Posts Tagged ‘Victor Martinez’
This man is off the DL and will be back at Fenway this weekend. If anyone deserves the ovation it's him. Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission.
Ian Browne and Peter Abraham both think that Red Sox fans “owe” Johnny Damon a standing ovation this weekend. I won’t link to their articles, you can find them easily enough, and they are both absolutely ridiculous.
Earlier this year I looked up some quotes because Nick Cafardo wrote a piece trying to guilt fans into loving Johnny again. I think now is a great time to remind folks that Johnny doesn’t deserve a standing ovation.
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From March 2010:
For your amusement today, check out Nick Cafardo’s article about Johnny Damon. You know how I loathe to link to most of the writers over there but I really did get a few chuckles out of Cafardo’s story. Now, I don’t “hate” Damon. I think he followed the money and then pretended that he went to New York because Boston didn’t want him enough. THEN he spent his years in New York talking about how he was with the team he always wanted to be with and winning a championship with them is what he always wanted to do. Now that they have no use for him and he’s digging in with the Tigers, he tells Nick Cafardo that leaving Boston was more difficult than leaving New York and that he hopes there are no hard feelings with Red Sox fans.
Photo of Victor Martinez courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission.
Found in my Twitter feed:
The Atlanta Braves beat Stephen Strasburg and the Washington Nationals 5-0 (with Strasburg giving up four runs on six hits in six innings, three of those runs earned, yet he also struck out seven). According to many on Twitter, the Braves fans started chanting “Over-rated”. When I read that, I must admit to laughing out loud. You have to think that they were beat to death with “expect the team to lose to the mighty Strasburg” crap ever since the day someone figured out he’d be pitching at Turner Field. Why not have fun with it? He lost to their team after being deemed the best pitcher baseball has ever seen. Let him know that, in spite of MLB’s trying to make the world Strasburg fans, not everyone wants him to win – especially when he’s pitching against their team. I don’t believe he’s over-rated but I sure do believe we’re being saturated with Strasburg publicity right now and the “over-rated” chant will hit every ballpark he visits if he doesn’t with the game and strike out at least 10 each in each appearance. This isn’t his fault, this is the fault of MLB and every writer and broadcaster who has decided that a Stephen Strasburg start is more important than any other game being played in baseball. Maybe now we’ll stop being inundated with inning by inning updates on him.
Detroit Tigers’ Joel Zumaya hurt his right elbow last night while pitching against the Minnesota Twins. According to catcher Gerald Laird, you could hear something pop as he made his pitch to Delmon Young. MLB has the video here and the look of pain on Zumaya’s face is, well, painful. Check out the look on Young’s face after he swings. Whatever happened to Zumaya, his catcher and the guy at bat heard it and there’s no way it’s anything but bad news. Thinking good thoughts for the 25 year-old who has been plagued by arm injuries in his short career. In an understandable contrast to how Braves fans treated the opposing pitcher, Twins fans gave Zumaya an ovation as he left the field.
Staying in Minnesota for a moment, Twins fans, I’ve come to find out thanks to Twitter, also do the wave. Can the “Fenway Park is the only place that still does the wave” talk finally be put to rest? It isn’t accurate at all. There are plenty of lame, wave-doing fans all across Major League Baseball and folks need to stop pretending Red Sox fans are some odd breed that still live in the 1980s.
The Red Sox are rumored to be calling up Gustavo Molina from Pawtucket and putting Victor Martinez on the disabled list. Lots of complaining on Twitter last night because Molina isn’t hitting well in Triple-A. Folks need to take into consideration that the two best catchers on the PawSox, Mark Wagner and Dusty Brown, are both on the DL right now and Molina will be the back-up catcher to Jason Varitek. Expecting the Triple-A back up to the back up catcher to come up to the bigs and blow you away is short-sighted and, well, ridiculous. Molina will do what he’s being brought up to do, be a serviceable backup to Jason Varitek. The team is in injury trouble right now; do folks expect all stars to be available to fill in? The injury situation sucks all the way around. Having starters go down doesn’t always (or usually) give a team the opportunity to fill the gap with the next big name. This is, unfortunately, something the Sox and their fans are going to have to deal with for a while.
