Or maybe he's right to be bitter about it?
You seem to have chosen the Management side. Which is fine, but it's a choice.
Playoffs? Playoffs!??!?!?
- Thread starter Sandy Leon Trotsky
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You seem to have chosen the Management side. Which is fine, but it's a choice.
I am not there. But when this thread kicked off, I immediately thought that we had the other end of the 2011 playoff odds, and hoped for, why not? And it immediately made me mad about the 2011 all over again.
The firings were warranted. It was the very worst of what I had experienced in 4+ decades of fandom.
This team, with all its warts and shortcomings and apparent futility, has fought hard. It has been a professional effort. For that I am grateful. I like them.
That's an interesting point, honestly I believe management was at fault as well. That trade deadline the starting pitching was in trouble, just going off memory and being too lazy to look, Buchholz was injured and the big acquisition was the often injured Eric Bedard. I remember it getting so bad they almost acquired Bruce Chen to pitch in the final Baltimore series.
I guess my point, there was blame all around, I sometime believe people want to excuse Francona from that equation and he gets a free pass because of how it ended for him and he is a sympathetic figure.
This, for me. Cora is managing like there's something at stake, and the players are following along to the best of their (in many cases, limited) ability. I've never been a "get angry at my favorite team for sucking" kind of fan, but yeah, I like them.
Also, there is no reason for him to be a dick to Sox fans, especially 8 years later.
Taking at least 3 of 4 from the Yankees and mucking up their race for home field advantage would be an Orioles’ style consolation prize. I’d also like to knock the Rays out of the playoffs, because I’ve hated them since the Pedro / Gerald Williams fight and the. Throwing at Daubach 3 times in the same game — because their crappy pitchers kept missing.
My recollection was that Lackey was next up if there was a playoff game and they were trying to sign Chen to pitch instead. I'm still peeved at the Yankees for treating their game with the Devil Rays like a Spring Training game.
One point about that season that was somewhat on Francona. In addition to the pitching, right field was also a disaster down the stretch with Drew hurt and Reddick experiencing growing pains both offensively (.265 OBP in August) and defensively. Daniel Nava had a good SSS start in 2010 before getting hurt and fading. For some reason they outrighted him off the 40-man and got away with it. So the braintrust including Francona and Epstein had written him off. He also had a bad April and May at Pawtucket, dropping further off the radar, and never got a call up in 2011, even after rosters expanded. But he had put up a 1.080 OPS in August and from June 1 on the year had gone 86-284 with 38 BB 19 2B 1 3B, and 9 HR (including 7 in August) for a .:303 / 385 / 472 line. In the first half of 2012, he was finally called up on May 10 and hit to a 815 OPS in the first half — he got hurt early in the 2nd half and struggled to finish again before his magical 2013.
I always felt like if they’d called him in the fall of 2011, he may have been the type of spark that would have shaken off the doldrums that team was in and maybe gotten them 2 more wins.
I didn't mean to hijack the thread. I get it, my opinion on Francona is not popular. He never really talks about Boston, considering all he accomplished. I guess it the optics of it, I never thought the day would come that Roger Clemens comes back and is welcomed back and goes to the booth for an inning.
I'm just joking.
Honestly, if that's how he acted toward you, I don't blame you at all for having that opinion.
Last night on mlbn, they were saying that the Sox are the best team to miss the playoffs. It's a shame, and seems to have been avoidable, as so many close games were lost. Oh, well.
What unites the 2011 Sox and the 2019 Sox is the moral that starting pitching is both fragile and valuable, and it can be hard to acquire more midseason.
It's so true. We have the same run differential as the Indians, a run better than the Rays, two worse than the Braves. Better than the entire NL Central.
The other issue, for me, is the obvious one: the slow start. Since the 6-13, we've played at a 93 win pace in a strong division. If we could have played at the pace we've played since the last week of April, we'd be roughly tied with Oakland and Cleveland.
Just playing at a .500 pace in both of those scenarios would have the Sox leading the damn WC this year. Unfortunately I'm sure just about every fringe team has a stretch similar. I think the first stretch was on Cora... and I really hope to hell he figured out that he can't assume the Sox are playoff caliber next year. The second stretch (early August 0-8) I could lay at the feet of Sale but the whole team collapsed.
At .500 for both those stretches would add 7 extra wins....
Anyone ever meet John McNamara? I met him at a golf course parking lot here in Sacramento during the 87/88 winter. He was very friendly and introduced me to his his brother and nephews as they showed up, while remembering my full name.
I was raving about Sam Horn, but he said other teams had figured how to pitch to him and that Wes Gardner was strictly a reliever in response to my suggestion of putting him in the rotation.
It’s been a frustrating year, but the team that was so fun to watch last year is still a likable bunch of guys. When three Cy Young winners pitch more like Al Leiter than their former selves, wins are much harder to come by.
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I think 95 hosts the WC... 93 will be the guest team. Still.... that's 17-3. Not happening. Please keep JDM off the field, also. Two losses now in the past week can be laid at his feet.