a700hitter

At the time of the trade they were not playing .472 ball, so it is unrealistic to think that they would have played at that percentage until the end of the season. As I pointed out in my previous post, they were 7-15 (a .318 percentage) for the month of August prior to the trade. That was much more indicative of what they were and the direction of the team than their overall record. They were a 90 loss team without the trade instead of a 93 loss team. They were circling the drain at the time of the trade and they were giving up.

No, they were not a 78-80 win team and the massive trade didn't really affect the performance that much. At the time of the trade, they were 13 games behind the Yankees and 10 game (loss column) behind the others. On August 1st, the Sox were 53-52. By the time of the big trade, the had slipped to 60-67. They had gone 7-15 from August 1st until the trade on August 25th-- a .318 winning percentage-- and they were falling fast. If they had not made the trade and continued playing at the blistering pace of .318 that they were playing at in August before the trade, we' d have lost 90 instead of 93 games. We have not improved enough to make up a 15-20 game deficit IMO.

Ross has a 2 year contract. I don't think they would cut him.

Would they cut Salty at that point? You don't see too many early season trades.

Unless they move Salty, I don't see how Lavarnway gets his chance, and that will piss me off.

The team directly ahead of us vastly improved their team. We did not. The other teams were ahead of us by 20+ games in the standings. If we avoid injuries altogether we will not eliminate that 20 game gap. We just didn't improve in areas where we needed to improve.

As for the discussion about whether or not the FO has changed philosophy, I have to throw some cold water on that one. Whether the FO needs to change philosophy to change the fortunes of this team is just a bunch of hooey. Philosophy hasn't been the problem of this team. Organizations with differing philsophies have been successful so long as the philosophy is well implemented. Philosophy has not been the Red Sox problem. Their problem has been poor implementation -- numerous and repeated poor personnel decisions. They don't need to change philosophy. They need to stop sucking. When your organization sucks, you don't cure it by changing your philosophy. You cure it by changing your personnel. They let Theo walk, but they replaced him with his protege and waterboy. They needed to clean house in the FO right up to, and possibly including Larry L. They did not and we are looking at a 2013 roster that will not be exciting and that has little chance of being competitive. There has been a change of philosophy since 2008. We went from a philosophy of success to a philosophy of suck.

With the start of Spring Training only about 2 weeks away, it is probably a safe bet that our roster is set and there will be no further acquisitions. As presently constituted, the talent level is roughly the same as it was at the beginning of last year on both sides of the ball, maybe slightly lower than last year. IMO, they are at best a 4th place team with a good likelihood of finishing last unless one of the other division rivals implode. I'll wait until the official start of spring training to make my predictions, but this is how I see things shaping up.

The Stros got a lot more value for Lowrie than the Red Sox got with Melancon.

The guy is 6'4" 240 and he has 1 HOUR in his last 500 plate appearances. That is horrendous. The only thing that he can hit hard is the wall with his fist.

I agree. Cherries thinks he is set for pitching. He is leaving himself little depth to fall back on if things turn bad. If we finish last again, I think he's toast.

Lazy Lars finds a home.

Let's hope he can regain that movement. Losing that much movement is huge.

The biggest drop in his k's was from 2010 to 2011. It's been a 2 year trend. It's taking him an awful long time to correct this mechanical flaw.

The defense wouldn't knock down Lester's k's by 25%.

If Overbay doesn't make the opening day roster, he has an opt out clause in his contract. He will not be our AAA first baseman.

We are staking our season on Buchholz and Lester having big seasons. After taking a look at Lester's numbers, I am not very confident that he will rebound to his 2010 form. In two seasons, his strikeouts have dropped from 225 to 166. A drop off by 60 strikeouts in the same number of innings sets off alarm bells to me. I know that someone posted a list of guys who had improved their ERAs by a run or more from one season to the next. I wonder how many of those guys had experienced a 25% drop off of strikeout effectiveness.

As disappointing as our last 2 off seasons have been, I haven't gotten to the point where I judge a move to be a success, because it will not hurt us. I look to see if a transaction will make us better. Overbay doesn't improve this team. I disagree with your assumption that anyone better than Overbay would get a better deal than being a part time first baseman. If we got a guy who could play the OF and 1B, we could offer him significant playing time and we would fill 2 of our needs. This move doesn't help the team and it probably puts either Nava or Sweeney on the opening day roster to fill the OF spot. Both of them stink.

I think it is more a function of seeing our pitching a lot plus other than Lester in those last few years we had no effective lefty starters. Did we have any lefty starters in those season. We also had very few lefties in the pen. Did the ballpark also factor into it? Maybe, but remember that in 2 of the 5 season his OPS was higher against us at home than on the road, so I don't think any Fenway effect is enough to justify signing an over the hill substandard offensive first baseman. They should have looked to get a little more pop.

I am not sure what point these stats make. He raked our pitching for those 5 years. In each of those 5 years, he hit Sox pitching for the highest or second highest OPS of any team that he faced in 10 or more games. In 2 of the 5 seasons, he hit Sox pitching for a higher OPS at home than at Fenway. Are you trying to make the point that he didn't hit Sox pitching well?

I believe it was a joke.

Maybe we are collecting knucklers so Wakefield will have something to do.

Wow, he lost almost a mph since this morning. This guy is on a fast decline.

That means much, because he will not be hitting against our pitching. He is JT Snow with less power. He was a good glove man and an average stick, and like JT Snow, we are getting him when he is at the end of the road. We could have done better than this. I am not sure that this is an upgrade over moving Nava to 1B.

Yuk!