Dear John Smoltz,
Let me start by saying, it is my opinion that you are a hall of fame pitcher. A seven time all star, 211 wins, 154 saves, 1996 Cy Young Award winner and a 15-4 record in the postseason. As part of the Atlanta Braves you won fourteen consecutive division titles and appeared in five world series including winning the 1996 world championship. However, as a Red Sox I must sing to you the title of my favorite Janet Jackson song, 'What you have done for me lately?".
I was enthused as was most of Red Sox nation when you signed with our club. The thought of you taking the ball in a postseason game for the Sox was thrilling. The team was replacing a big game pitcher (Curt Schilling) with THE big game pitcher. Management did not rush you back from off season shoulder surgery. Your first start on June 25th in Washington was must see television. After allowing five runs in five innings, we tried to give you the benefit of the doubt that night. However, you have duplicated that same type of performance in three of your five starts. In your six starts, the team has only one win.
It seems your forty-two year old arm has lost its gitty up. Though your velocity is still up in the low 90's and your slider still has some bite to it, batters are teeing off on your mistakes. Of the twenty-four runs you have allowed in thirty plus hours, fifteen of them have come with two outs. Pitching is about deceiving the batters and your ball is not moving enough to do this. Everything seems so straight. It is not like you have faced a great team (Baltimore twice, Washington, KC, Oakland and Texas) yet either. How can we continue to give you the ball to start games any longer?
It is with deep regret and an equally deep amount of respect that I type the next line -- I do not wish to see you start another game for the Boston Red Sox. Your services as a starter should no longer be desired. You are at the "twilight of your career".
Sincerely,
All Sox Blog
P.S. If you do start again, I truly hope you prove me wrong.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hi my name is Mike Rook and I am the editor of Behind the Foul Pole. We are a general baseball blog with a Google page rank of 4. (if that means anything to you, some are impressed) at any rate we get around 300 hits a day.
My plan is to expand Behind the Foul Pole into a blogging network. The feel of the main page would be the same except we would feature a link to one blog for each MLB team. Our original work would be supplemented by posts from the blogs that are linked to our network. So in essence one or more of your articles would hit the front page every couple of weeks driving additional traffic to your site. Basically you would not change a thing that you are doing except somewhere on your site advertise that you belong to the network. This drives more traffic to the network site. It’s a win win situation for everyone. For now the site is remaining the same until I have a blog to represent each MLB team. So most likely it will not kick into full force before the end of the season. Please let us know if you are interested in this project or not. If you are not interested I can look for someone else to represent your team.
Thanks for your time
Best Regards
Mike Rook
http://betweenthepoles.wordpress.com
mdrook6206@hotmail.com
Post a Comment