Dustin Pedroia and Red Sox Agree to Extension

Seven years, $100 million. An average of $14.3 million per year. That's not a bad rate for an All-Star second baseman that wins Gold Gloves and is a team leader. The deal is somewhat long. And it doesn't start until the 2015 season. Pedroia will make $10 million next year. So he'll be under contract until 2021. He turns 30 this August, so he'll turn 38 in the last year of this contract.

I'm happy Pedroia will remain with the Red Sox. He's a likable player. He has a career OBP of .371. He plays his position well. He has some power. He's a good example to younger players. He's a smart baserunner.

I've heard some compare Pedroia to Patrice Bergeron, and I don't disagree with the comparison. However, defensive play is much more important in hockey than it is in baseball.

I don't mind the salary. It's not ridiculous. The years kind of bug me. If he starts to deteriorate around 36-years old, he could be a defensive AND offensive liability, accounting for $14 million in salary. Perhaps risking this was necessary in order to sign him before he becomes a free agent. Although, what was the rush?

Pedroia was signed for 2014, and had an $11 million team option for 2015. Why the urgency to get this deal done now?

I can't help but suspect the PR aspects of locking down Pedroia played a part in this. I know we all have lovey-dovey feelings about the Red Sox right now, but it's still the same Front Office that gave us Carl Crawford and sold us bricks. I'm still suspicious. This preemptive strike signing might be a means to soften the blow when Ellsbury sets off for greener pastures. "Ellsbury's gone, but Pedoria's here 'til 2021," Red Sox fans will repeat to comfort themselves.

And with the end of David Ortiz's career on the horizon, Pedroia will assume the role of Face of the Franchise. Maybe the Sox will also sew a "C" on Pedroia's jersey, then sell another set of Pedroia t-shirts at the Souvenir Store.

There are so many non-baseball reasons to sign this baseball player.

Perhaps I'm allowing my cynical imagination to run wild. But those diabolical bastards on Yawkey Way spent years trying to win the hearts and minds of fans by making moves like this. From now on, whatever they do, I'll be wary of them. ESPECIALLY if they do something we all like. And we all like the idea of Dustin Pedroia at second base for the remainder of his career.

So because I generally like the move, that's why I'm suspicious of it.

This is the madness that can develop when living under the regime of Il Lucchino.

Team USA Hockey Invites 48 Players to Camp

Tim Thomas was not one of the 6 goalies invited to Team USA's camp. Jonathan Quick, Jimmy Howard, Ryan Miller, Cory Schneider, Craig Anderson, and 20-year old Josh Gibson were the netminders invited. Gibson was the MVP of the 2013 World Juniors, leading the US to a gold medal.

No Bruins were invited. Which isn't much of a surprise since Torey Krug was the only American on their roster last year. Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, and Milan Lucic were invited to Canada's camp. Claude Julien will be an assistant coach for Team Canada.

Two players from Massachusetts will participate in the US's camp: the aforementioned Cory Schneider from Marblehead, and Keith Yandle from Boston.

Other New England natives involved will be Jonathan Quick from Milford, CT (he also went to UMass), defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk from Greenwich, CT (also went to BU, also has the best last name ever), and forward Max Pacioretty from New Canaan, CT. That's right, the Montreal Canadiens are more American than the Boston Bruins. The Habs have two invitees to the camp.

As you'd expect, there are some great players on the team. The question is will they be great enough to match the likes of Canada and Russia. With Quick and/or Miller in net, anything is possible. Then there's some talented forwards like Phil Kessel, Patrick Kane, Dustin Brown, and Bobby Ryan that will be relied on for the scoring.

Unfortunately, the US's talent isn't as deep as Canada's (Bergeron, Crosby, Toews, Sharp, Green, Subban, Weber, Letang, Nash, St. Louis, Stamkos, Staal, Staal, and Staal) nor is it as strong at the top as Russia's (Malkin, Datsyuk, and Ovechkin).

So goaltending will have to be the difference for the US to win. Relatively speaking, Canada's goaltending isn't that good. They invited Corey Crawford, Roberto Luongo, Braden Holtby, Carey Price, and Mike Smith. Russia, on the other hand, has Vezina winner Sergei Bobrovsky.

Then there's Sweden, who will have Henrik Lundqvist. And Finland will probably start Tuukka Rask or Antti Niemi.

So Canada has the most talented skaters, but some questionable goaltenders. Russia has a goalie, and some studs, then a lot of guys you've never heard of. USA has goaltending, and some solid players, but not the firepower that Canada has. And Finland gets to choose between a Vezina finalist (Niemi) and a Conn Smythe contender (Rask).

Plus there's Sweden, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.

This should be a good tournament.

Full Team USA invitees

Can Jon Lester Respond to Matt Moore?

