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Sunday, April 22, 2007

Evil Empire, Evil Dan

Evil Dan is on display today. What's really twisted is that ostensibly, the article is an upbeat one as he discusses how the Red Sox are getting some critical early season wins against the Yankees. Yet, Evil Dan lurks behind every graf spewing venom and deceit coupled with his typical gratuitous shots.

Right off the bat, Dan diminishes the Sox victories by recapping the Yankees assorted injuries. Matsui and Posada are out; Damon has a bad back; Sheffield is in Detroit. Oh, come on, I don't think anyone feels sympathy pains for the Yankees lineup. If there are any excuses to be made, it is with the Yankees pitching staff; they have had their share of injuries. Yet, the 2006 Red Sox, a favorite whipping post of Shaughnessy, had their share of pitching misfortunes and yet Shank has declared 2006 as the year that Manny quit.

Speaking of 2006, last year's 5 game sweep is once again trotted out as the weekend that inspired Manny to quit. As has been pointed out on this site, Manny did not quit that particular weekend. He went 8 for 11 with 2 HRs. According to Shank, that sweep also apparently revealed major flaws in the design of the 2006 Red Sox team which forced Red Sox ownership into a spending spree. As also has been pointed out on this site, Shaughnessy lauded the composition of the 2006 team earlier in 2006.

Shaughnessy includes this joke of a line:
No more crying about the Yankee payroll -- not when you charge the highest prices in baseball, not when you regularly raid the rosters of the A's, Marlins, and Diamondbacks of the world.
Who on the Red Sox roster was raided from the A's? The Red Sox got Beckett and Lowell from the Marlins at a rather steep price in a trade that Shaughnessy has previously used to take pot shots at Theo and the gorilla suit. The Red Sox got Schilling in a trade from Arizona but I would hardly call that a roster raid.

Shaughnessy's obsession with Daisuke Matsuzaka seems to be waning although we get two brief references. Shank calls Matsuzaka the $103M man and I wonder if these references will become increasingly snide if Matsuzaka's record remains average so Dan can set himself up to say "I told you so--what a waste of money". Dan later calls Okajima a "stable pony" for Matsuzaka and I have got to think there are more apt metaphors.

31 comments:

mike_b1 said...

To paraphrase Eric the Clown, Dan is stuck on some owner from the '30s. No one raids Billy Beane's A's. I think that much has been established. As for the Marlins, based on last year's ramblings, Dan felt the Marlins ripped off the Sox in the Beckett deal.

Look at the record, and it's lose-lose for Theo and Co. They open the wallets, Dan criticizes them for overspending. When they don't, they are cheap.

That's some razor-sharp analysis there, Dan-O. How much does your head hurt from thinking that up?

Michael Wolf said...

Former As players who later played for the Sox include Johnny Damon, Keith Foulke, Jeremy Giambi (who played a year elsewhere between playing for Oakland and Boston), and Chad Bradford. Maybe some players on the current roster as well, although I can't think of any off the top of my head.

It does seem kind of pointless on CHB's part, but just because a barb is random and pointless hasn't stopped him from publishing it before.

mike_b1 said...

So I finally got around to reading the column. Pretty bad analysis. The Red Sox are following the same philosophy and approach they have since Henry & Co. came in. Dan doesn't understand it, so he can't see it, but it's completely intact.

Anonymous said...

"Dan diminishes the Sox victories by recapping the Yankees assorted injuries"

Clearly Shaughnessy should not be injecting a dose into reality into our trip to the land of sweets and joy and joyness.

Shun the nonbeliever! Shunnnnnnnnnn. Shhhhhhunnnnnnnnnnh.

mike_b1 said...

So Bruce, maybe you can explain why when the Yankees are hurt, Dan makes excuses, but when the Red Sox are befelled by injuries, it's "flaws of logic and gaps of talent in the House of Boston Baseball."

Then climb off of Dan and explain it to him too. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

Well they certainly did go out and get front-liners for short and right and snagged the top pitcher available. The difference in the '05 and '06 offseasons is quite clear. And the point that hte Empire is crumbling is a good one and injuries to aging players are part of that crumbling.

Fill me with sweet sugary goodness.

mike_b1 said...

