well hello once again and a welcome to another edition of the award winning time out for sports talk here at the belmont media center where for twenty five years and plus now we continue to be belmont's st and only live all sports program my handle is to us t twenty five years we've been using that one since we observed our anniversary in january we're going to keep using it for a while keep it easy for you folks out there if you want to tweet us your comments or again you can call us with any questions that you have course i realize most of be season three really i got hired right after spring training there is ago so rd season full time and then i had my last year the herald i was doing a lot of red sox stuff there so you could be back to trap me again will quickly becoming a big name on the red sox beat you know whether it's i'm listening on sports radio out st of all one of our cation all regular panelists sitting in the rd chair want to send out some congratulations to rob dally and his wife tiffany on the left there you will see a little joseph robert dally was born on sports coverage and with that we're going to give congratulations a fact and this is the reason this is the reason i said most people in belmont probably not watching us live on wednesday night march th because this night will go down as the night that the belmont boys basketball team is playing at t d garden in the are here a little after eight o'clock halftime score the tech boston at twenty six apiece they were tied at twelve at the end of the st quarter so that is a very close game apparently but a great story for them what a season that they have had  really the basketball court when are fieldhouse long overdue in my opinion the coach paul lyons was a long time belmont high school coach when over three hundred and fifty games and of course he was also the coach when they won the state championship in one hundred and thirty i remember him well great guy  and getting catch a lot of those games sports t v on demand the game at t d garden will be showing up on the website and also on the t v schedule very soon the jeremy missouri mess or deserve a lot of credit because they've been covering many of the games throughout the season so  it's good fun i was also fortunate i had a free friday night about six weeks ago i jumped in and actually called the boys game the night that you're demi and broke the one thousand point mark for his career and they he did it would like to have time three pointer and then they had a little become the highest paid tackle in professional football where he just at the lottery money is twenty six dollars like he's younger than a lot of these guys who hit free agency and then did have a very good year but that is a lot of money think about this too that trent brown is kind of a throw in almost after the fact after the patriots are traded a load of the forty nine ers it was almost like some kind of weather was a backdoor deal will never know the truth about how it all went down but oh i'm sorry we're not to meet can we cut away from that for a minute i'm not quite ready for that sorry my apologies we will get to that in just a minute i want to talk about that but just about trent brown you know the way that trade went down it was just you know he ends up with the patriots for a year under scarnecchia they win the super bowl all this you know there was questions where he could even be a le photo it's kind of with a heavy heart we are one time guest here it's a time out for sports talk we had him on a think he was here in studio about ten or eleven times nikka farto since our last program of course you all know by now if you follow the red sox at all nick who also was on the patriots beat for a few years passed away suddenly and down in fort myers and chris was actually down in fort myers while that happened i mean you know we were you know i know the tributes were pouring out for nick after the news broke of this as i said we had nick here in the studio he's a part as we said we had him in about ten or eleven times he was on our three hundred show which also coincide read anything the articles about nick that everything was true times ted i mean he was the nicest friendliest  you know was a part of our show we've had out of all the media celebrities we've had on the show i call media celebrity folks who work in sports media here in boston nick continued to come back over and over more than any i mean as we said we had him on ten or eleven times we don't have is know what that like towards anybody else  works in that profession that we had come on the show and yeah i mean it's just it's you know get only sixty two years old you know our condolences to nick's family and just very sad and of course chris we're fortunate enough to know this is your three getting your rd season well how long are you going to refer to the last sentence because yes i'm you do it because it's i think it was so fitting not that he knew it was going to be his last column but if so he wrote the story on steve pierce and ends it with the line and the red sox throwing a mix just so plugged into like how the pulse of everything that was going on yeah i think a lot of it because he never was very again he didn't want to be part of the story so he didn't make statements to make himself anything in it in his writings and you know chris just hearing you talk about nick is kind of a mentor and reaching out to you as a young writer i mean it just feels like i'm not surprised to hear that because again the fact that you know nick you know is family lives down the south shore a considerable hike from belmont and the fact that nick would keep driving up to our studios here time after time to join us i mean i obviously must have a joy these experiences on our show but also what just the fact i mean that you know again you know even with his job being what it is you know he didn't he wasn't