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Two years after this blog was first activated, Go, Titletown is now on Twitter!

Our account will provide links to stories on the blog as well as Tweet out live information as select stories break. This will allow Go Titletown to provide better coverage to its readers and hopefully help draw attention to issues discussed on the blog. 

Please follow us at our Twitter handle: @GoTitletown and remember to check back with the blog for game recaps, columns, features and more! 

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Mookie Betts playing 2nd base in Pedroia's absence: Discussing his longevity with the Red Sox

He has a good baseball IQ. He is the prospect of the future. He has played to well to show any signs of slowing down. Those are all things said that have been said of rookie sensation Mookie Betts since he made his MLB debut a little over 2 months ago. But mind you, those things were also all said about another rookie sensation last season; Xander Bogarts.

Betts joined the Red Sox in the final week of June when the team was already realizing that 2014 was yet another lost year. He was never seen as a help-us-now kind of player but rather an asset worth testing going into 2015. The Red Sox front office, who by then were realizing that perhaps their biggest weakness was in their outfield, scanned their minor leagues and were reminded of Betts who had definitely been catching eyes since April.

After starting the year in Single-A Greenville Drive, the 21 year old climbed through Boston's Lowell, Portland and eventually Triple-A Paw Sox teams. Excelling on every level, Betts was called up in June following the demotion of Daniel Nava. Since then, he has hit solidly with a batting average of .291. Also, though he stands just 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs just 156 pounds, 13 of his 39 hits have been for extra bases (4 home runs, 8 doubles, 1 triple). He has also stolen 5 bases.

That speed has also helped Betts in the field. He has logged a fielding percentage of 1.000 in 28 games in center field while committing just one error in left. His DWAR is the best of any Red Sox outfielder this season and his range when chasing down fly balls is challenged only by a healthy Shane Victorino.

But what does this mean for next season? Does Betts have a place in the future lineup of the Boston Red Sox?

Looking back to last season, the Red Sox organization was faced with a similar situation. Xander Bogarts had earned a spot in the lineup but flopped in 2014 hitting just .236 and batting in just 37 runs.  

But John Farrell sees longevity in the game of Betts and feels that he can adapt his game to a sort that will let him play for many years. Farrell things that Betts is a very good player. As of now, the Sox have him playing second base in Dustin Pedroia's absence.

“When you look around and you look at the number of guys we had in that leadoff spot until Brock settled in, we tried four or five different guys, but to have that skill set — on-base, base-stealing ability and in his case, the ability to impact the baseball with extra-base power, he’s a pretty dynamic skill set,” John said.  

If Betts is to stay with Boston next year, it will not be at second base. If he stays a Red Sox he will be deemed better than any other player the team could field at center field. 

Ben Cherrington is liberal about speaking of what he thinks of Betts chances at being that guy next year.

“Look, we understand next April there’s nine spots in the lineup so nine people will be in the lineup and we’ll figure out who those nine guys are and how it all winds up,” said Cherington. “I think we want as many good players as we can and we’re happy that we think we have a number of guys that could play center field in the major leagues, and in our particular ballpark, we like having more than one center fielder in the lineup at any time anyway because of the dimensions and hopefully this gives us a chance to do that.”

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Roger has forsaken them: Adrian Peterson child abuse charge, Ray Rice domestic violence demand huge action from NFL

By now the name of Ray Rice has been linked more with the name TMZ than the Baltimore Ravens, the team for which he used to play. His name has been lopped in with those of men like Michael Vick and OJ Simpson. The fact that his boss just happens to be Rodger Goodell only makes the both of them seem that much more evil.

By now the sudden explosion of media regarding the arrest of Adrian Peterson for the abuse of his son has further tarnished the name of the NFL, drawing more attention to the huge mistakes made by players, officials and league executives when fans are most focused on them.  

By now, the NFL, which is valued at upwards of 10 billion dollars and viewed by billions of people all week long has seen its regal reputation blackened by the brutal allegations made against its employees. These problems have always been a part of the NFL but up until recently, its publicity level was not enough to raise most of these stories above the level of whispers.

For example, in the 1990’s an NFL player going to jail was a huge news story, a first for that matter. In the 90’s, OJ Simpson and Rae Carruth were devilish humans sequestered from the masses of football and successfully portrayed by the NFL as no longer part of the league. Now, that is no longer the case.

