Continuing to mimic the style of one of their political heroes (John Kerry), the NOG has again reversed ground on a major piece of your 2012 Red Sox. In a conference call with reporters today, Ben Cherington implied that new acquisition Mark Melancon could very well be Boston's closer. Huh? What happened to the talk of bringing in Andrew Bailey in a trade or loosening the Liverpool-dependent purse-strings to pay for free-agent Ryan Madson. That position was so yesterday. And, anyway, BenCher's got a confounding answer for that, too. You see, "there is certainly time between now and spring training and we're going to continue to look for ways to make the team better." OK. So which is it? The closest we could come to figuring that out was another quote: "We'd like to have a defined closer on opening day." Really? Yeah, that's a good idea.No matter how many reporters insist that this management team is a patient, methodical machine, it sure looks like a bad Three Stooges episode to us. Another wonderful tid-bit from the call was the revelation that Nick Punto has been on the team's radar for years, it's just that "the timing has never quite worked out." Uh-huh. I don't know about you, but I've often thought, "Damn, we need to find a way to get Nick Punto on this team." Is anybody in charge over there? Hello?