Braves 5, Red Sox 2: Minor lapses add up to an eighth loss in nine games – Tim Britton looks at the latest Red Sox loss which included a John Farrell ejection.

John Farrell needs to be tougher on Red Sox players – Peter Abraham says that the manager needs to be more like Bill Belichick when he had Malcolm Butler sit out OTA practices. Wait, no, he doesn’t actually say that…

It’s a good overall look at the current state of the team, though.

Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington disappointed with his own performance – Jen McCaffrey has the Sox GM trying to get back on track.

James Young working to silence the doubters – Chris Forsberg has an encouraging piece on the 2014 first round pick, who basically went through a redshirt season as a rookie.

The Patriots are officially on summer vacation until training camp starts in about five weeks or so.

What we learned from Bill Belichick’s final minicamp news conference – Mike Reiss with a look at what the coach had to say before heading out to his boat.

Five predictions for the 2015 New England Patriots season – Kevin Duffy with a nice look ahead.

Foes will shoot for Patriots more than ever – Karen Guregian says that the team will have an ever-present target on its back in 2015.

Chorus of Deflategate skeptics getting louder – Tom E Curran looks at the noise starting to pick up against Roger Goodell.

The Wells Report In Context website continues to be updated, as two pages on the site are collecting articles critical of TWR:

Wells Report Critical Articles

Wells Report Critical Science Articles

Chris Gasper wants you to thank your local beat writer:

6. Media members are often subject to criticism and derision. Sometimes we deserve it. But I hope Patriots fans appreciate the yeoman work being done by the Patriots beat writers to chronicle practice sessions and provide them with updates during OTAs and minicamp while contending with players who have no identifiable numbers on them. If going sans numerals really does boost team bonding, the Patriots will win the first-ever Nobel Prize for team chemistry.

While the Patriots did this last year as well, it seems like it’s been a much bigger deal this year. (I think last year there was still a small number on the helmet.) Some have insinuated that it is done purposely to make the media’s job more difficult.

Consider what Ben Volin wrote last year when this was a novelty:

Belichick has the players practicing without numbers on their jerseys, and it’s more than a way to build team chemistry or needle reporters trying to watch practice. There’s an unspoken message that the players are all parts of one machine, working together to win a Super Bowl trophy.

Since that’s exactly what happened, should Belichick be awarded that Nobel Prize for team chemistry, Chris Gasper?

Published by Bruce Allen

Automattician.

31 thoughts on “Sox Still Scuffling, Patriots on Vacation”

  1. Yes, Sir. Thesaurus Rex, Christopher L. F. Gasper IV, Jr., I appreciate your valiant efforts to always use such sophisticated vernacular and in the hopes that, one day, we may be elite and enlightened like you.

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    1. Globies? We need to look into the Presidential Medal of Freedom nomination process for Gasper and company.

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    2. The arrogance is astonishing, made worse by the fact that “non-credentialed” bloggers, et al, have been destroying that profession for years; beating them to scoops, doing the legwork most lazy “professionals” refuse to do, and at least trying to cut through the established newsroom “narratives” with some outside-the-box thinking in their presentation(s). Gaspar just doesn’t realize that without him, Pats fans would still have gotten the same level of “insight” into the OTAs and the mini-camp; they just would have gotten it from the “footie-pajama-wearing fanboys” on the various Patriots blogs (or maybe he realizes it and is loathe to acknowledge that fact).

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      1. As traditional mainstream outlets are already or continue to morph into PR firms for their causes/interests, this is true.

        You can debate the reporting on OTAs all day. I heard a good segment from Zo, who obviously knows what goes on, about how useless most of it is. The only thing that matters? Who gets injured, which we’d find out about anyways.

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  2. This is Boston. I player on a World Series team gets a pass until the first time he arrogantly takes the fans support for granted. It usually happens the following spring.

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  3. So yesterday I ripped Felger’s Sally Jenkins take because…Felger is a moron when it comes to covering the Pats. Today I absolutely stand and applaud, make that stand and lead the parade to honor Felger and his blunt statements “Fire this bozo now”…he is talking about Farrell. Last nights game in Atlanta was the final straw for him. Felger is absolutely right. I feel like we are going through with Farrell what Pats fans had to endure with Pete Carroll…management personally like the guy but he was/is an incompetent boob whose teams won games in spite of him. It has been a great listen. Mazz is trying to temper some of Fellers firebrand speech but Felger is right. The guy needs to get fired for the way he managed the 4th inning last night.

