So for those of you who didn’t know, the Sox played yesterday afternoon. Yeah, I found out at about 5 o’clock when my XM lost signal and I was flipping around the dial. I heard the Sox wrapping up. Well as they were wrapping up they said that Jonathan Papelbon passed Bob Stanley for first place on the all time Red Sox save list. That got me thinking as to who was the best closer ever on the Sox.
My earliest memory of the closer wasn’t Stanley but a little later. Lee Smith who closed for them in ‘88 and ‘90 both years they lost in the ALCS to the Oakland A’s. But in 1990 he wasn’t the closer. Nope, he was traded away to St Louis because the Sox had brought in Jeff Reardon. Reardon was the closer on the 1987 Twins team that won the World Series. He edged out Smith for the closer job after being signed as a free agent in December 1989. So although these guys were two of the best in the 1980’s, neither proved to be incredible closers for the Sox. Who did the Sox get when they traded Smith to St Louis? That’s right, Tom Brunansky.
So that was the late 80’s and early 90’s after Bob Stanely. The mid 90’s had a slew of closers including Jeff Russell, Ken Ryan (he sucked!), former Twin Rick Aguilera (traded for Frankie Rodriguez and not the one you think), Heathcliff Slocumb (who netted Varitek and Lowe) and Tom Gordon.
Derek Lowe who was setting up Tom Gordon took over after sharing duties with Tim Wakefield one season. Then Ugueth Urbina took a stab (HA!), Byung-Hyun Kim in 2003 before Scott Williamson took the reigns in the playoffs. That was the stupid bullpen by committee crap. The Foulke won the World Series before Papelbon became the man.
So that was Stanley to Papelbon and I’m sure I skipped a few guys in the mix. But I’m going with The Monster Dick Raditz as the best ever. He had 104 saves for the Sox but that was before your closer was really a position. The Monster would pitch three and four innings for his saves. None of this one inning crap.
So I ask. Who’s the greatest Sox closer in your opinion? There’s this giant comments section below for you to sound off. Let’s hear it.
Posted in Baseball, Red Sox | Tagged Boston Red Sox, Dick Raditz, Jonathan Papelbon | 1 Comment »
I’m not talking about the “best bullpen in baseball” looking like their opponent’s bullpen and blowing a 10-1 lead. Nope, I’m talking about Mike Lowell going down again. After getting a shot and fluid drained from his right hip, Lowell is now headed to the 15 day DL retroactive to June 28th.
So besides the fact that it’s another guy on my fantasy team going down (maybe I should put all Yankees on my team and see what happens) it’s another bat out of the line up for the Sox. So I’m going to ask the question that many are too afraid to ask because he really is a great guy.
Was Mike Lowell on steroids?
The numbers certainly speak volume to the speculation. 32 home runs in 2003, 27 in 2004 and followed that up with 8 in 2005 when baseball started testing for steroids. Now I know when he came to Boston he hit 20 in 2006 and 21 in 2007 but that blip on the radar of eight combined with the fact he has the same injury to his hip that a known steroid user in New York has, you have to scratch your head.
Now Lowell is in the second year of his three year contract and is on the books for $12 million and change next year. What if he doesn’t come back from this? Sure he’s optimistic and wanted to play this week in Baltimore but will he be back after the All Star break? At what point does Theo use this as an opportunity to go out and grab another bat for the line up? Sure Jeff Bailey was a decent fill in last night but he batted .188 when he was called up earlier this year.
I say you make a blockbuster deal with Arizona. Give up Buchholz and one of the other young guys and snag Mark Reynolds. Or same package to Texas and grab Saltalamacchia and Hank Blalock. Sure Blalock doesn’t hit for average, but he does give you power.
We’ll see how this shakes out. Hopefully the Sox beat Baltimore tonight too, even with a tired bullpen.
Posted in Baseball, Red Sox | Tagged Clay Buchholz, Hank Blalock, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Mark Reynolds, Mike Lowell | 1 Comment »
I have to thank the NFL Network for some great programming on Saturday night. There we are at Rockafella’s in Salem and look up and what do we see, a very young Tom Brady in the midst of a game winning drive.
Three consecutive passes to JR Redmond had the Patriots driving on the Rams. John Madden said that the Patriots should take a knee and play for overtime. Sure he’s since said he was wrong, but we all knew he was at the time. This Patriots team was a team of destiny.
After the three passes to Redmond there were 33 seconds left on the game clock. After an incomplete Tom eyed his binky Troy Brown. Brown was the guy that Tom would throw to on every third down play when he knew Troy wouldn’t drop the ball. Sure enough this was no exception and Troy Brown caught the ball for a 23 yard gain. We all watched the clock very closely as they were now in Rams territory.
