example1

That's an absurd amount of money for a Trot who doesn't really play very often and when he does he can't hit a HR even if someone told him th epitch that is coming. That said, I like Trot and would like to see him on the team. Prediction: arbitration --> trade no lose draft picks

Willis' potential for dominance is considerably higher than Wangs. And despite Wang's good season last year that's one good season, give him some time before we declare that he's the best pitcher in the AL. Finally, I would take the 2 years YOUNGER Willis over the older Wang.

nice :thumbsup: I think Schilling made 13m last year, but he probably has incentives there to bring it up into the 15m range. In this climate that's a good OF or corner IF.

Most likely he's not going to be there.

Out of those players I think only Bedard could be had without other pieces from the Yankees (barring that player being in the last year of a contract and the team dumping him to get some value). If I had any of the players listed above I would not trade them for Hughes unless Hughes came with another prospect. And thats just the starters. Why? Because Hughes has a lesser chance to become one of these players, than say, one of these players. This is something out of a700hitter's book...I would MUCH rather have major league talent that has proven they can win 14+ games with a good ERA, etc. than a prospect who COULD become better than that, but also could very well do absolutely nothing.

Very few people would rather have Wang than Willis. Willis has great stuff and Wang reminds me of D-Lowe. He's an extreme groundball pitcher who doesn't get a lot of K's. Willis has thrown 500 more professional innings and is 2 years younger than Wang. I really don't see the two as mutually exclusive anyway, but I'd much rather have Dontrelle. Either would be great to have though.

That's a s***** deal. Texeira is a nice return, but not if we have to throw in Buchholz and Youkilis and only get back a SS prospect.

It's not even a rumor. Its just conjecture at its best! I suppose this is what we have all devolved to, waiting for the Manny-shoe to drop.

Yeah, on one hand I love watching Manny. Absolutely love it. At the same time, he is making the Red Sox the yearly laughing stock of baseball. There is NO reason the Sox FO should be the top baseball-related news right now. None. Cowherd talks about it, Dan Patrick talks about it, every sports center/espnnews update questions their capacity to adequately run the team. Yet the main hurdle at this point is whether or not Manny goes, with most people blasting the absurdity of trying to trade Manny at all. Of course, I've never once heard anyone on the radio refer to VORP or WARP3 or any other useful metrics to actually quantify how good manny is. That's the tough part, Manny is so good that people don't feel like numbers can describe his value. Without it being stated often he has those 'intangibles' that the greatest players have, his intangibles are entirely offensive but they are tremendous tools. No matter who the Sox get back there is going to be a negative backlash. The only names I've heard mentioned I can think of that wouldn't involve that are Teixeira, Andruw Jones, and Vernon Wells. Peavy would be in the second tier, although with a long term view having Peavy on your team would really solidify the pitching staff for 5 years (Peavy, Matsuzaka, Papelbon, Beckett, Lester/Bowden/Bard/Buchholz). They would still need to get a good bat though, and there are few bats available.

That's the whole point though. It doesn't have to be a dark day. What do the sox have to look forward to? A bunch of players that most other teams would love to have. The sox have, intelligently, not allowed there to be a severe bump in the road while waiting for talent to develop. You can be somewhat cynical, anti-Red Sox at times, but you have to admit that they have done a great job of creating a solid farm system that is only getting stronger. They are drafting experienced college players with good eyes for the plate, and pitchers who throw hard. Bowden, Buchholz and Bard are all very strong pitchers. Papelbon and Lester are good too. Beckett and, hopefully, Matsuzaka to go along with Hansen and Delcarmen. 5 years from now, if the sox make no moves, I think I just listed 9 of the sox pitchers. I think that's one of many realistic possibilities. Add to that the usual spending on bigger names and trades and whatnot and you already have a good core. And those guys are just the top tier pitchers. It didn't mention guys like Cox and Masterson, who have strong relief potential as well. I have to respectfully take your "competitiveness" comments with a grain of salt. Afterall, I imagine it is frustrating to be competitive and not win the world series. Sure, you have to get all excited for those playoff games and then get disappointed when the team ultimately falls short. But I swear to you, if the Yankees fell into the kind of pit that the sox did in '06 with the promise of more to come... you would stop watching. I know I did and I watch every Sox game I can. I just did something else with my 3 hours... I know, its a horrible bandwagon thing to do but they were godawful . This year they were HORRIBLE by the end of the season. Imagine having a team like that every year. Imagine being a Royals fan, or a D-Rays fan or a Mariners fan. Personally, I enjoy the pennant chase and I don't think there has been any one quality that has defined the past 5 or so winners of the world series. In other words, there is no receipe for success. If there were the Yankees would have purchased and utiliezed it by now. Teams "compete" to get into the playoffs and then "compete" for the world series. Having a team that is "competitive" does not mean "only competitive"--as if it were not quite enough--competitive means "has a reasonable chance to win". Now, if I have to choose between having a "reasonable chance to win" year after year, or winning one season for sure, I would choose the former (assuming I'm not coming off an 86 year drought, which we're not). Remember, the Red Sox did not win in 2004 necessarily because they were the better team. I think they were the better team because of what they overcame, but it all came down to a foul-ball here, a called strike there, a stolen base, and seeing-eye single. If that's a ground out, four feet to the left, Roberts may not score and the sox lose and we have won ZERO WS. We won by a) being competitive and being lucky. That's all you can ever do. How many times out of 100 do you think the Tigers pitchers can make accurate throws to a base? I would be its in the 90% range, if not higher. St. Louis was lucky to win. White Sox series against the Angels, a few calls for Chicago and they end up taking what should have been a competitive series rather easily. You can't buy yourself a stolen base or a seeing eye single, but you may be able to buy and draft your way to the point where you can gamble on one of those things and hope its your year. The Yankees do that every single year and it just hasn't gone their way.

