Shut Up Pedro. It takes a lot for me to get pissed at Pedro Martinez, but at this point, I'd wish he'd shut his yap. Back home in Santo Domingo Friday, he claimed that in 2005, Boston "will field the best bad team in baseball history." I'm not completely sure what he meant by that.

He also said Tito is merely a front-office puppet. "Francona had no say, like he didn't have any say in managing the team. He was manipulated from upstairs. ... I was in the clubhouse, that's how I know." Theo Epstein brushed Martinez's comments aside and John Henry added that when team officials met with Martinez in the DR about one week ago, they "offered Pedro exactly what he said it would take to sign him."

Schilling expressed surprise at Pedro's barbs. "He came and went as he pleased. That was something very different for me and something I'd never seen before. ... There were times during the year when I wondered where he was. ... It's obvious: The barometer he uses for respect is money. [Our respective incomes] obviously bothered him because, question after question, his answers were that he wouldn't be behind me or be under, whatever that means. I'm guessing it relates to salary."