a700hitter

Check his stats. Romero had two very good seasons in a row topping more than 200 innings each of those seasons. His game fell apart with the great Guru Farrell at the helm. I think those teams have the best talent evaluators for pitching. They do a much better job of identifying pitching talent and drafting it. Their secret is not their pitching coach. We had Curt Young for a year. His results are much better in Oakland for reasons other than the climate.

It worries me greatly that Ortiz is still not fully healed. Without a healthy Ortiz, the team will struggle to score.

Jacko, I wholeheartedly agree with your post. I acknowledge that it is much more difficult to spot flaws at the ML level which is why the major league pitching coaches have less of an impact than coaches at lower levels. If I had a dollar for every time that I heard that coaches spotted something in the mechanics of a struggling pitcher only to have the guy continue to struggle. I don't buy into the pitching coach guru theory. Leo Mazone was nothing when he left the Braves. I remember that people thought that Joe Kerrigan was a guru because the Sox staff put up good numbers under him. Of course they were led by Pedro who was other-worldly. Kerrigan never found success again. He was no guru. I am not saying that pitching coaches add nothing at the ML level. They help with preparedness and philosophies on attacking hitters etc., but Farrell was no big whiz straightening out mechanics his first time around. He's not going to watch some video of Lester and solve his problems. Lester will be helped much much more by pitching to a catcher other than Salty IMO.

By the time they reach the majors and certainly by the time they have reached Lester's level of experience and success in the majors they have mastered the fundamental mechanics. The refinement at the major league level is incredible as these guys have repeated their deliveries thousand upon thousands of times. The major league pitching coaches are doing far less tinkering with mechanics than coaches at lower levels. If pitching coaches made such a big difference, they would make a lot more money and they would be more valuable than the managers. The fact is that they make modest money and they show up in one organization after another like a game of musical chairs. They are very interchangeable. The teams with great pitching talent had the best talent evaluators who do a better job of identifying and drafting the talent. The organizations are not do ing such a great job developing the Matt Cains and Lincecums and so forth. They are doing a great job at finding them and drafting them.

I think the biggest role played by pitching coaches is keeping pitchers ready by making sure that they gets their work in, and he provides information to the manager with regard to how a guy looks. As for helping pitchers figure things out, I think that does not happen very often. I have not taken a scientific survey, but I have spoken with a number of former pitchers. When I asked Seaver and Koosman about the Met organization's philosophy on developing pitchers they laughed. I noted how many of them had similar deliveries and mechanics. They told me that they learned from each other-- that Joe Pignatano was busy tending to his tomato plants. By and large, the pitchers watch each other and learn from each other. There are exceptions. Dave Duncan has been a success, but on each of his staffs he has had some great pitchers who were good teachers starting with Dave Stewart on the A's. A fellow pitcher, Larry Sherry has been credited by Sandy Koufax with turning Koufax's career around. I don't have a lot of faith in Farrell turning guys around. He didn't do such a great job in Toronto. Ricky Romero's promising career took a nose dive under Farrell, and Alvarez flopped too. When the highly regarded Leo Mazzone went to Baltimore he couldn't accomplish a thing. No one improved. Mazzone looked like a genius because of Maddox, Glavine and Smoltz et al. IMO, the bigger impact will come from losing Salty.

I am not a big believer in the notion that pitching coaches have anything more than a nominal influence. I am not counting on that. I am starting to believe that the staff would markedly improve if Salty is traded. Of course, if Salty is traded and the staff improves, everyone will attribute it to the positive influence of Farrell. IMO, they would be mistaken.

Two holes in the rotation usually spells disaster for a team, because it puts pressure on the other 3 to win nearly every start. It also puts an enormous strain on the pen which would likely reduce its effectiveness as a result of over use. I leave open the possibility that we could survive if Lester and Buch pitch to their potential, but it would be tight. If one of them falters, I don't see any other combination of 3 that could have us survive 2 holes in the rotation. It's just too much to overcome. With regard to the possibility of filling a hole during the season, that is not easy to do, and the organization has not shown an inclination to do what it takes to make such an acquisition during the season. Also, if there are 2 holes in the rotation, the team could be in such a deep hole at the trading deadline that it wouldn't matter.

We should have a moratorium on this. We all like Nava, but he is just not a major league outfielder. He doesn't have major league skills. If he is on the opening day roster, it wouldn't signal disaster, but IMO it would not be a good signal.

I never said anything otherwise. However, I do think that almost all of the question marks need to be answered on the positive side in order for the team to compete. That is unlikely. At least 3 of the 5 need to come through and in that 3 of 5 scenario Buchholz and Lester performing would be a must to compete. If one of them falters, we would need 4 of 5 to perform. That is not impossible, but highly unikely.

Not yet.

Why would Napoli keep it quiet? He would want to generate interest in himself. ^ This is not plausible.

The odds are against all the "ifs" coming out in a positive way. That's just how it is. If you have one question mark, if it doesn't work out, you might be okay. In order of importance, both Lester and Buchholz need to rebound. If one of them doesn't rebound, we're dead. Next in importance is that Dempster is not an ALE pi?ata. We don't need him to be an AllStar, but he needs to be solid and make quality starts. Lackey needs to be at least 2010 Lackey. We can live without Dempster or Lackey if Buch and Lester come up big. I don't think we can survive both Lackey and Dempster failing even if Buch and Lester come up big.