A six yard dump to East Boston’s Jermaine Wiggins put the ball on the Rams 30. Now Wiggins went to college. He actually went to a good football college, Georgia, but that’s not how we remember him. Nope, even Saturday night as we’re watching Tom complete the pass we all said to East Boston’s Jermaine Wiggins.
Tom quickly spiked the ball leaving just seven seconds on the clock. Now after the snow bowl against the Raiders the confidence in Adam Vinatieri is through the ceiling. There’s no way this guy misses the kick, right? Absolutely right. Adam and his Ray Bourque inspired playoff beard booted it through the uprights.
As the confetti started to fall all over the field Antowain Smith high stepped it from the sidelines to celebrate with his teammates. Like Bob Kraft said, that day we were all Patriots.
Thank You NFL Network for letting us relive that again on Saturday night. In case you missed it…
Click Here
Posted in NFL, Patriots | Tagged Adam Viatieri, JR Redmond, St Louis Rams, Super Bowl XXXVI, Tom Brady, Troy Brown | 1 Comment »
So a couple Celtics stories and half my readership leaves. The NBA is hated that bad? I had no idea. My highest days were doing Celtics columns. Oh well.
Let’s talk about the Sox. It seems like forever since we have. I mean sure I dumped on Matzucrappa for a couple weeks but really hadn’t focused on the rest of the team. Whipping boy David Ortiz has started to turn his game on in the last few weeks. He’s up to .220 from .185 at the end of May. In fact Papi is hitting .319 in the month of June with seven home runs. Hopefully the weather will warm up soon and his bat continues to heat up.
My whipping boy from last year, the Captain, Jason Varitek is hitting .235 and has 11 home runs on the season. A .250 April followed by a .230 May and a .200 June doesn’t give you much confidence for the rest of the year but it’s OK with George Kottaras heating up. Kottaras has actually hit .273 for June, considering he’s only playing typically every 5th day, that’s pretty good.
Sure the team only managed two runs in their last two games but they won one of those 1-0 and they lost 2-1 in the other. Their pitching is still the key to the team and despite a bad outing against the Nationals, I’m convinced Smoltz still has gas in the tank to help this team down the stretch.
The Sox don’t go West for the rest of the season so that eliminates a lot of the travel they’d typically have remaining on the schedule (think West cost trip post All Star game, every year). They have a series in Baltimore starting tonight and then they’re home against Seattle, Oakland and Kansas City. They could easily go undefeated in their next 13 games but I think 10-3 is realistic. That would put them at 56-32 heading into the All Star Break. Not bad at all.
But this guy checking himself for stink; he still stinks and may be on his way out of town.
Posted in Baseball, Red Sox | Tagged Boston Red Sox, David Ortiz, Jason Varitek | 1 Comment »
A night after the NBA draft, where we saw the Orlando Magic with no picks snagging Vince Carter from New Jersey I have to view it as similar to the Shaq trade with Cleveland. Who cares?
The East isn’t tougher despite the headline. The cream of the crop in the East that was already good just added more pieces to the puzzle. I still view the Celtics as top dog in the East followed by Orlando and Cleveland in a 2a, 2b scenario. Other than those three, there’s really no great team in the East and once again the talented teams will come from out west.
If I’m forced to predict it now, I’m going with my same prediction of last year. Boston over San Antonio in the NBA Finals. I think San Antonio was smart in trading for Richard Jefferson from the Bucks and giving up a role players like Kurt Thomas, Bruce Bowen and Fabricio Oberto to do it doesn’t hurt their core.
The Celtics had the 58th pick in the draft and they drafted one of the oldest players, 24 year old Lester Hudson out of Tennessee-Martin. Yeah, I know he’s a guy you had all over your draft books, but here’s what I was able to dig up on him:
Hudson is the oldest player drafted (he’s about to turn 25 in August), and the second-highest scorer (27.6ppg) behind Stephen Curry. He used a higher percentage of his team’s possessions than any player in the draft, as he had to do pretty much everything offensively to keep Tennessee-Martin afloat. His shooting percentages are commendable when you consider the offensive burden he had to carry. (He shot 51 percent from two-point range and 35 percent on 284 three-point attempts–the fourth-highest number of attempts among 21 NCAA shooting guards
Thanks to CelticsHub.com for the scoop.
Back Monday with hopefully more exciting news. Sox at Braves this weekend. (Yawn)
Posted in NBA | Tagged Boston Celtics, Lester Hudson | 1 Comment »
