Dojji

Do you really think other teams are any less aware of the unreliability of Buchholz than we are? How good do you think Buchholz' trade value is to other teams when half the reason you want him traded is you want more surety in the rotation spot he occupies?

I'm thrilled. This is a lot better than what I've come to expect of the front office in recent years. Ben and Theo had a tendency to outsmart themselves when it came to going for top free agent acquisitions, trying to find that guy who'd be just as good but cheaper rather than just rolling up their sleeves and going after the genuine article. So we now have our ace, we've added at least one bullpen arm, and we have a slightly overpaid 4th OF that should still be serviceable on defense and in a platood role. Our lineup is set at a decent level, and our bench is pretty strong and the bullpen has been improved. Next up is seeing what can be done practically to improve the bullpen as much as possible. I still think we need one more good arm there if it can be found, preferably a power lefty but that may wind up being filled internally. Since we're now not desperate enough to be taken over a barrell, we may be able to make a few surprising moves, but I think that this pretty much is your 2016 Red Sox. I would still love to go after Wei-Yin Chen to flesh out the lower middle of the rotation just a bit more. The work of building a rotation is never really done and the lower middle of the rotation matters just as much as the top at the end of the day. But if we don't make that move I'm content that we've got a pretty strong team as-is. Health is going to be the deciding factor

I believe that cycles depend on more than the raw roster strength of any one team. That's just the only part of the equation the team can control, so it's rightly emphasized. However, when all 3 of the usual punching bags in the division are also competitive teams in a given year it's insane to have the same expectations for the Red Sox that you'd have if they were still bottom feeders. What happened this year was very much essentially losing fights we normally don't even have to face.

For a second there I thought they'd signed this guy http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/y/youngch03.shtml Wouldn't have been the worst idea really.

I believe it is a cyclical thing -- in that the O's, Rays and Jays are either peaking of peaked very recently, greatly limiting what the Red Sox can do to ensure they win consistently.

Let me be clear about this: The Red Sox organization has on the whole run itself extremely well for a very long time. Even with our financial advantage not many franchises could have had the level of sustained success we've maintained for the last 18 years or so. Personally I saw chinks in the armor since 2009 when the Angels finally beat us in a postseason series, that was when the team entered its decline and it's declined steadily ever since. That was also the last time we graduated a premium level SP of our own to head the rotation. I think the two concepts are linked. The firing of Epstein was foolish, no one since has been able to jump start the farm on the pitching front, and the move was basically blaming a man for not holding off entropy forever, which I find mildly retarded to tell you the truth. He was still a better bet to assemble our next winning roster than anyone we've seen in that office sincce.

I am personally convinced that Wei-Yin Chen is one of the most underrated commodities on the market right now. If we can bring him in while he's still overshadowed by all the top talent waiting to be sold to the highest bidder, we can get most of the value we'd get from an ace at a substantian discount, and can free ourselves up to use the rest of our resources more wisely, and possibly still afford to bring in one of the top dogs too if we can shift some bad contract weight outside the franchise If we take part of the salary, a lot of AL franchises wouldn't mind Hanley as their DH, just for an example, we can get a small return to pad the pen or tne bench (RHH OF or mid tier reliever) and use that money to get Chen and one of the big 4. Having a rotation of one of the big 4 guys, then Chen, Porcello, Eddie, and Buchholz as the 5 so you can skip starts for him from time to time and keep him healthy, is actually a pretty exciting rotation.

