Adrian Gonzalez won the AL Player of the Week Award for last week after homering five times in seven days. Here's the latest from a division that includes a number of prominent MVP candidates, including Gonzalez…
- Gordon Edes of ESPNBoston.com argues that Red Sox manager Terry Francona deserves more credit. The skipper has never won AL Manager of the Year, but Edes says he deserves it this year for the work he has done leading the Red Sox to an AL-best 82-51 record.
- B.J. Upton told Marc Topkin of the St. Petersburg Times that he's happy the Rays chose to hold onto him instead of trading him. The outfielder, who will be arbitration eligible for the final time this offseason, says he'd "love" to be back in Tampa Bay in 2012.
- Travis Snider acknowledged to Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.ca that his position in the Blue Jays organization has changed in recent years. The Jays demoted the former first rounder twice this season and he has lost ground on the depth chart to Eric Thames and others. Snider's resting his right wrist now and looking forward to the 2012 campaign.
“Red Sox, Upton”
starting to think you’re doing this on purpose
If I were you I’d apply for Canadian Citizenship now to avoid any lines at the boarder
Snider is an important part of Blue jays. I fully expect Snider to be with Blue Jays starting next season.
LF/DH should be rotated between Thames and Snider.
People forget how young Snider is, still only 23. He has a lot of time to fix his stuff.
Absolute awful season for him and for Drabek..
but perhaps with all the pressure sort of off them, they can both clear their minds, and come back in 2012 to be meaningful contributors.
Snider is still younger with better over all tools than Thames. Travis’ top prospect slack is now over, next year is put up or shutup.
I wouldnt say it was a “awful” season for Snider, he had his flashes of brilliance but he had a hard time finding consistency. He looked like he got his act together but he had a few holes that needed to be fixed and Thames played him out of the lineup before he could get it all together. He is still going to be a great player and he will be solid next season. Also, David Cooper deserves a second chance in the majors too, with the way hes been playing in the Minors.
I’m a huge Snider fan, but I don’t know how you consider 7 HR’s in 2011 between the majors and AAA to be anything besides awful.
and your point about David Cooper is kinda moot, he can play one position, where we already have a young player signed to an extension.
He did have a lot of problems hitting homeruns this season, but you have to admit after the first time he was send down and brought back up he was hitting real good. In July Snider hit .287 in 22 games which is not a definition of an awful season. Kyle Drabek on the other hand is having a terrible season, and he better get better fast because there are pitchers that are dominating in AA and A.
Yes David Cooper can only play DH/1st base but really keeping him in the minors will not bring up his value for a future trade. Hes batting .373 in the minors, he hit better than Thames and Lawrie in the minors but in his first stint with the Jays his nerves got the better of him. Hes 24 and played great in AAA, hes a left handed bat and is really underated, i know we have Encar and Lind covering those positions but both of them can play the outfield and Cooper should be given at least a 5 game tryout. He actually is a better prospect than Brett Wallace.
No, his season was flat out awful as is Drabek’s.
I do think both of them will bounce back next year. Snider’s will depend if the team actually decides to play him. It’s too bad he is not out of options for next season.
thats true… he needs time to struggle and to work out of it .
I thought 2011 was put up or shut up.
Actually, while Terry Francona has had a great season, especially considering how poorly they started the season, I think he deserved the award last year. Just about every starter on the mound and in the field lost time to the DL. Darnell McDonald, God love him, he tries, was starting games. Bill Hall was filling in everywhere….and still, they hung in until almost the end.
The Sox have a big payroll, but they also use farm players and bit players just about better than anybody. That’s on Terry. He’ll get his manager of the year someday-he already should have by my thinking.
Oh, and I don’t even like the Red Sox.
who cares if you like the red sox? francona manages the best team in the american league and probably all of baseball. that doesnt make him the best manager. its a stupid award to begin with since managers dont make that big a difference. but its even worse to give it to a guy who has his team where everyone thought it should be to begin with. give it to manny acta or someone else from a team performing above expectations.