Since Rodger Goodell became the NFL’s new head honcho back in 2006, the league has seen countless terrible people grace its rosters. Many of these players, it has failed to isolate from the masses of its 32 team’s worth of players. The league has seen guys like Michael Vick go to jail for dogfighting, Aaron Hernandez get charged with brutal gang activities, Jovan Belcher involve himself in a murder/suicide and now Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson get caught committing terrible acts of domestic violence. All of this and more has taken place since 2006.  

In the 8 years, since that day in August when Rodger Goodell became the new commissioner of the NFL, he has failed to punish so many players.

In doing so, Goodell has committed transgressions that have in some cases been nearly as terrible as the initial acts. When Goodell let Michael Vick back into the league after his prison sentence, he forgave Vick for brutally murdering countless dogs. When it took Goodell over 6 months to suspend Mike Prefreir for his part in the homophobic firing of punter Chris Kluwe, he made the gay football community out to be an afterthought whose wellbeing was not worth urgent action.

And now, as the NFL’s domestic violence problem tears the leagues reputation down in front of our very eyes we see that it only punctuated by the awful arrest of Peterson. The fact that two players were charged with domestic forms of violence so close to each other is not a rarity in football and that is disgusting to think about. Crimes within the home are a huge problem in football and in not punishing the perpetrators of these crimes, regardless of their place in sport’s hierarchy, Roger Goodell has turned his back on a subgroup of NFL fans as well as all who stand with them.

Our culture, though evolving past most legal barriers against women (ie. suffrage, working rights), is still a vastly sexist one. Women consistently earn up to 30 cents less per dollar than men and are objectified throughout our pop culture. Furthermore, terribly offensive words used in a derogatory way against anyone not bearing the most “masculine” of qualities have long ago become deeply ingrained within the American vocabulary.

As CBS’s James Brown so eloquently said during Thursday Night Football this week, words like “sissy”, and phrases like “[insert action here] like a girl” make females seem weak and generally less than their male counterparts.

It is this belief that men are superior that manifests in these situations of domestic violence. It is that belief that manifests far too often.

According to the program Safe Horizons, 4 million women are subjected to domestic violence each year with well over 1,000 women killed in the same time period due such violence.

This is a huge problem and the NFL, as America's biggest cultural institution needs to set a precedent that it is not okay. But they do not. Since Roger Goodell took office in 2006, 44 cases of domestic violence have been brought to court involving NFL players. Of those 44 cases, (though only 14 of them resulted with some sort of actual guilty verdict being handed to the defendant), only 4 saw players cut from a team while Goodell himself made only 3 suspensions.

No matter what the teams did, the most powerful man in the most powerful league refused to acknowledge 41 of those women whose partners hit them while playing football. Also worth noting is the fact that none of those assaults were punished with a suspension longer than 1 game.

Another thing also worth noting is that those 44 cases I mentioned did not include the case against Ray Rice.

Rice was first accused of beating his wife back in February when TMZ published a video of the then Baltimore Raven dragging his fiancé’s unconscious body out of an elevator. Following that black mark, Rodger Goodell slapped a rather trivial two game ban on Rice that stood until last week when TMZ snagged yet another video actually showing Rice brutally knocking out his now wife in the elevator. Goodell, by then caught in a terrible position, made a string of some of his worst mistakes in the span of just a few days. He uttered a terrible sequence of lies that proved his guilt as an incomprehensibly inept deliverer of justice.

First he claimed that there was ambiguity when the video first surfaced and when Rice was questioned by the NFL.

Then Rice revealed that he had disclosed everything about what had happened. He said he apologized for what he had done but held nothing back.

Defensively backtracking, Goodell said that at least he had not seen the video before TMZ published it.

Then a federal investigator who had been appointed to dig deeper into the case revealed that that was wrong. Back in April, the video of the punch had been sent to an NFL executive. No response had been given.

So what does this mean?

Well, the defense can be made that the league has changed since Goodell became commissioner nearly a decade ago. It has signed huge multi-billion dollar deals with television providers, launched into full time broadcasting across the NFL Network and become subject to second by second social media analysis. Anything that happens in the NFL gets Tweeted and Facebooked while also being subjected to the widely broadcasted opinions of anybody with Wi-Fi. Yes it is true that such a sudden responsibility might not be what Roger Goodell specifically signed up for but is that not included in the greater job description that he promised to fulfil?  

This unpredicted spike in popularity has definitely breached the banks of what the NFL was like in 2006. This unprecedented spike in popularity has only made the commissioner's job that much more important. Football is part of American culture now with its players serving as role models who represent what plenty of kids want to be when they grow up. Yet when these players, these role models beat their wives and the league does not punish them, they show that it is okay to hurt one another.