looking down on anybody he was always there to you know just a friendly you know just a nice decent person like he said most valuable person i thought it would be nice to make you should make us feel like we were e s p n where i mean you were a little local you were at the high school or just tables with blankets on him and stuff and he still continued to come back in but he made us feel like that was the most important job we were going to be on that day you know and that was that was nick yeah you know and he's got a yardley's got a book coming out this summer too i mean from the press box or something like that but definitely read the going to osho yeah i was i was actually looking back remembering i should have brought with me that i had a forgot but when you know all the times we had nicky and i remembered i had the copy of the book the impossible team the that was at the time i was covering the patriots he did a he wrote a book about the two thousand and one the st super bowl championship patriots team wrote a whole book about that it was called the impossible team and you know i picked it up and i opened it up and i forgot that nic some riders to get on those boats some time right some of them are no wars or the patriots they do interesting all right well of course you know the on field thing that we all remember was this the final out of course and at dodger stadium and the red sox completed just  myers what's the atmosphere been like i mean i know they have all that world championship stuff on the ballpark does mean they're competent they were really competent last year i think a lot of it has to do with cora in like the vibe but it's really easy to believe that confidence now after what they did last year it's like exhibition games which means nothing but i thought time cora said it would kind of set the tone i know chris you would even wrote this sometimes in some of your your game stories and stuff the corridor referred to it being you know that that's what he thought gave him the confidence or at least set the tone for what would be a season with a one hundred and eight dollars games and eleven postseason games and you know this year there are only six dollars twelve cents out of the gate and i mean what to i mean what you saw what so what do you think the the reason for that is or does it i mean i know these games shouldn't matter so like do they matter i mean they meant a lot to cora last year and yeah they play he cares a lot about the last week or two and he says he doesn't care about the results you just want to be playing clean baseball and i think at this point you've seen i think a big reason that they are what they  because a lot of their best players are playing you know even if you go through these at bats that we have right here like yeah with j d martinez has sixteen at this point you know it's not like he's trying those guys out there time after like there's going to be times where we're you know it's like a five run game there's going to be ball at the middle that maybe i could get to maybe i could and i'm going to let it go through instead of diving and banging money yeah i heard him say that it kind of made a lot of sense really want to think that some guy's not going to it's had but he's going to do things to preserve him you know as opposed to making the spectacular play when it doesn't you know it's just so weird coming from him specifically like a one million miles a minute that's you know dirt dog that's who is can he change that d n a and i think they're being really realistic with the expectations for him where he said hey we're hopeful this guy plays one hundred and twenty five games right like that's best case scenario so i think they're they have a good plan in place and all the way it's going to be on him we've got a photo of the drive from down in spring training we can go to there are yeah i mean chris i mean given the way this guy is i mean he's thirty six and we know how he's hard wired i mean the guy does die for everything i just i mean it's he can say that that's the way he should play now he's got to change the way plays going forward i just i guess it's easy to say and i don't know if it's going to translate into a magic in the game is he going to be thinking like his statement is that's not the way he plays well yeah in with him it's when i see it right when i see him play that way you know can not play recklessly i'll believe it when i see it it's easy to say now ok he's words of spring training  h steve wright is that going to mess up any thoughts and about the bullpen you think are affected he hasn't really pitched in the last two years does that really mess the equation up that much i think it kind of does like if you look back at beginning of spring training cora mentioned him as a potential closing option right so they obviously had some measure of expectations for this guy now he has spring training went on it was clear he probably wasn't ready for opening day either way so you know who knows and it's easy for them out to be like oh well we weren't counting on him but it's like at the beginning you did surgeries but you know the other thing to keep in mind here is you know you could say coming off a knee injury it's might be helpful but he's going to be back you know maybe giving a meaty games of rest and be back healthy for the nd half just keep one thing in mind that he won't be eligible for the postseason so at best you're going to have him for you know the last three months that's at best but yeah i mean given the bullpen question marks i mean this is this was certainly not good news to hear that although he hasn't been the same since that thing is he was very effective when he was healthy last year like if you go back and look through the numbers where oh yeah from the twenty six in that was with one bad start where his knee was basically it was like the one before the d l so his knee