a700hitter

and compensation for Theo is completely forgotten. The compensation we got was the full page newspaper Thank You card from Theo to the fans.

Plus the Phillies did win their division and made the playoffs.

The Angels fans will not complain if they end up in the World Series in 2012, and we wouldn't be complaining either if the Sox performed as billed and went to the WS in 2011. Quite the opposite happened. There was a giant sucking sound heard all over New England that was the 2011 Sox going down the drain at a record pace in September. As fans, we know that this team need to get better and we have been weakened in the off season thus far.

... and in the end, who knows who is wrong or right. If the team wins, the FO vindicates itself.

There are 30 teams. Some finish last. Some finish first. Not every FO is doing a great job. Are they privy to information that we don't have? Certainly. However, we are able to judge the moves they have made. It's baseball, not science. We can all have an opinion about this stuff. Your opinions about this stuff are tolerated. No one posts that you drive them nuts.

Those who criticize are making the case for doing things differently, i.e. they know better. You have a problem with the criticism. How can you say that you don't? This explanation of yours makes no sense.

Initially, I didn't like the idea of giving up a lot for Gio, but as you point out, he's not some old expensive guy on his last leg. He's young, lefthanded and cost controlled. We'd be lucky if one of our current pitching prospects gets to that point. If we "gutted" the farm for Gio and we decided after a year or two that he is not our guy, he'd probably still have some good market value in a trade, because he is young and lefthanded. He will not lose trade value unless he really bombs out. I'm on board for getting this guy even though he will cost big.

Those are three injured pitchers that you are looking to add and one of them (Oswalt) is old too. I don't know how well that could turn out. I'd rather go after Gio who is young and healthy.

Thanks for the information. He's basically into his second post op year, so he might be able to contribute this season.

How long ago did the injury and the surgery happen?

Has anyone read or heard anything about Zumaya lately? Wasn't he supposed to throw for some teams to evaluate him? Did that happen?

With him and Willingham off the market, the only outfielder left on the FA market that would interest me is Beltran. I guess we will be getting someone through a trade, possibly one of those under the radar moves.

Over my many years of being a fan and doing analysis like above, I have learned that when you start piling up th "ifs" it means that your team will not be very good. Rarely, do all or most of the "ifs" occur. More likely only a few come through and that is not enough to be a good ball club. You have a highlighted a bunch of "ifs" and that is only with regard to the bullpen. We have other "ifs" besides the pen. Bard and Aceves holding down rotation spots over the course of a season is a huge unknown. Reddick or Kalish holding down RF for an entire season and giving the team good offensive production is an "if" too. It's not a huge issue, but it is far from a certainty. I'd feel a lot better if we got a good RH bat to share OF duties. If Cherries can build a good pen, a lot of our issues go away, but there goes that word "if" again. Truly, at this point, this team can go hard in either direction-- very good or a no-contender. Things are developing very slowly and it's frustrating. As Fred said, we have gotten worse since the end of the season. We are waiting for moves to turn that around. Of course there have been years like 1975, when 2 kids like Rice and Lynn come up from the minors to become the 2 best players in the league, but I am not holding my breath on that. Even though it was the age before the internet and ESPN and Sports Talk radio, we still knew about Lynn and Rice while they were in the minors. They were that good.

Tazawa can't have many shots left. It's do or die for him in the next 2 seasons.

I thought he had a back or shoulder issue during the season too.

Can we really place a lot of faith in Jenks making a big contribution? If he decides that he still wants to make a living throwing a baseball and comes to camp under 500 lbs, he could be a big part of the pen, but I have to view that as a hope more than an expectation.