When only 3 of the 14 players convicted of domestic violence since 2006 actually get suspended, there is no excuse. In letting these batterers off scot free, even after the justice system decides that they are guilty, Goodell is saying that violence to another human being is okay.

And as fans watching this entire saga unfold, as we watch Roger Goodell tear his reputation apart as he tries to preserve it, we need to see that he is saying it is okay to hurt people. He is saying it is okay to beat your kids, to drive drunk, to beat you wife! It is not okay to hurt people.

Roger Goodell has violated a general code of conduct among people in control of companies; to keep the peace and enforce a higher behavioral standard in the workforce. Though football does not involve the typical workforce, it is after all possessing of one, meaning that as his employees assault and discriminate against people they deem lesser and Goodell fails to punish them, he is failing at his job.

What has been happening all along but has only been exposed in the last few weeks is a terrible example of a weak standing commissioner who has shown himself incapable of managing the NFL. The fact that Goodell must be fired is not a “someone has to go” kind of deal. No, Goodell has to go because he is a terrible commissioner who has alienated his sport’s fan base right from the get go.

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Adrian Peterson indicted for child abuse: Deactivated from Sunday's game

It is a fact made even more terrible by its proximity to what the NFL has been up to for the past 6 or so months; Adrian Peterson was charged with the abuse of his child just before 4 PM on Friday. 

Mere days after we were handed the latest developments, indicating the true hanesnes of the NFL's non action on the Ray Rice case, an even bigger star within the marquee of NFL greatness has tarnished his name and thrown yet another black mark across the NFL and its commissioner, Rodger Goodell.

 As reports first surfaced on Twitter, details gradually came out alleging that Adrian Peterson had been charged with child abuse. The  alleged abuse occurred when Peterson was caught "spanking" his son with a wooden switch. Though no further details about the child (other than the fact that he is in fact Peterson's son) have surfaced since these allegations were first made public, many other details have. 

Peterson, who only last October had to deal with the brutal murder of his two year old son in another child abuse case, has been testifying before a grand jury for weeks now and had already set up an agreement with a criminal defense attorney by Friday afternoon. The news was kept quiet by members of the jury and Peterson himself until the official charge was made.

Furthermore, by the time the football word was tuned into the case, it was Peterson's crew who were the only involved parties to make a statement. 

“Adrian will address the charges with the same respect and responsiveness he has brought to this inquiry from the beginning," said Peterson's attorney, Rusty Hardin through a statement on Twitter, “It is important to remember that Adrian never intended to harm his son and deeply regrets the unintentional injury." 

As of 7:30pm Friday, three hours after the charges were made; the NFL had neglected to make a statement on the matter. 

Nevertheless, while Rodger Goodell and the league are still recoiling from the Ray Rice domestic violence charges and have turned an imposition of media science to this case, the Vikings dealt with the issue in a much lower, short term way. Adrian Peterson was deactivated for Sundays game against the Patriots.  

*more to come on the NFL's huge problem later this weekend...

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Strength beyond statistics: Dustin Pedroia's injury prone wrist may kill his swing, will not kill his worth

Red Sox second basemen, Dustin Pedroia is an amazing player with some terrible luck. 

Earlier this week, Pedroia, who had been feeling pain in his left wrist for months now, went in for a preventive MRI exam Tuesday afternoon. Soon after, WEEI's Alex Speier tweeted that "Farrell says MRI showed Pedroia dealing with soreness/inflammation in left wrist. Could be shut down for duration of year, but no decision yet." 

Not too long after that, the speculative report was confirmed to be of reality when it was announced that Pedroia's season would end with surgery. Through the MRI results, doctors discovered a wide array of scar tissue, damaged tendons and inflamed ligaments and proposed that such abnormalities be physically removed from Pedroia's wrist. 

Suddenly faced with a stark decision, the Red Sox chose to finally call it quits on a season Pedroia wanted desperately to finish. Doctors successfully completed surgery on Pedey's hand Thursday morning officially making 2014 the third consecutive season ending for Pedroia with an operation of some sort. The latter of those facts has begun to fringe upon the worrisome; especially given the fact that Pedroia is owed a total of 91 million dollars over the next 7 years.

