Time for some summer fun: Sox/Yankees ! (get credit, job)

[ogre]

[quote=NY'er lost in MA;1152596]Ogre- I wrote a nice lengthy reply and lost it- dammit!

To recap: 2 drastically different cities within 4 hours of one another in the same division. They beat themselves up all season and usually one goes on while the other plans for the following season. Almost might be more fun if they were in different divisions??

I think the proximity of the two cities has a lot to do with it. Mostly I posted that question because it struck me as interesting that this is widely regarded as one of the great rivalries in American sports, yet it's based on actually very few times when they've both been, in the same season, two of baseball's best teams, and so have been in a tight race with each other with a lot on the line.

Drastically different cities? Well, there's a difference in population, but I think the common element of sharing the Northeastern culture and history may actually have more to do with the rivalry than any differences, that along with the close proximity you pointed out. Same as the other example I mentioned, Ohio State and Michigan. Just a few hours away from each other, and located in two states with a lot in common, since they're both Midwestern industrial states. Another example is Texas and Oklahoma, both being south-central states where the Southeast, Southwest, and Plains regions converge. So a lot of it has to do with, Who's going to be king in this neck of the woods?

[ogre]

Well, it's a little difficult for me to talk with any enthusiasm about moves that might benefit the Yankees. If I try as best I can to wear the hat of neutral sports analyst, here goes:


Side note: The Yankees have been calling a few teams to see if they'd be interested in taking center fielder Johnny Damon off their hands, as reported by the Newark Star-Ledger. According to an official, the Braves liked Damon, 'but not at that price.'

I actually agree with this move if they can make it. Cabrera is a legitimate CF and probably better than Damon at this point.

I'm not sure how long Damon's contract is. If he's got a few years left, they'd probably do well to move him and not get stuck paying him gobs of dough after he's past his prime. One question, though, is whether they're not already too late on that. Is this just an off year for Caveman, or is he starting to fade?



Your heard it here first: This should be Giambi's last year in the Bronx.

Same idea as Damon. Move 'em out BEFORE they're washed up.



A-Rod is not going anywhere (WEEI is ludicrous at times)

I haven't been too comfortable with all the talk on EEI about how maybe the Sox will get A-Rod. With me, it has nothing to do with the fact that he's tainted with Yankee blood. I just don't like him. He's talented, but how much of a price does his team pay by having to deal with his attitude? I too have had doubts about whether he's going anywhere. It's pretty simple really: How many clubs can afford to pick up that contract?



OFF SEASON- NEED a new, young catcher to learn from Posada.

Funny you should mention that. I've been thinking the Sox need to start realizing Varitek won't be around forever, and finding a replacement they can groom before Varitek is completely over the hill. A lot of catchers are pretty much done at the age these guys are--done as catchers at least, though a lot move over to first base or somewhere, maybe DH. True, one of the greats of a generation ago was not only playing, but catching, several years into his forties. I'm talking about Carlton Fisk. That's unusual, though. The other Hall-of-Fame catcher from back then, Johnny Bench, hit his mid thirties, played third and first for a couple of seasons, then retired. That's more typical.



Move Posada to DH by 2009. Move Mussina in the off season.

The Moose presents an interesting situation. Hard to tell with him just when he'll be at the point where if you don't move him you might get stuck with him after he's lost it. Interesting case, the Moose. May turn out to be the greatest pitcher in baseball history never to have one twenty-win season.



Bring in Gagne- sooner than later.

Actually, today I heard a rumor about Gagne and the Sox. Who knows about these deadline deals until they actually happen (or not)? One story is that Gagne says he won't go anywhere where he won't be the closer. Of course he can't actually veto a trade since he's not a 10-5 man, but I wonder how much time he has left on his current contract. If he really is adamant about being the closer wherever he goes, and has little time left on his contract, a club that couldn't guarantee him that role might have to trade too much for the little time they'd have his services.



Keep Abreu and let him ride it out. Then replace him with Kevin Thompson next season (less power, but very fast and more of a team player type of guy)

I don't know so much about Abreu, not enough to know about it if his attitude is wrong. That could be a reason not to keep him around too long. If it's manageable, you might want to hang onto that pop for some time longer.



Next year's rotation: Wang, Pettitte, Hughes, ??[/quote]


And . . . ?