wasn't but it's also not a total bad it wasn't as bad as wakefield vessel exactly by the way quick update from t v garden belmont forty one boston tech forty thought of having stephen wright be the closer but right now i mean again what's your take on this chris barnes seems to be the guy that they're they're going to get st chance to hear to close but he hasn't pitched very well or very much for that matter  mean it's so hard to tell with early spring training stats too because i've talked to tyler thornburg about the see other day like there might be a day where one of these guys goes out and says hey i just want to work on my fastball that i was going to you know there's going to be barely any pitch makes going to be all fastballs i want to work on my command of that pitch right so it's hard to tell at this point in only two games a tiny sample size but the interesting thing is i think or is going to use him as like a progressive manager either way like if he wants what is best reliever in the th inning because being he's had three  forty five coming up i think barnes gets that and then it's bray's or take the th like take us home with the bottom of the order which you know they said they want to do with carroll but i don't know if it's going to say it's probably going to be easy to do that this year but because  funny i mean yeah it's comparable saves yeah exactly like feral kind of alluded to want to do that never happened with him cora said specifically like yeah this is what i want to do it never happened so it's like what's the common denominator there carol want to say maybe that's why they really not pushing that but you know now in his initial ask was so ridiculous the six year one hundred million i think that scared a lot of teams off right off the bat like no for a thirty year old closer we're not doing that well these years and contracts and to me just getting way out of  you talked about how you said you talk about his market is there any market out there i mean he's still unsigned i mean he doesn't you know whether he doesn't want to like talk his tail between his legs and accept a small you know offer something much less but isn't has any kind of market out there for him i mean i think the red sox are smart not to give the big money because you know the way he the fact he really was not a big contributor in the postseason last year the fact he had turned to the starters to basically bail out a shaky kimbrel i mean i think you know and then based on the demands that  he made in the offseason with the final numbers are great but if but what it means like a heart attack pitcher yeah i mean in his thing now too is they like say he's like ok final take a one year twenty million dollar deal right red sox are so close to the highest luxury tax that's thirty million dollars for that pitcher and are you willing to spend that much on a great game now that being said it's shocking they haven't got anyone else like i honestly i was pushing the david robinson train i was driving o thinkin he makes a ton of sense as a guy that has closing experience signed a relatively modest deal and i don't remember how much it was now i think it was like to around twenty which would have been or maybe it was yet eighteen that might have been bumping up close to the dead that threshold too low for the red sox yeah let's just even with him he's perfect for bars and razor basically like ok here you're training wheels like we're going to let robert you can grow into this role while roberts starts with it right and see how that  i mean yes you got to look at it that way i mean you're right though the odds are getting longer and longer that he's going to be able to contribute anything and it he's another going to be so tough to gauge just because his spring stats are always terrible like he's a notoriously slow starter but is going to the point now where cora saying yeah infected toe and that's been like wipe him out the whole like yes and i think he was going to start slow to begin with like henry i don't think is going into a game yet either but not this slow like that definitely it was like he went letting both barnes and brazier kind of battle it out here he feels like that's sort of the without using those three words that's the kind of take on this you're not going to have one closest to me based on matchups and i was home to say i want to roll him into that i think he would have been perfect seems to have that kind of edge right i mean just the peaks and valleys with him though like those valleys are i think three to six months last year zero was over eight you know when you know when he's off he's way off is there anyone else out of these candidates in the don't i don't even know what the stat like what is it so he's an interesting guy just because they thought they identified stuff with him like basically brian bannister's their guru with all that's been right sort of stuff and they're like all right we're going to you know bring him into band  i think there's a good chance he starts in pa tuck it either way but he is the has options i guess right and he just an interesting arm in that something like people keep talking about the bullpen competition it's pretty much said already just because none of these guys have options anymore  really especially now that right out of the equation the last kiss was the one with options that might have been the odd man out you know and just the tough luck type deal but in the other pretty much all options where do you think they're going with seven or eight ball ten guys to start this is this was the case last year too is that you have the offseason to sign these guys right like you see the bullpens a need i'm going to sign a reliever free agency they didn't do it last year and then of trading at the deadline right they get all the who they like as like a starter reliever hybrid great but you have a great pick up well of