I have outdone myself this time. We just started rolling out some more t-shirts at The 300s and what better to slap on a shirt than the hottest phrase of the 2017 Red Sox season. Dennis Eckersley incidentally started a war with David Price by uttering this one word and setting off the $30M/year starter on an F-bomb filled tirade. Yuck indeed.
It seems like the topic du jour around the local sports media is whether the Patriots can realistically (or should even attempt it) go a perfect 19-0. Except there seems to be less people talking about if they can do it and more people just straight up refusing to talk about it and saying its stupid to do so. USA Today thinks its doable. But basically every other media personality wants no part of it.
As a Patriots fan, the lack of people that want to go for 19-0 personally offends me.
Guys, I know it brings up bad memories. We almost had it in 2007. It was in the palms of our hands, less than 2 minutes to go and the 07 Patriots would be crowned the greatest team of all time.
If Asante Samuel makes that interception. If David Tyree plays like the insurance salesman he really is, if Rodney Harrison somehow jars that ball lose from his fucking helmet, if the refs actually called holding on the Giants offensive line on that play. The list goes on and on.
That shit used to kill me. Used to. But I noticed something recently. The 07 Super Bowl highlights come on….and I watch them. It doesn’t make me physically ill anymore. I can watch those clips and say ah man that sucked, without smashing a pint glass off my wall like I would have done a few years ago. Winning two Super Bowls since then goes a looong way in healing that pain. Brady’s 5-2 in the SB for christ’s sake. That will always be the most painful loss of my life. I was a freshman in college and my direct roommate was a Giants fan, not to mention half my hallway. So losing in that fashion, surrounded by that many Giants fans in neutral territory as a young, inebriated boyish man, that was a tough pill to swallow.
But like I said, one of the greatest Super Bowls EVER against Seattle with the Malcolm Butler pick to seal the W was cathartic; the greatest comeback of all time against the Falcons in 2016 gave us all our swagger back. You can’t say shit to us. You can’t hurt us.
The Patriots have 5 Super Bowl rings, Tom Brady is a 2x MVP, a 4x Super Bowl MVP, he had one of his greatest seasons ever during the Deflategate saga, and then was suspended the following year only to come back, tear it up and win another fucking Super Bowl. Belichick and Brady are the. Greatest. Of. All. Time. So…what do you get the men who have everything? The only thing left. Perfection
Its the ultimate. Its the only thing left that the Patriots don’t have. And there will always be the Felgers of the world saying we as Patriots fans all have a persecution complex (is it paranoid if its true though?) and theres nothing left to prove. But, tell someone they can’t do something or don’t need something and what do they want? Exactly. We’ve conquered the AFC East, we’ve conquered fan bases in St. Louis, Carolina, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Atlanta, we’ve taken on the league and the commissioner himself and come out with one for the thumb. TB12 is 40 years old and playing better than anyone has ever played the position. Minneaposix™ is the goal, but 19-0 will always be the ultimate.
PS – Plus if the Pats do go 19-0 I can get my fucking t-shirts back stateside.
Yesterday was Monday, so of course I was off my game and missed the Monday morning post. But I was watching a game from The Big 3 yesterday and it got me thinking back to some of my favorite ballers. Not great basketball players in the NBA, but ballers. Guys that you know were kings of the court, dominating one on one, and throwing down hellacious dunks in style. AKA Gerald Green. Lets throw it back to 2007 when Gerald Green won the dunk contest when he was just 21 years old.
So after another tough loss to the Angels on Sunday afternoon, the Red Sox announced the promotion of Rafael Devers from Triple-A Pawtucket.
Devers, of course, is the Red Sox top prospect and has been a virtual untouchable in any trade talks since Dave Dombrowksi has dealt so many prospects the last couple of seasons. Devers started the year in Double-A Portland and dominated before getting nominated to Pawtucket on July 14th.
