This quote from Peter Abraham crystallizes my feelings, especially about the string of no comments Hohler got from players other than Pedroia in doing his story: Finally, it speaks poorly of the prominent players on the roster that only Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz to a lesser extent have been willing to step up and accept some responsibility for what happened. Extraordinary measures were taken to try and get Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Tim Wakefield, John Lackey, Jason Varitek and others to give their sides of this and all have so far refused. Disappointing. I know it's the offseason, and you want to forget about a bad season as quickly as possible and not deal with the Boston media, but guess what? When you collapse in epic fashion, there's some accountability that needs to happen. The fact that the same attitudes that contributed to the collapse manifest themselves in the response to it is not surprising, but it's unfortunate, and it means the next manager, whoever he is, will have quite the task.

Two games go the other way in September... Yes, if Daniel Bard is only atrocious and not mind-destroyingly bad, the Red Sox make the playoffs and all is well, and perhaps the problems from this year are addressed in spring training and we never know about it... or it all falls apart next year. Or who knows. But it's funny how all of that works. Like I said, some of this stuff is legitimately problematic, others of it not an issue if the club is winning. I would not have run the part about the pill bottle in Francona's room, Nick, given the strength of his denial. It creates a damaging impression with no evidence at all. Maybe the marriage stuff is fair game; we've seen it affect people's performance before, and it could be a legitimate distraction, but that's really close to the line. But, really, all of this stuff is anonymously sourced, which, seriously, this is baseball, not the U.S. government. I understand that's the only way this story gets written, but if you'r going to use anonymous sources, keep it to the big stuff of what's happening in the clubhouse, not the shady character-assassination stuff that may or may not be true and may or may not be relevant.

Ortiz has a long history of speaking his mind and saying things that cause little furors then dissipate. It's never been a problem before now, and I don't think it's at the root of the Sox' problems in 2011, your clear dislike of him notwithstanding. Do you really think contract status determines who is a clubhouse leader, as opposed to say, being the best pitcher or player on the team? It's a serious question; I don't have any way of knowing. Varitek was never the highest-paid player on the team. Pedroia has been talked about as a team leader, and he's both young and inexpensive. I'm not inclined, based on the evidence, to believe age or contract matters as much as on-field performance and general ability to command the respect of your peers.

The Hohler piece was really fascinating – and disheartening to see that Lester was among the pitchers doing stupid stuff in the clubhouse during games. Lackey and Beckett have never exactly come across as great clubhouse guys, but Lester should be able to be a team leader. Buchholz being part of that group shows he still has some more growing up to do. It's hard in a story like Hohler's to prioritize all the things mentioned: which actually contributed to the problems in the clubhouse, which are merely symptoms of those problems, and which would never have been issues if the Sox had managed to get into the playoffs. I think the overall problem was a sense of entitlement and individual selfishness that crept in over time, and before anyone knew it, Francona couldn't stop it and no one on the team felt they could either. I'd say having 80 percent of your starting staff in the clubhouse having their own private party during games and cutting back on their exercise regimen as the season progresses is significant, and was likely a contributor to the problem. Some of the other stuff – Wakefield's pursuit of personal achievements and Ortiz's demand for an extra RBI – would be overlooked if this were 2007 or even 2008 or 2009. They're the typical actions by highly paid, highly driven individuals that make them "winners" when you're winning and "selfish jerks" when you're losing. I also wouldn't put much stock in the Ellsbury stuff, partly because that's also the kind of stuff that surfaces when a team isn't doing well, and also because it's disputed by Rob Bradford this morning. I'm a little uneasy about the contributions of Adrian Gonzalez in the mix. But I suspect if the team were winning, his attitude would be recast as quiet confidence instead of egotistical whining. Either way, it's armchair psychoanalysis influenced mostly by the end result than by any actual evidence. What this story tells me is that Ben Cherington needs to let some of the old guys go and make room for younger, hungrier players. Wakefield and Varitek simply cannot return next season. Let Aceves and Bard compete for a rotation spot, and give the backup job to Lavarnway. Clearly, Varitek's past his prime, both on the field and off it, and Wakefield's quest for 200 was pretty horrific; I don't think anyone wants to see his quest for the Red Sox wins mark. I'd keep Ortiz for the right price. He's still the best DH in the game, and he at least tried to right the ship, unlike his veteran counterparts. Peter Abraham is on record defending Ortiz's RBI outburst as something that happens all the time in baseball, just not usually when a camera is on. It's another example of things being blown out of proportion because of the end result, not because they are themselves unusual or harmful. In the end, my hope is that this serves as a slap in the face for players who should know better, guys like Lester and Youkilis, who should be clubhouse leaders, and a wake-up call for Pedroia to be the leader everyone keeps saying he is or will be. He was the only player with the guts to speak on the record to Hohler; he should be the guy in the clubhouse calling guys to account. And I hope it wakes Henry up from his recent malaise. I think the Red Sox were his passion for a few years, but he got bored with his toy and stopped caring so much. That's noticeable, to fans and players. With a new manager, some fresh blood and some more attention from ownership and dedication from the starting pitchers, the Red Sox should still be fine next year. If they'd only gone 6-6 to open the season and 13-14 to end it, they would have won 100 games. So I'm not too worried, so long as they show they're making efforts to right the ship.

