a700hitter

They stumble out of the gate, and they trade their best young cost-controlled player and their only drawing card? I don't see it.

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2010/01/hoyer_gonzalez.html No Gonzalez, not now, not later.

Welcome.

What part of Jersey are you from?

That's got to be the record.

Agreed. If a high paid player is being outplayed, he should sit. He still gets his check, so he should shut up, and the organization should swallow its pride and admit its mistakes. The Sox FO has been good about moving on past its mistakes. Hopefully, they will move on from this Kotchman experiment before it starts.

The NBA is a joke and a bore. I haven't watched it since Bird and Magic left the game. The first 44-46 minutes are a waste of time and generally have no impact on the outcome of the game. Too many teams make the playoffs. They should play 5 minute games and play 6 games a night. The schedule should be 240 five minute games, and only the Division winners should make the playoffs which would be the best of twenty-one 10 minute games. Playoff teams would play three 10 minute games against each other each night. That would be an interesting league.

Hey, welcome from a Red Sox fan from Long Island, New York, birthplace and chidhood home of Carl Yastrzemski. My favorite Sox player is anyone wearing the uniform

But when Jeter is gone, the Yankee fans might blame their FO if the Sox sign HanRam and shift the balance of power back to the Sox. Similarly, I think it is fair to question the FO performance in losing out on Teixeira last year causing a shift back to the Yankees.

But don't they have to exceed the cap for the tax to apply? If they are over the cap in 2010, but the payroll falls under the cap in 2011 and 2012 due to contracts coming off the books, to what would the tax rate apply in 2011 and 2012?

Agreed. I eagerly await the hitting first baseman, but I don't think we are getting one. People are getting used to the notion of Casey Kotchman who I hear can scale 10 foot walls to catch flyballs. The FO will do some minor tinkering, but nothin major will happen between now ad April. If this team catches a bunch of breaks and everything goes right and the Yankee spring training bus rolls down an embankment, we are good enough to go all the way. More realistically, they'll be looking for a bat at the trading deadline and they might actually get one. However, he'll be more like an old Gante Bichette than Adrian Gonzalez.

At this point the numbers don't back you up. I'll leave the door open a crack for Kotchman because he is only 27, and he could surprise us, but I am not counting on it. As for Cameron, at age 37 there are no surprises, and his stick is a big, big downgrade.

Kotchman isn't as talented as Doug Mientkievicz. That's why I am negative about him.

Did you read this thread before you posted this link? At the start of the season, there wasn't a single Sox fan who posted negatively about the Sox upcoming 2007 chances in that thread--- not one. The Thread was started by Gom as a trolling attempt. Again, please knock it off with telling my what I think today and what you think I thought 3 years ago. I was very very happy that the Sox had been very aggressive in the off season. They did what needed to be done, and it was a welcome change from the 2004 and 2005 off seasons when they went on the cheap. I didn't think Pedroia needed to be anything but average for the Sox to be successful in 2007. My concern was that they had no backup plan if Pedroia blew up. My exact stated concern was that after building a team to win now (2007) and after spending all that money that they did not have a Plan B for second base in case the kid didn't pan out. If he was average, I thought they would be alright. Please stop telling people what they think and what they thought. We'll tell you what we think. Remember you thought Wily Mo Pena and Chris Duncan would be a good OF tandem that you thought had a realistic chance of combining for 55 HRs and 160 RBI.

The difference between the 2007 team and the 2010 team is that the 2007 team was expected to win if everyone just performed to their baseline. They were expected to win if Pedroia was merely average. At the start of the year, no one thought that they would need an insane year from Pedroia to win. Unfortunately, Lugo had a terrible year, Drew substantially underperformed and Schilling got injured. Three really bad things happened, but the team was so strong that it only needed Pedroia's surprise to keep it on top. The 2010 team needs everyone to perform to baseline and for there to be some breakout performances to beat the Yankees and go all the way. They will not be able to afford to have three players under perform or be injured for substantial portions of the season. The margin of error will be very small for this team, and in my experience, when a team needs everything to go right in order to succeed, that almost never happens.

In 2003 to 2005, the Red Sox had record setting offensive production. It might have been a surprise in 2003, but it wasn't in the subsequent years. The Sox clearly had the superior offenses during 2004-05 without the benefit of hindsight. In 2004, the FO also picked up one of the premier starters in the game-- Schilling to head the rotation with Pedro and Lowe. They also added one of the premier closers in Foulke. In 2007, the Sox added the most sought after pitcher of the off season to head a rotation with Beckett and Schilling (who did pitch a 1 hitter in 2007, before getting injured). Dice K wasn't just some import. They also added Drew whose talent has never been questioned. In 2004 and 2007, the FO made bold moves to improve those teams to compete with and beat the Yankees. The 2007 team went wire to wire. They didn't get there because of the emergence of Ellsbury late in the season. They were built to win, and they won with underperformances by Lugo and Drew that were balanced out by the unexpected emergence of Pedroia and Okajima. They were built to win. It was not a case of that team getting lucky. This year they made the big pitching acquisition, but they have clearly taken a step back offensively dropping further behind a Yankee team that had already become dominant offensively thanks to the addition of Mark Teixeira. This year's team is not built to win. Kotchman and Cameron are not going to get it done.