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Time to Go


mickeef2

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Great points all, Lorf. It wasn't that I didn't want to see Hansen, or even Moss, go, I just didn't want to use all of our chips in the same trade. Either way, they absolutely had to make this deal, other teams knew it, and they got held for ransom a bit. At least it's over.

 

My thinking on the lineup is exactly what you said. I think they need to shake things up here. Ortiz should be hitting cleanup now. He's the only logical choice. I don't know why they're so dead set on him hitting third. Ellsbury is absolutely screwing up the whole lineup. If he were even a serviceable leadoff hitter at this point we'd be in so much better shape. Then you could go:

 

Ellsbury

Pedroia

Bay

Ortiz

Drew

Youk

Lowell

Tek

Lugo

 

That's not a bad lineup. Not thrilled with Lowell hitting 7th, and he probably wouldn't be, either, but he's going through his usual 2nd half swoon.

 

The problem with that lineup is that it Drew and Ortiz can't hit next to each other in case of a lefty specialist coming in. For now, until he figures out how to adjust, Ellsbury is going to have to hit at the bottom of the lineup. A lot will depend on how this team adjusts as a whole to Manny leaving the lineup. Some people are more comfortable in certain positions and I don't even know where Bay does best. I actually think Lowell is hitting cleanup tonight. I figure we're gonna get a few Grady Little lineups over the next week or so but it should shake itself out.

 

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The problem with that lineup is that it Drew and Ortiz can't hit next to each other in case of a lefty specialist coming in.

 

Good point. I'd probably flip-flop Drew and Youk in that case, maybe even hit Youk third and Bay fifth.

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According to the radio, Francona had a meeting with "team leaders" (probably Lowell, Tek, Wake, Ortiz, Beckett, etc.) to discuss the trade before it happened and they all supported it. They were all fed up with Manny.

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According to the radio, Francona had a meeting with "team leaders" (probably Lowell, Tek, Wake, Ortiz, Beckett, etc.) to discuss the trade before it happened and they all supported it. They were all fed up with Manny.

 

Yeah, supposedly they had all had it with him. The silly stuff throughout the years they tolerated, mostly because Manny was a mellow guy. But after the Youk and McCormick incidents, I think a lot of guys felt like he had changed.

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Yeah, supposedly they had all had it with him. The silly stuff throughout the years they tolerated, mostly because Manny was a mellow guy. But after the Youk and McCormick incidents, I think a lot of guys felt like he had changed.

 

Didn`t realize it was actually that bad. Oh well. Good debut so far for Bay. 0-1 BB, HBP, R.

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One other thing, Lorf. I feel like an idiot for not seeing this coming the minute Manny hired Boras this past offseason. Think about it- Boras didn't stand to gain a dime if Manny's options were picked up in 2009 or 2010. The odds that the Sox were going to pick those up were very slim, anyway. But Boras couldn't take that chance. Maybe they win the WS, Manny is a hero, and they pick up next year's. So after Manny gets off to that hot start, Boras tells him he's going to approach the Sox about an extension now, knowing full well that there's no way they'd do that because they have options on the next two years. He comes back and convinces Manny that the Sox don't appreciate him. He tells him it's okay, anyway, because he can get Manny 100 million over 4 years on the open market. He's just gotta make sure the Sox don't pick up those options. Manny, being the numnut that he is, actually believes he can get 100 mil for 4 years (that's what he told reporters), and buys into this whole charade. In the end, Boras will be the guy holding the big bag of money, and Manny's legacy in Boston is forever tarnished.