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    1. I’m willing to be a little more patient with him, but not much more. What happened in 2013 was just crazy, and Farrell continues to get the benefit of the doubt because of that. Still, this is the same guy who, inexplicably, brought the flammable (and little used) Franklin Morales into a 1-0 game (with men on base) in Game 6 of the ALCS against Detroit. Morales promptly allowed the go-ahead hit and left the Sox three innings away from having to face Verlander in a do-or-die Game 7, until Victorino’s grand slam in the 7th inning bailed them out. I mean, who brings a guy like that into a game like that, particularly in a situation like that? He made other head-scratching moves during the season as well — he never did figure out that “managing in a National League ballpark” thing — but the magic pixie dust that 2013 team must have snorted during spring training carried them through all the way to the World Series championship, somehow. I don’t think he’ll survive this nightmare, however. Too bad they extended his contract when they were under no pressure, or obligation, to do so. Now, after they fire him, they’re going to have to eat more money than they would normally have eaten before they extended him.

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      1. I am not willing to be patient. Farrell offers no hope. His players have tuned him out…because he is the moron who coached in Toronto. I have no idea how they over came his idiocy to to win a WS but if you go back and count his stints in Toronto he has been a bottom dweller 4 of the 5 years he has managed. The guy is has a long and storied track record of suckitude. I don’t see why they erupted him. I don’t see why they keep him. But hey…its not my money.

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        1. I don’t think there is much reason to be patient with him, however firing him now doesn’t really do anything as this season is already lost (barring miracle that would have nothing to do with a manager). The only reason I can see for firing him is if you have someone in-house that you want to give a trial period as an interim. I don’t know if they have that guy or not.

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          1. Firing him means I do not have to hear his name, shake my head when he does something stupid or listen to him try and justify his lack of substance. Its a marketing move design to placate me. If it placates others great. But really this is all about my enjoyment and getting me back as a fan. 🙂

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  5. If a member of the media in town is caught liking posts on here or responding to threads on SoSH, are they suspended for a day?

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    1. Cannot fathom how the Globe overlooked looking into the possibility that he donated the money.

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      2. Or, maybe, the intentional negation of such facts because it doesn’t make the story as juicy? I think the Latin term is “Errata”. (Thanks Gasper!!!!!!!! SAT 1600 THX 2 U!!!!!!!!!)

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        1. If that’s the case, then I can’t fathom how they didn’t foresee the donation news coming out as a result of their juicy story and them looking like idiots as a result.

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  7. Sandoval is checking instagram during games, but Farrell, Cherrington, and ownership are the problem.

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  8. Shots fired:

    Speaking of which, the object of “KFP48’s” affections should be getting her own reality show any minute — maybe that would improve NESN’s ratings.

    So, what’s the answer? Management held former manager Terry Francona
    responsible for the team’s meltdown in September 2011, so it’s not
    unreasonable to think that manager John Farrell soon could be in
    trouble, if he isn’t already. The Red Sox manufacture scapegoats like
    Vermont manufactures maple syrup. Somewhere, Bobby Valentine is
    laughing.

    Amazing what you can write when you’re not beholden to the team.

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    1. Is that a “retweet” of something Volin said? What “renowned scientist” said the math in the Wells Report was good? The “pop-culture” scientists like Bill Nye and DeGrasse-Tyson? Was there a “renowned scientist” quoted somewhere saying that Wells and the tobacco-smoke-does-not-cause-cancer consulting firm got the math right? I must have missed that one. Who is Volin supposed to believe? Maybe he should, you know, do some actual REPORTING and checkout the science on his own. He works in a town that happens to have places called “Harvard” and “MIT” located within a short driving distance of his place of work. Eh, too hard to do that, right? It’s just easier to follow the herd like most of the media. That guy be-clowns himself more and more with each passing day.

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      1. No that is Greg Bedard, whose football analysis is terrific but his reporting is spotty, who is saying that.

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        1. OK, got it. I’m not on Twitter and I must confess that all of those @ symbols confuse the hell out of me. I never know who came up with the original “tweet.”

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    2. another example of the reporters not understanding what they are reporting on. Bedard doesn’t need to understand the math. All he has to understand is exponent manipulated, intentionally or not, the data to produce a result they wanted to get. It’s all there in the wells report and AEI exposes it and writes about it on a level that even he could understand but he makes no effort to understand what AEI pointed out so he dismisses it. His thought process is backwards. He acts like the the science is a gray area when in fact it is black and white. He then acts like the texts messages are black and white and not subject to interpretation.

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  10. Tom Brady’s hearing is in less than 48 hours. Any predictions on the leaks? Who will get them? What will they be? How correct will they be?

    My best guess, Goodell will use BSPN, “objective” guys at NFL-N like Breer, and a well placed, connected reporter from either NY or Boston to muddy up the waters so whatever the end result is, Brady looks guilty while Goodell looks “firm but fair.”

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    2. I don’t know if the league has anything left to leak. They did most of that in January. We might see, as Curran predicted, new stories that paint the investigation and/or people like Kensil in a negative light.

      Either way, Tuesday morning and afternoon should be pretty interesting.

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