Reports are that Clay Buchholz won’t be going on the DL, Martinez will be and Dustin Pedroia won’t be having surgery. It’s all still pretty ugly but it still feels to me like it could be worse. Six weeks without Pedie will hurt the most. Can’t even try to find a silver lining there. Hopefully Victor’s hand won’t hurt so much that he won’t be able to rub Adrian Beltre’s head after each home run.
All Star Game voting updates came in yesterday. I am not upset to see no Red Sox players in the running to be starters. Given all the injuries this season I am even more dedicated to the idea that I want the team to use the All Star break as a genuine break from the game. Give them the rest, let the Yankees and Rays do the heavy-lifting for home field advantage. I have no problem with this.
As I mentioned yesterday, there won’t be a live chat for tonight’s game. There will be a live chat tomorrow night (Daisuke Matsuzaka v Matt Garza in game two of the two game series against the Rays) and then next week we’ll start back up on Tuesdays again.
Tonight we get John Lackey going up against James Shields. If ever a game screamed out for a live chat to take the edge off, I realize this is it, so I apologize in advance. I do, however, have a good feeling about Lackey tonight. If the Sox can split this series, I’ll be happy but a sweep would make me even happier…so lets work on that, eh, John?
I’m really getting tired of listing all the injuries the team has endured so far this season.
So let’s focus on the good. The team needed Jon Lester to go at least 7 innings and I was hoping for 8…what we got was his second complete game this season and a nice bit of rest for the bullpen. Winning the series was a nice way to end the weekend.
A day off today and more time for Victor Martinez to rest that finger (no word of him going on the DL from the team, but ESPN, MLBN and just about every baseball writer I read has already reported it as true – can’t wait for Victor to show up behind the plate tomorrow night and give the all the finger).
A programming note: Tomorrow’s regularly scheduled live chat will be postponed to Wednesday. Sox lost last Tuesday and the string of live chat wins began on a Wednesday so I figured I’d shake it up to see how it works (Okay, that and I have something scheduled that I can’t change). Next week the chat will be back on Tuesday.
Two games behind the Yankees and the Sox are in sole possession of the second place slot in the division. It’s small steps but they’re working their way up. I’ll be back at Fenway this weekend and just look forward to watching a game where, hopefully, no one gets hurt!
The Money Shot - Courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission
I’ve spent the better part of this morning reading and re-reading stories about Daniel Nava. He has such a great story that folks really should get to know him. It’s a poor blogger who directs her readers to other blogs or websites and takes the traffic away from herself, but that’s what I’m doing this Sunday morning because I really can’t do those stories as much justice as their original authors. So here we go:
First up is Dan Hoard. Dan is the PawSox radio and tv broadcaster whose blog you should be already reading if you have any interest in the guys in Triple-A. His blog is funny and insightful and full of neat little bits of trivia. He’s written a lot about Nava and all of it is great stuff.
I watched the game from home with my niece and when he came up to bat was explaining his story and how he hadn’t been drafted and how long he had been working to get to the big leagues and how intimidating it must be to have your first at-bat in the bigs be with the bases loaded. I barely had time to begin the story when he hit the ball. My niece, 8 and still learning all there is to learn about baseball says to me “Wow he swung at the first pitch” as we both watched it go into the Red Sox bullpen. Then we jumped up and down yelling “Grand slam! He hit a grand slam!” like most of Red Sox Nation did. After all he’s gone through to get to this point, I can’t even imagine his euphoria at the demand for a curtain call on his first day in MLB. There aren’t enough words to describe my happiness for him.
On to WEEI…Joe Castiglione told Nava to “hit that first pitch out” before yesterday’s game only to be one-upped by Victor Martinez who called the grand slam just before it happened (for the SECOND time in VMart’s career).