Obfuscate all you want. Theo said during late 2005 that they would sacrifice some offense for pitching and defense going forward and that's exactly what they did. And Beckett was a prize! Remember how The CHB called Beckett the new Clemens and said they should give him Clemens' old number?

And they didn't need to get a starting RF before 2006 bc Nixon was still under contract. That was the point of getting WMP, hoping he would grow into the role (defensively a question but clearly his bat is huge).

Chris said...

The 'Nappy-Headed' columnist is dreadful, we all agree. But his 'stable pony' Bob Ryan (or is it the other way around?) proved that The Boston Globe wagon is losing its wheels in a big way. Ryan noted that Manny's home run--in the sphere of the 4-HR Third inning--landed 'a row or so in front of the Volvo sign.' It did no such thing; the ball soared OVER the sign and out of the park. Those of us not lucky enough to attend the game gratis but watch instead like mere mortals on TV, could see that the ball Manny hit behaved far differently than Ryan described.

Talk about a newspaper in utter free-fall. The 'last bastion' of respect for The Globe resided in the Sports Department Now that's gone, too.

Anonymous said...

wow Michael ... they raided the A's of Jeremy Giambi and Chad Bradford. The Sox are pirates on the high seas, really.

Damon was a classic A's rent-a-player the team had no intention of re-signing.

Anonymous said...

Nixon clearly wasn't the future after '05 but it took a year to replace him, rather than eat some of his contract and trade that bit of offense for a pitcher. So they traded offense for pitching and defense? You mean like packaging the shortstop Ramirez and Sanchez in the deal for Beckett? Or
trading Arroyo? Or maybe giving away Cla Meridith and catcher of the future Bard in the Mirabelli panic-move? Or perhaps it's trading Wells with a month to
go in the season -- Getting a look at Gabbard, Jarvis and Hansack was may have been a good idea, but casting off a veteran pitcher with five starts left when barely five games games away from wild-card is hardly concentrating on pitching and defense...


Then we have the poster child for remedial reading class, the blogger, stating that "As has been pointed out on this site, Manny did not quit that particular weekend." Well golly gee, the columnist actually said "The five-game sweep
effectively ended the Sox' season, inspired Manny Ramírez to stop playing for the rest of the year" and like it or not, Manny may have had eight hits in the infamous sweep, but he didn’t have eight more for the rest of the year, and in fact had exactly one (1) against a team that was over .500 so Shaughnessy hit that
one on the nose.

So much for the magical bridge of hope and wonder

mike_b1 said...

That "catcher of the future Bard" was 27 and had hit .193 in 83 at-bats the year before.

Meredith had no fastball and bombed in Boston. Sanchez was a kid with no major league experience and coming off arm surgery. Ramirez was a kid with no power and a bad attitude. Arroyo was, hands down, one of the five worst starters in the majors in 2005.

Nice try.

Your revisionist history is sounding an awful lot like Dan, OB.

Anonymous said...

Careful swallowing the pablum, sometimes you choke on it.

Meredith, 5-1, 1.07. His "bomb" in Boston consisted of 2.1 innings.

Bard was .239 lifetime, not great but given the comparatively reduced shelf-life of catchers compared to other position players, a better option that John Flaherty, who mercifully decided his .165 in '05 was something to retire over or anything on the farm or Mirabelli, who spent the year getting neck strain from looking up at the Mendoza line.

Sanchez had come back from relatively minor (compared to Tommy John) elbow surgery to post an ERA of 1.77 at Lowell, then an ERA of 2.40 at high-A

Rameriz was called the Red Sox top minor league prospect by Baseball America after the '04 season; his big sin was acting like a 19-year-old when he was 19.

Arroyo was coming off a year in which he won more games, pitched more innings, gave up fewer walks and had a lower ERA than Matt "Young" Clement, and was about what you want from a fifth-starter.

Time to go into the Theo cave, a joyful and perky merry land.

mike_b1 said...

Careful about using words you don't understand, Brucey Boy. Like "great" or "minor."

