Protecting the Shields -- The Nick Cafardo Thread

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touchstone033

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Anyone notice this in today's Cafardo column? It's his list of top-ten lineups.&nbsp;</p>

10. Kansas City Royals &mdash; A talented, athletic group of young, core players is coming together. They finally have a bona fide No. 1 starter in James Shields. You can&rsquo;t be completely sold on the rotation, but on paper it&rsquo;s better than it has been in years. The bullpen has some outstanding arms. The Royals may make the leap over .500 and into contention.
What a bizarre choice for no. 10. I mean, the White Sox are a better team, not to mention Tampa, Oakland, Texas, Philly, Milwaukee, and Arizona. I realize I'm being nit-picky, and it's likely he just wanted to bring attention to an interesting team that essentially has to win a playoff spot this year or its front office is toast, but at this point on paper the Royals are like the 20th best team.

All I can think of is that this is Cafardo's way of supporting the Myers-for-Shields trade, which most of the baseball world panned.

This annoys me for some reason. I guess I feel like a good commentator should explain baseball the way it is, point out nuances that may have gone overlooked or reveal ways of looking at the game that enhance our enjoyment of the sport. Instead, by putting the Royals at an extremely unrealistic 10, he got political on us. Calling a team good even though it isn't because he dislikes the kind of analysis that panned a particular trade...

[Edited out code...]
 

Hendu for Kutch

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Apropos of nothing

1. After my note championing Dwight Evans for the Hall of Fame last Sunday, Bill Chuck came up with this: Alfonso Soriano is a career .273 hitter with 372 homers; Evans hit .272, with 385 homers. Granted, Evans had 1,384 RBIs compared with Soriano&rsquo;s 1,035, but Evans played in 2,606 games compared with Alfonso&rsquo;s 1,757.
You could say the RBIs are the big difference between them, but I think the almost 50 points of OBP or the fact that one guy was arguably the best defensive RF of his generation and the other was unarguably a butcher at every position he played would be more worth mentioning as differentiators.
 

Dummy Hoy

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I'd say the eras that they played in made Evans' offensive contributions quite a bit more valuable as well. It's a stupid comparison, and I'd like to think Bill Chuck was just fucking with Nick.
 

touchstone033

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The difference in eras also affects how we should view the offensive contributions between the two. Here's a little table comparing the players using stats that more accurately account for total contribution and their offense in context:

Evans Soriano
OPS+ 127 113
wRC+ 129 112
bWAR 62.8 24.2
fWAR 71.4 39.5


OPS+ and wRC+ reveal Evans was a better batter, and that his WARs were so much higher reveals that he was a much, much, much better ballplayer.
 

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon

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What's really strange in that whole Evans-Soriano bit from Nick is that, above all else, Evans is know for his defense. He won eight gold gloves. The reason you have to "make a case" for Evans is because many of his strengths haven't traditionally been highly valued. If you had even glanced at the Evans-to-the-Hall debate, that would have to be top of mind.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I didn't get that Evans-Soriano comparison either. It was like Cafardo needed something and just threw it in there without thinking it through. But he'd never do that.

Honestly, at this point I'm convinced that the Boston Globe Baseball Notes are never coming back. I don't mean to the days of Gammons and Whiteside, but to the days of Edes and a reporter who actually gives a shit about the column. You want to compare Dwight Evans negatively to Johnnie LeMaster and Bob Zupcic, Nick, go for it. You've done the impossible, no one gives a shit any more.
 

joyofsox

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In his mailbag, he says that Matsuzaka is looking for a job in either the majors or minors, but he would prefer pitching in the majors. Interesting!
 

mt8thsw9th

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Terry from Seattle and others are wondering that if Giancarlo Stanton is truly available, what would it take to obtain him from the Miami Marlins?​
Think Josh Beckett/Mike Lowell for Hanley Ramirez/Anibal Sanchez-and-other-prospects in reverse. The Marlins need to get more than usual for the face of their team.​
So that trade in reverse? Are the Marlins looking for an old third baseman and an established potential frontline starter? Do they include prospects with Stanton? The Beckett trade "in reverse" is just sort of confusing. He follows it up by saying they'd need to be blown away, and frankly, at minimum a repeat of the trade is what they'd need, not a reversal.