A lot of the bloom is off the Epstein rose, I think, and the success of Tampa, Texas and Toronto show that Epstein clearly isn't the only saber-minded GM out there. So I'm not panicking. But Epstein is a very talented GM, and is clearly a top priority for the Cubs, so the Sox need to make sure they receive appropriate value in return, and it should be significant. And of course it will be sad from purely a fan's perspective. Epstein played a huge role in bringing not just one but two world championships, as well as some of this era's most beloved ballplayers. I'll save a more thoughtful retrospective for if/when he actually leaves, but there are definitely some mixed emotions, as there were when Francona left.

Edes is reporting that Francona told his staff last night that he would not be returning. Wow. If the Sox have even a .500 September, he's back in 2012. Amazing how these things happen.

Good grief. Stop paying attention for 12 hours... I've been composing a post in my head about this abominable month and crazy conclusion, and now it just gets crazier. Suffice it to say: Thank God I'm in grad school and was too busy to do much more than read box scores for the past four weeks. But this is really surprising to me.

This made me laugh, despite my firm belief this is nothing more than a reverse-jinx attempt.

Fangraphs has a good piece about Montero's callup today: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/jesus-did-not-come-to-save-the-bronx/ The gist: Since Montero won't be starting at catcher, he will be nothing more than a DH with some late-inning catching duties. That means he's replacing a platoon of Jorge Posada and Andruw Jones. Posada vs. RHP, 2011: .272/.348/.465 Montero vs. AAA RHP, 2011: .273/.330/.398 Jones vs. LHP, 2011: .276/.377/.543 Montero vs. AAA LHP, 2011: .328/.392/.648 So Montero replaces Jones, who moves to left field against LHP, but that means putting the team's best defensive player on the bench those games. Is the upgrade from Gardner to Montero against lefties on offense worth the downgrade from Gardner to Jones in left field, especially at Yankee Stadium?

I'm just looking for one win this series. That's pretty much all I ever do against the Yankees, but in this case, with the Sox carrying a 1.5-game lead, that's really all they need to do. The rest of the schedule benefits them.

The Red Sox are a combined 42-10 against the A's, Yankees, Blue Jays and Orioles, teams they will play 23 times over the next 34 games. They will also play the Rays seven times (5-6 record thus far) and the Rangers five more times (1-4). We could simply extrapolate their performance to date against those teams forward through the remainder of their games and get a final record of: 101-59. I doubt that will work out just this way, and I always dread playing the Yankees and Rays, but the Sox have a nice schedule coming up, and this doesn't account for most of these games taking place at home. They're in a good spot; now they have to make the most of it.

Let's look back further: 5. The Hartford Courant, March 22, 1940, discussing comparisons between Ted Williams and Charlie Keller: "The somewhat steamy rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox doesn't stop at the two ball clubs. It has moved along to the matter of crowning the king of the 1940 sophomore crop." How about the early 1960s, when the Sox were dreadful? 6. Meriden Journal, July 17, 1962: "The game offers the first of 14 remaining chances for the Red Sox to take charge of the New York rivalry." 7. Finally, there's a Boston Globe headline from 1964, when the Red Sox finished 27 games behind the first-place Yankees: "Red Sox-Yankees Rivalry Among Biggest In Sports." Seven examples from between 1940 and 1964, more than a decade before the late 1970s. This has been a rivalry by any objective sense of the word for at least 70 years. James might not think it is, and that's fine, but the rest of the sports world begs to differ.

For the record, I only looked at the 1930s in my search because I wanted to see how far back they were described as being in rivalry. So how's this: 1. March 23, 1954: "Twice in the next two days, the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees will renew their ancient rivalry. The rivalry was considered "ancient" in 1954! 2. Here's a report from later that summer: "The first game of a three-game series in New York's Yankee Stadium will be piped back to local viewers via WBZ-TV, Channel 4, as the Red Sox and Yankees resume their age-old baseball rivalry." 3. There's an AP story from 1955 with the headline, "Red Sox and Yankees resume rivalry tonight." Another one, nearly identical, in 1959. 4. There's the Norman Rockwell painting from 1957 showing Yogi Berra being heckled by Boston fans.

