canderson said:On MLBN he just said Ellsbury was "by far Boston's most popular player, even more so than David Ortiz."
How is that even possible?
canderson said:On MLBN he just said Ellsbury was "by far Boston's most popular player, even more so than David Ortiz."
Rasputin said:
How is that even possible?
Rasputin said:
How is that even possible?
That's flat out absurd, he was significantly "less popular" than Papi, Pedroia, and Koji. I'd also argue by the end of the year he was behind Gomes, Napoli, Lester, Bogaerts, and Victorino.canderson said:On MLBN he just said Ellsbury was "by far Boston's most popular player, even more so than David Ortiz."
JGray38 said:His Globe column yesterday was something- apparently, no teams seem to have lost ground on the Sox during this FA signing period- he saw everyone in the AL as gaining or keeping pace. He had the MFYs as improving/gaining ground, right after writing that they still need to acquire a rotation and bullpen.
John Marzano Olympic Hero said:
I almost posted that yesterday and it baffled me because everyone either gained ground or stayed the same, the day before the Winter Meetings. I mean, someone has to have lost some sort of ground. You can't have everyone gain ground.
BTW, the Red Sox "stayed the same" because of course they did.
Have they, Nick. Can you prove this?Baseball is seeking to ban collisions that have happened since Abner Doubleday invented baseball. What are we doing here?
This isn’t football, in which every play is a collision. You get a severe home plate collision once in a while, and although MLB estimates that 50 percent of its concussions come from collisions at the plate, they also are the result of batters being hit with pitches, catchers taking foul balls off the mask, and other collisions.
How far are we going to take this?
Raising the issue....how did Nick suffer his concussion?David Ross and Alex Avila suffered concussions as the result of foul balls off their masks during the 2013 season. Are we banning foul balls soon?
One of the game’s biggest stars — Buster Posey — suffered a nearly career-ending knee injury as a result of a collision with then Marlins outfielder Scott Cousins in May of 2011, therefore we must protect catchers?
Curll said:No, he broke his leg.
That is really a minor mistake.
For a guy like Cafardo, who makes dozens of careless mistakes each week, this is not a huge deal.nattysez said:
It's the lead sentence of his article, it was a famous injury, and breaking your ankle and blowing out your knee are different injuries. Have we really reached the point that it's not a big deal for the Boston Globe to get things like this wrong?
Curll said:For a guy like Cafardo, who makes dozens of careless mistakes each week, this is not a huge deal.
Bosoxen said:
Is that what it's come to? It's ok for the media to make a mistake because they make so many?
Fucking Twitter has warped our reality. I could see offering that defense of a tweet. But for an article in a major newspaper, there should be a much higher standard. I do more proofreading of my posts on SoSH than this moron does for his articles, for fuck's sake.
LeoCarrillo said:Nicky's been the MLBN's go-to counterpoint dope to deride the new rule banning home-plate collisions. Today was beautiful. After Johnny Bench praises the rule for 10 straight minutes and says bye, they go to Cafardo remote, who does the usual "They're eliminating an exciting play!!!" crap over a video montage of guys like Ray Fosse and Buster Posey getting plowed, injured and writhing on the ground in pain.
MyDaughterLovesTomGordon said:As I've said many times before, I don't believe Cafardo actually enjoys the game of baseball.
There’s also been talk that the Winter Meetings might be retired before too long. Teams can do their work on the phone, through texts and e-mail. The face-to-face interaction seems unnecessary now. Losing the annual forum would be a shame.
There are some old-school GMs like Kevin Towers, Brian Sabean, Brian Cashman, Ned Colletti, Doug Melvin, Walt Jocketty, Terry Ryan, and Dan Duquette who enjoy the face-to-face, who like seeing the agents, the ex-players wandering around the hotel looking for someone to speak to about a job.
Should Major League Baseball invoke a weeklong moratorium on discussing deals ahead of the Winter Meetings? That would at least return sincerity and urgency to the event.
It’s hard to stop the momentum of trade talks or player signings, but at least have the talks culminate at the Meetings to generate the buzz for baseball.
The question is, who is talking about the winter meetings going away? This is the first I've heard of it, and if roughly a third of the GMs in the league like them, why would they be prompted to eliminate them? He gives no reason for this to even be a credible talking point, for or against. Its shit being flung against the wall because god forbid he actually has to write a relevant story on what is actually happening.Dick Pole Upside said:Nick's anonymous sources.
