Peter Abraham .... Take 3

HomeBrew1901

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I'm starting a new Peter Abraham thread because I found the below article that Foulkey Posted in the "Fire Bobby V" thread. I've never been a fan of Abraham but he is actually pretty good with Toucher and Rich on TSH and I thought the article linked was well done.

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2012/08/firing_bobby_va.html

We all know what Abraham can be like on Twitter, so if you follow or troll him (yes people troll him trying to get a reaction) leave it on twitter. I fully expect the mods to have an itchy trigger finger and to close down this thread at a moments notice if it turns into the last few threads.

This is a thread to post his articles and discuss why you agree or disagree with him, not to come running here every time he farts in the general direction of the Sox or their fans.
 

HomeBrew1901

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That article sums up my feelings on Valentine and why getting rid of him mid-season doesn't make sense to me. It gives the same under achieving team that sunk Francona another fired manager on their belt and won't change the season.
 

ForKeeps

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This article also sums up my feeling on Pete Abraham. He makes a lot of good points, and then he just ruins it with garbage like this,

"Make a list in your mind of players you believe really care whether the teams wins or loses on a given day. Bet you don't get deeper than seven or eight"

No, I got to 25, because I actually like to have, you know, evidence to make an outrageous claim about a person.

The fact that Pete goes from logical, even-handed arguments in one breath to idiotic sports-radio talking points and tenuous things (who said Bobby V is responsible for Morales being a starter?) in the next shows you that his ultimate goal here is not to be objective, it's to defend his guy Bobby Valentine. This is the underlying problem with the media in general here (not just here), I don't have a problem with arguing for a certain viewpoint, what I have a problem with is not making honest arguments. They will say anything if it "proves" their ultimate point, whether it's cogent or not or whether they even really believe it or not. That is all.
 

WalletTrack

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Is there a Alex Speier Thread? Pete Abraham was part of the "Pravda".
Evidence?

He get this show trial piece of gossip to make up for the fact he was left out of the BIG trade info strem.

"Valentine instead turned to Andrew Bailey to get the final three outs. Aceves faced 10 batters and threw 37 pitches against the Angels on Thursday, giving up five runs on six hits. It was his seventh blown save of the season.
Aceves slammed the office door following the meeting with Valentine and stormed out the clubhouse."

Where was this ballsy reporting BTBFD (Before The Big F*cking Deal)?

To be fair few beat reporters were stepping up in the past 12 months.
 

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon

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Perhaps it's just that the Sox season is so bad there's nothing better to write about and Abraham has to fill the paper with SOMETHING every day, but his piece today about how the Yankees coming to town ought to inspire the Sox is just insipid tripe.

When will writers tire of implying the Sox are losing just because they're not trying hard enough? It's absurd. For example:



The good news, perhaps, is that the first-place Yankees arrive at Fenway Park on Tuesday for a three-game series.


Yes, that could be good news for the lifeless Sox. Right fielder Cody Ross believes the presence of a contending team in the third base dugout could prod the Sox into playing better.

So, they got swept by the Jays because the Jays were just as bad and, well, who cares? Yet the Blue Jays, playing a team even worse than they are, didn't have similar inspiration problems? And, yes, I understand that Abraham's position is validated immediately by the players, but the players are not professional writers. They're baseball players. It's the writer's job to frame the story.

Maybe this makes sense if the headline and lead is "Sox players think Yanks will motivate them." I guess that at least frames the story as saying the players themselves think they haven't been trying hard enough. But then isn't that the bigger story? Isn't the story, "Sox admit they haven't been trying very hard, but plan to try harder now"?

And when they were getting their asses handed to them by the A's, who are going to the playoffs and have basically the same record as the Yankees, did that motivation just not come into play? Gah. It's maddeningly stupid. It's like they haven't played a contending team in months, when they were just getting thrashed by the Angels and A's last week. Fuck, the only game they won was against Seattle, which is out of it.