course but it's like ok you know you have to like pay in prospects for this guy when you could have just paid him right it doesn't make a lot of sense sherry oh yeah that's right you come off he was coming off and a game suspension too or something or he was banned he was the st player ever to test positive for steroids three times really yeah like anabolic so he another like very low risk reward type signing aren't my thing with him it was just interesting to drop a guy like that to a clubhouse that has a ton of chemistry right but to the biggest like most vocal leaders in the cl who have both been very good steroids seances have been very strong on that point talk about a lifetime ban for a st time positive test sales favorite t shirt that he wears around all the time just as all me wears it like every day in the clubhouse so i think it's interesting just you know clubs are such fragile ecosystems are so weird to throw away the poster child for steroids in their right but it's done sales career stats and like august september october with you know with the questions of the bullpen with no off days that you know cora might try to like push the starters because the one strength the red sox have in the pitching staff going into the season are the starters i mean five guys locked in and you know chris i ask you talk about that also maybe a thing of the past because he had corrective surgery on it ultimately one of those like alright this is going to fix the type deals because it was just dislocating randomly it was like they called subducting where it would pop out basically once a year and then when he would come back from that it would it was obviously in his head like right and how could it not be when is my knees going to dislocate on the mound so he should be beyond that but with him it's always like ok i'll believe it when i see a full season because he's been you know spring training the  bell the ball for what three years in a row now he said that potential dag were in there for a long and cora is not afraid to give him tough love now you there where the other day he was like look he's been here long enough he has to take that next step because the big thing with him too is you know five and two thirds always five years like he has the best stuff but he can't he's not efficient enough with it right it's like a kid playing with his food it's like he needs to be more efficient he needs to be that seven inning guy and you know obviously again in spring heavily investing the bolt on where boston's kind of bang on the rotation of the lineup and thinking like ok well i hope we're up five to all the time when the th inning comes around and that our rotation in our lineup it insulated us well enough that even to give up a run or two it's not going to kill him well to right and you look at the roster breakdown there are going to carry two of these guys and none of them have options left so one of them is going to have to be either traded or designated for assignment everyone says the odd man out is blake's wired which is breaking my heart of he was a decent header but i still think the pitchers prefer sandy over him in terms of game calling especially rick sale definitely does so like if you compare leon with swi hart as the backup there i think you have a pretty pretty good tandem and the baskets contract is obviously more than the other two but i think i mean there's a reason all signs point to sweetheart is because he get the biggest return right because you see the potential in this guy and  and just try to stretch this out for at least to be a couple more weeks before they come back home to open the season lou and you just wonder too how unwilling they will be to trade swire to this point because this is the chip that he's held for the longest time right there but so many offers that  talk to him about he's like yeah i'm completely unfazed by trade rumors not because i've been in him for every single season since i was drafted so like eight years into it i'm pretty used to it but i think about how many proposals on grass he's turned down for this kid that this point is really going to sell him for  that veteran reliever just because you're you're trading in every day kid who can hit and potentially catch well and that's when you wonder to how the luxury tax comes into play because if it's a veteran reliever like an established one he probably has you know a relatively happy contracts why aren't getting paid nothing kind of like hitting catcher i mean and that's the thing i mean you know why hurt me not be the best catcher but if he's decent enough he can give you something that other most pitchers don't give you anymore baseball that's a little pop in the bat and then somebody good hitting catches are there any his numbers were still as decent as they were you know like st half the season before like when vazquez went down last year and he started regular playing time he started it you're like oh this is what this kid could do with regular bats before then it was like ok we're going to play once every ten games and good you this because you know chris you kind of started off earlier in the show mentioning you know cora's take is that hey there we're not going to make a lot of changes why fix it if it ain't broken in i understand that well he's kind of tinkering with the batting order this year a little bit and we've got to we'll start with our  trying to motivate him with at this point like maybe he worked his way into it but to start the year i don't think he'll be up there but i love been attending lead off and bet nd i wrote this last july there's one stretch where they finally weren't hitting and it's like this is such an easy way to have more on base not quite as good as betts last season but you know he certainly keeps getting better use of talented young player doesn't have the kind of power so yeah he's more likely to i guess get on base