Now, are NINE days in Triple-A a great preparation for the jump to the majors? Probably not. But last year, Benintendi jumped straight from Double-A to the majors and didn’t miss a beat, immediately taking over as the Red Sox every day left fielder. On the other hand, Dombrowski promoted Yoan Moncada straight from Double-A to the majors and he looked terrible. SO, this could go either way, but by all accounts from the local beat writers its more so his defense that isn’t necessarily major-league ready. If his bat is even half decent though, its a major upgrade at third base, especially after just cutting the fat fucking panda. This probably all but ends the Red Sox pursuit of a third baseman on the trade market. Welp, let the Rafael Devers era in Boston begin.
So with the Toronto Blue Jays in town, naturally NESN kept showing the Blow Jays manager John Gibbons on TV and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It finally dawned on me. John Gibbons is Dr. Evil’s henchman from Austin Powers, No. 2. This is the same goddamn guy, no doubt.
Finally had enough of trying to take over the world so he settled for Toronto.
Wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t also post the “Who does No. 2 work for?” scene, right?
Yahoo – The New York Yankees are going for it. They boosted their lineup and the backend of their bullpen in a trade Tuesday with the Chicago White Sox that’s sending slugger Todd Frazier and relief pitchers David Robertson and Tommy Kahnle to the Bronx..The White Sox (38-52) were already in full rebuilding mode and this adds to their minor-league riches, as the Yankees send Chicago a package that includes outfield prospect Blake Rutherford (New York’s No. 3 prospect) and left-handed pitcher Ian Clarkin (No. 19). Big-league reliever Tyler Clippard is also reportedly in the deal, as is outfielder Tito Polo.
The Yankees traded for Todd Frazier last night, swept in under the cloak of night and traded for the guy while I was enjoying a few Bud heavys at Fenway.
This trade did not come lightly though as the Yankees (with a suddenly flourishing minor league system) dealt their No. 3 prospect as part of the deal. Pretty steep for a guy who’s hitting .207 and will be a free agent at the end of the year if you ask me. He does provide some pop though with 16 Home Runs and 44 RBIs on the year. Not convinced? The last 3 years Frazier finished with 40, 35, and 29 Home Runs respectively. (On a side note, as that story points out the White Sox are rebuilding the smart way as they now have 5 of the top 30 prospects and 10 of the top 100 in all of baseball thanks to their recent fire sales.)
Now I wasn’t one of the people clamoring for the Sox to deal more prospects just to put a band-aid on third base. Especially with $50M in dead money from the euthanized Panda we just DFA’d. I’m definitely in the camp that the Red Sox should bolster the bullpen before brining in your 12th third baseman of the year.
HOWEVER, seeing this trade instantly reminded me of 2006 when the Yankees traded for Bobby Abreu because its a similar situation. Abreu, like Frazier, was a solid if not spectacular hitter who was on the market and the Red Sox were rumored to be in on. Then the Yankees swooped in and made the deal for Abreu. Wouldn’t have been as big of a kick in the dick if it wasn’t for the so called Boston Massacre that summer when the Yankees came to Fenway and swept the Red Sox in a rare 5-game series. Complete beatdown. And how’d Abreu do in that series you ask? Oh he merely hit fucking .500 in the series going 10-20 over the 5 games.
Over the course of the 2006 season Abreu hit .297 with 15 Home Runs, 107 RBIs and also had 30 stolen bases. In the second half of the 2006 season alone, playing for the Yankees Abreu hit .330 7 Home Runs, 42 RBIs and 10 stolen bases.
So, yea not a bad guy to have.
Ended up biting the Red Sox in the ass as they never really got right after that 5-game sweep and famously missed the playoffs. Lets just hope Todd Frazier doesn’t repeat history and go on a goddamn tear for the Yankees.
PS – Complex ranked that 5-game regular season sweep as one of the greatest moments in Yankees HISTORY. What a sad and sorry existence in the Bronx.
