It didn’t surprise Clay Buchholz that the Red Sox traded him during the offseason, the right-hander told reporters – including Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald – on Sunday (Twitter links). Buchholz is now with the Phillies, though he expected Boston to send him to the White Sox as part of the Chris Sale deal. “This is probably good for me, getting out of Boston in general,” said Buchholz, who had been a member of the Red Sox since they selected him in the first round of the 2005 draft. “It stinks to say that but seems like more people remember bad things that happened rather than good things.” Buchholz had his down moments in Boston, including a rough 2016, but posted respectable numbers in 1,167 2/3 innings with the Sox (3.96 ERA, 6.93 K/9, 3.21 BB/9, 47.8 percent ground-ball rate) and had arguably his best season in 2013 as part of a World Series-winning club.
More from the East Coast:
- The Braves have attempted to reel in free agent outfielder Angel Pagan, but it’s “highly unlikely” he’ll end up in Atlanta because he’s “seeking far more” than they’re willing to offer, according to Mark Bowman of MLB.com. Pagan wants a major league contract, unsurprisingly, but Atlanta’s among a group of teams that have offered him a minors pact. Judging by Bowman’s report, the Braves aren’t going to budge.
- While the Mets’ Sandy Alderson is both the oldest general manager in the majors (69) and in a contract year, it sounds as if he aims to continue with the organization beyond the 2017 campaign. “I haven’t thought about how much longer I want to do it,” he told Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. “But I’d like to do it a little longer.” The Mets had endured four straight non-playoff seasons before hiring Alderson in October 2010, but they’ve gradually turned around their fortunes on the longtime executive’s watch. New York is coming off back-to-back playoff seasons, including a 2015 World Series berth, for just the second time in franchise history.
- Red Sox reliever Tyler Thornburg’s lack of shoulder strength partially boils down to miscommunication, writes Silverman. After they acquired him from the Brewers, the Red Sox, who have their own shoulder maintenance program, sent Thornburg a list of exercises to perform daily. He misunderstood the directions, however. “I kind of figured that this is a list of the exercises they incorporated, I didn’t think this is what they do all in one day,” said Thornburg. “I thought, ‘here’s a list of exercises, learn them, pick five or six of them,’ because that was pretty much what we did in Milwaukee.” Teammate and fellow reliever Joe Kelly also had a difficult time adjusting to the program when the Red Sox acquired him in 2014, but he’s now on board with it. “It’s something that I didn’t buy into all the way when I first did it because it’s something new, something new you’re doing and you’re getting sore and fatigued, it’s something you probably don’t want to do,” Kelly stated. “It’s something I stuck with, and I tried it and ultimately it just felt great. It’s one of the things you’ve kind of got to get results first in order to believe.”
Maybe the Sox should be more clear on making their shoulder strengthening program “mandatory”. Take every chance they can get to have a hot start in April
If I’m not mistaken the “shoulder strengthening” Red Sox plan is what led to Papelbon’s initial injury that forced him to the bullpen, right?
A full starting staff and Keith Foulke’s inability to stay healthy originally shifted him to the pen. He was slated to compete for a rotation spot but Joel Pinero was terrible in ST, so they shifted him back to the pen.
Got it. For the life of me I can’t really imagine Papelbon was ever slated to start, unless he abandoned a couple pitches once he went to the ‘pen.
He had a 4 seam, 2 seam, curve, slider and change. He didn’t develop the split until later.
Can you send me a copy of that list?
If Buchholz thinks PHI fans are going to let him slide by with mainly poor performance, good luck. Ask Santa.
Did Buchholz just burn a bridge? I had heard things a month or so ago that, if injuries persisted, Boston may have been interested in getting him back, but I have to believe that Clay’s comments would change their view.
It’s not really all that surprising though. He really turned into the scapegoat there and it was time for both of them to move on.
Bucholz lets one know how he feels and always has. When he was sent to the minors several years back (rightfully so) becuase he was pitching dreadfully, he complaine that he “only had so many bullets in his arm” and didn’t want to waste them. If that wasn’t some kind of message to management he wanted another callup?
I doubt that would burn a bridge. After all, Boston did make that same statement by trading him. It’s also not likely that he needs many bridges between now and the end of his career. He may play for maybe one or two more teams, before he hangs them up.
I don’t see the problem, or where he said anything inaccurate. I think all would agree it was time for a change of scenery, and all he really did was acknowledge that.
Maybe that was the point of it, to burn the bridge. Much better being in the NL East in a contract year and out of Fenway.
He is just saying what Price has always said anyways. Lester was not a big fan of Boston fans either
Bucholtz could easily be an NL All star. The Phils have no obvious All star and he will be pitching to weak no DH lineups that haven’t seen him before in a contract yr. Buch & Lester had different issues then Price. Price was commenting on racist fans.. Even Ted Williams had problems with racist fans when he spoke out about the Red Sox failure to sign any black players. As late as the mid 60’s the Red Sox never had more then 1 or 2 Black players. In 1967 it was considered noteworthy that the Sox had 3 black starters Joe Foy, George Scott & Reggie Smith; 2 were rookies and Foy a 2d yr player.