I don't think the compensatory picks are done in the new CBA and Pedroia was a straight-up draft pick, but this is as nice a description of it as I've seen. The part about unappreciated value is especially spot-on. I think they've got their metrics and their particular projection tools and I, for one, assume they know what they're talking about. Most of us spend a fair amount of time reading critical material about baseball, statitistics, sabermetric theory, etc., and we don't believe its a bunch of crap. The hard part is mining all of the data to find the statistics that contribute to winning and is available. OBP + SLG = OPS was a pretty good tool to create to look at value. Now everyone looks at OBP and its not a unappreciated value anymore. The hope is to find the next great metric, but its kind of like trying to find a theory about "the Truth": you can describe it in many ways but the next guy can always describe it better; eventually you'll find that the guys who are the best are the ones who strike guys out, get hits, hit HRs, score runs, etc., just like baseball fans have always believed. There is no stat that will perfectly describe the best players, but those players will show up on the field for sure. In other words, the moneyball phenomenon appears to have just included more people into the "valuable" club, rather than redefining value itself. Now its guys who hit HRs, 2Bs, have a high average or OBP who are valuable offensively. There's not really any other type of player waiting in the wings... that could be it. In which case it is like back to the days of just enormous spending on players no matter what team you were. The Sox may have realized that their attempts to emulate Oakland (even to a small degree) wouldn't push them over the top. They're not going to be frivilous with their money, but look at todays climate! Any hope of getting a solid power hitting RF for 8-9 million dollars (which seems more than reasonable) is out the window. Its 14+ at this point. There can be no saving in this climate. None. The teams that have it either need to spend of sink and I think we can see how many are spending at this point.

Yeah, I think Japanese dude should get those guys out whether or not he's a specialist (his name is Hideki Okajima, I believe). If he's good there's no need to platoon him (so to speak).

I think the Sox probably see right now as the ideal time to move Ramirez, not the past and not the future. The market is high enough to make Manny's deal a good one. He still has 2 years left so whoever gets him will get 324 games out of him. His return now is bound to include some prospects and some position players and they're actually getting competition for Manny, whom they dangled for NOTHING a few years ago and nothing happened. If they wait till next year then teams are going to be willing to give up less, because they will be forced to have to renegotiate to keep him and will have lost the prospects/other players in the trade (assuming that they aren't forced to pick up his options). Its now or never, I think.

Not a big deal. Everyone would rather have Manny. Papelbon hasn't been through years of Manny demanding to be traded. He's a shoot from the hip kind of guy and likely doesn't have anything against manny personally.

Definitely off subject. Nobody knows. The Sox have decided (correctly) to not comment on Lester's condition as it is a private matter between Jon and his family. Your guess is as good as mine. I can tell you from family experience that there aren't many better cities in the world to be in than Boston when it comes to research and treatment (although I'm not sure that's where Lester is... again, who knows :dunno: ). Again, off topic, but I give lots of credit to the cutting-edge medical facilities in boston, and medical treatment in general. Hopefully young Jon will be okay.

Im not sure what a Jake Peavy type of player is. He has tremendous upside and has had a few good years. Last year his numbers weren't great but he did have some very good games. He was even more puzzling than Beckett, as I think Peavy has more stuff and was pitching in the weaker NL. I think we know which teams are looking for manny. They've been listed numerous times. SF, LA, possibly CHW, TEX, maybe a couple more. None of them have the offensive equivalent of a Jake Peavy type of player, which seems concerning to many here. I still hope they'll take prospects in a pre-arranged three way deal for a Peavy type player, names that have been mentioned before. I really hope we don't just fill a bullpen spot and a 4th OF and a medicore prospect. Winning aside, I loved watching Manny and the price other people should have to pay to watch him on their team is, for me at least, still high. Not every team gets to watch a hands down, no doubt 1st ballot HOF during his prime with other tremendous hitters around him. He's exciting and reliable and a superhuman hitter. He can hit ANY pitcher in almost ANY game. By the 3rd or 4th AB against a guy Manny will have hit the ball hard at least once that day, against mediocre guys he hits it hard 4 out of 4 times it seems. That's worth a lot and I think the FO knows it, that's why he's stuck around the last 3 years. EDIT: The image I will always have of Manny is his characteristic enormous rip at a pitch up and in, fouling is straight back, and the entire crowd going ohhhhh because he just missed an absolute shot. For every enormous HR Manny had he had like 3 of those things.

Is there anything credible to suggest that the Padres would give up Peavy? I can't imagine any scenario where that would be the case...