Here here or hear hear!

I made the appropriate correction in bold.

I don't doubt that they are in our top 5, and I think that speaks volumes to the lack of overall talent in our system. SFF, I do follow this stuff, but I acknowledge that you follow the prospects more closely. If your solution to our pitching strategy is to wait 3 years and Barnes, De La Rosa and Webster will be anchoring our rotation, that's fine. That's one strategy, and only time will tell.

I'll respectfully disagree with you on our pitching prospects. They are not our best prospects, and they are just not that good yet. Let's see if Barnes can dominate at AA before we start penciling him into the 2014 rotation. Let's see if De La Rosa can hold up over the course of a season as a starter anywhere before we start mentioning him in sentences with Pedro. As for Webster, he's just slightly better than Zach Stewart.

I think it all flows from the pitching. We had a strong run producing team for about 3/4 of 2012, but the pitching sunk us and then the wheels came off the whole thing. I don't think the offensive acquisitions will be enough to overcome suck ass starting pitching. The strengthened pen will help, but it will wilt from pitching 3 or 4 innings every game.

Bells, the problem is that Anthony Rizzo and our current prime youn talent are not pitchers. We can be as patient as we want, but that is not going to make young pitching talent appear in the organization. For several year we have sucked at identifying and signing good young pitching. We got scooped by Cleveland who landed Bauer for Choo (in his walk year). Why not offer them Ells to get Bauer and the Cincy CFer?

Everyone would love for the Sox to get an ace, but teams aren't exactly lining up to have fire sales for their ace pitchers. They are keeping them long term. When Gio was available last off season we didn't land him. Big mistake. He signed a 5 year/$40 million extension. He should kill his agent.

You have presumed wrong, so you don't know what the core of the argument. I have said what my expectations and hopes were for 2013 many man times. I do not expect an elite team at all. I was hoping for a somewhat competitive team that would play meaningful games throughout August and hopefully into September. If you are going to presume what I want, get it right or don't put words in my mouth. That being said, the biggest need on this team going into the off season was starting pitching. That is as clear as the nose on your face. Thus far they have chosen to address that issue with the great Ryan Dempster. There isn't a Sox fan on this planet who thinks Dempster will fix our rotation. The real mystery to me is why they would pump up the payroll when they have built a 4th place pitching rotation. The possibilities that I see are 1) they are not finished building their pitching (that's what I am hoping), 2) they like the staff and think everyone will rebound and the team will compete (this is pure folly IMO), or 3) they spent the other money expecting to also improve the pitching, but they couldn't execute that part of the plan. If they went into the off season without the expectation of improving the starting pitching, then they should have saved their money. So, you see you are wrong again. I don't want them to spend every penny. Spending 84% of their money on stopgap position players while spending only 16% on the biggest need is foolish. After asking you twice how you would rebuild the pitching and how long it should take, it is obvious that you have no strategy. We don't have the talent in our system to rebuild a rotation any time soon. You answered with nothing but wrong assumptions and presumptions about my positions on these issues. You basically just spewed insults. In your next lame attempt at empty rhetoric and accusations maybe you could accuse me of wanting to give tax breaks to the wealthy or accuse me of being in bed with big business. From what I can see, it seems that you are taking approach #2-- the staff will all improve in 2013-- the approach that I have called "folly". Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, because - wouldn't want to put words in your mouth. I will leave open one slim possibility for all of the starters to improve. I call it the Salty effect. It is possible that he has been a big part of the problem, and that getting rid of him will pay "addition by subtraction" benefits.

I'll take a shot at asking again. So, who do you like and when will they become available? In short, how would you go about rebuilding our pitching and in what time horizon?

^ This is all ridiculous. If you can't back up your arguments, just say nothing. It's hard to back up some opinions, but this stuff ^ is garbage.

Of course, we are all hoping that the team is not a finished product, because as it stands, the best thing you could say about our starting pitching is that it is too thin with many question marks. Pitching with so many question marks usually proves to be bad pitching at the end of the day. As for the "serial negative Nancy" stuff, give me a break. There was a consensus on the board by the FO ballwashers and the Negative Nancys at the beginning of the off season that the team need to improve its starting pitching first and foremost. Everyone agreed that if that didn't happen that the FO hadn't done its job. Now, as hope of improvement fades, the Stockholm Syndrome takes hold and people circle the wagons and make excuses for the FO. It happened last year, and history repeats itself. We are already seeing ridiculously unrealistic projections of the our starters performance. Without further additions to our starting pitching after January 1st, this staff is essentially the same staff that led this team to the basement. IMO, it will lead us to the bottom again unless everything breaks right.

So, who do you like and when will they become available? In short, how would you go about rebuilding our pitching and in what time horizon? Finally, if there were indeed no pitchers available to improve the biggest weakness on the team, why in the world would they spend $170 million on payroll for a team that really has very little chance of success.

They have a team with no first baseman (until Napoli signs), 3 catchers, only 2 real OFers (Gomes is a hack with the glove), and 5 starting pitchers (all with question marks). This is not a strong team as constituted. The pitching is pretty much the same as last year and September 2011. Expecting a markedly improved result from this group does not have a high probability IMO. If things don't break right, there will be little market for under performing pieces.