What Matt Moore did last night was demonstrate to Red Sox fans what an Ace can do for a team. It's something we haven't seen the likes of here since Josh Beckett's 2007 season.

The Rays didn't get an extra-base hit, yet they won. They didn't need to use their bullpen at all. Because of one pitcher having a great night and continuing his great season.

No Red Sox batter saw more than 15 total pitches from Moore. Only Mike Napoli saw that many. Seven Red Sox batters saw 12 or fewer pitches in their at-bats. Moore only needed 10 pitches to retire Jacoby Ellsbury 4 times.

Hopefully this was just the Red Sox running into a hot pitcher. Moore had won 5 straight starts coming into last night's game, and had an ERA of 1.91 in that stretch. So beating him was going to be tough.

Yesterday, I wrote a post about the Red Sox winning because of their character. Even character can't beat great pitching. The character part comes into play tonight as the Sox need to rebound from their night of silent bats. They're facing Roberto Hernandez who is 5-10 with a 4.90 ERA on the season. He's lost 4 of his last 6 starts.

Jon Lester, who has yet to prove he has the same levels of character as his teammates, is on the mound for the Sox.

This is the day after the Sox were shut down. They're facing a mediocre pitcher. They're tied with Tampa Bay in the loss column. They need something from Lester. Lester can help even up this important 4-game series, or he can give the Rays 1st place.

The team needs a good outing, Lester. Do you have the character to deliver?

Photo Credit:
AP Photo/Charles Krupa

Red Sox Walk Off With 60th Win

It wasn't pretty (3 errors committed by the Sox), and it wasn't quick (4 hours and 46 minutes), but it was entertaining. And that's a good description of the Red Sox season so far. A season in which they're the first team in baseball to 60 wins. A season in which they're an even .600. A season after they only managed 69 wins in total and had a .426 winning percentage.

The team has character. That's important in games like Sunday night's. Ryan Dempster labored through 5.1 innings. Craig Breslow was awful. Thankfully the rest of the bullpen picked up the slack. That's what teams with character do. Matt Thornton and Koji Uehara each struck out 2 in their single innings of work. Uehara only needed 13 pitches in his inning, 10 of which were strikes. Good God I love relievers who throw strikes.

The non-pitching aspects of the game were equally non-immaculate. Three errors. The bats cooled off for 5 innings against the Yankee bullpen. But the Sox stole 4 bases. Shane Victorino had 2 of those steals, he also had 2 RBI. Mike Napoli was the big hero with his 2 homeruns and 4 RBI.

Napoli's timing was perfect. Both his homeruns put the Red Sox ahead of the Yankees.

Getting contributions from different guys every night is how this team has won 60 games. Not getting such contributions is why they lost 93 games last year. There's a completely different aura around this team. They care. They want to win. So far so good.

Here's a list of goals for the Red Sox this season, each increasing in difficulty:

#1: Do better than last year
At the absolute bare minimum, this team had to win 70 games and be better than last year. They're 10 wins away with 62 to play.

#2: Be a .500 team
21 wins away with 62 games left, so they could play .339 baseball and still reach this goal.

#3: Be in the playoff picture down the stretch
This looks promising. The Sox have the best record in the AL. Although they're only 3.5 games ahead of Baltimore, the 2nd Wild Card team.

#4: Make the playoffs
Something they haven't done since 2009.

#5: Advance in the playoffs
Something they haven't done since 2008.

#6: Get to the World Series
You'd have been committed to an insane asylum if you predicted this before the season.

#7: Win it all
Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, but this is a possibility.

As the Sox approach and achieve these goals, I do have one concern. Although "concern" is probably too strong of a word. There's one thing to keep an eye on: pressure.

To this point, this team hasn't had any pressure on them. They're loose. They make mistakes but don't compound them by pushing too hard to make up for them. They're relaxed. They blew a big lead last night, but it didn't faze them. Their best two starting pitchers have massive question marks around them. Their closer is done. They haven't collapsed, in part because there has been no pressure on them.

That pressure will build. Pressure from the outside as fans and media build up their hopes for this team. And internal pressure as the team has opportunities to reach goals few predicted in Spring Training. It's easy to relax against Sabathia and the Yankees in July. In September in a multi-team playoff race, scoreboard watching the Rays and the O's, that's pressure.

This team's biggest strength is its character. We'll see the true mettle of their character as the pressure increases.

Photo Credit:
AP Photo/Michael Dwyer

So Many Reasons to Not Watch the MLB All-Star Game

I'll admit that I watched the All-Star Game. And by "watch" I mean I did other things while it was on TV. I cleaned up a little bit, ate my dinner, I'm even writing this as the 9th inning plays out. My back is to the screen as I sit hunched over the computer sitting on my desk in the corner of the room. I need to get another beer, and won't pause my TV as I go fetch it.