In fairness to both Dombrowski and the Tigers they had some damn good years in the middle of that win now phase. The problem is he's coming to a team that has been reaping the same consequences being in a win-now mode for damn near 20 years now. We've been going straight for the gold, non stop, every single year since the Pedro-Garciaparra-Vaughn peak, even a super rich team is going to need to stop and catch its breath from time to time over span that long, and if it doesn't, nature has a way of forcing it to. 2013 was the last gasp. Even if we can squeeze a few more wins out of our roster in the next couple seasons it's clear to me that it's just going to take time before the franchise can truly regenerate itself. We have been too poor at successfully graduating pitching prospects into franchise leaders to maintain sustained success indefinitely, until that changes, nothing Dumbrowski can do can change the fact that the franchise is on borrowed time. Not even a rich team can sign its way out of all of its pitching deficits and while we have some hopes for Eddie, our last successful starter graduated into the big league roster is still Jon Lester and our last homegrown closer is still Jonathan Papelbon, both nearly a decade ago. Our pitching development staff has some serious splainin' to do. We have to figure out why our pitchers aren't graduating and then maybe we can talk about getting back to the top. If our graduates are being supplemented by premium high cost stars, we can win. If it's the other way around we will continue to struggle no matter how our money and our GM can pad the roster.

No need to be sarcastic Kimmi, it's a legitimate question. What would be better for the Franchise right now? One David Price, two lesser starters that could provide 400 combined innings to Price's 220 or so. Sure having Price is probably better once you're in the postseason, but if you could get Wei-Yin Chen and John Lackey, instead of Price, For the same cash value, doesn't that on paper give you a better chance to get to the postseason in the first place?

I'll never understand the decision to let Lester walk like that. He was durable, dependable and crafty, with both power and guile, nd more importantly he had a perfectly clean bill of health, was younger than the average FA to hit the market, and a better than average gamble to stay healthy, effective and motivated. If you added Jon Lester to the list of this season's FA's he's the guy I'd have wanted over any of the current men available. And you could have gotten him for likely substantially less money. I don't know what factors may have convinced the organization to ignore that in favor of bringing in someone else but I just cannot find any way to agree with that decision that doesn't amount to a sophistry after the fact.

There's a lot of hope in the fanbase that Eddie will fill the need for a #2 this year and a rotation of Price-Eddie-Porcello-Buchholz-Miley could be really really good for us. If we get both the real Porcello, and a decent year out of Buchholz, that could do it, definitely.

I agree but I do think some people are a little justifiably nervous about how... improvisational? ... the outfield is going to be this year, with 3 different unproven or semi-unproven players scheduled to take the field as Red Sox outfield starters. If he would come back with the understanding that he was there strictly to back up the existing outfielders, I'd love to bring Shane Victorino back as our 4th OF. We could really use that veteran presence, and he's still got the skills to succeed in a bench role.

Yeah that's one of the reasons I've had my eye on Greinke. He's really really really good, and I'm noticing that the hype machine for Price has taken center stage, overshadowing Greinke a bit and pulling everyone's attention in that direction. Price hype may allow you to quietly bring Greinke in for less than Price will fetch, but that ma be wishful thinking -- Greinke's agent will know that once Price goes, it'll be his turn on center stage and will advise his client to hold out until Price signs.

We're stuck with the Panda, is my thoughts. Hopefully he bounces back to somerthing closer to his career level.

... and this right here is exactly why our financial advantage is nowhere near as strong as it was. It's coming to the point where the economy is simply not there for even the richest teams to sign their way out of a bad phase. The free agents are on the verge of pricing themselves out of the market. This is a bubble that will eventually bust: the center cannot hold and when it goes, I think uit's going to be the players that get the worst of it. The time is coming where the only way to be a surefire contender even for a big market team, is to develop your own internally, supplemented by maybe a small handful of mercenaries. The days of filling the roster from the free agent list are seriously nearly over, there's too much money and too much parity in the league just now. But the thing is, I think that's going to mean that a lot of B list FA's are going to struggle to find work because of the bloated contracts for the A-listers. My personal take is I'd rather have 2 B-listers that are both highly durable, than blow our wad that 1 guy that's only going to be somewhat better and only shows up at all 1 day in 5. I'd rather go for John Lackey and Wei-Yin Chen together than any of the mercenary aces separately, if I thought that both were equally possible options. Aces are flashy but it's rotational depth that really wins in the end. Or to put it another way exactly how many aces did the KC Royals have this year? Sure they brought in Cueto but Cueto didn't get the job done for them for the most part. They were carried on the backs of their B-listers and that powerful pen. (and a pretty deep offense, but we still have that too)

Welcome

london ontario or london UK?