Bard sucks. His handful of good at-bats in San Diego were a mirage. Of course, you discount his history leading up to that, obfuscating the facts by throwing in John Flaherty, for some unknown reason. And so Meredith puts up a good season in absolutely the best pitchers' park in baseball. Great: give him the Cy Young. Oh wait:

Meredith pitched well in a handful of games in San Diego. Bard has stunk up every city he played in in four times the number of games, yet we should put great weight on Meredith's stats and ignore Bard's.
Makes sense.

Not.

As for this part, well, get thee to Mass General, stat:

"Arroyo was coming off a year in which he won more games, pitched more innings, gave up fewer walks and had a lower ERA than Matt "Young" Clement, and was about what you want from a fifth-starter."

Arroyo, 2005: 14-10, 4.51 ERA, 100K/54BB.
Clement, 2005: 9-13, 3.68 ERA, 190 K/77BB. Clement pitched in a better hitter's park, struck out more, had a better K/BB ratio (2.47 to 1.85), had a much higher K/9 ratio, and had, contrary to your bizzare statement, a much lower ERA. Clements' lower win total was simply the byproduct of the Cubs inferior offense.

Please take Dan's dick out of your mouth before speaking again. Thank you.

Juli La Chuli said...

The last bastion of respect resided in the sports section? When was that, the early 80's? Cancer Dan Shaughnessy, the man who perfected spreading clubhouse cancer to the next level - the city's sportspages and airwaves - and Bob Ryan and Ray Fitzgerald and on and on and on are a genetically-designed mutant strain of Irish bitterness, resentment and envy overdosed with bile and bilge.

dbvader said...

Cancer Dan Shaughnessy, the man who perfected spreading clubhouse cancer to the next level - the city's sportspages and airwaves - and Bob Ryan and Ray Fitzgerald and on and on and on are a genetically-designed mutant strain of Irish bitterness, resentment and envy overdosed with bile and bilge.

I don't know whether to be offended at the shot at the Irish or to be stunned by the great writing.

I will choose the latter. Well done.

Anonymous said...

More silliness. The point is whether the Red Sox shifted gears in the '06 off-season, as opposed to the '05 off-season. They clearly did.

By the way, when Arroyo was traded, he was coming off a season when his ERA was indeed lower than Clement's 4.57 and he did win more games than Clement. The Cubs defense had nothing to do with Clement's performance in '05 since he signed with the Sawx on Dec. 22, 2004

Get your facts straight

Today, in case you didn't notice, Bard is and hitting 21 points higher than Varitek since coming off the DL.

mike_b1 said...

Look who's talking, Bruce baby.

1. Re Bard, I don't know what you are talking about. Bard is on the DL and hasn't played since April 11.

2. Anibal Sanchez missed the 2003 season due to Tommy John surgery.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Anibal_Sanchez

3. Re Clement/Arroyo: I typed in 2005 when I should have typed in 2004. Matt Clement 2004 ERA (last year with Cubs): 3.68. 2005 ERA: 13 wins/4.57.

Bronson Arroyo 2004 ERA: 4.03. 2005: 14 wins/4.51.

The difference in their respective ERA's amounted to a couple of earned runs over the entire season. Clement gave up only 5 unearned runs that year; Arroyo, in a handful more innings, benefited from 13. Change a questionable scoring decision or two, and the ERA's are the other way around.

Of course, what you ignore, too, is that Arroyo lost four more games (10, vs. Clement's 6), struck out 46 less (141-100) and had a much lower K/9 ratio (4.87 vs. 7.8). So Arroyo was much more dependent on his defense to get outs. He sucked, and at that time was getting suckier.

The Red Sox FO's strategy didn't change, your mindless rantings to the contrary.

Dave M said...

Hi OB

Thanks for your comment on the Manny quit take, re: Did he quit during or after the Yankees series.

Previously, the Curly Haired Dimwit has said

"There's been no word from Camp Manny since he curiously quit in the middle of the crucial Yankees series at Fenway in late August."

There you have the poster child for the remedial writing course.

Dave M said...

