MLB. And thinking it, or saying it in a corner of the locker room (which you have zero first hand knowledge of whether that happens or not) is far different than advertising for all the world to see. He, and the entire front office, bungled this badly.
Do you think someone in the Sox Front Office has torn through Joe's Social Media yet...just in case?
Your priorities sure are interesting if you’d be more embarrassed by your last place team (or even if they were in first) trotting out an ineffective starter than a homophobic one. Your handwaiving of it because 50% of white baseball players is homophobic is absurd and cynical and your inability to prioritize human rights over a game is sad and privileged.
Seems like you’d be fine with outwardly racist players too. Or is homophobia different?
Dermody stinks, but the Worcester roster is filled with terrible pitchers like him, why not pick one who hasn’t publicly made statements like this to get the start, or work out of the bullpen for a day? Bloom should have known that this would blow up once this guy was called up, that it happened to be during Pride Month wasn’t a good look. What was the upside to calling this guy up for 4 replacement level innings? If he was a 23 year old who threw 95 mph and had a future, maybe it’s worth the hassle…but for this guy? Really?
What this should show everyone is that organizations like the Sox (and countless others) celebrate Pride in the most superficial, cynical way. Lots of social media marketing and theme nights at the park. But when a real decision about inclusivity needs to be made, we get this doofus starting a game. It's not surprising, almost every corporation acts this way. People should just see it for what it is.
I just can't wrap my head around the Dermody fiasco. You pitch a guy despite MASSIVE public outcry, rationalize it in the dumbest way possible, then release him as soon as the game is over even though, while he didn't pitch well, he didn't pitch any worse than I think anyone could have expected given he stinks.
Maybe they DFAd Dermody in order to claim this guy.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/37826591/blue-jays-dfa-anthony-bass-pride-weekend-celebration
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/37826591/blue-jays-dfa-anthony-bass-pride-weekend-celebration
You don't know the first thing about me, so I'll forgive the rather reckless and obnoxious misreading of what I said in this comment.
I think this is over the top. close to 50% of your great republic agrees with this guy, they can't all be evil.
I teach ESL and what has been reinforced to me is how opinions and views can be horrible, offensive and wrong but assigning them as "evil" people helps nothing. The best person I know is 71-year-old survivor of the Taliban. He works basically for free helping kids with all different academic subjects. I know what his views on homosexuality are and we don't agree. He teaches and helps openly Gay students, and we have pride events, etc, at school, he quietly does not participate. I expect his IQ is literally twice that of Matt Dermody, and his world experience is beyond quantification. But, if pressed to verbalize his views on homosexuality they would be more in line with Dermody than my views. But, I also know like Dermody he is seeing how out of step those views are with the society where he lives. The speed of change when it comes to religious views is glacial, and calling people evil, stops even that pace.
Are we excluding born-again Christians from MLB? Or just shitty born-again pitchers? We know the answer.
This will probably the the only comment I write here. I lurk to learn things I do not know, and you all do a fantastic job of teaching me things this old brain never before pondered. For clarity, I am a 68-year-old parent, grandparent, transgender lesbian. I'm rather militant in things feminist and lgbtq.
On to the subject at hand. When I first saw the story yesterday, the key takeaways for me were: a tweet from 2021, and that the Sox spoke with him about it upon learning what had transpired back then.
That was good enough for me.
I have no expectation that the world will see lgbtq people the way I do. I don't expect people to see it my way. What others think of me is none of my business. The line is whether they come after our rights. There, I'll fight back.
One final point. The Sox have an expectation over how their employees represent the organisation. You all can speak to the contractual provisions that might be involved. None of this happened on their watch. I cannot criticise the team for what transpired, insofar as his prior expressed views. How they handled the personnel logistics for yesterday's game, I leave to you.
On to the subject at hand. When I first saw the story yesterday, the key takeaways for me were: a tweet from 2021, and that the Sox spoke with him about it upon learning what had transpired back then.
That was good enough for me.
I have no expectation that the world will see lgbtq people the way I do. I don't expect people to see it my way. What others think of me is none of my business. The line is whether they come after our rights. There, I'll fight back.
One final point. The Sox have an expectation over how their employees represent the organisation. You all can speak to the contractual provisions that might be involved. None of this happened on their watch. I cannot criticise the team for what transpired, insofar as his prior expressed views. How they handled the personnel logistics for yesterday's game, I leave to you.
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I very much appreciate you sharing your perspective on this! Like others have said, consider sticking around.
There are a lot of old and not so old brains here that could use a bit of teaching on a variety of things. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.
Yes, but really, they “celebrate” everything in superficial ways. It’s all marketing. But we shouldn’t be overly surprised. Professional sports ARE superficial.