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One other thing, Lorf. I feel like an idiot for not seeing this coming the minute Manny hired Boras this past offseason. Think about it- Boras didn't stand to gain a dime if Manny's options were picked up in 2009 or 2010. The odds that the Sox were going to pick those up were very slim, anyway. But Boras couldn't take that chance. Maybe they win the WS, Manny is a hero, and they pick up next year's. So after Manny gets off to that hot start, Boras tells him he's going to approach the Sox about an extension now, knowing full well that there's no way they'd do that because they have options on the next two years. He comes back and convinces Manny that the Sox don't appreciate him. He tells him it's okay, anyway, because he can get Manny 100 million over 4 years on the open market. He's just gotta make sure the Sox don't pick up those options. Manny, being the numnut that he is, actually believes he can get 100 mil for 4 years (that's what he told reporters), and buys into this whole charade. In the end, Boras will be the guy holding the big bag of money, and Manny's legacy in Boston is forever tarnished.

 

The sad part is that I believe that entirely. It's Boras' style. Shit, that's wrong. But yah, I don't know about how much he'll be getting. Regardless, Boras will get his...what is it...15%? Manny...17-19 million per, don't know what team will offer it to him. A lot depends on how much Teixeira gets and it will only go backwards to Manny. Still, damn. Funny that Boras is the same guy that ruined Hansen when his whole staff told him to change his mechanics which took away his slider when he first came up. So, basically, he was listening to his agent this whole time and then just recently switched back...meaning he was back to step 1 except for the whole "Major league experience thing". Hope he does alright with the Pirates.

 

Scott Boras :furious:

 

Probably still nursing his bruised ego from the A-rod fiasco.

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Manny looked lost in that uni last night. I gotta admit, I felt bad for him a little.

 

 

And as usual, looks like things are going to work out just peachy for the Red Sox. I gotta tip my hat to whoever scouts for them. :brooding:

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lol Now today's reports say Manny asked to stay after learning he'd been traded to the Dodgers, promising he'd behave if the team dropped the options for '09 and '10. Manny being Manny right to the very end.

where'd you hear that?

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where'd you hear that?

 

from the Globe:

 

Ramirez Lobbied to Stay

(Reuters)

 

Of all the Manny moments in Boston, the last ranks as one of the most confounding. Within an hour after Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein informed Manny Ramírez he had been traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers Thursday, Ramírez's agent, Scott Boras, called the Sox back, according to a source with direct knowledge of the negotiations. If the Sox dropped the option years on his contract - which they had agreed to do if they traded him - Boras said Ramírez would not be a problem the rest of the season.

 

For the Sox, the source said, Ramírez's pledge of good behavior only served as a tacit admission that his disruptive conduct of the last couple of weeks had been calculated, and they had had good cause to suspect more was in the offing if they did not trade him. The Sox told him thanks but no thanks, what was done was done, and pack plenty of sunscreen.

 

The debate over the merits of trading Ramírez was not going to end last night with a satisfying debut from the new Sox left fielder, which is what Jason Bay delivered in a 2-1, 12-inning win over Oakland. It was not going to end with Ramírez charming the LA glitterati, which he delivered, too, showing up in shades, a smile, and a No. 99 Dodger jersey. It promises to continue through the summer, over the hot stove of winter, and quite possibly through the day Ramírez is inducted into Cooperstown and beyond.

 

But for Jason Varitek, the pros and cons of that discussion are not terribly important. This was:

 

"Either way, you had to get to this point and have some closure," said the Red Sox' captain, not long after manager Terry Francona and general manager Theo Epstein had trooped upstairs to answer questions about Bay's arrival and Ramírez's departure, not necessar ily in that order.

 

"Either Manny's here or he's not," Varitek said. "It became more of an issue of whether or not he was going to be here. And he was pretty adamant he didn't want to be here.

 

"It came down to his happiness. If they had come to Manny and he said he wanted to stay here, he'd probably still be here. It's kind of out of our hands. I'm glad there's a resolution. There was going to be whether he was here or not."

 

Truth is, if John W. Henry had cast the deciding vote, Ramírez might not have been frolicking in Chavez Ravine last night. Henry, whose life has been defined by his mastery of numbers, was unconvinced the Sox would be better off without those generated by Ramírez's bat. But in the end, Henry elected to give his support to Epstein and his baseball operations staff.

