Honestly I'm expecting good things to come this year! However I do believe, if the club want to contend for the wild card I believe they are going to have to upgrade Salty by the second half. I really believe he's gonna be a huge liability behind the plate by then.
Long live Pedro Martinez! Long live the bloody sock!
Red Sox World Series Championships in the last ten years 3 (2004, 2007 & 2013)
Just before Opening Day I'm going to weigh in with a prediction of my own, but truth be told I still can't quite figure out our team. Their starting pitching was supposed to be their achilles heel but this Spring it has been awesome. They can revert back to their predicted ways but maybe they are going to be much better. The hitting? That has been rather weak this ST but we should hit better than we have---or will we? And when is Papi coming back....or is he? And that how tough will the AL East be? Questions and more questions. Still, I'll take a flying leap by late next week.:dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno:Originally Posted by rorschach
The two important things to note about this team is that it is much stronger against left handed pitchers than right handed ones, and that this division's best pitchers are left handed.
I also think that this group of players are going to be more effective in that they are more platoon-heavy than recent teams, which isn't something the coaching staff is nearly as concerned about in ST.
Is this forum usually this dead? There's hardly any traffic going through here, and from what I can tell the daily posts this board does receive come from the same few people everyday. Is this the norm?
Long live Pedro Martinez! Long live the bloody sock!
Red Sox World Series Championships in the last ten years 3 (2004, 2007 & 2013)
It gets like this when the regular season has not quite started and when the board has sort of exhausted itself on the spring discussions. We end up hungry for the game threads and that sort of stifles some of the other discussion. At least I think so.
Sometimes the traffic is lighter here than you would expect. It's an excellent forum though. I also post on the BDC forum. That place is completely insane.
If there's something to talk about there's talk. Not a lot of people go out of their way to manufacture topics to cover up the dry spells.
A lot of middle tier forums are like that.
If history tells us anything, the path to redeption for any bad baseball team is marked with a deep rotation of durable starters, a world class defense in both infield and outfield, a lineup that can generate runs in more than one way, a bullpen that won't steal defeat from the jaws of victory, and a top end catcher to hold the whole package together. These are the conditions by which victory is achieved, anything that does not accomplish these objectives is a waste of resources.
Most here don't like New topics just for new topics sakes. I think right now is a little calm before the storm.
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Dear Mr. Henry,
I appreciate the championships- but I'm watching today's game to see a competitive team. I don't keep going back to restaurants who serve terrible food because two years ago I had a great meal there.
There's never anything wrong with a newer topic. Just less to talk about right now. The end of ST is usually dull.
Hey man, I registered over at BDC almost a week ago, and still haven't received a confirmation/activation e-mail, and I'm still not even allowed to view the forum. Does it normally take this long for admins too activate accounts over there?:dunno:
Long live Pedro Martinez! Long live the bloody sock!
Red Sox World Series Championships in the last ten years 3 (2004, 2007 & 2013)
The problem with new topics is that people often create a thread just for attention's sake, even though there is a very similar one somewhere else. IE, "The Front Office sucks because...".
Rorsch----Try this number----617-929-7949 or 617-929-8617. Someone will take your call and get you straightened out. I sometimes post there and once that was my favorite board until they radically changed things in 2008.
Thanks seabeachfred.
Long live Pedro Martinez! Long live the bloody sock!
Red Sox World Series Championships in the last ten years 3 (2004, 2007 & 2013)
I predict they will play 162 games--and win about half of them.
Okay, the season starts tomorrow. Here are my predictions:
First out of the box, this team will finish last for the second year in a row, possibly 4th place if one of the other teams blows up. You don't replace Josh Beckett with Ryan Dempster on a bottom 3 starting pitching staff on a last place team and your team will not improve appreciably.
Lester and Buccholz should rebound and pitch well.
Lackey, at best, will return to his 2010 performance level.
Dempster will pitch to a 4.50 ERA and a .500 record.
The starting staff will improve from a bottom 3 staff to a middle of the pack staff -- a little below the middle. I expect them to start well but an injury or 2 will hit and the lack of depth will cause the pitching to spiral downward and it will burn out the bullpen by the middle of August.
The end of game bullpen will be much improved from last year's terrible showing. It will finish in the top half of the league. It will be in the top 3 earlier in the year, but injuries to the starting staff and a lack of adequate depth will stress the pen and hurt their performance.
The staff will perform much worse pitching to Salty than our other catchers.
Ortiz will miss significant playing time and the offense will have trouble scoring runs.
Middlebrooks hits 25 HRs and knocks in 90 runs.
The King of TalkSox has Spoken.
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