ahead of muki i mean i guess maybe it's not a bad idea in theory and he was great there last year when betts was down with the old bleak and attended battle leadoff for two weeks and its numbers were really good i think he hit like three hundred and thirty there is o p s was over nine hundred like it was kind of like he was given that responsibility and ran with it so sales it to st base pulls peers off the bad guys say he can't get away with that he did that like two or three times in that game i was watching yeah with him it's interesting too because i find so core likes analytics right here but he chooses when to use them with certain players very selectively like devers he always cites his range stats he's like well yeah the errors are there but if you look at his like range numbers they're actually very good like he's getting the balls that newness for example is not getting to camp looking a bit different than a weight loss for for raffy hopefully have helps a move around a little better i guess even though it's you know it's kind of refreshing to hear him acknowledge so he actually told me he's only lost two pounds but it's very different weight that he has on now it's definitely last year he's like i think it's a reason i end up on the disabled list because he did have the nagging hamstring thing and it's like yeah maybe that's a motivating factor the looks that things you know if i'm in better shape my hamstring doesn't go like this they strengthen the lot of the areas you have got another picture longer wanted to to start the grapefruit league season and he's got some promise i know they're trying him in a lot of different positions but maybe he becomes a rd base option i mean do you see him having any kind of impact on the to two thousand and nineteen team or is he i mean weak point moving forward to be on this year like me isn't right you know if new year's is in the goes again colts is like serviceable but he's still not every day guy there there was a time when nd base was it was like it was last off limits and it just figure assistant coaches who former coach at u mass boston as well was shot a couple of weeks ago and the team at been kind of playing you know you know for him and so it's yeah i mean both teams really wanted to win that game only the nd time they've done it so yeah sorry to pass along that bad news the game will eventually you will see the full broadcast of that game courtesy of sports t v coming up soon so what keep an eye on the b m c schedule for that ok we're winding down here chris i need to point this out we're talking about other guys in the lineup great story you kate you had i think was last week on the jackie bradley jr and his improved authentic this spring and certainly kind of it started during the nd half last year talk a little bit about that for people maybe to get to read the article or what you think jackie's chances are to have a big year this year and certainly you know last year they were playing j d martinez in the in the outfield a lot more because jackie was struggling but if he plays well maybe martinez become a full time d h again you know with thanks and if it goes back to martinez he hooked jackie up with his swing coach about halfway through last year but he really slump badly in the st half last year there was one stretch where i remember he could not stop striking out against the orioles he saw forty two pitches in the series and thirty nine were fast balls up in that he just could not catch up to so he went to j t because j t you know is the amateur swing coach of the amateur hitting coach and jay said hey so he did that they tried to fix on the fly last year which is obviously tough because again it's you know you can't just stand there and try to get your timing down when you have early on or pitching is you read like you need some results especially in a pennant race so he's fixing it on the fly nd half was just with an entire offseason dedicated to this new swing can he be that guy i mean the potential is always been there with jackie really junior when he gets hot and he hit every level in baseball you know every up the why does that was a big thing he seasons all these young players have their contracts coming up and you're thinking about well they can't sign them all and who were the guys that are most expendable originally i might have thought of jackie bradley jr but he might also come at one of the more affordable contracts if they can extend him i mean someone like nuki might be to you know a long term extension that's going to come considerably cheaper i do believe he's represented by your favorite agent yes yeah that's the one that's isn't so maybe they have a chance betts but really i thought it was  actually happens to be i think our director of the other control here she had time to do this while she was directed by she is multitalented are really late and says looking good guys what are the chances the socks go all the way this year well that's a bit of a peek she had been twenty years and certainly the red sox even though they won four championships recently none of them been consecutive so what what do we think i mean you know i'm all in here's the thing i mean do they they're going to lose i think they could you know lose maybe one thousand and fifteen more games you're still a good year you're winning in ninety something games but will that be enough to win the division and i mean what are your what are your thoughts here i think a lot of depends on how badly severino is injured he's on the shelf now runs an arm issue and that's one of those things the if he's lose their race that's a game because they really are many guys you can rely on in that rotation and i know they have mega bullpen but you still need starting pitching i mean i think there has there's a reason there has been a repeat champion in that long it's a lot of things have to go right for you and i