It would be a shame to retire the Winter Meetings because Nick would actually have to put in a lot of effort. "I'd rather sit like a dope in the lobby and wait for the players, agents, and GMs to just show up."
:gonk:
MyDaughterLovesTomGordon said:Nick throughout history:
1215 - "Are we really to limit the powers of the King, imbued as he is with God's will?"
1776 - "We will miss, surely, those Redcoats marching through the street with such precision. One smithy told us Paul Revere only took that ride to distract others from his declining work."
1879 - "Sure, there are those who embrace the lightbulb, but we in the Globe offices still cling to the purer, warmer light of the gas lamp."
1908 - "And with the Model T comes a loss of a certain something - that smell in the streets, the warmth of the horses radiating back toward you with the wind."
1952 - "It will be a shame when the polio vaccine becomes ubiquitous - old-school wheelchair manufacturers will likely go out of business. A great tradition lost."
1974 - "The pocket calculator might allow you to calculate batting average slightly faster, but we question its accuracy."
on the same site was an article confirming that Ryan Freel (who they suspect had up to 10 concussions over his career and committed suicide last year) had CTE. http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/12/15/ryan-freel-had-chronic-traumatic-encephalopathy/Smiling Joe Hesketh said:Craig Calcaterra poops all over Cafardo's home plate collision article.
Warms the cockles of my heart.
This is just so on the money.John Marzano Olympic Hero said:I was thinking about Cafardo the other day and why I disliked his writing and it's because of shot like this. There is no context to his writing, he never tries to explain anything, put it into context. And not only does he not do that for the readers, he doesn't do it for himself either.
Subsequently the things he writes either contradict each other from paragraph to paragraph or they just lay there. Take the winter meetings thing, he says 1/3 of GMs like it but says it might go away. What about the other 2/3s? Who knows.
ifmanis5 said:This is just so on the money.
If I had to boil down Nick into two words, it would be Who Knows. He just empties his junk drawer out and leaves it there for us to sift through.
I bet if he was asked about this directly he'd say something like, 'it's not my job to judge, i'm just a reporter, I report things I hear and it's up to the readers to make up their own minds.' To which I'd say, that's just an excuse to enable your laziness. Reporting isn't just a Twitter feed of semi-related facts, they should actually coalesce into an idea or an observation that has a contextualized point to make. That state of mind of 'I'm just putting it out there' applies to much of the media as a whole, but with Nick it literally defines him. Who Knows?!
He really is lazy. I could think of 10 things to write about if I had unfettered access at the winter meetings and the respect (deserved or not) that "Cafardo & Globe" get.Subsequently the things he writes either contradict each other from paragraph to paragraph or they just lay there. Take the winter meetings thing, he says 1/3 of GMs like it but says it might go away. What about the other 2/3s? Who knows. He doesn't expound about how this would affect the offseason or how it could affect trades or other front office maneuverings (I would assume that this is a place were assistants are hired, as well as scouts and other FO personnel).
Kid T said:edit: I wonder if Cafardo still thinks that mitts (nevermind catchers gear) are for pussies and takes away from the purity of the game.
John Marzano Olympic Hero said:Never mind JoePos or Neyer or Keri, Peter King doesn't do this crap. Ron Borhes doesn't pull this shit either. Even Dan Shaughnessy isn't this fucking lazy. In a profession filled with lazy hacks, drunks and self-promoting blowhards, Nick Cafardo really is the worst.
John Marzano Olympic Hero said:JtB, they have to understand that Cafardo is bad but I'm assuming that their hands are tied because of the writers union*. Or maybe because he has a reputation of being a really nice guy and they will look the other way until he puts down his pencil.
* For all the whining and kvetching that sports writers do about the MLB Players Union, the newspaper writers' union is just as strong. Cafardo and other dinosaurs essentially get to write as long as they want and it doesn't matter that they haven't an original thought in decades. Especially with younger, smarter, hungrier, more diverse people would do their job for less money. Remember that the next time one of these men cry about the MLBP Union.
John Marzano Olympic Hero said:I wonder if he'd file a union complaint if he was forced to cover Hockomock League Winter Track?