Thursday, July 20, 2006
Behold, a trio of Becketts for a trio more of Beckettful years.
On the face of it this is a deal that's good to everyone. The Red Sox get a relatively young yet experienced pitcher ('tho he's no Jeremy Bonderman) locked up and avoid the arbitration he would've gone to in a year, and then the type of contract he would have commanded on the open market, which had the potential to be more along the lines of five or six years, not just three. Beckett gets three guaranteed years when his still-patchy health record might just as easily prevent him from getting much more elsewhere, and he also gets the security of knowing where he'll be for a while, and the sense of trust that his team has shown in him and his implied future pitching.
The injury thing is the snag. I almost hate to say it (because watch, next time he goes out he'll break something vital) but Beckett has been remarkably healthy so far this season. Remarkably for him, anyhow. Pretty lucky. Because let's face it, our rotation is a mess right now, with Wells slooooooowly coming along, Clement off nursing his mental wounds or whatever the dickens it is he's doing right now, Wakefield with a broken rib (how did that even happen?). The fact that Lester has done as well as he has is also pretty lucky. So our pitching has relied on a recovered Schilling and a guy who, while chock ful of talenty goodness, has yet to pitch a full season.
Who knows what they've done to keep the blisters at bay so far this season. Be it wax or seaweed wrap or urine, so long as it works, I guess we'll just keep going with it, and hope nothing crops up.
Anyways. Good win today against Texas. There's nothing quite like dragging a team all the way out here for one measely game, and then beating them. I was there (photos to come, uh, eventually) and the weather was GREAT. Cool the whole time, but not cold at all. Just a good day for a ballgame overall.
Although I still do not know how on earth Rod Barajas got 3 RBI. Three! Rod Barajas! Absurdity.
I'm off to Toronto for the weekend, and I'll be at the Blue Jays/Yankees game on Saturday, which should be an interesting time... I've never been the Rogers Centre before, and I guess I'll be wearing my Red Sox hat to show my sidelong support for the Jays in this one. Hopefully the Cyanocitta cristata will administer a beatdown.Labels: baseball, contract, Josh Beckett, MLB, Red Sox
7:32 PM
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
We'll get to that image in a second.
By now you've probably all noticed the change 'round these parts; that is, the new banner. It was a sad day when I realized it was pitiably anachronistic to have Joey Harrington and Bill Mueller as the visual focal points of a site covering the Lions and the Red Sox. So now we have a blue cat (of the appropriate species) wearing red socks, which should withstand the test of time. Or something. I may tweak that banner a bit (if you were swift on the day I first put it up you might've briefly seen a version without any borders), but that's how we're gonna do things here at BCRS nowadays.
And by 'we' I of course mean me, my computer, and Mortimer, the collective cactus being that lives on my windowsill. He's very helpful.
But anyways. It's been a bit, and during this time of year that means that I've missed quite a lot. I blame education. I see that Coco Crisp has done something shattering to his hand and/or finger, the official word being "a non-displaced fracture at the base of his left index finger," which, for us nonmedical sorts, is a hairline fracture (see, non-displaced, the bone hasn't moved).
Doesn't sound too bad in the grand scheme of awful and terrifying possibilities, but I don't like the location. The base of his index finger... ugh, that's something he's gonna need for both fielding and batting. It's a part of the hand that gets a lot of pressure put on it, if you think about how much you use your index finger (even on your nondominant hand) for. But the front office doesn't seem panicked, and it's early yet, and it's not like Adam Stern is a horrible replacement. More Red Sox Jews for Passover, huzzah!
In happy good yay-making news, however, David Ortiz has been signed to a 4-year extension, with a club option tacked on at the end. I'm sure if you tried hard enough you could find some someone who is unhappy with the deal, because no matter what it is there will always be some Red Sox fan who finds something about a deal to be unhappy with, but in this case that person is a bitter, bitter soul who lives out their days in the darkness of their parents' basement, pecking away at their computer and cursing the sun like Gollum and generally hating life and joy. Or maybe they're a Twins fan and they feel ever so shafted.
Also, the presser gave us this image, which is clearly one of the greatest AP photographs to ever exist and in a way validates the entire signing all by itself. Seriously. LOOK AT HOW COOL HE IS. And the bling! And the SMILE. And the FUZZY THEO BENIGNLY PRESIDING OVER ALL IN THE BACKGROUND. His hat kind of looks like a bicycle seat but even that is OK because it's David Ortiz and if he wants to wear a bicycle seat on his head, you damn well best sit back and whistle at how sharp he manages to make it look.
The home opener is in a few hours but I, of course, will not be able to see it, as I'll be frantically painting away in my last (official) painting studio of the year. Beckett's going and I'm just a wee bit annoyed that I won't be able to get a good look at him, but it's OK.
Why is it OK, you ask?
This is why it is OK.
I almost didn't want to say anything beforehand, because I hardly believed we were actually going until we were walking up past Ford Field and into the park. The weather was perfect and Bondo was pitching and we had prime Brandon Inge viewing seats (although not necessarily the best seats for photos, what with my telephoto-lens-less camera and all, but I tried). The Tigs lost but it was an amazingly good time and you should all go look at the photos so that you may enjoy it as well.
For more detail on it you can check out my exhaustion-crazed and vaguely incoherent post about it over at RotT.Labels: baseball, blognews, Coco Crisp, contract, David Ortiz, injury, MLB
10:59 AM
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Kit becoming a Cat?
That's the word on the electronic street, anyhow. Jon Kitna is said to have signed with the Lions for 4 years, making Carson Palmer a sad, sad man.
It's awfully hard for me to drag my brain away from baseball season enough to really think about this, but, 4 years? That's not a "here, sign for a year or two and backup this clearly much better dude" kind of contract. That's a "well OK you're going to backup but keep on your toes because you NEVER KNOW" kind of contract. They've said they're going with Joey next season, and they'll probably stick to that, but Kitna is being brought in to challenge as much as he's being brought in to wait on an injury.
And he's a much more potent challenge then Jeff "a good pass involves throwing the ball 100 feet vertically into the air and watching it land at your feet again" Garcia.
The writing's been on the wall for Joey for a long time now, but I think the wording's finally started to become clear. This signing doesn't say that the organization absolutely trusts Joey to carry them to a reasonably good record (see, I'm not even looking playoffs. I'm looking reasonably good record), and much as I love the dude I don't think they would have any reason to trust him with that. But Kitna's the kind of quarterback who could look great in a couple practices and get some Martzish minds awhirlin' when the season starts up again.
Of course, he's also older than Joey, and therefore much more likely to break into a billion tiny quarterback pieces when the offensive line crumbles for the 11,000th time in one quarter and he gets sacked by 5 opposing players at once.
I guess that's what Shaun King is for, right?Labels: contract, football, Jon Kitna, Lions, NFL
2:25 PM
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