Thursday, January 8, 2009

Rocco's Red Sock

Update: Something about that picture just looks right.

Good on him. If not here under my stalkful eye, where else could he possibly go to keep me happy? He'll still get lots of screentime on Sportsnet without wasting away in some National League hinterland. Rocco's signing is expected to be announced tonight at the Boston Baseball Writers Association Awards; where Rocco will receive the Tony Coligniaro award for, as Mr. Rob Iracane said this morning, being awesome. I think Red Sox Rocco is great fun, though it spells bad things for the Jays.

The Tao nailed it as usual today, noting that the Sox signings (Smoltz!) are just as scary as the Yankees recent acquisitions. My esteemed colleagues at Walkoff Walk bookended their day's with Rocco comments. Kris aka CTC aka the resident Red Sox fan had this to say:
If Rocco is really on the health upswing he has the potential to be the best fourth outfielder in baseball. That's a huge asset to a team that employs awesome, but injury prone Florida State Seminole JD Drew.
You hear that Reed? Your mantle of best fourth outfielder in baseball has been passed to a guy with good reason for his scrap and grit. He also has the good sense to let the chin pubes envelop his entire face when the situation calls for it.

For Rocco to provide the Sox with anything more than pure aesthetic joy, he's going to need to improve some of his slightly scary 2008 numbers. He ended up with a Riosian wOBA of .358, but he struck out a shit-ton (30%!) and managed an amazing 20% home run/fly ball rate. Neither of those numbers are sustainable, but the Ks will come down so long as he doesn't take 5 month breaks from the game.

Generally regarded as one of the Good Guys, he'll get a pass from the Boston media horde until May 1st. If he isn't producing at or near the level of unfortunate Hall of Fame candidate Jim Rice at that time, I predict the scene below to unfold in the bowels of Fenway.

4 comments:

  1. Congrats, Lloyd. Boston is closer to Toronto than St. Petersburg anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  2. lloyd the gay red sox fan barber... a gay barber, not barber to the gay community...

    why do you keep writing such garbage?

    ReplyDelete

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