Brian MacPherson sums it all up nicely in his column from yesterday:
Close to 20 years later — and more than 100 pounds later, too, for a young man who didn’t really start to grow until he’d already been cut at Santa Clara — Nava hit a grand slam in front of more than 37,000 fans at Fenway Park. He sprinted around the bases half in disbelief just the way he had when he hit his first home run as a 70-pound runt in high school.
Dan Hoard has been telling the story of Nava leaving a ticket at each game for Erin Andrews all season. Yesterday the folks who run the WEEI Twitter account contacted Erin through Twitter to let her know about Daniel, his ticket and his accomplishment. Erin, showing more class than she probably should have, responded politely:
have Dave Obrien pass along my best to Daniel!! Congrats on a big day that will go down in Sox history! Hope to meet him soon!
WEEI’s pimping aside, it would make a great footnote to all that’s happened to Daniel this weekend.
And my last link of the day: Fortunately for us, Kelly O’Connor was there to document the day in photographs. As you would expect, she got some beautiful shots!
Today is not a day to dwell on things like the fact that we now have two of our starting pitchers on the DL…today is a day to appreciate the accomplishments of someone who decided not to give up and who had his shining moment on national television for all to see. Regardless of what happens next, Daniel Nava’s is a story you can tell your kids to show them that even the smallest have a place in the world and even if it looks like your dream is unachievable, it’s never too late to give it a go.
We lost Greg Montalbano in 2009. Kelly O'Connor took this photo of him at the Lowell Spinner's Alumni Dinner in January 2009 (Used with permission)
Just a note of warning: This entry is long and although I want it to be all-encompassing, I’m sure I’ve missed few things. But this is pretty much how I remember 2009!
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2009 was a fairly eventful year for me personally in both the good and bad categories. Sadly more bad than good which is probably why I initially avoided writing any kind of recap for the blog. But while I was writing my recap of the Red Sox decade (and I’ll have that up as soon as I finish it!) I realized I should probably write something about the final year of the decade as well. So here goes.
January: I started blogging at WEEI.com. Looking back on my entries for this month, I’m genuinely surprised I found so much to write about (it didn’t stop new readers from complaining that I was writing “drivel” though. Should have been a sign!). Personal highlights in January: The ongoing Jason Varitek saga, the signing of Rocco Baldelli, Kyle Snyder getting picked up by the Mets, the beginning of the MLB Network and Jim Rice finally gets voted into the Hall of Fame!
February: Bombshell of bombshells for MLB. Selena Roberts exposes Alex Rodriguez as a steroid user. The MLB Network cuts its teeth on this one and, unlike Peter Gammons and ESPN, doesn’t disappoint with their coverage. Unafraid of losing access to the players (again, unlike Peter Gammons or ESPN), they go full throttle on this story and introduce us to their newest addition to the network: Bob Costas. I wrote a lot about MLBN in 2009 and a bit about Sl*ppy. I would have written much less about the two, most likely, had this story not broken. Personal highlights in February: The Caribbean World Series on MLBN (I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed it!), Truck Day, pitchers and catchers reporting and Joe Torre’s book about the Yankees.
Chapter 10: The End of the Curse. When asked by Regis Philbin the other day what happened to the Yankees over the past 7 years, Joe responded “The Red Sox happened”. That will go down as possibly my favorite Red Sox/Yankee-related quote ever.
March: I spent a lot of March writing ‘rants’ and pointing folks toward baseball-related Twitter accounts. Must have been resting up for April! Personal highlight in March: The WBC. I spent a lot of time ranting about players getting hurt and how I didn’t care who won only to be totally sucked into it by the end.
April: The beginning of the season! Lots of liveblogging and picking up more WEEI readers (with mixed results!). Personal highlights in April: Going to both Sox/Mets exhibition games at CitiField, attending Opening Day at Fenway and high-fiving JD Drew and Hideki Okajima during their introductions, being at Fenway for the walk-off win against the Yankees, Jacoby Ellsbury stealing home on Andy Pettitte, Tim Wakefield taking a no-hitter into the 8th inning (thus setting the table for his All Star selection), watching Jonathan Van Every pitch while Javier Lopez floundered in right field then eventually getting DFA’d (watched on television, not in person), the Patriots Day game where Luke Scott got all pissy and some idiot fan threw a ball onto the field and “Toeing the Rubber” getting nominated for a New England Sports Blog Award in the category “Best Red Sox Blog”. Relatively speaking, a great month except for one thing that really hit the baseball world hard and made the month miserable: the death of Nick Adenhart.
