No team is perfect but you have to look at where you are weak and address the problems. Having good bench players can keep a team fresh and be a good hedge against slumps and injuries. The 2004 team was an offensive juggernaut. Mirabelli even hit 10 homers for the limited time he played. The Sox finished with Youk, Roberts, Reese and Mankiewicz as reserves.

Now when the Sox need to rest Lugo or Pedroia they have Cora. What has he done the past 2.5 months?

When Tek needs a night off they can turn to Mirabelli. Ugh.

When an outfielder needs a night off they can go to Pena or Hinske and both of them are liabilities in the field and at the plate.

How come there is no depth at the AAA club? This was a problem last year as well as in 2005.

Sox since June 1st. 28-26

I don’t care what happened in April and May. What I am concerned about is the trend and while the Sox owned the 1st 1/3rd of the season the Yankees have outperformed them since. Yankees are getting Hughes back, they are getting Giambi back, they dumped Procter and will be getting some of their prospects into the pen much like the Sox did with Papelbon. The Yanks can outslug the Sox pretty much any day of the week. Yankees September looks a lot easier than what the Red Sox have to deal with especially since the Sox finish up with Oakland and the Twinkees.

The Sox needed to upgrade themselves offensively and didn’t. The Dye deal was a bit over the top but they couldn’t have gotten Piazza or another bat? Maybe someone who could get this team fired up a bit?

“The best record in baseball argument doesn’t [hold] water any longer.”

I’m not sure what better indicator there is of a team’s success or failure than its own won-less record. If the team’s active roster were radically different as of August 1 than it was on June 1, then you might have a point about the Sox record being misleading. But it’s not, and you don’t.

It’s likely that the Yankees will overtake the Sox by September 1? Based on what? Did Murray Chass say so?

This looks like reason enough for me to be mildly optimistic about August.

And no I am not worried about Hinske or Wily Mo being on the bench bats….remember we had McCarthy and Kapler as the “big” bats off the bench in 2004. No team is perfect.
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We will both agree that the Sox have better pitching and if Tampa had the ability to keep players rather than trade them away they would be a lot better off. My point was that the Sox are an offensively challenged team that has a hard time generating instant offense. For the Sox it means a single, a walk, then maybe another single and a sac fly to get some runs.

Deep benches are what keep good teams winning. Your regulars don’t play 162 games a year even when healthy but when your back up catcher is below the Mendoza Line, your back up infielder has done nothing in the past 2.5 months and your other back ups produce like Hinske and Wily Mo Cerrano have it makes a huge difference. Depth is one of the things that the GM and his crew are responsible for. They are also responsible for signing over priced free agents that don’t produce and hitting coaches that preside over down years for a bunch of guys,

Google Sucks. I decided to do a quick check on the names and those spellings came up. I’ll know better next time.

The best record in baseball argument doesn’t water any longer. They have been a .500 team the past few months and with good reason.

I saw Ortiz hit 2 homers last night so let’s not say that his power problems are completely his knee. He has developed a really bad habit of check swinging and giving up strikes and did you see him get blown away by high 80MPH heat against Tampa? Do you see him pulling off pitches? He won’t throw his current hitting coach under the bus but he has gone on record as saying he misses Jackson. Given the results they produced over a 4 year period I think there is something to look at there. Lugo’s was a slump of epic proportions. And while I did see games where he was hitting 375 foot line drives that were caught, there were a lot of games where he just looked BAD. Drew is a whole other problem though. His OBP is about the same as his slug % and there are a lot of at bats where he looks clueless. How many times does he swing at pitches low and outside while watching strike 3 right down the pipe or middle in? You want to defend the signing then say they need another bat for protection without really addressing the problem.

Bottom line is that this is not a championship team. Theo and company have assembled a roster that has far too many singles hitters and guys that either don’t protect the plate on 2 strike counts or who cannot generate a hit unless they get the perfect pitch. In case you hadn’t noticed the wankees have upped their game considerably and will likely take the Sox by the time Sept. 1st rolls around.

You are in a position of negativity that intrigues me. I have to admit that I have been close to that point myself at times this year. Such as after they went 3 and 5 in the first 8 games of the recent homestand against Texas, KC & Chicago, on top of the brutal sweeep in Detroit. I think our offence has looked pretty dismal at times, especially the late-game offence. But here we are still with the best record, some of the guys who were slumping have turned it around and I feel pretty good about this team again.

I reaaly think you’re being unfair to the management that put this team together. I have been puzzled by some things, like why they fired Ron Jackson. And some of the deals have looked bad at times, no question. But remember that guys like Crisp, Lugo and Drew came into Boston having put up some good numbers in other places, and when you see the way Crisp is playing now you can understand why they wanted him. As for the bench, these guys have made some contributions this year. I don’t think any team in baseball would scare you if they sat out half their regulars. Good everyday players are so expensive you don’t have much money to spend on good subs.

Let’s be thankful for having an ownership/management group that genuinely wants to win championships and who as a group possess the money, smarts and stones to do it. They proved that by the way they went after Dice-K. They proved it again today-they are willing to go that extra step to try to win it all. They landed Gagne and gave a good shot at landing Dye. I feel pretty lucky to be a Sox fan now, and up until Henry & Theo came to town I rarely felt that way.