example1

whatever. just get him.

How about Hansack? What's his place? AAA, long relief?

why did they have to incentivize his deal at all? Was he thinking that 2.8 million was low? He needed convincing to come back?

Yeah but he's catching, and doing a damn nice job behind the plate overall. Every 5th day off only goes so far if you beat yourself to a pulp the other 4 days.

s***, I say try to sign Soriano AND Lee, trade Manny and move Lee to 1B or Soriano to 2B, packaging Pedroia someplace, possibly wth Lowell (in place of cash). I think a lot of Pedroia, but if Soriano can play average defense at 2B he would certainly contribute to the ability to have power up and down the defensive spectrum.

I guess you didn't. You said he had "won over" the fans. I don't think that's possible for Bonds in Boston or really anywhere else. I've told myself since this whole thing started that the only people who even root for the guy anymore are his own fans, and they are somewhat embarassed about it. He has been booed in every park he plays in. Are we really so fickle as to stop booing him once he comes to OUR blessed team? I know we're not all saints, but he's shown no remorse, has admitted NOTHING and has continued playing, through injury, solely to get the record via cheating. right in front of our eyes. I don't want to look back in 5 years and say that Bonds, like Canseco, came to Boston to effectvely die in the place of a younger, better available LF like Soriano, or Lee, or Manny Ramirez, who will contribute for 4+ years.

I think both are strongly correlated with runs though (SLG with a slight lead), and given that both are not always available (i.e., sometmes it is hard to find either) I am very interested in keeping Youkilis around. He's a guaranteed correlate of runs, so to speak, even if he's not the most efficient correlate of runs in the league. A team full of Youkilii type players (who have either a .380 OBP or a .570 SLG) would be very, very good. The kinds of guys it kills us to have in the lineup are Gonzalez, Cora, Kaplar types, as they don't even get a reasonably good average, let alone OBP or SLG. They make up for it in other ways, but I'm not convinced they do enough and I don't think the sox are either. Finally, you're absolutely right about the success of the 03 and 04 teams' offenses. The best offense will start with outstanding production from the middle of the field, including catchers, and above average to tremendous production from the other guys. When you start with a core of corner-type players consisting of a solid Millar and batting-champ Mueller, a .970 OPS trot nixon, HOF Manny Ramirez and a newly emergent David Ortiz you're looking at arguably the best offense in history. It is unrealistic to expect the team to be able to get back to that level without a lot of luck.

Correct me if I'm wrong yankee fans out there, but I don't get the sense that Giambi is any sort of fan favorite. I get the sense that he and sheffield have largely been embarassing, both because of their massive contracts and their ties to steroids. I don't want the sox getting players that are, from the start, guaranteed to not beliked by the fans. I'm depressed that you guys would be happy with a player you despised on your team. You guys want the pats to get TO too? Is that just what they need to go from being one of the best teams in football to winning a championship? I don't think so.

No doubt. In game of Shadows Giambi essentially tells the grand jury that he's been using since he was in the minors when he mysteriously shot to the top. This guy isn't good unless he's juicing. We know that much.

These guys are also the highest paid guys in the game. They are also the very people that 12 year old boys are imitating. They are also the guys that make us look at a guy like David Murphy or Jacoby Ellsbury or Coco Crisp and say "they don't have enough power to be the CF on a MLB team". Should those guys take roids too, so they can compete? The fact is we don't know how many people used roids or still use roids. The other fact is that we DO know who has benefited the most from it: guys like Giambi, Bonds, Caminetti, Palmero, Sosa, McGwire, Brady Anderson, etc., They have completely distorted the way the game is played and discussed. I don't blame anyone in particular but you guys must have forgotten that Barry Bonds broke the single season home run record. He is within a season of the all time home run record. He put up 1.400 OPS with ease, changed who got pitched to and the outcome of the season for a number of teams, fans and owners. We were fooled by McGwire and Sosa because they were the first to approach all-time greatness via steroids. Bonds broke their records at a time when it came out HOW those records got broken, so naturally he took the hit (although nobody would say that Sammy Sosa or Mark McGwire are looking too pretty these days either). I think baseball has the opportunity to go from goats to heroes on the steroid issue. Unfortunately it might take taking down the biggest star in the game to make it happen (which has essentially already happened). The iceberg has only been scratched with the "Game of Shadows" revelations. Anyone who thinks that Shawn Merriman is the only one in the NFL doing roids is crazy. I don't know about the NBA, but I do know that athletes have gotten bigger and faster on a yearly basis over the past 10 years. We have 6-4, 260lbs linebackers running 4.6 40's in football and nobody is raising any flags, while the biggest critique of baseball was that the power numbers surged and the fans and owners just accepted it because it made them money. Football is more popular today than it has been in years, and the players are mysteriously bigger and faster than ever before while, simultaneously, books like Game of Shadows highlight the amount of money and effort put into making steroids and performance enhancing drugs perfectly effecient and undetectable by any yet-devised tests. The book is much, much bigger than Barry Bonds but the power of the book was the grand jury testimony in the BALCO case, and the most important and well-known BALCO client was Barry Bonds.

I am pretty sure that Bonds is not the direction this team is heading toward right now. Perhaps its just me, but I can't see the Sox purposly taking on a contract of a slow, oft-injured LF option when they already have a DH who can't play the field and would need to spell bonds on a regular basis. Why should I care what Game of Shadows says? I read the book, I thought it was extremely disappointing. Bonds is on the cover, yet they mention him less than 25% of the time. So none of what you read bothered you? Your only criticism is that it doesn't have enough Bonds? It seems strange to critique a book of that bredth for not focusing on Bonds enough, especially because the entire book explains the BALCO scandal which directly relates to Barry Bonds. So by extension (and not an extreme one at that) the entire book is about Bonds. I'm pretty sure that he's only a symptom of a much larger problem. Personally, I read that book and I thought it was the best explanation of BALCO that I have seen. Yes, Barry only comes in and out of the BALCO scandal, he's not the main person in it. Disappointed or not I do hope that some of Bonds' clubhouse antics have made their way into your mind. If we think Manny silently taking days off is annoying wait until the daily media sessions as he approaches Aaron's record, the speculation about whether it is proper for the Sox to have paid 15m for another enormous roid user who is challenging baseball's most cherished record. Every time with that Sox logo behind his head, the bling and the defensiveness... no thanks.

If its okay with you that your team spends 13m largely to keep a player away from the Red Sox that's your perrogative. I'm just goad the sox don't do those types of things.

Yeah, congrats to St. Louis.

Let the offseason craziness begin.

although if fate was going Detroit's way Wainright would have just thrown that ball into RF.

Wainright is bound to blow a save eventually...

I've watched the whole series but I feel no excitement or tension right now. it's the 8th with 2 out in a 2 run game, but I just don't really care who wins as I think both teams are not the best teams in baseball. Certainly the cards aren't the best team in baseball.

I'm not convinced that this Tigers offense is that good. Perhaps they led the league in HRs, but I think they're showing their colors in the WS. Let's call the Cards about Duncan right now.

Both of these teams suck right now. The Tigers aren't playing up to their potential and, frankly, I can't tell WHAT the Cardinals are good at as a team.

If we can wait till 08 to see Ellsbury that'd be great. If we see him next season either he's having an absolute MONSTER year or something has gone wrong.