Almost a decade into his career, his place in Red Sox history is well defined. Dustin Pedroia is one of the greatest second basemen to ever play for the Hub. He has carved this spot out of a massive block of setbacks thrown against him, the largest of which being the fact that he is anything but large. Standing 5 feet 8 inches tall, Pedroia does not necessarily have the power hitter's build. Nevertheless, he has hit 106 home runs to go alongside 546 RBI's logged in a stunning data set of consecutive seasons with more than 95% of games scheduled started. As he ages though, all those great statistics begin to fall away as Pedroia loses some of his strength. In 135 games played this season, Pedroia has hit a career low batting average of .270 while also striking his fewest home runs total ever. Additionally, his weakened wrists have been blamed for causing a suddenly "horrible" swing. 

“If you don’t have your hand strength, you’re not able to follow through (on your swing) like you normally do," Pedroia said just after the MRI, "It makes it tough. But you’ve got to try to find ways in other areas to help your team win.” 

And so it is revealed that the situation is grim. Dustin Pedroia has suffered his 3rd straight injury to his wrist and is visibly deteriorating in regards to his athletic prowess. Furthermore, much of Red Sox nation has now begun to ask the question; was last year's mega contract paid to Pedroia worth it? The answer is not clear but what we do know is that if in a few years Pedroia really begins to become a non-factor offensively, his place within the Red Sox roster will still be valued and that the contract will not be a total bust. Pedroia has a drive to win that helped compel him for example to play all last year with a broken finger.  He appreciates where he is in life and is grateful. Those are some of the most important qualities in a ball player.

“It means a lot to play baseball in the major leagues, especially with the Boston Red Sox. There shouldn’t be one guy in here that thinks they’re going to pack it in. We’re here for each other and trying to play. It doesn’t matter where we are in the standings," he said. 

Nothing can hold Dustin Pedroia back and even if that eventually causes his swing to die an untimely death, it is his stunning will to win that makes him great beyond his statistics.

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Patriots distraught after stunning defeat: Brady, Gronk, offensive line fail to execute in Miami

In a game that carried the kind of anxious anticipation that for some a first day of school does, the Patriots let their fans down, failing to execute in the second half of a 20-33 loss to the Miami Dolphins. Amassing less yards of total offence in the second half than in any other game since 2003, Tom Brady was the name atop that list of poorly preforming Patriots. 

The New England quarterback lacked accuracy from the start of the game but road short screen passes to his wide-outs to a marginally acceptable first half performance. However as the third quarter commenced and the Dolphins began to pull themselves they began to hit or at least pressure Tom Brady on a regular basis. As a result, frantic throw away plays, scrambling incompletions and blatantly overthrown middle distance passes became commonplace whenever the Patriots had the ball. Whether or not these major miscues were as a result of bad communication in the huddle, bad pocket protection by the offensive line or a simple loss of composure by Brady, these problems came to a head in the final 5 minutes of the game when multiple plays that could have drawn the Patriots back into contention for the win were simply screwed up. When the dust settled, Brady had completed just 29 out of 56 passes, thrown just one touchdown pass and fumbled the football twice. 

Needless to say this man who holds himself to such a high standard of game play was not pleased. After claiming to have been "pretty pissed this morning," Brady went on to address the fact that aside from a 44 yard pitch and catch in the first half, big yardage plays were absent from Sundays contest. 

"It’s on us players to do a better job. When we have opportunities to hit open passes, we have to hit them. That’s what it comes down to. You can’t draw up a magic play. We are trying to do everything we can to make the plays that we need to make. And the execution of it out there on the field -- we need to do a better job of it." 

It is none too hard to see the stinting self-criticism with which Tom Brady described his own play Sunday but it is also none too hard to see that the South Beach collapse was not all his fault. The offensive line which only a few weeks earlier had lost its biggest rock -- Logan Mankins -- played outright terribly; both of the Brady fumbles as well as the sac came as a result of huge holes left in the line. Furthermore, the special team line that allowed for a huge blocked punt to start the game did so in another uncharacteristic lapse in brute coverage. 

But Brady insists that no one neither does nor should feel sorry for this team. Why? Because they are one that remains incomprehensibly capable of winning a Super Bowl this year. These predictions are not fantastical, I insist that much. This team that save for the loss of Mankins is fully healthy and stocked for victory just did not bring all their skills together in Week One. 

Danny Ammendola made just 3 catches while Rob Gronkowski failed to catch 7 of his 11 targets. 

But in the end all is well because after all it is a 16 game season and frankly, we all still know Ryan Tannihill and Tom Brady are as close in skill set at varsity and freshmen teems. Week One was a spat, stinging, yes, but needed as well. Mind you furthermore that the last time that the Patriots lost their first game of the season was also the last year that they won their final one.