I’d also like to point out that @Complex had that as a Top 50 moment in #Yankees HISTORY #RedSox pic.twitter.com/UM6D7mUlzG
— The 300s (@The300sBoston) July 19, 2017
The Vertical – “Rival executives expect Boston to be keeping close tabs on New Orleans, which is entering a critical season. The Pelicans are committed to seeing if an Anthony Davis-DeMarcus Cousins frontcourt can work, but if the season goes awry, it’s widely believed the Celtics will make a strong run at Davis, who is under contract through 2020.”
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: there are growing rumblings around the league about the future of Anthony Davis and how the Celtics could be in on any potential deal. If the New Orleans Pelicans start off poorly next season and the DeMarcus Cousins pairing doesn’t mesh, a lot of smart guys around the NBA like Chris Mannix expect the Pelicans to start listening to offers for Davis.
I am one of the biggest Anthony Davis guys you’ll find. He is a top five player in this league, he’s a future MVP and I just want to state for the record that I would trade every single player on the 15-man roster plus everyone on the Maine Red Claws to get Anthony Davis. He is literally the only guy in the league that can put up a 40 and 20 game. I will buy that AD jersey TONIGHT.
You can have whatever the fuck you want if it gets me Anthony Davis. Sure you can point out that the C’s would be in the same situation the Pelicans are in right now with Anthony Davis and no one around him. But I will take Danny Ainge and Anthony Davis and let them figure it out. I have faith in that pairing. Love you Jaylen Brown. You look like a pretty good player so far Jayson Tatum. Isaiah you’re my guy, but if I can get Anthony Davis I will play one-on-five if I have to. Get me the Brow and we’ll go from there.
You know its the little things in life that bring me the most joy. The Boston Celtics bringing back Paul Pierce on a one day contract to officially retire in green is one of those things.
He’s baaaaaack #TheTruth pic.twitter.com/cwaSW5lKHU
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) July 17, 2017
Paul Pierce was the greatest Celtic of my lifetime for sure. I was too young to watch Larry Bird and those great 80s Celtics teams. So I grew up with those early 00s Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker teams. Pierce was the first guy in my life to get drafted, developed, become an elite NBA player and win a championship. He was the NBA Finals MVP the year they won and he’s gonna have his number in the rafters before too long. If Kendrick Perkins doesn’t get hurt in 2010 or Rasheed Wallace isn’t a complete bum, Pierce has two rings in three years with the C’s. He was competitive – routinely going head to head with LeBron in the playoffs. But above all, he was clutch. This was the guy you wanted with the ball in his hands with the clock winding down. Get Paul the ball, isolate and let him go to work. Didn’t matter who was guarding him, take him to the elbow, give him the Pierce lean to draw the contact or pull up and drain it. I had this Pierce game winner in LeBron’s eyeball as my background for a LONG time.
Pierce was also a part of one of my favorite Boston teams of all time, the 2011 team that lost to the Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals. They only won 39 games that year and finished as the No. 4 seed, but it was the ultimate Grit and Balls team. The Big 3 was an old group of aging vets and this team was on its last legs. They had LeBron and the Heat on the ropes, who needed an otherworldly performance from LeBron to hold them off and ultimately knock the C’s out in 7. But that team was fun as hell to watch, getting by on effort, execution and just straight up balls. Sure they didn’t win the title that year, but they did spawn the best NBA playoffs commercial ever.
To sum it up, Pierce was the one constant for the Celtics over the years. He has the 2nd most points in franchise history with 24,021. He was there as a kid, he was there when the team was BAD, winning less than 30 games, the guy nearly died in Boston after getting stabbed for christ’s sake. He was there for the KG and Ray Allen team up. He was there to hoist the first Larry O’Brien trophy for Boston in 20+ years. Kevin Garnett changed the culture in Boston and they don’t win the title without Ray Allen, but Paul Pierce WAS the Celtics. The guy bled green for 15 years so it’s awesome to see him retire with the Boston Celtics.
HIT THE TRUTH HIGHLIGHTS!
Update: It was pointed out to me the compiled Batting Averages were calculated wrong, so those numbers and the graphic have been updated in the post below.