You can argue semantically all you want, but the fact remains that media were using the word "rivalry" to describe these teams as early as 1936. Like SF says, the team's histories have been intertwined since 1904, when the Highlanders collapsed down the stretch, giving the Americans the pennant. They played the first game in Fenway Park in 1912, were involved in the series of trades in 1919-20 that sent Babe Ruth over, and picked back up when the Red Sox began ascending in the late 1930s. It's been a constant refrain from Yankee fans to scoff at the idea of a rivalry and invoke the hammer-nail analogy, though not as much since 2004. Yet national baseball media, from The Sporting News to the newspaper wires to ESPN, have persisted in describing the teams' relationship as such for 70 years. If you object, I suggest finding a time machine. That ship sailed long ago.

And at least one book I found pegs the beginning of the rivalry as we know it with a beanball war in May 1938 that ended with Joe Cronin and Jake Powell exchanging punches in the runway leading to the clubhouses after both had been ejected for escalating the on-field fracas. That's all I got for now. :-) This thing's been going on for a long time. Nearly 75 years now. I don't think it's dead, as I said, but K is right, everyone outside the two fanbases is tired of it, and it's clear the current generation of players have a lot of respect and appreciation for each other. Both teams are too good, and the system offers too many opportunities to reach the ultimate goal without going through each other that we're probably seeing another 10 or 20 years of dormancy before a new generation, and another flukey two- to three-year series of collisions reawakens the passions of the rivalry.

I stand corrected. The word "rivalry" is used to describe the Sox and Yanks' players battling for spots atop the leaderboards during the 1936 pennant race. "That the Sox, nestling in second place, might do something about that deficit in the standings adds to the general interest, but even beyond this is the individual rivalry for batting and pitching leadership, bringing on something close kin to man-to-man combat."

Anyone want to guess how many times the Sox finished second to the Yanks, or vice versa, in the 75 years of baseball from 1920 to 1995? This is easy enough to figure out. The Red Sox finished second to the Yankees in 1938, 1939, 1941, 1942, 1949, 1977, 1978, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2009. Many of those weren't particularly close, but the 1949 season famously came down to the final weekend, and the Sox finished in third in 1950, but just five games out. The word "rivalry" may have been coined later, but the history of close finishes and player comparisons started with Ted vs. Joe D in the early 1940s, culminated with the 1949 pennant race, then resurfaced nearly 30 years later, took a two-decade break and ramped up to the 2003-05 crescendo.

Who were the big-time controversial players of the rivalry in 2003-05? A-Rod and Varitek (the fight, A-Rod's contract and slap) Pedro (Zimmer, "daddy," etc.) Schilling (making Yankee fans "shut up.") Sheffield (fighting Fenway fans) Damon (duh) I'm sure I'm forgetting people. I do think the characters are more boring now. A-Rod tries his best (usually failing) to deflect controversy, and the controversy he does generate is not rivalry related. Varitek's was really just the one incident. Pedro, Schilling and Sheffield are retired. Damon is now playing for a team we can all agree to hate. So I guess my conclusions are the opposite of SF's: We have a largely new generation of players on both sides, outside the two or three big names on each team (Ortiz, Wakefield, Jeter, A-Rod). Both sets of newbies have won the Series without needing to go through their rivals. Both teams have arguably had bigger rivalries with the Rays because the Rays have been the team standing in the way (Sox in '08, '10; Yanks in '08) more often. The only real thing to me that is reminiscent of the rivalry from the early 2000s is the Pedroia-Cano comparisons, which remind me of the Jeter-Nomar debates that formed a big part of the rivalry through the first half of 2004.

But for pure bragging rights (which I care more about, logistics be damned), I want the division. Totally agree with this. The Sox have been lousy against Texas for a few years, and with the wild card, they would lose homefield advantage despite likely having a far better record. So in that sense, yes, the Tigers would be preferable. Of course, you're right about Verlander. Tough call, which probably emphasizes further that this series is pretty meaningless beyond bragging rights.

Great writeup, btw, IH. Wish you wrote more often. :-)

The Sox and Yanks are clearly both making the playoffs, barring an epic collapse, so this series really only matters to the extent that both clubs would probably rather face the AL Central winner than the Rangers (but that assumes the Rangers can pull away from the Angels, which isn't a sure thing anymore). Which is to say this series isn't all that important for either team. So why am I so nervous?