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Patriots at Dolphins Week One Preview: With predictions daring, the Patriots kick things off in a must win

Alas the summer has ended. As our thermometers that show the searing temperatures of August are beginning to warn of opposite weather signifying that summer has finally, blissfully ended giving way to the seasons known not as fall and winter but rather as a one football season. After drafts completed and training camps ground through, the NFL season began Thursday with the Seahawks defeating the Packers 36 to 16 and most other teams logging their final practices before their respective openers. 

The Patriots, who are set to play the Dolphins at one o'clock on Sunday, were no different this week, fielding their vast array of new talent for their practices as they hope to live up to the high expectations fans have of them this year. Their first step in proving that will be staying on the field. For the past few years, this team that has been fully capable of winning a Super Bowl has only been hindered in doing so by a variety of torn ligaments, bruised brains and more. When we look at these last few years the loss of Rob Gronkowski for various periods of time has been glaring. Additionally, the sudden injuries to Aquib Talib in back to back AFC Championships could also be pointed to as reasons for early exits by this team. Basically each year since their Super Bowl loss in 2011, the Patriots have fielded an opening day roster that could easily win the NFL title. Their only problem has been depth. Finally Bill Belichick addressed that problem in blowing things up this off-season.  

Going into week one, the Patriots will have a suddenly ferocious running back squad that includes the likes of an underrated Shane Vereen, rookie James White and a finally demoted but still skilled Stephan Ridley. This wonderful improvement to the Patriots rushing game will allow Tom Brady to work in some new read option plays as well as keep the offence moving even if a receiver like Rob Gronkowski goes down again. Furthermore, it will allow the Patriots coaches to put fumble prone Ridley on a much shorter leash as even without him, the team would still have its power rusher in White and its flashy RB in Vereen. 

In an interview with Sirius XM back in August, Bill Belichick spoke on the subject of White. "He's a very interesting and versatile player," he said. "He does a good job in the passing game and in the running game -- both inside and outside. Blitz pickup -- we have a pretty extensive offense for him to learn, but he's working hard at it. We'll just let him go and see how it goes, but I think he has the ability to compete on all three downs, in both the running game and the passing game." 

Keeping with the theme of depth, the Patriots will also be rolling out a new look defense in week one with headline CB, Darrelle Revis serving as the centerpiece to their pass defense that now  also includes league veteran Brandon Browner. This week one game that features Miami wide receiver Mike Wallace will actually be a perfect showcase of the capabilities of this revamped Pats defense. Wallace who will begin his second season in Miami against the Patriots is a man who despite his up and down stats has always boasted incendiary speed off the line. Revis, the Patriot who will be tasked with matching those explosive sprints up the sideline said to ESPN's Mike Reiss earlier this week that Wallace is "probably the fastest in the league." 

All we can say about that is that Revis is a smart man to acknowledge and prepare for Wallace to the fullest extent. At the NFL Combine in 2009, Mike ran a 4.33 second 40 meter dash blowing scouts away and serving as his calling card going into the draft. 

Revis, who ran 4.38 in his 40 yard dash back in 2007 of all people is nonetheless capable of catching Wallace. Such turns out to be a theme with the Patriots as they match up against the Dolphins. 

Each season since their 6-10 2011 failure, the Dolphins have been getting consistently better as they have begun conditioning their decided starter Ryan Tannehill while grooming a vast array of linemen and tight ends through the draft and their practice squad. Though Miami in the present is not a squad that could possibly contend with the Patriots for the AFC East title which the team has sat upon for the better part of 15 years, they have given the Patriots their fair share of scares of late, actually defeating New England last season and regularly keeping even their losses close well into the 4th quarter. But as said earlier, the Patriots are still incomprehensibly better than their South Beach foes. It is almost like those Bruins vs Providence Bruins games each year where, though sometimes the affiliate wins, no one ever calls the squads equal. 

At 1 in the afternoon Sunday, the Patriots will step onto the steamy field in Miami while we all watch from home in pleasant New England. Patriots fans will watch that game from afar, hoping that by afternoon's end they will be celebrating. Furthermore, they will also be distantly fantasizing about a much grander celebration that might involve duck boats and a shiny trophy specked with confetti a little over 5 months from now. As it stands, we might have reason to believe that both those hopes and wishes will be granted.

*all statistics from ESPN.com

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