OB

This from CHB, April 3, 2006--on the day he predicted the Red Sox would take the AL Easr

"It all goes back to pitching and defense. The Sox have starters named Schilling, Beckett, Wakefield, Wells, and Matt Clement. They have rookie stud Jonathan Papelbon warming up in the bullpen if one of the starters gets hurt. They have bolstered their pen (Papelbon again) and it actually looks like baseball-hating closer Foulke is back to his 2004 self. Sure the Yankees have Randy Johnson and closer Mariano Rivera, but the Pinstripes are lamenting the wounded wings of Carl Pavano (and you thought Renteria was a bad signing?) and Jaret Wright. Mike Mussina could implode at any moment. The Sox have far better pitching than the Yankees. Better defense, too: Mike Lowell, Alex Gonzalez, Mark Loretta, and J. T. Snow/Youkilis could be downright spectacular defensively."

He obviously liked what the Red Sox did in the offseason of 05 but of course as Chief points out, he and you are specialists in revisionist history.

Anonymous said...

Sigh. Gotta love that Internet thang, it's great for spreading false information without attribution.

Unable to find a piece in a legitimate newspaper about Sanchez and Tommy John surgery (probably because they have rules about fact-checking), I checked and found a Web site that actually did some original reporting (very rare among the mom's basement crowd) rather than assume that every time somebody gets an elbow cut it's Tommy John time:

Q and A from Redsoxnation.net

"I understand that you've had Tommy John surgery. Are you 100% recovered from that?"

Sanchez: "That's a misunderstanding. It wasn't Tommy John surgery. I had a problem with a nerve in my arm, near a ligament, but I didn't have my ligament replaced and I feel very strong now."

Interesting that I can't find a legitimate news organization claiming that it was Tommy John Surgery, only Bloggers repeating stuff they've "heard."

All this begs the point. The Sawx traded away pitching during '05-'06 and got away from that failed experiment last year. To suggest that because Shaughnessy thought it made the team better a year ago simply avoids the issue. It is quite childish, and completely illogical, to suggest that because Shaughnessy opined that the Sawx had improved themselves before the '06 season they didn't change their approach before '07.

Incidentally, Cla Meredith's road ERA last year: 1.74. At home, in this oh-so-great pitcher's park: 2.86, while pitching four more games on the road than at home.

Sigh

Anonymous said...

Whoops. Forgot to sign it. I be Anonymous 7:11.

Anonymous said...

I just did a very quick search through Google, using the search words "Anibal Sanchez, Tommy John". I found four articles on the first page that said he in fact DID have the surgery. These sites include two credible baseball sites (ESPN from an AP article and Baseball-reference.com) and two "grain-of-salt" I will call them sites. (Answers.com and Wikipedia) I guess that means that it all depends on what you want to believe is a credible site.

Anyway I think the original point was that Dan didn't like the 05 and 06 moves. Is that correct? But I clearly remember him loving the Beckett trade mainly because he thought Theo had nothing to do with it. I also thought that he liked the ideas of bringing Wells, Clement, Tavarez and others that he has killed in his articles onto the team. Am I remembering this correctly or totally misinterpretting what has been said?

Anonymous said...

wow,

i thought nobody hated Shaughnessy more than I do. he's the worst sportswriter ever, bar none. i hope he falls off his stupid mile-a-day treadmill and breaks both hands. what does CHB stand for?

dbvader said...

what does CHB stand for?

Curly-haired boyfriend. It is what Carl Everett called him when ranting about the Globe and its reporters.

Posters at Sons of Sam Horn claim that they popularized the nickname while Bill Simmons claimed he used it first.

Monkeesfan said...

Given how often Shank attacks Theo and company over running the team, has Shank ever offered his own alternative policy for running the team?

mike_b1 said...

If the Globe had rules abou fact-checking, then The CHB wouldn't have published the following:

