Abraham On Bard As A Starter: "Always Been Against The Idea"
Baseball season kicks off in just about two weeks and the other day Bobby Valentine announced that Jon Lester would pitch the season opener in Detroit. Josh Beckett will get the start for the home opener.
Peter Abraham joined Ryan Johnston and Mike Flynn, who were in for Toucher & Rich, to discuss shortstop Jose Iglesias, Daniel Bard, Bobby Valentine critiquing players in the media and Kevin Youkilis' performance in spring training.
Bobby V has made it know that he would like Jose Iglesias to start at shortstop opening day, but will it happen?
"There's two things at play here, Bobby really likes the kid and the front office would really like him to go to Pawtucket for a little more time and finish off his development and become a better hitter. So there could be a little bit of a roster tug-of-war here with that position."
The decision was made to move Daniel Bard to the starting rotation, but Bobby V has said that it's not set in stone. What's Abraham's thoughts on this Bard situation?
"I've always been against the idea of Bard being a starter and I wrote that at the time when they announced it after last season."
If he doesn't work out well as a starter do the Sox bounce him back to the bullpen for awhile or does that do more harm than good?
"You can't go back and forth with that, I think you have to go one way or the other. They made this decision to make him a starter, you have to give him every chance to do that."
Valentine critiqued some of his players in the media. If he continues to do this throughout the season does he risk souring the relationship with his players?
"He doesn't say anything that's not correct, but if you're a player you can't sit around and go 'Geez why's he saying this' and 'I'm upset about it' and 'I'll show him' or something like that. You have to realize what kind of guy he is and if the Red Sox spend too much time worrying about what their manager's going to say the season is going to go south pretty quickly."
Plus find out what Abraham thinks of Kevin Youkilis' performance so far.