With that argument.. All awards basically suck.. Try again…
how do you figure im saying all awards are the same? felix won the cy young last year on a garbage team even though he had a mediocre record because he was the best pitcher. im specifically talking about a guy who manages a team that was overwhelmingly selected by “experts” to play in the world series. he’s not playing a position. he’s not doing anything other than filling out a lineup card full of players that are better than pretty much every team they play against. i didnt say awards are stupid. i said awards for guys that have no real impact on actual games are stupid. but if you are going to have them give them to guys whose teams exceed what most reasonably intelligent people expect.
felix is argualy the best pitcher he should nor get cy young
pujols is best player he should not get mvp.
get it?
having the best team record doesnt make francona the best manager. not having the best record last year didnt mean felix wasnt the best pitcher. it is not the same thing. get it?
I do have to agree with you somewhat.
I think the only reason Francona is being considered is due to the Red Sox rough start. Everybody, and I mean everybody including Yankee fans like myself, picked the Red Sox as the favorites to win the East, many including myself also predicted them to go to the World Series, maybe even win it all.
Let’s say the Sox go 99-63. If I were to tell you preseason they would go 99-63, would any of you be stunned?
(Awaits a Red Sox fan to tell me if I were to tell you they’d start 2-10, would you be surprised that they would win 99 games). Frankly my answer to that would be no it would not, the team was too talented to not win at least 95 games, even with losing 10 out of their first 12.
As mentioned he was more deserving of it last year. Although I would easily have given it to Ron Wash over Ron Gardenhire.
I’m a fan of giving the Manger of the Year to surprise teams. Although in the past 2 years in the AL at least it has not gone to surprise teams. 2008 went to Maddon, 2007 went to Eric Wedge, 2006 went to Leyland, etc. Same reason Bud Black won it last year with the Padres in the NL over Bruce Bochy.
Same reason Girardi did not get it in 09 despite the Yankees finishing 3rd place in 08 and finishing 14 wins better in 09. They met expectancy. Barring an epic collapse, the Red Sox will do the same thing this year.
Then again, there is no cleary cut winner for AL Manager of the year this year. I’d give it to Acta or Leyland though before Francona. However Francona is deserving of one sooner or later, perhaps this is the year.
Same for NL, but there are good candidates to choose from. Gibson, Roenick and possibly Clint Hurdle.
I don’t disagree with anything you said, and it is understandably hard for a manager of a team like the Sox or Yanks to win the award because it’s hard to separate his managing from how good the team he has to work with. Ideally voters could/would separate winning percentage from actual managing because really the manager has very limited control over how well the team actually does, it isn’t like Maddon is any worse of a manager this year than he was in ’08. For what it’s worth the players voted on their favorite managers not too long ago and Francona came in second behind Maddon and what the players think of the managers should count for something too right?
I suppose, but then again, A-Rod and or Jeter have been voted the most overrated players and both have won MVP’s and/or finished runner up in recent years. I don’t think the players voting affects the BBWAA voters voting. I can easily be wrong on that though.
I remember years ago when Jeter was voted the most overrated player. The same year had a different poll if you had to build your team around 1 player who would it be. Do I have to bother telling you what player got #1 in that poll? lol
Back to the topic, would you give it to Francona? I know the year isn’t over yet and there’s plenty of time. Maybe it depends on who expected how good the Tigers were to be this year. Indians are a completely surprise but they are fading.
i’m a die-hard sox fan and eventhough francona drives me nuts, some credit is due. its not that i DONT think he has ever deserved MOY, its just that somebody is always more deserving. last year wouldve been the year to win, IMO.
many of francona’s baseball decisions annoy me. but looking around the league, i get the impression almost every manager would annoy me at least as much in that respect. what francona does well is handle his players. they like him and they’re happy. not screwing anybody up may be more than half of a manager’s job in the long run
i think the only guy out there i’m sure i’d take over francona is joe maddon
I tend to go back to the fact that he’s a manager with 2 world series wins with an 8-0 record in the Series.
Yeah, I don’t think the guy is perfect, but he’s damn good.
it’s a popular assumption, but i have no idea how one gets causation out of correlation from the statement of those facts alone
And I can definitely see Joe Maddon getting on my nerves similar to Francona. He has a tendency to over-manage…when his tricks work he’s a genius, but when they don’t it looks pretty foolish.
Just be thankful none of you have Joe Girardi. I would trade Girardi for Maddon or Francona with ease.
I’m a Sox fan as well, and I think Tito is a great manager. However, if the Angels make the playoffs there is no way Mike Scoscia doesn’t get manager of the year. The Angels are a roster filled of journeyman hitters, they got no help at the trading deadline, and yet somehow Scoscia has them right there with the imensely more talented Rangers.
i think their starting pitching has something to do with it.