It's just so insulting to the reader's intelligence. The Sox have been losing because their starting pitching is HORRIBLE. Will the starting pitching be better against the Yankees? That's actually something you could look at. How do the starters scheduled for the next three games match up against the Yankees line-up? That might be interesting. Is there any hope for at least one win in this series? Well, we could look at the fact that Yankees lost Tex and have their own starting pitching woes, etc. But, no. Let's talk about "motivation" and "embarrassment" and trying wicked fucking hard!

So dumb.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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What angle would you rather him take on a story? The pitching sucks one has been beaten into the ground. The team is in disarray has been beaten into the ground? All of the story lines about this dead-ass, dead end team are finished until October 4.

The writers are marking time just as much as the players. And it's worse for the beat writers because with the Patriots starting up they know that absolutely no one gives a shit about them.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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Pete also laid out very clearly exactly how badly the Sox are sucking lately.

Frankly it's not a bad angle at all: what the hell do the players do when their team is hopelessly out of it and it's September? Guys like Lester and Pedroia have never experienced this before, Ross has.

I don't see the criticism here. It's not a bad article at all considering how dead-ass the Sox have been.
 

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon

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But professional pride requires a better effort in a game that has postseason implications, particularly when it’s against the Yankees.
Against the A's, a team fighting for its first playoff spot in a while, with a bunch of no names, professional pride doesn't come into play. So you get blitzed. But professional pride will now kick in. Blue Jays had no professional pride problems in trouncing the terrible Sox.

It's treating the whole thing like it's in a vacuum.

Maybe I'm just reacting to how it's framed. If the story hed was "Sox learn what it's like to be losers," and the rest of the story was framed so that the quotes gathered were in reaction to the question, "what's it like to be on the other side of the coin?," it would make more sense.

But the hed implies the team will play harder because of the opponent, ignoring their recent opponents, which I find ridiculous.

I agree that by the time it gets mid-story and talks about the players not having been there before, and the quote from Jeter, it's basically fine. But I just think this idea that players win because they're trying and lose because they're not trying is really, really bad.

They lose because the players aren't as good, for the very most part. I guess it's possible that a team could just totally lay down, but how does that even work in baseball? The pitcher doesn't throw as hard? The fielders don't dive after balls they otherwise would? The hitters give up at bats? I just don't think that happens in such an individual stats-driven league.

Does it happen in Basketball? Football? Hockey? Almost definitely, because stopping someone on defense in all of those sports, or going all out on offense, has tangible benefits. You're literally physically pushing on another human being. Baseball, I just don't think it works that way.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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Here's the thing, for the last 10+ years every game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees have been over-covered and have been referred to as a war. Every March and April, we read the same baseball preview issues and it always says, "Watch out for mid-September when the Yanks invade the Fens, it's going to be another one for the ages!" So it's not like the Sox are playing the Rangers or the A's or the White Sox.

In other words the prevailing wisdom is that "throw out the standings" the Red Sox are playing the Yankees and it's going to be a war, is what Abraham is getting at. He knows that isn't the case, the players know it isn't the case, I'd guarantee that 95% of his readers know it isn't the case; but it's a nice, easy story to write in a year where there aren't any nice, easy stories.

You're getting angry about something that doesn't matter at all.
 

Orel Miraculous

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Nothing particularly substantive to post, just want to alert people to the fact that Abraham is positively embarrassing himself with his Myers/Lester coverage and, if you're in the mood, his twitter feed is good for a laugh or too.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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I look at his tweets today and I see a guy mocking the fervor at which everyone is over-reacting to a one line rumor of a possible trade that even the rumor admits is nowhere close to being a reality. A poor attempt at humor, but that's fairly par for the course in Abraham's case.
 

Corsi

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I look at his tweets today and I see a guy mocking the fervor at which everyone is over-reacting to a one line rumor of a possible trade that even the rumor admits is nowhere close to being a reality. A poor attempt at humor, but that's fairly par for the course in Abraham's case.
This whole situation really has highlighted Abraham's laziness.