Then he goes on about how the deal should involve the team's top prospects, and ends the thoughts with a couple of questions. Perhaps he'll answer those in his next mailbag.
 

Humphrey

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Love today's logic about HOF voting. Of course he's voting for Clemens, would you think it would end any other way?
 

Hendu4Kutcher

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It looks as if Nick and/or the Globe editors dropped the ball again this week (at least in the on-line version of the Baseball Notes) when he insisted that Lance Berkman would be a great fit for the Sox. He agreed to terms with the Rangers yesterday. I realize that the Notes are submitted in advance, but it wouldn't take much effort to amend them.


http://bostonglobe.c...AwYJ/story.html


I agree that his stance in the HOF is short on logic or, at the very least, his logic was poorly explained. He has often stated that he was going to vote for Clemens and Bonds because, in his opinion, they were HOF players before they became linked to PEDs. I can't recall him ever backing up this claim with data. IMO, if his career had continued the trend prior to his rejuvenation in the second half of 1996, Clemens would still have been a legitimate HOF candidate, but his career statistics were certainly bolstered by his PED years (ERA+ of 196 with Toronto and 180 with Houston).

Cafardo also states that Bonds became a surly player late in his career when he was chasing the home run record, but he had that reputation when he was still playing in Pittsburgh. I'm not sure which Barry Bonds Nick was watching.
 

touchstone033

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No one knows what effect, if any, steroids actually has on on-field play. I don't think there's any way to look at a guy's statistics and say definitively what they would be "before" steroids or without them. And that's with not even knowing exactly when the players in question actually took the PEDs, or even if they did. You can't say Clemens' year in Toronto and his year in Houston were "certainly" bolstered by PEDs, because you don't know if he was using steroids then, or, even if he were, whether they really contributed to his performance.

It's a fool's errand to decide whether a guy is Hall-worthy by trying to calculate his statistics around steroid use.

That is, judge the player by his actual body of work. I like Cafardo's stance; I like Abraham's better.
 

mt8thsw9th

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Clemens' statistics (and ultimately candidacy) were bolstered by being the best pitcher in baseball over a decade+ stretch. He had thrown 2776 innings with a 144 ERA+ through 1996. If he hung around for few more decent years (and if indeed his performance was due to PEDs, and not from talent), he's retiring with around 225 wins and over 3,000 strikeouts, and 3 Cy Youngs and an MVP on his resume. If not playing for some poor offensive teams from 1991-1996, that win total is a bit higher. It's tough to make 177 starts with an aggregate 142 ERA+, and only come away with 76 wins, but I digress.

However, PEDs or not, Clemens was only 34 at the start of the 1997 season. PEDs probably help quite a bit when the competition isn't all on PEDs, but you can't discount adding a splitter to his repertoire and perfecting it as being a big reason why he pitched well through 40, which isn't exactly uncommon for power pitchers to begin with.
 

nattysez

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This isn't really Nick's fault, but when I hear him being discussed on sports radio in the Bay Area, it gets my attention.

Nick wildly speculated this weekend that Lincecum might be traded by the Giants during the year:

3. Matt Garza, RHP, Cubs, Gavin Floyd, RHP, White Sox, and Tim Lincecum, RHP, Giants &mdash; Hard to read the Cubs, since they&rsquo;re building for the future while also signing veteran pitchers. Garza still has to show teams in spring training that his injured elbow is OK; the Cubs would listen on a possible deal. Floyd remains one of the more attractive pitchers who could be had. The White Sox have said they want to keep him, but with some younger pitchers ready to step into that rotation, he is expendable. As for Lincecum, the Giants feel they&rsquo;ll straighten out his mechanical defects. But he is making $22 million this season, and if he&rsquo;s not what he used to be, the Giants may be enticed.
The awesome thing about this is that it makes no sense -- he basically is staying that the Giants may want to trade Lincecum if he sucks this year, without explaining why another team would want to pick him up if he was pitching poorly. Anyway, CNNSI decided to quote from Cafardo's article and give it the headline "Lincecum available?"

