a700hitter

There can be no injury excuses in 2012 unless the team charter plane crashes. We have no pitching depth. Everyone knows it. Some kind of injury, minor or major will happen. With the lack of depth on our staff, a couple of minor injuries causing a couple of the guys to miss 3-4 starts each could be very devastating. Ben needs to get something done and his options are dwindling.

They constantly remind me of why I hate them so much.

iortiz, as usual, I am in full agreement. Our starting pitching is 3 deep. Saying that we lack depth would be an understatement. We only have 3 legitimate major league starters. Period. If one of them gets injured, it would be disastrous, but whining about it would not be justified. The problem is staring everyone in the face. Ben need to do something about it. Carlos Silva is not the answer unless the problem is that you need someone to take home the left overs from the after game spread.

Why would the Yankees screw us just once when they can screw us twice?

I don't remember who he said it to, but Willie Mays imparted to a young player one of his secrets for being great. He told the kid that he just tries to hold his own against the good pitchers, getting 1 hit in 3 or 4 ABs made him happy, but he feasted on everyone else. That's always the way it is for pitchers and batters alike. This kid is good. I'd love to have a 22 year old kid at 6'7" pumping easy gas at 97 with a good breaking ball.

This is a reasonable position. Change a few of your reasonable assumptions as to why they might be improved and make an opposite but still reasonable assumption and the analysis ends up somewhere between "about the same" and markedly worse, which is where I believe that Pumpsie and others are on this issue, but they get ridiculed for it. I'm not quite sure why, because their analysis leaves them somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, which is where you are. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that you are the one heaping ridicule. I am not saying that at all. You are the only person who took the time to try to make the case that the 2012 pitching will be improved and you came out in the middle somewhere leaning toward improvement. When all the blather is boiled away, this staff is about the same as last years. If injuries and unexpected performance occurs it will be markedly worse. If we have good health and some break out performances, it will be markedly better. There's a lot of common ground in the opinion in this thread, but people are too busy bickering.

This may make you feel better about things, but I don't feel better about it. The Yankees like the Sox needed pitching. A lot of people here are willing to trade Youk -- an All Star cleanup hitter-- to get a pitcher. The Yankees filled their hole by trading a prospect-- a very good hitting prospect-- but still a prospect-- and he's a DH prospect. I don't feel good about this.

Even after the defection of Papelbon, the Red Sox were positioned such that a few acquisition (nothing too splashy) would reassert the Sox as a dominant force in the AL. Via a trade, we replaced our closer with a pitcher with great stuff but questionable health. We also added a late inning reliever in Melancon. We are one solid starting pitcher away from materially improving our pitching over the 2011 version. We are still waiting. Today, the Yankees solidified their status as a dominant team. They went from having a staff with an ace, an emerging ace in Nova and several question marks to a staff that is 7 Starters deep at the major league level with the killer Bees waiting in the wings. Benny Boy just got a lesson from Cashman. Hopefully, he is a fast learner and responds appropriately.

Write the damn check already, Ben!!!!

The Phillies and the Yankees have more depth in their rotations than the Sox do. If the Yankees lose CC, they still have a solid 5 guys with Nova, Pineda, Kuroda, Garcia and Hughes with AJ for depth. Edit : They can survive losing one of their top 3. We can't.

I'm hoping that montero hits .360 next year, but that will not change the fact that the Yankees just filled a hole for many years to come with a kid with a lot of upward potential. It pisses me off much more than the Kuroda signing.

Pineda is a huge kid who can throw 96-97 consistently. He's a big horse and he's only 22, and he already made an All Star team. I think the kid has quite a future.

You are getting off the point of the post that I replied to. You brought up the philosophy of not trading a superstar position player for a pitcher and compared it to the Montero deal. I don't see the application. Montero is a prospect, not a superstar position player. I didn't bring Lavarnway into the discussion.

I guess this is the big news today for the Red Sox. Ben and Cherries has probably worked all week crunching the numbers on this deal.

I think you are probably right. The prices are not going to come down.

He's done basically nothing. We are so news starved that we got giddy over getting a guy who throws 40 innings a year with a bad elbow to replace Papelbon. He got a guy Melancon from the Stros and a catcher that can't hit .200 in Shoppach. This is really like a Mets off season, and they are on the fringe of bankruptcy.

To sum up the off season thus far. The Yankees have added two pitchers to their rotation-- Pineda and Kuroda. The Red Sox have replaced their closer Papelbon with an injury prone Bailey and added Melancon. I don't think we have closed the 7 game gap in the standings.

Money talks and ******** is just s***.