a700hitter

We got Manny by writing the biggest check at the time. It set the market. It also jump started the building of a potent offensive machine. We are not going to get that back from growing kids on the farm.

It's not the pink hats they should worry about. When a fan of over 40 years who has traveled around the country to support the team, including 7 straight years of Spring Training, is not excited about the upcoming season, they have a problem. The diehards like me pony up their dough early on. Their financial guys like that. It projects to having a good season financially. IMO, the Sox will seek to make a big acquisition before tickets go on sale in December. Fenway, as we know, is a small ballpark with the highest ticket prices in baseball. For those of you who think the gate receipts aren't the lifeblood of the franchise, you are just kidding yourselves. The owners want those fannies in the seats. Edit: A lot of people here are already making excuses for anticipated failure. Some are even trying to paint it as not being a failure. I don't think the FO will fail. I don't think we will see a lineup of: Youk -1B Pedroia- 2B Scutaro- SS Lowrie- 3B Salty-C Kalish/Cameron -OF Drew- OF Ellsbury- OF Ortiz- DH That would be a failure. There is no other way to paint it or spin it. However, I don't think the FO will field that lineup.

I guess you must be lowering your expectations so you won't be disappointed. An OF of Drew, Ellsbury, Cameron and Kalish is a joke if they want to be competitive.

The Tigers have come out of the box strong. The Sox had better not sit too long drawing a line in the sand. If Crawford, Werth and Beltre slip away, and the Yankees sign Lee, there will be no jou in Fenway in 2011. They need to make a bold move after losing VMart.

.710 OPS ...maybe he pops his bubblegum.

He's no longer a 5 tool guy, maybe a 4 to 4.5 tools. He was moving well at the end of last year and appeared to be healthy.

I have been calling Jeter a prima dona for years. Now, for the first time in his career he is not being coddled by the FO and press, and he is completely baffled. He is Derek Jeter and he believed that he would always be a Yankee and that the Yanks would always give him what he wanted. He has been believing his press clippings and he painted himself in a corner, because the FO knows he won't play for anyone else. Stupid move on his part. The team has him over a barrel. This contract negotiation is just act I. After he signs, he will be moved off SS at some point. That will really cause fireworks and bad feelings. He will not make that move graciously.

He makes a number of good points. He forgot to mention Brad Penny and Jeremy Hermida.

He has lost some range, but he is healthy, and he would be very motivated because he'd be playing for his next contract. I think the one year commitment to Beltran would be preferable to committing for 4 or 5 years for Werth.

Exactly. He's a Yankee fan. His primary objective is to annoy.

I guess this is the price for being a perennial competitors?:dunno:

You are sounding like a Yankee fan today. Luxury tax is just additional money. Crossing the luxury tax threshold doesn't prohibit future acquisitions. It just costs money.

The proceeds from any MLB licensed products gets divided equally among all the teams, so if sales of MLB products in Japan went up due to the Dice K signing, KC gets the same share as the Red Sox without having made any investment. As for any other revenue streams from Japan that go to the Red Sox... well, I am still waiting for the Red Sox to disclose any information about such revenue. There ain't any. The posting fee bought an exclusive right to negotiate and absolutely nothing else.

Kurt Suzuki?

Is this Plan C? http://www.weei.com/sports/boston/this-just-in/2160789/report-red-sox-sign-drew-sutton

If it is irrelevant then why would you bother to compare contracts at all. Under that theory, none of the money spent is relevant. Why would it make a difference if it hit payroll? There is no salary cap. Luxury Tax would just be more money spent by billionaires, so what is the difference. $52 million in a lump sum is a huge check. It's not spread over a period of years. It's much more expensive worse than paying $52 million over six years. I can assure you that $52 million factored into their operating budget. Edit: BTW Who is acting like the Yankee fan by calling $52 million irrelevant?

They all stink and they are all overpaid. Those bad contracts don't make Dice K's look any better. The only one that had a good track record was Zito, but it was clear that he just could no longer throw with any velocity. The others were just different degrees of mediocrity, and those were stupid contracts, but they were about half the cost of Dice K's contract.. There is no debating the posting fee. Just because it doesn't hit payroll for luxury tax purposes doesn't mean that it isn't real money. It was a $52 million expense, for which they received nothing other than an exclusive right to negotiate. He cost them $104 million, no matter how you slice it. The posting fee is a bigger financial blunder than the salary, because Dice K's salary and the salaries of Meche, Lilly and Suppan were spread over several years making them worth much less than the $52 million lump sum posting fee paid in 2006. The time value of the money makes the posting expense even more egregiously wasteful.