Alex Speier works his ass off and writes an 886-word column on the Myers/Red Sox connection, while PeteAbe casts an 84-character tweet dismissing it like a wiseass.
 

SoxScout

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Still not as bad as Tony Mazz saying there are major red flags with Myers because superstars don't get drafted in the 3rd round.
 

Castor Troy

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Saw the tweet in E5 Yaz's post on main board

Pete Abraham ‏@PeteAbe

Holy cow, bored #RedSox writers are churning out Lester columns like Hyundais today.


Rob Bradford ‏@bradfo
.@AlexSpeier isn't close to bored and just followed up great look at Lester w story of Red Sox history with Wil Myers


Umm, what a dick....,.

Good for Bradford to speak up for Speier
 

soxfan121

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Still not as bad as Tony Mazz saying there are major red flags with Myers because superstars don't get drafted in the 3rd round.
and that small market teams don't trade prospects
And how he compared him to Coco Crisp/
Or how he seemed totally unfamiliar with KC's lineup/plethora of hitting prospects/roster situation. When it would have taken all of five minutes of research to know these things.

But the best part is how he was waving around some sort of baseball periodical (probably BA) that clearly hadn't been opened before the show and was reading Myers scouting reports. What. An. Embarrassment. /Begnino
 

HomeBrew1901

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Or how he seemed totally unfamiliar with KC's lineup/plethora of hitting prospects/roster situation. When it would have taken all of five minutes of research to know these things.

But the best part is how he was waving around some sort of baseball periodical (probably BA) that clearly hadn't been opened before the show and was reading Myers scouting reports. What. An. Embarrassment. /Begnino
That and he had no idea that Trout won the Minor Leaguer of the year award last year. Scary thing is that I didn't know that until Toucher and Rich took the 5 seconds to look it up and tell us how much success the last 5 winners of that award have has in the MLB.

I can't tell if he just doesn't give a shit or if he doesn't want to know because he doesn't want to have to change his argument.

I don't have a problem with him not wanting to trade Lester for Myers but have more reasoning behind it than you don't like prospects.
 

steveluck7

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...or if he doesn't want to know because he doesn't want to have to change his argument.
I really really think this is it with a lot of the "old guard", BBWAA types. I think their disdain, resentment and jealousy of "bloggers" is blinding so they just stick with their point in the face of facts, research and, in many cases, common sense.
 

joyofsox

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Did the Globe backdate Pete's Extra Bases post on Lester/Myers? The time is 12:35 PM and he insulted Speier's column on twitter at 1 PM. That seems really strange. (Speier's second story is timed at 3:30 PM, so Pete was not tweeting about the fact of two stories being written.)
 

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon

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Or how he seemed totally unfamiliar with KC's lineup/plethora of hitting prospects/roster situation. When it would have taken all of five minutes of research to know these things.
This has been surprisingly common. Felger and Mazz, a low bar I know, crafted their whole anti-trade argument on csne last night around this argument:

"Does KC have offense to spare?"
"Of course not!"
"Then why would they make this deal?"
"Exactly!"

Then my wife wondered why they were yelling so much and I changed the channel.
 

Buffalo Head

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Going back to my time on the beat (2007-08), there was a suspicision, never proven, that the timestamps on Extra Bases were being manipulated to make it appear they were first to break stories.
 

Corsi

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Michael Silverman joins the fray.

Mainly small-item #RedSox news today. If only there was, like, a baseball ombudsman to advise Red Sox writers on what's most newsworthy.
https://twitter.com/MikeSilvermanBB/status/273895498488885249
 

TheYellowDart5

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Pretty sure Pete Abe meant West Coaster in the sense that Wilson lives in LA, not that he was born there.
 

touchstone033

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Ugh...today's piece about Gomes?