As for THIS year, you never know, because right now this is looking like one of those years with several teams all pretty close to each other in quality. Whoever gets hot in October wins the Series. Of course, there are still trades to be made. If the Angels get Teixeira--another rumor I've heard--our two teams may have to settle for deciding who's head honcho in their own neighborhood.

[manchester]

think the proximity of the two cities has a lot to do with it


very true
I know that I'm not into baseball but where I'm from manchester england there is an intense rivalry with liverpool not just in sport but other things due to the 30 miles apart to the west then there's leeds which is to the east another 30 miles

[NY'er lost in MA]

Originally Posted by manchester

think the proximity of the two cities has a lot to do with it


very true
I know that I'm not into baseball but where I'm from manchester england there is an intense rivalry with liverpool not just in sport but other things due to the 30 miles apart to the west then there's leeds which is to the east another 30 miles

I actually have been over there many times and seen some of that rivalry. Futbol has alot more dedicated fans. But if you were to compare, the Sox and Yankees come close.

I still think Detroit has the most pieces of the puzzle to make a run. One more day until the trade deadline!!

[ogre]

Oops. Forgot about no-trade clauses when I said Gagne could not veto being traded. So what about those eleventh-hour deals? The Yankees did not do anything that scares me. The Sox did. The thing that makes me nervous is including Gabbard in the Gagne trade. It's risky to rely on Schilling to effectively fill that spot in the rotation, because of his age. This one's tricky. With the conditioning these guys have now, they do last longer than ballplayers used to. We're into some unexplored territory about how old players will be when they typically start to fade. Since this is new territory, we probably still don't know whether 40ish is the age when a guy is likely to fade, or a guy Schilling's age might have a few good years left. With the depth of the Sox' pitching so far this season, they don't need the Curt Schilling of old. All he has to be is solid. Will he at least be solid? Until we see how it turns out, this one still makes me nervous.

I heard something about how the Sox were trying to get Jermaine Dye. I have a feeling this was one of those neve-really-was-gonna-happen deals. If they had gotten Dye, along with getting Gagne and IF Schilling were to do as well as they needed, that probably would have moved the Sox clearly ahead of the Tigers as the obvious team to beat. As is, I'd say the main concern for the Sox, aside from Schilling, is that they still have a lot of rallies dying at the bottom of the order. If Lugo and Drew were both hitting the way they have through most of their careers, then, along with the addition of Gagne, if we were to make the risky assumption that Schilling would work out well, that would probably move the Sox out ahead as the team with more of the tools than anyone else. But Lugo and Drew aren't hitting like they have for most of their careers. You never know what might happen, but his far into the season, I think what you're looking at is what you're looking at for this year. As it stands, I'd still go with Detroit. The last-day deals do tighten things up, though. There are several teams pretty close to each other, and now it looks more than ever like a season where it could come down to which team gets hot in October.

How about that NL East. Are the Braves now the favorites? How much chance does any NL team have to win the World Series? Food for thought.

[NY'er lost in MA]

ok- coming back to a few topics...

I think in essence, NY and Boston are polar opposites.

Boston: small city, huge college town, sort of small town feel being part of New England. Hospitals and techy.

NYC: mecca of business and Intl. relations. Very Metropolitan. One of the World's super cities. Also an arts mecca.

The people are also very different IMO.

Ok- back to sports!

The Yanks needed bullpen help and the Sox needed an offensive player. So what happened?!! The Sox got the guy the Yanks needed and the Yanks got WHO?? Very weird, but it seems like the Yanks have some strategy with a few minor leaguers and possible waiver deals. Sox also will need to add a bat at some point. The 3-2 wins won't cut it in the playoffs when you go up against very offensive teams like Detroit and the Angels.

A-Rod will NOT be going to the Sox- just so everyone knows. He is going to want a 7-8 year deal and I don't think the Sox will do that with Drew and Lugo weighing them down.

In the next 3 weeks we'll see what the playoffs are going to look like- exciting!

Random: I think Theo boned his infield. I would have kept Loretta and put Pedroia at short. That savings in money would have allowed them to get someone much better than Drew. Like Dye back then! He would have torn up Fenway! The savings in money also would have allowed them to get someone better than Mirabelli- maybe even a eventual replacement for Veritek. Ok- enough of that......I do think Theo is HIGHLY overrated.