Re Sabathia and Verlander, it must be the ground ball rate because Verlander actually has a higher K rate and lower BB rate. Verlander also has a higher HR rate, so his xFIP, which assumes neutral home run rates, has Verlander on top. Fangraphs' WAR, however, is based on regular FIP, I believe, though I wonder how soon it will be until they change to SIERA, their new stat, which is basically xFIP but adjusted for the fact that pitchers can in fact control their BABIP to a small extent. (It adjusts xFIP for how pitchers with similar K/BB/FB/GB rates have fared over the course of history.) Verlander has a 2.77 SIERA this season, while Sabathia is at 3.08. Haren at 3.20, King Felix at 3.21, Beckett at 3.33, Masterson at 3.40 and Weaver at 3.43. Though there's a ton of other pitchers who move up under that metric: Brandon Morrow (3.01), David Price (3.04), James Shields (3.08) and Jon Lester (3.22). Re Cano, his dWAR ratings at Baseball-Reference go like this: 2005: -0.6 2006: 0.9 2007: 1.4 2008: 0.4 2009: 0.8 2010: 0.3 2011: -0.3 That's a total of 2.9 wins over seven years, or 0.25 wins per season, essentially average, a little better than that if you assume the last few years are more his true talent. Fangraph's ADR (Aggregate Defensive Rating), which is expressed in runs (B-R's is in wins, so I've divided these numbers by 10 to keep them comparable), looks like this: 2005: -1.6 2006: -0.3 2007: 1.1 2008: -0.7 2009: 0.4 2010: 0.2 That's -0.9 wins in six years, so also essentially average, just on the other side of zero. This year, UZR has him at -5 runs and DRS has him at -4.

Wow, looks like you're right, John, about Granderson on offense. Gardner has more of his value than I would have thought come from defense. And Cano's been great, but he's still a win (or more) behind with the bat depending which you look at. Pitchers in this conversation: B-R (ERA-based): 1. Verlander, 6.2 2. Weaver, 6.0 3. Sabathia, 5.3 4. Beckett, 5.0 5. Romero, 4.2 14. Lester, 3.2 18. Garcia, 2.7 24. Rivera, 2.3 28. Colon, 2.0 33. Buchholz, 1.9 39. Bard, 1.7 Fangraphs (FIP-based): 1. Sabathia, 5.9 2. Verlander, 5.5 3. Weaver, 5.1 4. Haren, 4.8 5. Masterson, 4.1 8. Beckett, 3.4 24. Garcia, 2.3 25. Colon, 2.3 29. Lester, 2.0 33. Robertson, 1.8 35. Rivera, 1.7 36. Papelbon, 1.7

He has Granderson on several of his alternate lists, depending on how you define "MVP." At any rate, isn't Gardner up there with Granderson on offense? Gardner actually has (barely) more WAR than Grandy, according to B-R. Here's where everyone stands on the B-R list: 1. Bautista, 6.8 (6.4 bat, 0.4 glove) 2. Pedroia, 6.2 (4.9, 1.3) 3. Ellsbury, 5.3 (4.4, 0.9) 4. Gonzalez, 5.2 (4.3, 0.9) 5. Zobrist, 4.7 (4.9, -0.) 6. Youkilis, 4.3 (4.0, 0.3) 12. Gardner, 3.6 (1.4, 2.2) 15. Granderson, 3.5 (4.2, -0.7) 17. Rodriguez, 3.2 (2.1, 1.1) 19. Swisher, 3.2 (1.8, 1.4) 24. Cano, 2.9 (3.2, -0.3) 33. Teixeira, 2.4 (2.4, 0.0) 42. Ortiz, 2.1 (2.2, -0.1) And on Fangraphs: 1. Bautista, 6.9 (-0.1 glove) 2. Pedroia, 6.8 (+1.5) 3. Zobrist, 5.7 (+0.9) 4. Ellsbury, 5.7 (+0.8) 5. Gonzalez, 5.3 (+0.7) 6. Granderson, 4.9 (-0.8) 11. Rodriguez, 4.0 (+1.1) 12. Gardner, 4.0 (+1.6) 16. Youkilis, 3.9 (-0.4) 18. Teixeira, 3.6 (+0.5) 20. Cano, 3.3 (-0.5) 27. Swisher, 2.8 (+0.7) 35. Ortiz, 2.4 (-0.0)

Sean McAdam reports it's a stress fracture in his lower back. Probably out for the season, possibly but not likely available for the playoffs.