Cue freaking out in the Bay Area. The hosts on the show I was listening to insisted that it "wasn't the writer's fault" that CNNSI kind of misrepresented what he wrote.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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Another mention of the Sox trading for Justin Morneau. This is, what, the fourth week in a row?

He has such a hard-on for dinged-up Twins.
 

touchstone033

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Another mention of the Sox trading for Justin Morneau. This is, what, the fourth week in a row?

He has such a hard-on for dinged-up Twins.
I wonder if these guys think they can influence the front office into considering moves. Or do you think these repeated calls for Morneau are actually being spurred on by comments from the organization? I find columns on trade speculation to be aggravating because of that. Is the writer simply talking out of his ass? Or is he passing on information he gleaned from sources?

Maybe I'm just jaded by the insane trade proposals that constantly float around SoSH during the Hot Stove season, the Justin-Upton-for-a-bag-of-balls-and-two-AAAA-players kind, but I'd love to see, you know, sourced and knowledgeable offseason chatter. Man, I miss those Peter Gammons Sunday spreads....
 

Humphrey

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If you look at Ellsbury, Nick has proposed dumping him so many times you would have to say at this point it's pulling-it-out-of-his-ass-because-he-has-an-agenda-against-the-guy* rather than the front office pushing him to say it.


*but somehow, he manages to keep shitting on Ellsbury and fellating his agent at the same time. Ponderous.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I don't know. Cafardo seems to me, the type of guy who (especially in this example) sees that the Red Sox have a need at first and that the Twins might be looking to shed payroll and have a first baseman who was once good and may be willing to move. On the surface, it does make sense; but when you look below that, I don't think that Boston makes that move for a number of reasons (health, diminishing skills, salary, age) but Cafardo doesn't acknowledge this. He just keeps pushing and pushing and pushing, week after week after week.

His baseball logic is the same baseball logic that we all had when we were 12 or 13-years-old. Most of us have moved on and understand that there are more to baseball trades than just need vs. need (BTW, Cafardo never says what it would cost to acquire Morneau. Never), the rest write for the Boston Globe Sunday baseball column.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Aside from Valentine getting hired, has there been any move that Cafardo has stumped for and repeatedly mentioned in his Notes column that has come to fruition? I lean more toward the "he's pulling things out of his ass" side, and the fact that either he guessed right or did get inside info on Valentine has emboldened him to keep pushing for other things with the belief he can move the needle in the front office.
 

touchstone033

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I've been thinking about this way, way too much & here's what was runnin' through my head. I feel like there's like four jobs writing can do: inform, influence, entertain, and express (emotion). Most pieces do more than one thing. A novel usually expresses and entertains. A Science magazine article informs. A political op-ed informs and influences. That's wa-a-a-ay broad and general and of course doesn't actually get at the heart of writing, but I think it's interesting in this context because I believe a lot of sportswriters, especially the columnists, believe they influence as much as they entertain and inform.

That's to say, it's apparent some of these guys think their columns pressure organizations to get better and players to play harder. It's like they see themselves as voices of the people, or think their high profile gives them power, or whatever. When Cafardo says, we should trade for Morneau, it's like he imagines conversations like this taking place:

"Napoli won't sign a one-year deal. And we can't take a risk on his hip. It's time for Plan B at first."

"Did you read Cafardo today? He thinks we should go after Morneau."

"Morneau? That hadn't occurred to me before. That's intriguing. He could be available."

"We certainly don't want to make the media angry. Remember what happened to Francona? Give Ryan a call."

I think that's a reason why sabermetrics guys tangle with old-school sportswriters so fiercely. It's over the perceived influence the different groups think they have. Didn't Heyman essentially claim that Morris didn't get into the Hall because of stats-centric Tweeters, and call for a "movement" to counteract the "negativity"? I think that's why the seasonal awards and the Hall of Fame gets the most vicious arguments: they're measurements of influence. When King Felix won the Cy with 13 wins, a lot of folks saw it as a "victory" for sabermetrics. That no one got in this year's HoF balloting was a victory for the old guard moral champions of the integrity of the game, etc & co.
 