On their way out: Farnsworth and possible Damon. I think his best days are fading and in his current condition- not sure how many years he has left..

[ogre]

[quote=NY'er lost in MA;1207808]ok- coming back to a few topics...

I think in essence, NY and Boston are polar opposites.

Boston: small city, huge college town, sort of small town feel being part of New England. Hospitals and techy.

NYC: mecca of business and Intl. relations. Very Metropolitan. One of the World's super cities. Also an arts mecca.

The people are also very different IMO. [quote, NYerlostinMA]

Similarities: Both are old Northeastern cities founded in Colonial times; both are longtime centers of arts and culture and higher education; New York does have many colleges and medical centers, while Boston is in fact a financial center, with the difference being more in the proportional importance each activity holds in the two cities' local economies; both are old seaports that have been the first arrival point for old-wave immigrants (from southern and eastern Europe and some parts of Asia) and both see this reflected in their ethnic enclaves; the people in both cities have that east coast edge, and will tell you ad nauseum (I grew up in MA but I'm trying to be honest here), whether you want to hear it or not, about how their cities are the greatest places in the world and no civilized person would live anywhere else.

Leave it to a New Yorker to call Boston a "small city." Worcester, MA, Portland, ME, Albany, Scranton . . . those are small cities. All have enough population density and concentration of activity to be cities rather than towns, but none has anything like the metropolitan feel of Boston. For that matter, cities like Providence, Hartford, Omaha, Jacksonville, etc. are substantially larger than the first cities I listed, with completely more of a big-city feel, and they're still noticeably smaller than Boston. If Boston is "small," what are those cities?

This does point up something. I don't mean to start an argument here, but just to make an observation that might relate to the question of the rivalry's roots. It's not that Boston is small, but that NY is giant, one of those cities now referred to as "megacities." The only other American cities that might be in this category are LA and Chicago. In line with the idea that both New Yorkers and Bostonians can get pretty full of themselves about the wonders of their cities, I do get a sense that many New Yorkers view Boston with a special disdain, because they perceive Bostonians as people who think their city is in the same league as NY. As a result, New Yorkers may find a particular pleasure in beating Boston in sports, and kind of knocking Boston back to its place.

So, possibly, New Yorkers like to emphasize the obvious difference in the size of the two cities, and the sheer number of urban amenities in each, and therefore are especially aware of these differences. Having grown up in the Boston area, I don't think this emphasis on the two cities' differences goes the other way so much. My sense is that, like me, most Bostonians don't give the comparison a lot of thought, but, when they do think about it at all, are more likely to see the commonality of Norhteastern culture, history, and attitudes.

In an earlier post I said something about the idea of competing to see who is king in the same neck of the woods. I do think that where differences are perceived this perception can lead to an especially intense rivalvry. Look at the Dodgers and Giants. That thing has gotten so ugly that there's even been at least one murder associated with it (stabbing in the parking lot of Dodger stadium a few years ago, I think it was).

Though northern and southern CA may actually have more in common than either would like to acknowledge, you're looking at some real differences in their basic culture. In the north you've got wooded hills and fog and new-age-white-magic Bohemians, in an area where the leading city has more of an old-city feel than probably any other city west of the Mississippi. In southern CA, it's sun and surf and blond-haired Valley chicks, all spread across an area that epitomizes newness and glitz and suburban sprawl on a massive scale. Given the contempt that each bunch seems to feel for the other's basic culture, throw them just a few hundred miles apart, in the same state so that there's a sense of existing on the same turf, and you've REALLY got the ingredients for an ugly competition to see who rules that turf.

Well, anyway, just some musings, and this is getting kind of long, so, later.

[ogre]

Originally Posted by LeavingMA

I'd say the Angels are the team to watch out for. Other AL teams get all the attention but they have a very solid club. I wish the red sox never got rid of orlando cabrera.

More and more, I'm leaning toward the Angels as the favorites. This has nothing to do with the fact that they've just beaten the Sox two games in a row. I've been a baseball fan way long enough to be aware of the ebbs and flows every team goes through during that long season, so that I'm not going to be swayed too much by the results of a few games. It's just that I look at the Angels' personnel, and right now they look like the one complete team. The Tigers? Zumaya's hurting. 40-year-old Kenny Rogers is hurting. Suddenly it's not looking quite as good for Detroit as it did a few weeks ago.