But I don’t cry because of any personal connection I have to Nick. I don’t cry because a future baseball star is dead. I cry because parents lost a son today. Many people lost a friend. And the world lost someone who could have potentially been great. Not just at baseball but at life. No drunken ass has the right to take that away from us. This doesn’t “put things into perspective” for me. I hate when people say that. I’m forty years old for God’s sake, I’ve seen enough death and tragedy in my life to have proper perspective, thank you. I don’t watch baseball and think that what goes on down on that field is life or death and more important than anything else in my life. I’d argue that most sports fans, even if they act like they have no perspective, have exactly that. Baseball is an outlet to forget about the realities of life for a few hours.
May: Getting to see Daniel Bard’s first Major League appearance (after having seen him pitch in Pawtucket) was very special. Finding out that Jerry Remy was recovering from cancer was sad and a little frightening. Personal highlights in May: Seeing Kyle Snyder with the Bisons at Pawtucket, Javier Lopez signing Steve the Ferret’s “Lopez” jersey (also at Pawtucket), Aubrey Huff fistpumping to Joba Chamberlain, appearing on “The Baseball Show” on Comcast SportsNet, crying (literally crying) over Big Papi’s first home run of the season, getting to meet metsgrrl and “paloozaing” with a huge group of people I love during the Mets/Sox series at Fenway.
Yesterday was an amazing day spent with friends (most of whom I haven’t seen in quite a while or hadn’t met yet!). There are many amazing tales to tell (but not here!) – my favorite being when our friend Susan noted that we could start singing “O Canada” except no one knows the words past “O Canada!”. Standing up and singing loudly and proudly, a group of us proved her wrong. That our serenade didn’t get us thrown out still kind of surprises me.
June: This month brought us the end of interleague play, the end of Jonathan Van Every’s season (thanks to knee surgery), Tim Wakefield hitting ten victories with his torn labrum, John Smoltz making us all wonder why we were so excited to have him on the team while Dusty Brown makes his major league debut. Personal highlights for June: Derek Lowe returning to Fenway with the Braves, Nick Green’s walkoff against those same Braves, sitting in Fenway during a mind-numbing rain delayed game that turned into a loss for the Sox (okay, that one is a lowlight, really) and the Sox capping off 7 wins in a row against the Yankees with an eighth.
Photo of the Captain taken at the last game at Fenway in 2009 - ALDS game 3 - courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission.
It came as a surprise to no one that Tek exercised his option on Wednesday and will be back with the team. He seemed resigned to his new role as the playoffs began this year and Theo made it quite clear before Tek’s decision was made public that Victor Martinez would be the full-time catcher – so Tek knows what his staying on with the team will mean. EVERYONE knows that Tek knows this. And Tek’s history is such that no one really thinks this will be an issue. He’s always been professional and seemingly puts the team first. Well, everyone knows this except this guy.
In their on-going effort to make an issue where there isn’t one, the Boston Globe publishes a piece about how Tek coming back “won’t end well”. Not because he’ll play poorly due to his age and obviously decline in his skills…no not that. It “won’t end well” because Tek’s “mere presence” is going to “undermine” Victor Martinez. I’m using quotes here because I don’t want it to be mistaken that I am the one writing those ridiculous words. Here’s more from Mr. Gasper:
Tek’s return for a 14th season with the Sox sets up Martinez’s game-calling skills to be second-guessed at every turn by fans, media and possibly his own pitchers.
very time Martinez puts down a sign this season and a Red Sox pitcher shakes him off, you’ll have to wonder if the pitcher is doing it because he thinks there is a better pitch in that situation or because it’s not the sign that Varitek would have put down.