CoffeeNerdness

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Aside from Valentine getting hired, has there been any move that Cafardo has stumped for and repeatedly mentioned in his Notes column that has come to fruition? I lean more toward the "he's pulling things out of his ass" side, and the fact that either he guessed right or did get inside info on Valentine has emboldened him to keep pushing for other things with the belief he can move the needle in the front office.
Hanrahan.
 

Hendu4Kutcher

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Aside from Valentine getting hired, has there been any move that Cafardo has stumped for and repeatedly mentioned in his Notes column that has come to fruition? I lean more toward the "he's pulling things out of his ass" side, and the fact that either he guessed right or did get inside info on Valentine has emboldened him to keep pushing for other things with the belief he can move the needle in the front office.


Well, his son Ben works for ESPN where Valentine was employed prior to being hired by the Red Sox, so Cafardo may have had some inside info on that one.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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Here are is the rundown on what happened in Nick the Quick's column today. 
 
- Intangibles vs. athleticism? Who's going to win? I don't know. Which side of the fence am I on? I think you might know, but I'm not going to tell you explicitly. What's the point of a column without a conclusion? It takes up space and it makes me money. 
 
- Oh yeah, it's weird that Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez both got jobs with their old clubs this winter. How weird? Don't ask me. That's for YOU to decide. But I will say that Pedro may not be good at his job. I didn't say this about Varitek or Clemens. That's just apropos of nothing, of course. 
 
- Buck Showalter is a whiny, old crank and I love him for it.
 
- Why don't people want to sign Michael Bourne? Don't ask me. Even though the Mets have gone on record on Thursday saying that they don't want to sign him because they'll lose their draft pick. That might be a reason, but that might not be a reason. Only the Shadow knows for sure. 
 

Buckner's Boots

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John Marzano Olympic Hero said:
Here are is the rundown on what happened in Nick the Quick's column today. 
 
- Intangibles vs. athleticism? Who's going to win? I don't know. Which side of the fence am I on? I think you might know, but I'm not going to tell you explicitly. What's the point of a column without a conclusion? It takes up space and it makes me money. 
 
- Oh yeah, it's weird that Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez both got jobs with their old clubs this winter. How weird? Don't ask me. That's for YOU to decide. But I will say that Pedro may not be good at his job. I didn't say this about Varitek or Clemens. That's just apropos of nothing, of course. 
 
- Buck Showalter is a whiny, old crank and I love him for it.
 
- Why don't people want to sign Michael Bourne? Don't ask me. Even though the Mets have gone on record on Thursday saying that they don't want to sign him because they'll lose their draft pick. That might be a reason, but that might not be a reason. Only the Shadow knows for sure. 
Thanks for saving us wasted effort. I find these Sparknotes to be every bit as more satisfying as than the real thing.
 
 
 

bombdiggz

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I'd like to add this tidbit not covered above...
 
 There were baseball people who pleaded with their teams to go after B.J. Upton as a free agent and to deal with Arizona for younger brother Justin Upton, and there also were those who said “over my dead body” would they have either.
 
So according to Cafardo, some "baseball people" said, "over my dead body" when contemplating the addition of Justin Upton to their team. And the way Cafardo writes this, it isn't referring to at the price Towers demanded, but saying that at least some in the "industry were vehemently opposed to even the idea of adding a 25 year old player who has already accumulated 17.1 fWAR in his career and is signed for 3 more years at less than 13 M per. 
 
That is sheer lunacy...
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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This excellent Boston magazine article has a delicious evisceration of Nick:
 
Whoever was at fault for the chaos that had descended on the team—Valentine, the players, ownership—it was clearly a massive story. Unless, that is, you happened to work as a sportswriter in Boston. While national reporters parachuted in to break a big story—as they’ve been doing with increasing frequency of late—the local press simply missed the boat. In fact, some of the Sox beat writers insisted in the aftermath of the bombshell story that Passan had gotten it all wrong.
 