The same way the outlook for the Tigers has shifted, things could change again. Some years there's one team that stands out as clearly the best, with room to spare. This season looks more like one of those where there are several teams very close to each other in quality. Whoever stays healthy (or in the case of Detroit, gets healthy again), maybe makes one final sharp waiver deal, etc., probably will be your next world champion.

Could be interesting, but at the moment, I'd rate LAA on top.

[ogre]

The Yanks needed bullpen help and the Sox needed an offensive player. So what happened?!! The Sox got the guy the Yanks needed and the Yanks got WHO?? Very weird, but it seems like the Yanks have some strategy with a few minor leaguers and possible waiver deals. Sox also will need to add a bat at some point. The 3-2 wins won't cut it in the playoffs when you go up against very offensive teams like Detroit and the Angels. [quote, NYerlostinMA]

Agreed. They need a bat.

A-Rod will NOT be going to the Sox- just so everyone knows. He is going to want a 7-8 year deal and I don't think the Sox will do that with Drew and Lugo weighing them down. [quote, NYerlostinMA]

I never have really seen this one happening. You never know, but I doubt it.

In the next 3 weeks we'll see what the playoffs are going to look like- exciting! [quote, NYerlostinMA]

See my previous post. Maybe more like we'll see in the next three months, the way fortunes keep shifting. Exciting.

Random: I think Theo boned his infield. I would have kept Loretta and put Pedroia at short. That savings in money would have allowed them to get someone much better than Drew. Like Dye back then! He would have torn up Fenway! The savings in money also would have allowed them to get someone better than Mirabelli- maybe even a eventual replacement for Veritek. Ok- enough of that......I do think Theo is HIGHLY overrated. [quote, NYerlostinMA]

I'd say the jury's still out on Theo. I don't give him the automatic adulation he may get from some quarters, but I'm not ready to say definitively that he's overrated. He did put together a world champion. However, that had some of the look of a wealthy club's version of a fire sale about it. Look how few players they have left from '04. They appear to have made one all-out push to throw together some serious talent, then to have broken up the team as soon as they had their championship. Sort of like the Marlins, except that the Sox have more money, so they haven't plummetted the way the Marlins did after they quickly broke up their championship teams. So, it remains to be seen how Theo will do over the long haul.

What makes it tough to come down with a final verdict on Theo is that there's been an all-or-nothing feel to the quality of his moves. Many of his deals have been either really good or embarassingly bad. The trading-deadline deal in '04 was daring and brilliant. Theo has also been good at bringing in players who aren't always marquee names but are still very good, and bringing them in right when they hit their peak (Mueller, Millar, Myers, Arroyo, Foulke, to name several). On the other hand . . . this circus at shortstop (I agree that a Loretta-Pedroia middle infield could have been interesting), Pokey Reese the FIRST time they signed him, before the '03 season, when they then realized he would put them over budget and cut him loose, and of course, maybe the biggest fiasco of all, B.K. Kim, a big-contract (laughably big contract for what they got) guy everyone and his brother other than Theo seemed to know was a flash in the pan whose flash had faded a year before the Sox got him. But then, there was that world championship . . . So, I'd say we still have to let time tell where Theo is concerned.

On their way out: Farnsworth and possible Damon. I think his best days are fading and in his current condition- not sure how many years he has left.. [quote, NYerlostinMA]

Farnsworth: Do they have anyone coming up from triple A? I agree your club would probably do well to move Farnsworth, if they've got someone good to replace him with. But pitching, particularly lack of depth in the staff, has been the Yankees' soft spot for a number of years. Do they have anyone good to put in Farnsworth's place? Damon: I agree conditionally. Caveman is still young enough that this could just be an off year that he'll bounce back from. But yeah, it sort of has more the look and feel of a turn onto the back nine of his career.

[NY'er lost in MA]

Originally Posted by ogre

I'd say the jury's still out on Theo. I don't give him the automatic adulation he may get from some quarters, but I'm not ready to say definitively that he's overrated. He did put together a world champion. However, that had some of the look of a wealthy club's version of a fire sale about it. Look how few players they have left from '04.

That was Duquette's team that Theo inherited! Theo got 100% of the credit for the win and did little to nothing to build the team.

Yeah- Yanks brought up Joba Chamberlain- 90mph curve and 99mph fastball.
Farnsworth should be gone soon!