*Mark Mulder is righthanded.
*Ed Anzalone was "dressing up" as a fireman for Jets games (Anzalone is a fireman).
*Terry Bradshaw was among the former Super Bowl MVPs introduced before the 2006 game.
*The University of New Hampshire players who have played in the Super Bowl (left out linebacker Dwayne Sabb).
*Incorrectly ID'd Gary Alexander in a column about Red Sox fans at Wrigley Field in the June 13, 2005 piece.
*The birthplace for Chris Chelios (it was Chicago).
*Manny Ramirez's batting average before 2004.
*The losing pitcher in Game 6 of the 2003 World Series (it was Andy Pettitte).
*That Game 6 was, in fact, not Game 7. (!)
* Ron Perry's term as Holy Cross athletic director
*The time when a 2003 Red Sox playoff game ended.
*That John F. Kennedy was America's youngest president. (It was Theodore Roosevelt).
*Roger Clemens' age and his career ERA in postseason games.
*That Bob Kraft did not play football at Columbia University.
*The retired numbers of Joe Cronin and Bobby Doerr (How many times has The CHB been to Fenway?).
*Telephone numbers were listed for the Hyde Park Lions Club.
*The number of players with career marks of 350 homers and a .290 or better average who made the Hall of Fame ballot.

dbvader said...

has Shank ever offered his own alternative policy for running the team?

A great point that can never be made enough. Dan has perfect 20/20 hindsight.

This discussion about the '05 v. '06 offseason is ultimately meaningless. The front office doesn't change its philosophy year-to-year. The FO acts based on the circumstances.

Juli La Chuli said...

Wow, looks like Cancer Dan has a doppelganger down in Baltimore spreading his standard envious spew about anybody who climbed higher than stat-master batboy for the High School baseball team (the stat-master of course referring to the time before he spent his entire adult life drunk and peddling shop-worn Curse of the Bambino cliches to make a buck and lost all track of what little he ever knew). ESPN is running an article about Curt Schilling's fake vampire blood on his sock, courtesy of one of Dan's like-minded purveyors of the idea that other people commit the same despicable acts of which they would be guilty of in their blighted little worlds, if only they weren't broken down alcoholic hacks.

Anonymous said...

This is to the people who run the dan watch site...

I have a quick question to ask you guys. I have to do this profile for a course I am taking at a local Boston school and Dan Shaughnessy was the person that I was given to write about. I was just wondering, because I would really like to balance out the article about the good and the bad of Dan so I was wondering if either of the four of you could possibly write a comment about why you don't like Dan and his writing or both for me to use as quotes in my article. If so that would be really helpful. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

I would be glad to assist the student by providing the answer.

The columnist doesn't luv, luv,luv the athletes and this drives the Red Sox sycophants absolutely berserk. They don't think their favourites should be criticized, don't understand any cultural references more than five minutes old (and don't understand some contemporary ones either, as my responses on this page demonstrate) and believe that columnists should emulate their hero-worshipping. They read every column with a pre-conceived notion that there is something wrong with it -- preferring to spew venom rather than engage in intelligent discourse.

Note the constant use of foul language, name-calling, and derisive personal comments by those who criticize the columnist. Note also tone of their commentaries -- immature and hate-filled. No fact is too silly to be googled and re-invented (we now find them elevating something called "lightweight" football to the status of ivy league varsity competition, solely to find yet another point to quibble over)

Finally, as this page demonstrates, there is an abject inability to comprehend a basic truth about sports columns, that the columnist from time to time offers predictions and writes of expectations. Here we have a columnist who looked and thought some moves by the Red Sawx prior to the 2006 season would bring success. They didn't. He pointed out a shift in strategy prior to the 2007 season and his comments are debased as invalid because he thought that the prior year's team was a good one. Basically the Logic 001-flunking critics believe that because he said, in effect, "gee the sox look good this year" and they tanked, he is disbarred from holding an opinion as to whether they did something different in the following off-season.

So basically,they believe that one who doesn't indulge them in their hero-worship, and who challenges their axiomatic beliefs must be vilified with smarmy personal comments.

It's pretty childish.

Anonymous said...

Bruce

You are pretty funny when you say

"Basically the Logic 001-flunking critics believe that because he said, in effect, "gee the sox look good this year" and they tanked, he is disbarred from holding an opinion as to whether they did something different in the following off-season."


That wasn't my point at all. The issue is Shaughnessy's revisionism. Re: 2006 We go from "The Sox will overtake the Yankees this year" in April to a year later when he calls the 2006 edition something to the effect of a "poorly constructed team" for which he takes pots shots at the management team. My point had nothing to do with the Sox changing philosophies from year to the next. It has everything to do with Shaughnessy's blowing with the wind. The guy is a joke.

As for the student, will try to provide you additional thoughts later.

Dave M