For instance, the Globe’s Nick Cafardo—who devoted so much effort to (bizarrely) defending Valentine throughout last season that he seemed to miss the larger story of a franchise crumbling around him—wrote a column arguing that what Passan’s piece showed above all else was that it was the Red Sox players rather than the manager who were the real problem. “The behavior of players as described in the Jeff Passan Yahoo! Sports story,” Cafardo wrote, “was downright disgusting.” Maybe so, but what was missing entirely from Cafardo’s take was any mention of what Valentine had done to create his own problems. Instead, Cafardo excused some of Valentine’s transgressions, including publicly questioning third baseman Kevin Youkilis’s commitment early in the season, a comment that Cafardo insisted would have been no big deal back in the ’70s and ’80s—decades that occurred, you know, 30 or 40 years ago.
 

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon

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There were baseball people who pleaded with their teams to go after B.J. Upton as a free agent and to deal with Arizona for younger brother Justin Upton, and there also were those who said “over my dead body” would they have either.
 

There isn't as much lunacy implied if you really look at what Nick's written here:
 
1. "Baseball people" - this could literally be anyone employed by any team - players, coaches, managers, trainers, scouts, ANYONE!
2. "pleaded with their teams" - what? Not "pleaded with their GMs," who theoretically would make this call, or "pleaded with ownership," which would imply GMs making a case, but pleaded with their "teams," so that it is even more open-ended, GMs pleading with their owners, managers pleading with their GMs, players pleading with their managers, the ball boys pleading with the clubhouse managers - ANYONE DOING ANYTHING.
3. With this ambiguity established, just how worthless is the "over my dead body" quote? I have no doubt that plenty of players, scouts, managers, et al, wouldn't want Upton on their team at all. Maybe they think he's a dick. Maybe he plays their position or the position of their buddy on the team. Maybe they don't think his skills will hold up. But there's no reason to think a GM, whose job is to construct a team with a budget and is being presented with a reasonable deal, said this.
 
So, while on the face of it, this quote seems to say, "Some teams really wanted the Uptons, while some really didn't" (which is, of course, just shocking!), it's really saying, "Some people who have jobs with baseball teams and returned my emails really wanted the Uptons, while some didn't."
 

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bombdiggz said:
I'd like to add this tidbit not covered above...
 
 
So according to Cafardo, some "baseball people" said, "over my dead body" when contemplating the addition of Justin Upton to their team. And the way Cafardo writes this, it isn't referring to at the price Towers demanded, but saying that at least some in the "industry were vehemently opposed to even the idea of adding a 25 year old player who has already accumulated 17.1 fWAR in his career and is signed for 3 more years at less than 13 M per. 
 
That is sheer lunacy...
 
This is sheer lunacy if you're building a fantasy team for 2013. If you're a real-life GM, there are other factors, many of which aren't -- and maybe never will be -- known to the general public. I have no inside information on the player in question, but some front office people within in the game may, and there are a variety of reasons you might not want someone on your team. From Chick Gandil to Milton Bradley, baseball has a long history of players with "issues." In retrospect, would you have traded for Josh Hamilton in 2001?
 
Again, I have no inside information on this specific player and in no way am suggesting he is of bad character. I am simply saying it is far from lunacy to not want a player of his age, with his numbers and contract situation.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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David Laurila said:
This is sheer lunacy if you're building a fantasy team for 2013. If you're a real-life GM, there are other factors, many of which aren't -- and maybe never will be -- known to the general public. I have no inside information on the player in question, but some front office people within in the game may, and there are a variety of reasons you might not want someone on your team. From Chick Gandil to Milton Bradley, baseball has a long history of players with "issues." In retrospect, would you have traded for Josh Hamilton in 2001?
 
Again, I have no inside information on this specific player and in no way am suggesting he is of bad character. I am simply saying it is far from lunacy to not want a player of his age, with his numbers and contract situation.
 
That's fine and to be honest, you gave more reasons than Cafardo did for not wanting Upton. He just put out a blank statement saying "baseball people" don't want Upton at all. He didn't really get into the whys. He had some annecdotal things: he seems to lose concentration, he got picked off first base a bunch of non-scrappy, anti-David Eckstein stuff. He never mentioned that Justin Upton spent most of last summer battling a severe thumb injury and that all of his stats rose in the second half. Including his slugging which jumped 60 points and he struck out 30 less times in the second half than he did the first half (74-47).
 