...

I'm back. Last Wachusett Blueberry. Not much has changed in the game. And if it had, I wouldn't care. And that's Reason #1 not to watch...

#1 No rooting interest
This time it counts? Who cares? It's exhibition baseball, the only thing in the Sporting Universe that means less than regular season baseball is exhibition baseball. Nobody cares about World Series homefield advantage in July. Nobody cares about who wins the All-Star Game.

#2 Baseball is slow
And the All-Star Game isn't an exception. Last night's was 3 hours and 6 minutes, considered a short game by modern standards. There's so much time between pitches, in a game that doesn't matter. No tension, just waiting.

#3 The game starts too late
A 3 hour and 6 minute game. That ends at 11:27pm. What's wrong with this picture? I know you don't want to start the game while California fans are still stuck in freeway traffic. Then again, California fans suck. They show up late to their own games, why not make them show up late to the All-Star Game too. Start the game at a modest time for the East and the Midwest. Especially so kids, who still have bedtimes in the summer, can watch.

#4 Fox's production sucks
Fox tries too hard to make their sports coverage epic. Nobody watches sports for the shiny extras, they watch for the game, or because they're degenerate gamblers. The All-Star Game is one of Fox's crown jewels, and they try really hard to make it more than it is. I'm always going to remember that artificial moment when Cal Ripken Jr. left his last All-Star Game, and they brought out a podium to home plate. What a BS, contrived attempt at a tear-jerker moment. The best All-Star moments are impromptu, like when Ted Williams was swarmed by everyone on the mound in 1999, or last night when Mariano Rivera tipped his cap to the fans. As opposed to generated moments such as Neil Diamond singing "Sweet Caroline."

Everything on Fox is overly staged.

#5 Tim McCarver and Joe Buck

How can you listen to these guys call a game that you don't have a rooting interest in? How can you do so without drinking heavily? It's like brain surgery without anesthetic.

#6 Too many players
There are about 80 All-Stars. Doesn't that seem a bit much to play in just one game?

#7 Too many players play
Too many people get into and out of the game. I understand the thought behind each team having a representative on the roster, but why will some Royals fan watch 3 hours of baseball to see his guy play, especially when he doesn't know which inning his player will play, especially when his player will be lucky to get more than 2 at-bats, or more than 1 inning on the mound?

29 players took the field for the AL last night. 26 for the NL. 55 total. 55 players in one game of baseball. Way too many to keep track, especially in a game that you don't have a rooting interest in.

#7 Pitchers don't last
Pitchers are so soft these days. They can't go if they pitched Sunday. Only two pitched more than an inning last night. And if they throw more than 15 pitches, their arms will fall off. In this modern age of sports medicine (both legitimate and illicit), the frailty of pitchers is inexcusable.

#8 Interleague play
The All-Star Game used to be a chance to see the best NL hitters face the best AL pitchers. And vice versa. Now this happens regularly with interleague play. Remember how exciting it was to see Pedro Martinez face McGwire and Sosa? And I can remember watching All-Star Games to see Greg Maddux face the best AL hitters. Now this happens in regular season games.

#9 Over commercialization

This ties in with Fox. There are far too many commercials, too many promotions. Everything is sponsored by something. A millionaire athlete gets a car for being an MVP of a game that he only played in for one or two innings. Every 5 seconds is a commercial or product-placement. It feels more like watching an infomercial than a baseball game. Your viewer is already barely interested in watching, so you saturate the broadcast with ads?

All of the All-Star games in all sports suck. Baseball is the least worst of them all. But none of them are any good. None of them entertain. You shouldn't watch any of them.

Fuck Rolling Stone Magazine

In a desperate effort to publicize their irrelevant, once-edgy-but-now-utterly-mainstream magazine, Rolling Stone have put alleged Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar (in the magazine they use the teeny-bopper Twitter corruption of his name: Jahar) Tsarnaev on the cover of their upcoming magazine. But it wasn't just any picture. It's a glamorizing, softly lit, almost angelic image of the terrorist. It makes him look like a Disney Channel heartthrob, not a heartless sociopath. They tried to make him look as sexy as possible. As much like a rock-star as possible.

Someone should send a copy of Rolling Stone with sexy Dzhokhar on the cover, to every inmate of that supermax prison in Colorado. Include a note that says "Coming soon to a shower near you."

How edgy of you, Rolling Stone, how very bold. And how brave of you to be so bold. They've released a statement defending of the freedom of the press and touting the merits of journalistic integrity. That's why you made Dzhokhar look as pretty as possible on the cover. Because of all your integrity.

If you truly want to discuss his descent from popular teenager to terrorist, why not have two contrasting images: one like this one, and one of him walking along Boylston Street with a bomb slung over his backpack. Or maybe a picture of him juxtaposed with a picture of the carnage he created.