I'd be happy to see all three of them get flipped for talent, DFA'ed, or fired into the sun as the case may be, and Tilt's transcendent shittiness was acknowledged during his departure. But when bans are handed out for talking about what may be described as the players' "politics" on the main board, I don't find it shocking that there is less sustained attention on such things.
The player is gone/DFA, but that said, I wish someone in the media had dug deeper into this.
Specifically, the disgusting comment he tweeted; is that what he believes or is it what he was TAUGHT/TOLD?
I grew up in West Roxbury, a very racially charged suburb/part of Boston as a kid, a shit ton of old school white racial bullshit. My Dad was a Boston police officer and as a rookie, he worked out of the Roxbury police station, he was involved in a huge racially charged riot at White Stadium during a Thanksgiving day game, he and a couple of other officers tried to break it up, he was stabbed during the riot, luckily, he survived.
He taught myself and my brothers and sisters about racial prejudices and right and wrong and also, he preached about everyone getting along and being positive members of society.
During the forced busing in the 70's, my Dad was with the TPF (tactical patrol force/riot squad/K9 dogs), he was involved in an incident where a guy threw a rock at a bus, shattered a window, a little girl had some minor injuries, he chased the guy along with his dog Ceasar and caught the guy........it did not end well for the guy, my Dad became friends with that little girls parents.
My overall point here is you are a product of your environment; myself and my brothers and sisters were taught by my Dad about right and wrong, to his dying day, he was proud that none of his kids are racist/prejudiced in any way, he wore that like a badge of honor.
So my question is; is this player a product of his environment/this is what his parents believed/this is what he was told and taught during his younger years, or is this what he himself believes.
The only way to end this sort of disgusting attitude is to nip it early in life and teach children about hatred of any kind and how wrong it is, otherwise it grows like a cancer and spreads.
Specifically, the disgusting comment he tweeted; is that what he believes or is it what he was TAUGHT/TOLD?
I grew up in West Roxbury, a very racially charged suburb/part of Boston as a kid, a shit ton of old school white racial bullshit. My Dad was a Boston police officer and as a rookie, he worked out of the Roxbury police station, he was involved in a huge racially charged riot at White Stadium during a Thanksgiving day game, he and a couple of other officers tried to break it up, he was stabbed during the riot, luckily, he survived.
He taught myself and my brothers and sisters about racial prejudices and right and wrong and also, he preached about everyone getting along and being positive members of society.
During the forced busing in the 70's, my Dad was with the TPF (tactical patrol force/riot squad/K9 dogs), he was involved in an incident where a guy threw a rock at a bus, shattered a window, a little girl had some minor injuries, he chased the guy along with his dog Ceasar and caught the guy........it did not end well for the guy, my Dad became friends with that little girls parents.
My overall point here is you are a product of your environment; myself and my brothers and sisters were taught by my Dad about right and wrong, to his dying day, he was proud that none of his kids are racist/prejudiced in any way, he wore that like a badge of honor.
So my question is; is this player a product of his environment/this is what his parents believed/this is what he was told and taught during his younger years, or is this what he himself believes.
The only way to end this sort of disgusting attitude is to nip it early in life and teach children about hatred of any kind and how wrong it is, otherwise it grows like a cancer and spreads.
He says that he first read the Bible when he was 30, and became born again in December of 2020; before that he'd had no exposure to religion. More detail in V&N.
Thanks.
That answers that.
What a broken toilet of a human being, his parents must be thrilled.
I think this is a larger and thornier issue than some here are making it. And I don’t think it’s a Red Sox-specific issue; they were basically picking a dude to DFA, which was presented as “giving him a start” by the press. A few stipulations:
(1) Dermody’s views on sexual minorities are both reprehensible and quite common among the exurban white evangelicals who are the bulk of baseball’s US-born players.
(2) The political and athletic geography of the United States is such that most of baseball’s biggest markets (New England, NYC, Philly, Chicago, California) are politically and theologically distinct from the areas from which they recruit most of their US-born players.
(3) Baseball has one of the most powerful unions in the United States — certainly in US sports.
(4) The five decades of emancipatory political progress for sexual minorities since the Stonewall uprising has rapidly and sharply stalled and even receded in the last decade or so, as LGBTQ rights have re-emerged as a contentious issue in electoral politics. This has followed from a reshuffling of the partisan coalitions. I know, V&N…, but as a first approximation the tiny-but-influential “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” crowd in the suburbs are now largely centrist Democrats instead of centrist Republicans, largely in response to Trump’s nomination. This development leaves few within the Republican Party (except, extremely ironically, Donald Trump) to oppose a homophobic politics (and even he is not exactly putting his back into it).