This literally took me five minutes to find on baseball-reference and if Cafardo consulted these numbers maybe he wouldn't have fallen back on crap like "loss of concentration" (which, BTW probably stemmed from his still-healing thumb injury) and getting picked off first base. (BTW, again it should be noted that Upton didn't have a CS in the entire second half).
 
I don't follow the DBacks and I could give a shit who Kevin Towers trades and which players Kirk Gibson thinks are tough; but what Cafardo did was foolish and down-right ignorant for a the Boston Globe national baseball beat writer.
 
You know what would be a better exercise, showing Upton's home vs. away splits which are pretty damning. Just his slugging is down almost 200 points! That would be a better building block for Cafardo's column rather than the rantings of baseball people.
 

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Well put, JMOH. To sum up my problems with Cafardo, he takes whatever he's told by his chummy contacts list as utter gospel, never figuring out either extenuating circumstances, like the thumb injury above, or if his source is simply making shit up.
 

The Gray Eagle

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He had about 10 mentions of the Mets in today's column-- obviously he called JP Ricciardi and wrote up whatever he was told. It's pretty comical, he must have just read a list of players and asked Ricciardi about each one: "You guys interested in this guy?" "Nope." "What about this guy?" "Sure, if the price was right." Boom, Sunday Notes column is done!
 

Sampo Gida

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The Gray Eagle said:
He had about 10 mentions of the Mets in today's column-- obviously he called JP Ricciardi and wrote up whatever he was told. It's pretty comical, he must have just read a list of players and asked Ricciardi about each one: "You guys interested in this guy?" "Nope." "What about this guy?" "Sure, if the price was right." Boom, Sunday Notes column is done!
 
Might not have even done that. MLBTR had a lot of Mets stuff this week.
 

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John Marzano Olympic Hero said:
The Dentist loves Cafardo. Just loves him. 
 
I cannot imagine why the search for a PA guy is so interesting that he had to vomit that pile of shit in the paper yesterday. 69 goddamn wins last year and all Nick cares about is the carnival-barker style search for the PA guy. Pathetic.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I cannot imagine why the search for a PA guy is so interesting that he had to vomit that pile of shit in the paper yesterday. 69 goddamn wins last year and all Nick cares about is the carnival-barker style search for the PA guy. Pathetic.
 
I said this last year, but when Yankees PA Bob Sheppard died they hired someone to replace him in the offseason. Sheppard had been around since 51 and it didn't get more than a press release. When Carl Beane died last year there was a conga line of people brought up to the booth with a press release about every single one of them. It was a circus. And for Cafardo to write, "The Red Sox didn’t want to name a successor so soon after his death, so for much of the season, they allowed about 50 people to sit in Beane’s seat and announce players as they came to the plate." it's laughable.
 
Yeah, the Red Sox were so solemn in their quest to replace Beane last year. Each week Nick Cafardo makes me angrier and angrier.
 

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John Marzano Olympic Hero said:
 it's laughable.
 
Yeah, the Red Sox were so solemn in their quest to replace Beane last year.
This is similar to what the Mariners did after Dave Niehaus died. They used rotating broadcasters for two seasons before hiring Aaron Goldsmith.
 

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David Laurila said:
This is similar to what the Mariners did after Dave Niehaus died. They used rotating broadcasters for two seasons before hiring Aaron Goldsmith.
 
No, it's nothing similar. Niehaus is their play-by-play announcer, Tom Hutyler is their public address announcer. If Don Orsillo went belly-up last year, that would be a situation similar to what happened to the Mariners. And that would be fine. 
 
Beane is a PA guy, and while his death did leave a hole in the Sox' game day presentation, it should have been filled and moved on. If the Sox wanted to respect his legacy (or whatever euphemism Cafardo used) they would have made their choice and moved on. Dragging it out and allowing every C-lister in town to do the PA stuff (while hyping it up, "Come see Dennis and Callahan's John Meterperal do the PA at tonight's Sox game!!") wasn't a solemn remembrance. 
 

