Pap Smear
By SteveThe Red Sox did the right thing moving Jonathan Papelbon back to the bullpen. While it’s true a starter has more value than a reliever, the Red Sox already have a solid core of starters with Schilling, Beckett, Matsuzaka, and Wakefield. It’s already too right-handed, and there’s no guarantee that Papelbon could dominate hitters as a starter like he did as a reliever. (Seriously, .78 WHIP, 0.92 ERA? Those numbers are as good or better than Mariano Rivera during some of his peak seasons.)
This slots the clearly insane Julian Tavarez in the fifth spot in the rotation, which isn’t necessarily a terrible thing. He’s an erratic reliever, which I think is worse than being an erratic starter. In a handful of games at the end of last season, he pitched well and even tossed a complete game. I prefer power arms in the bullpen and slop groundballers like Tavarez as starters.
Tavarez is keeping the spot warm for Jon Lester, who’s still on the way back from his treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It’s hard to say if Lester is good or bad; he wasn’t that great for the Sox last year, but at the end he was feeling the effects of the undiagnosed cancer. He’s a lefty with decent stuff, and his minor league stats are off-the-charts. While he walked way too many batters in MLB, he’s only 23.
In other Sox news, it’s all about Dice-K. He struck out 7 Pirates on Wednesday, which is kind of like saying he beat up on a minor league team. Still, he got Jason Bay multiple times, which is a good sign.
March 29th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
It was a dreadful idea, Steve. It’s not a question of if he’ll break down - it’s a question of when.
March 30th, 2007 at 12:23 am
I can’t say I’ve cared enough about baseball to even know when the World Series is happening since I stopped playing in 3rd grade. You see I was getting pretty good, batting 1.000 in pre-season & never dropping a ball in the outfield, but when the coach moved me to 3rd base (& I’ll never know why that throw was more difficult than center field) my arm started hurting & I had to quit. A year later I broke it throwing a tennis ball playing a game of wall ball during recess…?_?…
Apparently I had less than 1mm of bone mass on the edges of my right humorous due to a cyst that had developed. Awesome.
Anyway, I thought I’d just share why I’m so clueless. I have no idea what you just said in this post, and I’m quite sure this response is equally validating to you. (I’m secretly here under selfish motivations, despite also wanting to support you)