(5) This development in the political system raises the salience of these issues elsewhere in the culture. A brand like a sports team (or a beer or a media company with theme parks…) that might once have sat these kinds of questions out now has to take a stance.
(6) Many on the right have come to feel (rightly or wrongly) that they are beset on all sides by “woke capital” — that even deeply conservative institutions like Disney or Blackrock or Starbucks are somehow participants in a conspiracy against them. A line is drawn, and it is drawn in such a way that literally Raytheon is imagined to be on the left side of the line (Google “woke defense contractor” for — well, I wouldn’t call it a “good” time…). It’s more than a bit paranoid.
(7) Back to baseball, we’ve seen a number of recent blowups on these issues: several Rays refused to wear a rainbow patch last season; a week or so ago, a Dodgers’ pride night that would have hosted the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence drew the vocal condemnation of Clayton Kershaw. Some players are making noises about seeking their union’s protection from what they see as the insidious influence of the woke agenda.
(8) As a left-wing person, I am sympathetic to players who would like their employer to mind its business and stay out of their private lives. I am likewise sympathetic to their reluctance to be roped into political messaging they don’t support by their employers’ PR arm, even as I think they are dead wrong on the substantial issue.
(9) I am also *extremely* concerned about the attack on sexual minorities. There’s downright genocidal rhetoric emanating from some extremists, and it’s not hard to judge that concern (9) is a whole lot more important than concern (8).
(10) But this is a larger cultural-political phenomenon than any one team or sport or player or executive. Making this about Chaim Bloom in particular or Matt Dermody (or Jalen Beeks or Clayton Kershaw or Anthony Bass or…) in particular misses the forest for the trees. The Red Sox — just like the recent kerfuffle about a Bud Light marketing partnership with a prominent transfeminine influencer — have a lot of constituencies to make happy here, and they’re not going to find it easy to thread the needle.
(1) Dermody’s views on sexual minorities are both reprehensible and quite common among the exurban white evangelicals who are the bulk of baseball’s US-born players.
(2) The political and athletic geography of the United States is such that most of baseball’s biggest markets (New England, NYC, Philly, Chicago, California) are politically and theologically distinct from the areas from which they recruit most of their US-born players.
(3) Baseball has one of the most powerful unions in the United States — certainly in US sports.
(4) The five decades of emancipatory political progress for sexual minorities since the Stonewall uprising has rapidly and sharply stalled and even receded in the last decade or so, as LGBTQ rights have re-emerged as a contentious issue in electoral politics. This has followed from a reshuffling of the partisan coalitions. I know, V&N…, but as a first approximation the tiny-but-influential “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” crowd in the suburbs are now largely centrist Democrats instead of centrist Republicans, largely in response to Trump’s nomination. This development leaves few within the Republican Party (except, extremely ironically, Donald Trump) to oppose a homophobic politics (and even he is not exactly putting his back into it).
(5) This development in the political system raises the salience of these issues elsewhere in the culture. A brand like a sports team (or a beer or a media company with theme parks…) that might once have sat these kinds of questions out now has to take a stance.
(6) Many on the right have come to feel (rightly or wrongly) that they are beset on all sides by “woke capital” — that even deeply conservative institutions like Disney or Blackrock or Starbucks are somehow participants in a conspiracy against them. A line is drawn, and it is drawn in such a way that literally Raytheon is imagined to be on the left side of the line (Google “woke defense contractor” for — well, I wouldn’t call it a “good” time…). It’s more than a bit paranoid.
(7) Back to baseball, we’ve seen a number of recent blowups on these issues: several Rays refused to wear a rainbow patch last season; a week or so ago, a Dodgers’ pride night that would have hosted the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence drew the vocal condemnation of Clayton Kershaw. Some players are making noises about seeking their union’s protection from what they see as the insidious influence of the woke agenda.
(8) As a left-wing person, I am sympathetic to players who would like their employer to mind its business and stay out of their private lives. I am likewise sympathetic to their reluctance to be roped into political messaging they don’t support by their employers’ PR arm, even as I think they are dead wrong on the substantial issue.
(9) I am also *extremely* concerned about the attack on sexual minorities. There’s downright genocidal rhetoric emanating from some extremists, and it’s not hard to judge that concern (9) is a whole lot more important than concern (8).
(10) But this is a larger cultural-political phenomenon than any one team or sport or player or executive. Making this about Chaim Bloom in particular or Matt Dermody (or Jalen Beeks or Clayton Kershaw or Anthony Bass or…) in particular misses the forest for the trees. The Red Sox — just like the recent kerfuffle about a Bud Light marketing partnership with a prominent transfeminine influencer — have a lot of constituencies to make happy here, and they’re not going to find it easy to thread the needle.
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