The Telegraph in Britain figured that out.

That would be journalism. That would be provocative and it would elicit thought. Not merely sensationalist and shocking, in order to generate profit.

And if you were truly brave and truly wanted to push the boundaries of freedom of the press, then you'd have a monthly comic strip featuring the prophet Mohammed (illustrations of Mohammed piss many Muslims off), printed alongside the personal mailing addresses of the magazine's staff. That's brave. This is cowardly. This is just a crude attempt to generate controversy and get people to talk about a magazine they probably assumed wasn't on the shelf anymore.

But if you want to go down this road, you can't do this just once. If Taylor Swift or Jay-Z is on the cover of next month's edition, I'll be very disappointed. You want to be edgy, you want to push the envelope, you must do it ALL THE TIME. You bought the ticket, you take the ride.

Suggestions for future Rolling Stone covers:
Adam Lanza
Aaron Hernandez
Osama bin Laden
Major Nidal Malik Hasan
Joseph Stalin
Muammar Gaddafi
Joseph Kony (remember how much people hated him, then forgot about him)
Timothy McVeigh
James Holmes
Lee Harvey Oswald

And I want the pictures to be as sexy as possible. That's the main thing. The type of thing teenage girls tape to the inside of their lockers. When Rolling Stone put Charles Manson on their cover, he wasn't portrayed as sexy. More crazy than anything else.

Anyway, fuck you, Rolling Stone. You're not journalists, you're just trying to pump some relevancy into your outdated, uninteresting rag. You're not trying to tell a story, controversy be damned. You're trying to make money off pain and suffering, by glamorizing someone who killed innocent people as thoughtlessly and as callously as you turn the page of your shit magazine.

Bergeron to Be Bruin for 8 More Years

The Bruins and Patrice Bergeron agreed to an 8 year contract extension that will keep him with the Bruins until 2021-22. The deal is worth $52 million, resulting in a $6.5 million annual cap hit.

Bergeron has always been a respected player here in Boston. He's only 27 but it seems like he's been in the League for over a decade. Because he essentially has been. He has 9 seasons under his belt. He's not a typical star. He doesn't score 40 goals, or tally 60 assists. He doesn't do any one thing spectacularly, he does every singly thing well. And in the postseason he finds another gear.

Zdeno Chara is signed with the Bruins until 2017-18. It's safe to say that when Big Z leaves the Bruins, he'll pass the Captain's "C" to Bergeron.

I like this deal better than the Rask signing. Bergeron is a forward, not a goalie. Long-term goalie contracts always carry more risk than contracts for skaters. Bergeron also has more of a track record than Rask. 9 seasons, 579 games, 83 playoff games. And finally, when a guy like Bergeron loses a step, he can still be productive based on his hockey IQ and his knowledge of the game. When a goalie loses a step, they're done.

I also think Bergeron would have more value on an open market than Rask would.

I'm still not a big fan of these long-term contracts. However, for a guy like Bergeron I don't really mind.

Andrew Ference Gives Bruins' Army Rangers Jacket to Matt Brown

Andrew Ference is the classiest of acts. In his last action as member of the Boston Bruins, he bestowed the Army Ranger jacket on Matt Brown. Brown was a Norwood High School hockey player, paralyzed his sophomore year due to injuries suffered in a game in 2010. The jacket was given to the Bruins by a friend of Ference's, Army Ranger Sergeant Lucas Carr. After each game the jacket was given to a Bruins player, by his teammates, who was deemed to be the player of the game.

In a sense, the jacket has come home. Matt Brown participates in road races, and he's pushed in a wheelchair by Lucas Carr, the same Army Ranger who gave his jacket to Ference. As I mentioned in a post the day after the Marathon Bombings, Carr and Brown push each other, literally and figuratively.

Matt Brown had planned to participate in the Boston Marathon, but wasn't feeling well that day. Carr ran the Marathon. And he crossed the finish line moments before the bombs went off. And in true Army Ranger form, he went back to help the wounded. In this picture he's in the sleeveless yellow Bruins shirt in the top right.

You can see him and his tattooed arms in the right side of this picture:

The jacket has been on a pretty cool trip, being worn by Rask, by Bergeron, by the best of the Boston Bruins. And it's pretty cool that it took such a whirlwind tour of hockey greatness, starting when Carr gave it to Ference, and ending when Ference gave it Carr's co-runner, Matt Brown.

It's a garment of distinction, and I can't think of a better person to wear it. Ference put it best when he tweeted:

This jacket represents a lot of great things. I couldn’t think of a more worthy final recipient than you bud. @mjb_3 pic.twitter.com/B9jCCImZE0
— Andrew Ference (@Ferknuckle) July 11, 2013