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon

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The thing is, for 95 percent of the people in the stands (maybe more like 99.99 percent), the PA guy is completely invisible. It's just a voice with, by design, very little personality or impact on the game day experience. It's meant to be a subtle thing that just fits right in with the whole package. I've read what a great guy Carl Beane was, etc., but I certainly could have been stuck in an elevator with him and had no idea.
 
And I'm sure that's how Beane wanted it. I'm sure he prided himself on not being obtrusive. And yet they honor his legacy by drawing attention to the role and letting amateurs have a go, which is a distraction and annoying and counter to the purpose.
 
It has NOTHING to do with honoring Beane's legacy or him as a person. Just look at that sentence Cafardo crafted: "The Red Sox didn’t want to name a successor so soon after his death, so
for much of the season, they allowed about 50 people to sit in Beane’s seat and announce players as they came to the plate."
 
Talk about not questioning the drivel handed down to you! They wanted to honor him by making by allowing 50 people to take his spot and do his job, as though anyone with a working larynx could do it? How does that make any sense? How could you write that down without questioning it?
 

Corsi

isn't shy about blowing his wad early
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For a job for which they pay $50 per game (actual number), they're really dragging this out.  
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

has fancy plans, and pants to match
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Apr 12, 2001
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You forgot that they have to be able to wait for the umpire to give them the signal to announce the relief pitcher first. So you need a voice and eyes. 
 

CoffeeNerdness

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Jun 6, 2012
8,713
public auditions last Saturday in what Steinberg called a “Fenway American Idol”
 
 
Steinberg further commented that he didn't want to "dis anyone", but only one lucky person would be "bringing home the bling".
 

Lose Remerswaal

Experiencing Furry Panic
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MyDaughterLovesTomGordon said:
The thing is, for 95 percent of the people in the stands (maybe more like 99.99 percent), the PA guy is completely invisible. It's just a voice with, by design, very little personality or impact on the game day experience. It's meant to be a subtle thing that just fits right in with the whole package. I've read what a great guy Carl Beane was, etc., but I certainly could have been stuck in an elevator with him and had no idea.
 
And I'm sure that's how Beane wanted it. I'm sure he prided himself on not being obtrusive. And yet they honor his legacy by drawing attention to the role and letting amateurs have a go, which is a distraction and annoying and counter to the purpose.
 
It has NOTHING to do with honoring Beane's legacy or him as a person. Just look at that sentence Cafardo crafted: "The Red Sox didn’t want to name a successor so soon after his death, so
for much of the season, they allowed about 50 people to sit in Beane’s seat and announce players as they came to the plate."
 
Talk about not questioning the drivel handed down to you! They wanted to honor him by making by allowing 50 people to take his spot and do his job, as though anyone with a working larynx could do it? How does that make any sense? How could you write that down without questioning it?
 
Oh no, you'd have known
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

Throw Momma From the Train
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God, the twists and turns Cafardo makes today in his attempts to paint Valentine in a good light (in an article ostensibly about Farrell) are so idiotic and so transparent I have to wonder if Bobby's paying him under the table. No sane person in the world could describe last year's manager the way Nick does.
 
He has no shame.
 

Granite Sox

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Feb 6, 2003
5,055
The Granite State
Yeah... that was crazy. He was trying too hard to create a narrative so far removed from what ultimately was reported. It was nuts. Barely a mention that most of the problems Valentine had were of his own doing.

And the incessant use of the word "inmates" was right out of the CHB Book of Baiting.
 

Sampo Gida

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Smiling Joe Hesketh said:
God, the twists and turns Cafardo makes today in his attempts to paint Valentine in a good light (in an article ostensibly about Farrell) are so idiotic and so transparent I have to wonder if Bobby's paying him under the table. No sane person in the world could describe last year's manager the way Nick does.
 
He has no shame.
 
I recall he was in the running to author Bobby V's book.  That was going around last year in ST.  Not sure Bobby V still has plans for a book after last year, but if so it explains Nicks man love for him.
 
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