“How does a big machine run? A big machine runs with a lot of grease. You get a tall building with all kinds of fancy windows. It’s that foundation that keeps that building up. I always say I represent the grease that runs the machine, not the machine. I represent the foundation, not the star at the top.”

That's gold, Jerry. Gold.


Gomes has been a platoon player the last two seasons, getting most of his starts against lefthanded pitchers. But the Red Sox see him as more than that.
I'm singling Abraham out, but this is a disease common among many Boston writers (CHB!), the love of quotable, "scrappy" players, and the (patently false) idea that the Red Sox lose, not because they suck, but because they don't want to win badly enough. But Gomes isn't going to take them to the Promised Land. A lifetime .244/.334/.455 hitter? The small side of a platoon (.223/.307/.425 vs righties)? Poor defensively? Which pretty much limits him to LF or DH against lefties. A nice (small) role player, but not someone you build around.
 

Edelpeddle

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What are the chances Peter Abraham got this figure from SOSH?

They still have great payroll flexibility (roughly $110 million is committed for 2013 counting the arbitration-eligible players)
http://www.boston.co...as/extra_bases/

An hour and half earlier, I had said:

We're now up to $110 million in salary comitted to 2013 (including arbitration salary estimates). Napoli immediately becomes tied for the second highest paid player on the team, behind one John Lackey.

http://sonsofsamhorn...s/#entry4405101
It seems strange that he'd not only come up with the same exact dollar amount but also come up with the same estimates for arbitration eligible salaries and use similar wording. Especially strange since my estimate is based on AAV and it included $12 milion in medical costs, so it's not a figure other people would come up with on their own if they simply added up salary figures.
 

CoffeeNerdness

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I don't like the Pete Abe, but is that really a big deal? You saved him some time and effort by putting all the salaries in a tidy table. You've done Red Sox fans and media a fine service. Are you looking for some credit from the guy?
 

keyalyn

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Lots of websites have used those arbitration estimates from MLBTradeRumors. He may have looked at your post to find information, or more likely a site like Baseball Reference that has compiled the same information to make their estimated payroll figures. BR has the Sox at $96.3M before the Napoli signing, or roughly $110M after the signing.
 

URI

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I don't get it. Is it only because Pete didn't put the word "high" in?
 

OzSox

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It's because he meant nine figures (i.e. $100,000,000), not eight figures ($10,000,000).
 

URI

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Either way...who gives a shit?

The problem seems to be with the Globe's inability to edit their peices (whether he meant high-8 figures or 9 figures) rather than this huge "GOTCHA PETE" moment.
 

URI

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Good posting though. Most people would have just shrugged.
 

steveluck7

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So apparently Pete was on DA's show tonight around 7:00. DA asked about the Sox possibly looking into trading Ellsbury, Pete said that no one he;s spoken to has said anything about it.
45 minutes later Pete tweeted that they're looking into trading Ells.

DA (rightfully so) brought it up, keeping it light and sarcastic but I think he has a right to be pissed that he was flat out lied to less than an hour before
 

HomeBrew1901

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My guess, when he was being interviewed by DA he hadn't heard anything. Left the show called some of his sources based on DA's questions and tweeted that.

Does he have anything to gain by tweeting something 45 minutes after telling DA that he didn't know anything?
 

Spelunker

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A surprisingly reasoned and logical approach to his HoF ballot. His take on PEDs even have an internal consistency (and makes you wonder how many writers will follow suit. Frankly, it's unlikely to be that many).

Then again, he doesn't specify which version of WAR he uses, so there's that. :q:

http://www.boston.co..._votes_for.html
 

ForKeeps

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Is Pete going to mention his slogan idea the next time he's doing some propaganda puff show with Tom Caron?
 

BoSoxLady

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HomeBrew1901 said:
To Abraham's credit, he's the one that posted that exchange in the Globe.
Several writers at practice this morning were LOL that Pete got caught with his pants down. He's universally disliked. Not surprised Middlebrooks was involved in the ruse. He's gone after PA on Twitter in the past.