When Daisuke first came over he was hitting 96. He lost some velo or something somewhere in the second half of his first year here

Count on nothing from Buchholz. His spot in the rotation might as well be filled by a sign saying "This spot reserved for rookie replacement." I just hope Owens is ready to go when (not if) Buchholz falters

I think they give Joe Kelly until mid May to see if he's got what it takes and then go to Eddie. Having the luxury of sending him to Pawtucket means they'll probably try to make use of it. Not saying it's right, just saying that we see teams make that kind of decision all the time.

I suspect the team actually sees Christian Vazquez as their incumbent starter. Spring can change everything of course but at the moment I think it's actually Swihart that would go down to Pawtucket to work on things when the team breaks camp. I also don't think Eddie breaks camp with the team. As for that last outfield slot -- has Rajai Davis been taken yet? He's kind of the ideal guy for that assignment to back up multiple youngsters.

Poor word choice on your part then. He has already "left" because Greinke had an option with the Dodgers which he declined to enter the market. Going back to the Dodgers is definitely something he may decide to do once he's tested the waters. I'm sure the Dodgers can make an attractive offer if they choose to, but there's certainly other markets I could see Greinke winding up in that may be interested in him. My current pick for surprise contender for Greinke at the moment is St. Louis actually. They have to know that the Cubs have the inside track on Price at this point and the Cardinal FO is willing to hand out some big contracts when they need to compete. If the Cubs do land Price, I wouldn't be surprised if the Cards decide to make a splash of their own. And St. Louis is a medium-sized market with a legendarily friendly and supportive fanbase, a history of favoring and respecting defense as a source of win value for their franchise, and one of the best defensive and pitch framing catchers in the league. not a bad spot to wind up for a player with a history of social anxiety. Also Greinke has a stated preference to pitch in the NL because as he's said in the past, he enjoys hitting, and for a pitcher is actually pretty good at it. Any AL team competing for Greinke's services may find itself simply used to try to lure a matching offer out of an NL franchise.

Your farcical opinion is noted MVP, right along with the moon landing hoax and the 9/11 truthers.

SK he already HAS left the Dodgers. He's a free agent.

Frankly the Red Sox are in a far tougher division than the Cardinals. A lot of those first place finishes the Cardilans boast about come from less than 90 wins. THe competition in the AL East is much tougher even when the Blue Jays, Orioles and Rays aren't as well run as they currently are. When the usual divisional punching bags are running a tight ship on a relatively consistent basis it's going to take a better roster to beat them, and that level of objective roster quality is above the level you can expect to achieve year in, year out with any franchise. The success we enjoyed in decades past came in an era when the other three teams in the division were particularly poorly run, and in most cases we would make the playoffs with second place finishes. Think about that for a minute -- the only teams in our division we were consistently outperforming were the corpses of TOR, BAL, and TB. Now those franchises are ascendent and as soon as that happend we're in the bottom of the division no better than them. The reason? Simple. Every strategic choice you make has consequences. Trying to compete consistently dilutes your peak years and flattens your performance curve, increasing its quality in bad years at the cost of reducing its quality in the best years. Removing the valleys tends to remove the peaks as well given equal levels of skill at roster construction and equal opportunities to attract talent -- when you're not stacking up for any one given year as The Year you tend to drift around somewhere in the middle 15 most of the time. We've been getting around the worst of this problem with pure money, but if you've looked around the whole league is awash with cash just now and even the poor teams can afford to keep a core around them, making our one big advantage a lot less unique, and we have not used that financial advantage well recently anyway. With that advantage nullified by the rising tide floating all boats, and by organizational incompetence, the ability to compete year in and year out is greatly reduced which is why I think a 2-3 year gap and a reload aimed at trying to establish a few peak years is called for.