I’m wondering if Gasper actually paid attention to the Red Sox during the second half of the 2009 season. The fans, the media and the Red Sox pitchers all fell in love with Victor Martinez, pretty much on sight. Of course, it seemed that Josh Beckett had some trouble adjusting but you know how Tito dealt with that? He let Beckett pitch to Varitek most of the time. But even Beckett finally gave in and let the reality hit that, sadly, Tek was turning into Doug Mirabelli. If the starting rotation in 2010 is the same as it was in 2009 – every pitcher on the team will have had sufficient innings under their belt having pitched to Victor Martinez. Some with great success. Does Gasper think a new pitcher will come in and question Martinez’ talents? Does he think the pitchers currently on staff are so stupid they thought Martinez was a quick fix and Tek was coming back to the every day role in 2010?
The kicker in this “commentary” comes here:
Can’t you already envision a scenario where Josh Beckett, who seemed to be the most obstinate about Martinez supplanting Varitek as the team’s best option behind the plate last season, goes to manager Terry Francona and asks for Varitek to be his personal catcher?
Beckett, who in three regular-season starts with Martinez had a 6.19 ERA, would have been forced to adjust if Varitek departed. Now, Beckett, in a contract year, can cling to his security blanket. So, every time the Red Sox send their ace to the mound they’ll have to take Martinez’s valuable bat (.303, 23 home runs, 108 RBI, .861 on-base percentage-plus-slugging) out of the lineup, a bat that is the primary reason Martinez is valuable as a catcher in the first place.
It makes me think that Gasper has never seen Martinez play. Is he unaware that most actually think he’s a better first baseman than catcher? Does he not realize that Tek catching most likely will almost NEVER take Martinez’ bat out of the lineup because Tito will probably schedule days off for Mike Lowell…our aging, creaky, third baseman…putting Youk at third and Victor Martinez at…wait for it…first on those days? (Not to forget the struggling designated hitter who will benefit from rest this year as well…)
Gasper ends his piece by saying it would have been better for Tek to have signed elsewhere. Not for his offensive and defensive declines, but so the players, media and fans won’t second guess everything Victor Martinez does behind the plate. In two-plus months this year no one second guessed Martinez. Actually, the media and fans were clamoring for him to take over the lead role from Tek and even Gasper points out that Clay Buchholz actually improved with Martinez and Jon Lester “worked well” with him too. It was also determined that he could serviceably catch Wake. That’s three out of five, Gasper. Slide in Daisuke, who only pitched to Martinez once in 2009 (against the Yanks, giving up 1 earned run, 7 hits and 5 walks so there’s too small a sample size), and maybe your only “issue” is Beckett? (And that’s a big maybe since I’m not even close to being convinced Beckett will be an issue here.) Tim Wakefield pitched for years to his own catcher, is it really the end of the world if Beckett does it for a season?
I’m happy the Captain is back. He means a lot to the team and to many of the fans. He seems to be dealing with the issue of his new role, even acknowledging as the playoffs began that it was tough but that you do what’s best for the team. I’m okay with people arguing that having Tek on the team, even in this diminished role, could hurt the team – no one enjoys a hitter in there batting a solid .200, even for just one game a week – but to argue that he, just as a man, will hurt this team is that typical alarmist crap that the Globe has now become expected to write. Slow news day? Let’s try to get the fans worried about what MIGHT happen! Thankfully and, admittedly, surprisingly, most of the fans – even some of the nuts who comment over at Boston.com, weren’t having any part of Gasper’s ridiculous argument. A few agree with him, though. There’s one commenter who chides the folks criticizing by defending it as an “opinion”. Fine. It’s his opinion that he’s spouting like fact – and it’s my opinion that all he’s trying to do is get fans riled up about Tek. Hell, the Globe needs to tout a new villain for the new season. Instead they’re getting riled up about the lazy writing going on over at the Globe. I like it.
So welcome back, Tek. I, for one, am happy you’ll be back in the clubhouse…but I’m also happy that VMart will be taking on the majority of catching duties, I can’t lie about that. So that’s one issue settled for the Sox and a whole lot more still left hanging out there. It’s going to be a long and, hopefully, interesting hot stove.