Mike Napoli agrees the Rangers are more talented. And the nice thing about the Rangers is that the most talented guys don’t get stuck behind Jeff Mathis.
That’s because Scoscia is a much better mgr than Franconna. He knows what it takes to score runs without a superstar offense
Scoscia is so overrated. The old school baseball talking heads just love him because he plays NL style baseball in the AL.
and loses, go figure right?
He’s not a bad manager. I just think that because of his NL style, the talking heads go ga-ga over him for no good reason. Someone needs to tell those dipsticks that the Halos play in the AL, not the NL; and that there’s nothing wrong with being a great manager when it comes to playing the game the AL way.
Jeff Mathis and his .489 OPS thank Mike Scioscia for all the regular playing time.
He does have his eccentricities and hang ups.
Imagine if Joe Morgan when he managed the Sox, how long he would have lasted had he won a series with the odd things he did? Would he have lasted as long? After all, it seems to me many of the things each did were polar opposites.
T
Players do 90% of the work. Managers do like 10% and thats generous. Tito is one of the best. He deserved it last year but didn’t get it, he is in the running for it just about every year he has managed the Sox. Do I care if he gets it? No. Its like a gold glove it means nothing, Clevelands players turned it up to 11 one year so Eric Wedge was the toast of baseball in 2007. Now he has bounced around and signed with Seattle and can’t MANAGE to get them anywhere. Point is if your players are doing most of the work the most you can really ask from a manager is to make solid on field decisions (which Tito does) and manage personalities to keep the chi flowing (Which Tito does at an elite level hah). So trophies or not Francona is just fine…..he is the Red Sox’s Joe Torre he gets it done he is a rock.
I think Youk will probably stay on unless Middlebrooks really emerges and Youk needs to field to sign.
I think the general consensus is Youkilis will eventually go to the Reds, as a third baseman.
General consensus from site commenters.
Lamentably (For me at least, Youk’s one of my favorites), I wouldn’t be surprised if the team offers Youk a “DH money or the door” kind of deal when his current contract’s up. A lot of people forget how late he broke in (He’s 32 now and will be 34 when his next contract starts) and he’s been the victim of a lot of nagging injuries the last few years.
His injury history is actually very much ignored by a lot of people. He’s never played more than 150 games in a season and he hasn’t played in more than 140 since 2008 (Nor will he this season). He’s actually been one of the best third basemen in the game this season (Leads the MLB in WAR at third base, a position that’s been marred by injury everywhere, the top five on the WAR board for the position have all spent time on the DL).
In short, paying Youk the kind of money his level of play may warrant is probably not in the team’s best interest long term and Epstein generally tends to cut ties with players when that happens.
i don’t think his decline will necessarily be that quick so long as a team moves him back to 1B. it’s easy to forget how fantastic he was there, and it’s a much less physically demanding position. his bat is more than adequate and i can see youkilis sticking around for a long time there. i know i’ll always root for him
I don’t expect him to nosedive or anything, I just don’t expect him to fit in the long term plans for the Sox in partiular. Moving him back to first or DH’ing him would easily keep him going a bit longer, but with first base locked up, he’s suddenly looking at DH’ing, something Lavarnway may be able to do for us just as well at league minimum.
I imagine they’ll probably offer him something similar to what they offered Victor Martinez where they’re saying it’s effectively a given he’ll be DH’ing. His defense at third is already below league average at only 32 and we can’t move him back to first, so it’s basically DH or nothing. Considering he’s fully capable of manning first, I doubt he’ll take an offer to DH when he could probably get more money and playing time elsewhere. Nobody really brings it up, but I could see somewhere like Oakland being a good fit somewhere down the line.
Francona as my vote for MOY (manager of the year). Then, please, promote him upstairs to a VP slot and bring someone in who knows how to manage, especially in the realm of starting pitcher utilization. BTW, The Red Sox should win a minimum of 100, to a maximum of 105 regular season games in 2011.
Francona as my vote for MOY (manager of the year). Then, please, promote him upstairs to a VP slot and bring someone in who knows how to manage, especially in the realm of starting pitcher utilization. BTW, The Red Sox should win a minimum of 100, to a maximum of 105 regular season games in 2011.