Good! Braves should not budge on paying more than MLB minimum for a fourth outfielder. It would be throwing cash away since the Braves are going nowhere this year. Give a prospect or a minimum salary person a chance to get the experience. d’Arnauld, Walker, Rojas. Adams, Johnson, Sosopo, even Recker, Landoni, Lipka or Kubitza will do for this team. Favor someone already on the 40 man, even Camargo.
Took Alderson the right amount of time to create a contender and a top farm system to boot. Extend the man!
Actually more than a few years than were necessary. He wasn’t forthright with the fans as to how long this would take.
I’m gonna guess your username is not referring to Sandy Cheeks the cartoon character.
You’d be correct (who ever that is?)
Actually Minaya was responsible for a lot of the mets limited success. Including Duda Flores Harvey degrom matz niece familia and Robles
100% Agree with you. Sandy gave us the likes of Eric Campbell and John Mayberry Jr.
C’mon. Sandy made the visionary Jay Bruce trade that forever clarified the Mets roster situation….
I could throw in a few more but why ruin such a beautiful day..
And you fail to mention some of their best players. Syndergaard, cespedes, reed
You could make a list like this for every other gm in the league to
No. He wasn’t. He had a handful of good drafts but had no ability to create a system of development for them, and totally bombed on all kinds of trades and free agent signings.
Sandys not perfect and I have my criticisms but he’s certainly an improvement over Minaya on overall management and efficiency.
Omar has/had a great eye for talent. The best part of this Mets team came from Omar’s vision. As a General Manager overall (managing an organization and spending their money) he left a lot to be desired. Sandy has bombed on many trades and signings but clearly knows how to manage a big-budget organization (or in this case of the Cheapons, a small-budget organization)
Omar comes from a scouting backround, he was a good man and had a good eye for talent. He was also a very poor executive who left the next regime with lots of dead money. The situation Sandy walked into was intense… a poorly ranked farm, dead money on the books, terrible owners embroiled in a financial scandal. The fact that you fail to grasp the situation he walked into is pretty evident, but to anybody else with a rational thought process he has really done a fantastic job.
It took him the appropriate amount of time to put together a sustainable, playoff quality team for terrible owners. Sustainable is the key word, they are going to be good for quite a while, so you might want to save face and change that username.
And for my money the best minor league guy out there, (Keith Law) has been raving about their farm system and last few drafts in particular. They’re going to be producing players and continue playing post season baseball, not sure what it’s going to take for you to grasp what’s happening.
Every major league team has talent within their system, what Omar left behind was not enough.
The Mets “limited” success is going to continue because of all the elite pitching they have locked up, and the pipeline of players formed by the current front office which is going to start this year.
If their pitching stays even 75% healthy one of these years they are going to be scary.
None of their “elite” pitching is locked up beyond simply holding onto their arbitration years.
All their starting pitchers minus Noah S are coming off injury.
deGrom is coming off a fairly common injury, as is Matz. Harvey is the legit question mark.
Not sure why the quotation marks, these guys are all really good, their numbers speak for themselves.
And their arby years are fine by me, Syndergaard is a Met until 2022, as is Matz.
deGrom until 2021.
They also have Wheeler still floating around, as well as Gsellman and Lugo who are until 2024.
And they have some really nice pitching in their system, feeding into an already stacked rotation. They are becoming very good at developing pitchers, if you haven’t noticed. Hell you saw Cessa, he’s not half bad and he was like 35th on the Mets depth chart.
You guys can have Harvey in 2019 if you want him.
Might explain why every good pitcher they bring over struggles in their first year. Perhaps they should rethink this and have a longer transition period
It’s mostly just the lefties that take a little longer to assimilate and that’s more of a park factor. Dice-K was the only one I remember complaining about the regimen before and that was because it stopped him from his marathon throwing sessions between starts.
Alderson is a guy Mets’ fans will miss once he’s gone. He’s a CEO type GM. But those skills are needed more than any others with Wilpon ownership. They’re cheap, disorganized, headline driven, and stupid enough to try to micro manage things (with the goal apparently being that the headlines don’t expose their cheapness or disorganization).
Minaya was a very good talent evaluator (better than his draft results and IFA signings would seem to indicate, because he had no ability to exceed slot when that was essential to get draft value and could give only minimum bonuses to IFAs). But he knew little about the other aspects of running a baseball organization (including player development) and was not smart enough to realize it. He was just as disorganized as the Wilpons’. He was a natural Wilpon hire and fed/magnified their worst impulses.
Alderson’s successor is likely to be a Phillips or Minaya type. It’s not like a proven GM is coming here to work with these cheap chaotic maniacs. Might be one of Alderson’s assistants since the Wilpons’ like to hire guys they know and who know them. All of their prior GM hires were former relatively long term Met assistant GMs (familiar with Wilpon-ism),. It will be a downgrade.
Sorry, but Frank Cashen isn’t walking through that door.
braves don’t need pagan and I don’t really understand our desire to go get him. We have players in our system that will perform just as well. No need to spend any more money just to grab him. We have guys who have been knocking on the door that aren’t “big time prospects” that we can play easy. That way we don’t rush any of the young guys.