 

His people believed they had no choice but to trade a player who was bent not on forcing the Sox to pick up his $20 million option for 2009, as many thought, but, in their view, was willing to do anything - including laying down on the job - to achieve the opposite outcome: becoming a free agent with no strings attached.

 

In that sense, Ramírez won. To get him to agree to a trade, the Sox had to waive the two option years on his deal. But even after letting it be known they were willing to pick up the remaining $7 million of his salary this season, the Sox were not overwhelmed with offers for the 36-year-old slugger. In that respect, it was reminiscent of 2003, when the Sox placed Ramírez on irrevocable waivers and any team could have had him for a song - and they all passed.

 

But while one member of the hierarchy expressed regret that the Sox helped Ramírez to achieve his goal, Epstein and Francona were clearly pleased - and relieved - that in the final minutes before the trading deadline, they were able to engineer a three-way deal with the Pirates and Dodgers.

 

"We were in a bit of a difficult circumstance and we made something good of it," said Epstein, who was in Anaheim two weeks ago when Ramírez balked at boarding the bus taking the team to the airport and a flight to Seattle.

 

"I heard about that," Varitek said. "I didn't see it."

 

The acts, and words, of defiance seemed to multiply quickly thereafter.

 

Ramírez refused to play a game in Seattle, citing a sore knee about which he'd said nothing to the trainers. When he elected to sit out the first game back at Fenway Park, against the Yankees, ownership insisted on MRIs on both knees, and when those tests came back clean, it threatened disciplinary action if he sat out the next night.

 

That's when Ramírez stepped up the rhetoric - the "they're tired of me, I'm tired of them" diatribe, and the "they don't deserve me" zinger - and his teammates could no longer block out the white noise of discontent. That led to what Mike Lowell described as a "weird atmosphere."

 

"He's not a press guy," Lowell said. "And when you see his quotes every day, that's something different. I don't think it's surprising, but it was weird.

 

"If Dustin Pedroia said the same comments, we think he's a Martian. If Manny says it, people like it. It's front[-page] news."

 

Losing two of three to the Yankees, then being swept by the Angels, the series finale an ill-focused embarrassment, only added to the sense that something needed to be done. The Sox had lived through 2006, when Ramírez claimed patellar tendinitis left him unable to perform for basically the last six weeks of the season.

 

They judged a similar risk was at hand.

 

"It's very hard to tangibly evaluate how hurt someone is," Lowell said. "I'd like to, and still do, take his word for it, until someone comes up to me and says, 'I faked the injury.' It's kind of like Barry Bonds. Everyone has crucified him, but I still have to believe he's innocent until someone proves him guilty."

 

Was Ramírez hurt? "You don't know," Varitek said, "but it was clear he was unhappy here. And we needed a productive Manny Ramírez."

 

The Sox in the past had always backed off from trading Ramírez. This time they decided there was too much risk in keeping him. Epstein came away elated that the Sox were able to emerge from the process with a quality left fielder, the kind they expected would be in short supply this winter.

 

"[Ramírez] had a remarkable run here," Epstein said after asserting he would not engage in finger-pointing at one player. "His whole career was remarkable. He is one of the best righthanded hitters in history, and no one can ever take that away from him."

 

The loss of that player, for David Ortiz, was hardly the cause for celebration. His answers were short, flat, and delivered without the trace of a smile.

 

"We got to fight through it," Ortiz said. "We'll see. Hopefully, everything will start going good, everybody moves on, and we go where we are supposed to be."

 

The words seemed to lack conviction.

 

There was no mistaking the belief in Francona's words, however, that better days lie ahead.

 

"We want an atmosphere," he said, "where good players want to do the right thing.

 

"I was very pleased. What we care about, all of us together, is our team, and I think we sit here feeling pretty good about our team."

 

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