Rose Deserves a Second Chance

            Last week Major League Baseball hosted one of the most successful and entertaining all-star weeks in recent memory. Almost everything went right for them. Severe weather held off, hometown Cincinnati heroes performed at their best, and a Reds fan-base was engaged and energized.

            The Home Run Derby was highlighted by a huge performance from Cincinnati’s Todd Frazier, who hit 15 dingers in the final round of the Derby to take home the hardware. In the past, the Home Run Derby dragged on a bit, and it didn’t always make for great TV. But with an all-new format this year, that changed in a big way. The MLB put together a head-to-head bracket that gave each player four minutes to hit as many shots as they could. This added a whole new energy to the Derby, and it made it so that players couldn’t take pitches, which is what made it lag before.

            The game itself was also a success. The American League won 6-3, and AL stars Mike Trout and Manny Machado both had big games. Cincinnati looked like a hopping baseball town, and it was a great week for the sport. I think that much of this success is a credit to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, who is in his first year on the job, but has taken big steps forward in order to make the game more appealing.

            As should be expected, the ratings provided mixed results. Viewership of the Home Run Derby was up 32% from 2014, and it came through with the highest rating since 2009. The numbers on All-Star Game, however, dropped from last year. The game received a 12 share from Nielson, which means that 12% of televisions in use were tuned into the event. That is down from a share of 13 last year, and the total viewership numbers were also down from 2014.

            While the MLB had to come away from last week thinking it was a success, there was also a much more complicated narrative behind the All-Star Game being in Cincinnati that stirred up lots of controversy with executives, former players, and especially fans.

            Since Pete Rose was banned from baseball and the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989 due to gambling allegations, MLB executives haven’t said much at all about re-instatement. But with the game being in Cincinnati, where fans are dying to get Rose into the hall, it would have been impossible for Commissioner Manfred to ignore the topic.

            Manfred appears to be open to the idea of re-instating rose, but undoubtedly there are a lot of negotiations that need to take place before he makes a decision. At least for the time being, though, Rose supporters got what they wanted. Prior to the game, Rose was honored as one of the four greatest Reds out on the field, and he received a huge round of applause from the hometown crowd. Rose served double-duty at the game, as he was also there as a pre and postgame analyst for Fox, who hired him this year.

            While Rose made some huge mistakes, there is no denying that he is one of the greatest ballplayers of all time, and for that reason, I think he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. There’s just no arguing with his numbers. He had a .303 career batting average with 4,256 total hits, which is the most ever. He is a 17-time all-star, a three-time World Series champion, an NL MVP, a World Series MVP, a Rookie of the Year, and the list can go on.

            Nobody denies that Rose bet on baseball, which is one of the game’s highest crimes, but you just can’t keep a guy like that out of the Hall of Fame. It is a place where baseball’s best players are honored, and Rose is among the best of all time.

            With all of the support behind him, I think Rose will eventually find himself in the Hall, but at age 74, Manfred would need to act relatively quickly if he wants this to happen within Rose’s lifetime.

Contact Jasper Goodman at jgoodman@radiovermont.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jasper_Goodman

Time For A Change

            Red Sox nation was tantalizingly close to giving up entirely on the 2015 season. But just as we were about to put our rally towels away and find something else to entertain ourselves with for the rest of the summer, the not-so-loveable losers, also knows as the 2015 Red Sox, gave us hope. They gave us just a little bit of a glimpse as to what this team should be playing like.

            Boston has won seven of their last ten, and they’ve even gained some ground in the AL East, as they now sit six games out of first place. I’m not saying this is a warrant to jump on the bandwagon and start gearing up for a playoff run, but even though I wouldn’t have told you this a week ago, this team may not be as atrocious in the second half as they were in the first.

            If the Red Sox are going to turn this around, they need to do a few things. First off, the front office needs to decide if they are in it to win it. If this season is a bust, then the front office needs to recognize that and they need to let go of 2015 and start making moves that will benefit the 2016 Red Sox.

            However, if they are going to make a serious run at the top of the division, they need to make some changes. They need to fix the bullpen. That is the second thing they have to change if they are going to make a run. To put it mildly, the Red Sox bullpen is terrible. To manager John Farrell’s credit, he has done a fair job at managing the bullpen, but when he fixes one problem, another one seems to arise immediately. Reliever Matt Barnes has particularly bad. Opponents are hitting .334 against Barnes and he owns a 5.14 ERA. Relievers Craig Breslow, Robbie Ross Jr., and Stephen Wright also have ERAs above four. Wright hasn’t been terrible for the Sox, but if Farrell puts any of the other guys on that list out on the hill, you’re almost guaranteed to see a bad inning.

            The most obvious thing to do is to trade for some help out in the bullpen. Koji Uehara is safe in his job as the closer, but if the Boston could add a solid middle reliever, they would be in much better shape. 

            Other than that, they can explore with moving a starter to the bullpen or something along those lines, but right now things are looking pretty grim from the point when the starter comes out of the game and beyond.

