By Chris Cue
February 23, 2009

     Red Sox manager Terry Francona introduced a few new conditioning tools to the team yesterday. Many of the new approaches to training are a bit unorthodox, but the players appeared to embrace them without any questions or complaints. When asked why he decided to institute these new measures now, Francona responded with, “Well, we all heard about the suck-up session that Joe Girardi had with his players yesterday, so the Theo and I decided to do something a little different for our guys too.”  Francona then went on to introduce a few of the new idea’s to the media during his afternoon press gathering.

     “This was originally designed for Pitchers. We hope that by using this they will become much better in pinpointing their accuracy when it comes to locating their pitches. When I installed it in the club house, I was surprised to see the entire team line up to try it out.”

     “They’re all getting their work in by using this.” Francona said. “I think right now, Beckett has the team record, but we’ll keep track of it and update you on the current standings.” 

     Another motivational piece introduced yesterday is a first of it’s kind when it comes to preparing ball players. When asked about the next item shown to the press, Tito said, “You know, ever since Coco’s incident last season, we’ve been trying to figure out a way to prepare players mentally when they are hit by a pitch. All the guys have to do is look at this and I think it gets the message across.”

     Francona was asked if he had any special idea’s regarding how to approach Tampa this season. He responded by saying, “We kind of had to think out of the box to address that, so what we ended up doing was bringing in someone we felt was an expert at tackling situations like that.”

“The Fishing Instructor”

       “This next picture shows you something that I can’t take credit for.” Francona said, “It’s something that Tek came up with. He noticed that a number of the guys like Bard, Kottaras and even Dusty Brown don’t really spend a lot of time in the weight room. So, to increase stamina and to test their will power, he had the guys doing this exercise yesterday.”

“The Sam Adams Indurance Test”

      “The guys really seemed to enjoy it. I saw them doing this over and over. It must be really challenging because at the end of the day, most of them couldn’t seem to be able to stand up.”
    

     “Another challange we had was how to help some of the younger pitchers learn how to hold runners at first base. As you can see in this shot, Michael Bowden got really into it.” Francona labeled this next exercise….

“The Pick Off Drill”