So as everyone knows by now, the Red Sox designated Pablo Sandoval for assignment today. Look the Red Sox have given out a lot of shitty contracts over the years. Thats what big market teams do. You throw money at problems that other teams can’t afford to do. Except the problem with that is by definition free agents are most often older players who rarely live up to the pay day. You’re usually paying for past performance and almost always are eating money towards the end of the contract when the player is a shell of what he once was. Which is fine. I accept that.
BUT, when you have guys that are a disaster from Day 1 and can’t even make it through an entire 162 games then you have a huge problem.
So who was the worst Red Sox contract of all time? Well looking back over the years the two names that standout as the frontrunners are soft-ass Carl Crawford (who STILL complains about his 2 seasons in Boston) and the recently departed Sandoval. While a lot of people want to say Crawford is the worse deal because of how toxic his attitude was and how bad his play was, its got to be the Panda. Look, I made a spreadsheet to make it easy for you.
Although Sandoval was here for parts of 3 seasons and Crawford only two, due to DL stints by both, their total number of games played for the Red Sox is the EXACT SAME at 161. Which makes this the perfect sample size.
Compared to Sandoval, Crawford had more:
Now want to compare their slash lines as members of the Red Sox?
Both completely SUCKED for guys who had signed gargantuan contracts. Granted Crawford’s deal was for $142 million to Pablo’s measly $95 million, but Pablo has been so bad that they’re gonna have to eat the last 2+ years of it. At least the Red Sox were able to dump Crawford onto the Dodgers. So while Crawford signed a much larger deal, he wasn’t so far gone that another team thought “Hey Boston is a bitch to play in, we can turn this around.” Barring an even more stunning deal than the Crawford/Gonzalez/Beckett Dodgers heist, there’s no getting out of this one.
So yea, the Kung Fu fucking Panda is by far the worst contract in Red Sox history.
So, unless you’ve been under a rock you know we signed Gordon Hayward a little over a week ago to a max deal. He’ll be be that pure scorer we desperately needed to take pressure off IT and keep the points coming, from a bigger man at that. He’s not Durant or Curry or anyone like that but he’ll get buckets and that’s really all we care about him doing for the most part (more on that in a second).
What’s just a teeeeensy tiny bit worrisome is that since the signing two of his former teammates, one of whom wasn’t even on the Jazz last year, have come out with some, in the least not-positive things to say about Hayward and his switching teams. In and of itself this isn’t anything to really take a deeper look at, there’s always going to be teammates rubbed the wrong way – especially when you switch teams – athletes are people and not everyone gets along with everyone. However the comments aren’t of the same nature and come from two widely different people.
First on the 9th, Trevor Booker, the now non-Jazz (he’s on the Nets) in question came out doubted Hayward really wanted to be “the man” and that he, to paraphrase, did not want the pressure that comes along with such a role. Ok, for us this isn’t too much of a biggie. We have IT. We have Horford, Tatum, and Brown. Even if this is true it shouldn’t be too troubling, and Booker also complimented Hayward in his comments, but he still felt comfortable enough with his opinion, and apathetic enough with how Hayward would react, to say them.
Then, just a couple days ago Ruby Gobert, one of Hayward’s teammates for the last 4 seasons, came out to, paraphrasing again, simply say he understood blah blah blah but didn’t exactly like Hayward leaving “went down”, which can mean a million things in the Sports world. I’m guessing Gobert either expected a heads up from Hayward before things became public or didn’t expect him to leave at all and is a bit salty. The bottom line is the Stifle Tower is another ex-teammate that probably will not be making the trip to lovely New England to spend the holidays with the Hayward family.
Again, all of these comments were pretty innocuous but they do beg the question of what Hayward is like around his teammates and in the locker room. They certainly don’t suggest his Jazz teammates hated him but he doesn’t seem completely beloved by them either. We signed Gordon Hayward to fill it up and that is what he is going to due. I don’t think we need him to play a KG-esque captain role, but it wouldn’t have hurt to have gained some leadership or at least a good example of a veteran personality. We still may have, but now we are certainly allowed to wonder.
The 300s 