            The third thing they need to do in order to succeed in the long run is to win games against other teams in the AL East. I don’t know if it is a mental pressure or what, but the Red Sox have been awful in games against other eastern teams. They are 16-25 against the AL East, and if they keep that up they are never going to come close to the top of that division. The quickest way to gain ground in your own division is to win games against other teams in your division, and right now the Sox simply can’t do that. Only one game separates the first place team from the fourth place team, which means that nobody is running away with the crown.

            The fourth key to winning is scoring first. When the Sox score first they are 28-12. It seems that when the offense gets going early in the game, they can stay hot, but when they start cold, they tend to finish cold.

            I can’t begin to predict what is next for this team, but hopefully some time off at the all-star break will benefit them.

Contact Jasper Goodman at jgoodman@radiovermont.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jasper_Goodman.

Injuries add to Boston's struggles

            Injuries has now joined poor managing, lack of focus, and underperformance on the list of things that have made the 2015 Red Sox season the painful-to-watch disaster that it is.

            Third baseman Pablo Sandoval and catcher Blake Swihart both went down with injuries over the weekend, digging the Red Sox’s hole to be even deeper, and adding two more complicated problems to the already plagued 2015 Red Sox campaign.

            Yes, the Red Sox had a good weekend, taking two out of three from the defending AL Champion Royals. But let’s face it, this team has had good weekends before, and time and time again, they have continued to disappoint any fans who had any sort of expectations at all for them. This season has turned into an embarrassment for the Red Sox and their fans. They currently sit in last place in the AL East, and are nine games out of first place.

            It’s not so much how bad they are, but more the way that they have handled how bad they are. Whether it’s David Ortiz getting ejected for no reason, Wade Miley throwing a hissy fit on his manager, or Pablo Sandoval going on Instagram in the middle of a game, this team just doesn’t have the mental commitment to win right now.

            Off the field, there are more than a handful of problems as well. In the dugout, we have John Farrell, who has no clue how to manage a baseball game in a National League ballpark. Upstairs in the front office, there is Ben Cherington, who has epically failed three out of the four years that he has been General Manager of the Red Sox at his job, which is to put together a winning baseball club, and is currently driving this team even further into the ground. And sitting in the luxurious owner’s box, being fanned by $100 bills, there is John Henry, who is watching all of this happen, and yet still says, “The general manager (of the Red Sox) is going to be the general manager of this club for a very long time.”

            Let’s start with the on-field problems. The Red Sox just aren’t scoring enough runs. It’s a given that the pitching staff isn’t going to be fantastic, and that is entirely the fault of the front office, but this team still should be winning games with scores like 6-5, and scoring enough runs to make up for a mediocre rotation. Their team batting average is .256, and they just aren’t getting the production out of the middle of the order from the guys who they need to, notably Mike Napoli, who is hitting just .203.

            Mentally, they are even more of a train-wreck. Things got to a boiling point for them in Saturday’s loss to Kansas City.  Two starters had to leave that game due to injuries, and DH David Ortiz was ejected for arguing balls and strikes. Ortiz’s ejection stood more for his overwhelming frustration with his team’s performance, and for that matter his own performance, than it did for his anger towards the umpire. I understand how frustrating baseball can be, but at the same time, Ortiz let his team down by getting thrown out of that game. At the point where he was tossed, it was a close game, and for all he knew, having his bat could have been essential later on in that game.

            At the helm of this team is John Farrell. I don’t blame him for all that has happened, but at this point, he has proven himself to be a poor in-game manager. In the fourth inning of last Wednesday’s game in Atlanta, which is a National League ballpark, Farrell proved that he can’t execute basic strategy, and blew the Sox’s 1-0 lead. There was a runner on second with two outs in the inning, and the number eight hitter, Pedro Ciriaco, was coming to the plate, with the pitcher on deck. Any manager should know that with first base open you walk the number eight hitter to face the pitcher and get the third out in the inning. Instead, Farrell chose to pitch to Ciriaco, who made him pay by singling home the run.

            Over the weekend Farrell again proved his incompetence as an in-game manager after Blake Swihart doubled with nobody out. Mookie Betts, who has been the Sox’s hottest hitter as of late, came to the plate and was told to bunt Swihart over to third.  He did so successfully, but it gave away an out that shouldn’t have been given away after a leadoff double, especially with Mookie Betts up.

            I also blame Farrell for Wednesday night’s incident when Sox third baseman Pablo Sandoval was caught ‘liking’ an attractive young woman’s photos on Instagram in the middle of a game. Farrell needs to have control over his team, and if he wants to win, which right now it doesn’t really seem like he does, he can’t have his starting third-baseman working on his post-game social life in the middle of a game. It’s an embarrassment.

            Going forward, if they have to blow up the team, this will be the third time in the last four years that they will have done so. The blame for that lies on Ben Cherington, who doesn’t really seem to have a plan for this club. Yes, they won the World Series in 2013, but I’m starting to have questions about whether or not Cherington really has a plan, or if he is just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what will stick.

            This week will be the Sox’s last shot. I can’t see them turning this season around, but they have three straight series against AL East teams, and if they can’t start winning now, the season is as good as over.

Contact Jasper Goodman at jgoodman@radiovermont.com. Follow Jasper on Twitter @Jasper_Goodman.