Dojji

His hitting numbers resemble Kevin Youkilis more closely than Josh Reddick. He's a line drive hitter whose calling card is patience and discipline. Not that Youkilis is by any means a bad comp, he was the last genuinely great first baseman we had and during his brief heyday he was the best 1B in the American League. He was also one of those players who was regarded as a bit piece until he got the chance to prove otherwise, so again, not a bad comp.

By the way, don't sleep on Portland 1Bman Sam Travis as a potential longish term solution to the first base conundrum. At age 21 in Portland he's putting up some reasonably impressive numbers. He's no sure thing, and the team is really hoping his power develops a bit as he fills out, but... well, if we're talking about long term plans at 1B, Travis deserves at least a passing mention. The big thing to note besides the obvious batting average and OBP Travis has (both respectable to good) is that his walk to strikeout ratio has improved steadily despite being underage for his level. That's not a slam dunk but it is a good sign. Trying hard not to get too excited because he's still at least 2 years away and we've all seen that a lot can go wrong, but if he can keep improving his hitting discipline and the power follows, we may just have something here. The way I see it, a short term deal for Kendrys Morales (as long as the Royals aren't too unreasonable) followed by promoting this kid, may be the way to go.

I think he's assuming that both Sandoval and Hanley will need to move down the defensive spectrum at some point -- ignoring the fact that one of them already has, and the other... well, his biggest problems aren't defensive in nature.

Either way the man was in his late 30's. If we were rebuilding I would be fine with the trade as constituted. The only issue comes from the fact that we're clearly NOT rebuilding -- this team was built to compete. From that perspective neither the Lester trade nor the Lackey trade even make bad sense. They're complete nonsequiturs compared to the rest of what the team was doing at the time and I'm at a loss to understand these moves, especially the consecutive acquisition of two different third basemen.. We would have been a better team right now with Holt at third base, an outfield of Castillo/JBJ/Betts in some order, and Lester and Lackey leading the rotation, no doubt in my mind. We'd be light on offense but the pitching and defense could have made up for that -- and let's be honest, our offense isn't carrying the team either way. At least by accentuating starting pitching and the D, we'd have had a direction for the team while we develop the next generation.

I'd say the two aren't mutually exclusive. The team leaders don't understand the fans as well as they think they do, and I'm afraid the reverse is also true. So the FO tries to please the fanbase by bringing in aging over 30 big contract talent when the fans would be just fine with a rebuild as long as it's well done and the future looks hopeful Basically the result looks like hot garbage with no positive direction to it. If we were rebuilding the fanbase would know it and not care so much about the W-L. If we were ready to compete no one would have a problem with bringing in expensive overage talent. It's the fact that we're doing neither and both at the same time, and the fanbase isn't reacting by failing to reward this kind of dithering, that's the problem. Think of it like this: When the Joe Thornton trade went down while at the same time the team showed no signs of a true proper rebuild Bruins fans reacted by deserting the Garden in droves. That's the correct reaction because it lights a fire under ownership to pick a direction to improve the team and stick with it. So they bring in Peter Chiarelli and Claude Julien to lead the team and start filtering in some young talent from trades, and you can say what you want about either of them, the team was competitive -- and despite the same ownership that they really hated, Bruins came back because it was clear that Jacobs had been forced to give at least half a damn and give control of the team to competent people. But it started because the team wasn't drawing flies anymore from the old way, forcing ownership to either respond, or alternatively, to lose money, which no competent businessmen however little he cares about the franchise will tolerate indefinitely. Do we do that here in Red Sox Nation? I don't think we do. And that means that the ownership loses an important piece of feedback. That's what's behind some of the directionless meandering we're seeing from ownership and the FO. The fans aren't making it clear what they want so ownership is left guessing. If we were capable of making a statement they would respond. they're businessmen and they're not idiots, but because we can't accomplish this as a fanbase, they're stuck in left field trying to do without the most obvious form of feedback most front offices have to work with -- the general satisfaction of the fanbase as expressed by attendance I hope that made some sense.

I have no problem with moving Lackey along. It was a contract year and he'd only pitched the one good year here. Lester they should have kept until they were more positive they could replace him, which they clearly failed to accomplish.

Us. The team is in the crapper 3 of the last 4 years and we're still packing the stands like lemmingsheep. What incentive does that actually provide to ownership to fix things properly?

In not even a perfect world, but just a world where things go according to plan more often than not, this team is at least over .500 and probably competing for the division. Personally I strongly suspect that the long term plan at 1B is currently not on the 40 man roster. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it was someone who wasn't even in MLB right now. I actually espect the Red Sox to try to compete in the IFA market, since that's a place where they can use their money to beat nearly everyone without giving up precious draft picks. If a talentedf IFA 1B turns up (and they seem to every few years, witness Kendrys Morales, Jose Abreu, etc) I expect the Sox to be all over them. Actually Kendrys Morales would be a decent choice. He's having an OK year in a hitter-unfriendly ballpark and next year is technically a contract year for him (he has a mutual option for the following year but it's for $11M, and KC's going to pay that the day pigs fly). That might be the move to make at least in the interim.

The only people in a baseball game who touch the baseball more than the first baseman are the pitcher and the catcher. First base might be the position that requires the least defensive range in all of baseball but that does not mean it's an "easy fielding position" you can just dump on anyone. The reason a lot of big sluggers play first base is that it's a position that a heavier man can play and a lot of your big boppers are also big in other areas. But that doesn't mean that any hit-first spaz can play the position. Do you really want someone with Hanley's attention span problems anywhere near a position where they touch the ball that many times? It would be like putting Manny there. I think we've been spoiled by having some excellent defensive 1B in the last few years with Youk, then Adgon (who was always defensively excellent) then Napoli, that's three straight gold glovers I believe. Defense at first is tough to really appreciate until you start getting bad defense at first base. A good first baseman probably saves each of his other infielders half a dozen errors over the course of the season. A bad first baseman can make more other players on the diamond look bad than any other position but pitcher and catcher.

Don't see why that's particularly true of Papelbon. Lots of guys who are used to closing only want to close

Happy with the Rutledge acquisition, the more solid multi position infielders the better. This allows us to keep Holt somewhere permanently if we need to with Rutledge to take the bench position.

YMMV, but I actually think that the real problem is subtler than that. The positional defense as it stands right now is not very good. We try so hard on this team to get good hitters into every position that we sometimes forget that position players also need to play positions. The heart got cut out of this team when the catching went down, but we've got holes and learning players all over the diamond defensively. That's not going to help the pitching. Part of the solution is to improve the positional defense of the team. I have nothing against Bogaerts, but if I had the chance to move him to third and put a true top defender in short I'd do it right now. And I'd be looking to slot as many young players as I can into the positions they're projected to play the next time we're relevant. Oh and I'd look into playing Hanley at first base, which solves 2 different problems for the team almost immediately.

I don't honestly think the talent is there, at least not in a way that we can count on. We're too dependent on Buchholz, Pedroia and Ortiz right now and those people are in a position where you can count on exactly *none* of them for *anything* next year. I personally want all of them gone and if I had to pick one of the thre to keep my choice of a keeper is probably Ortiz.

Agreed. Just because he plays through injuries a lot doesn't mean he isn't getting injured, that kid has spent most of his career playing hurt and as he ages his ability to play through stuff is going to diminish and we'll start seeing more and more chinks in the armor.

You know what? Screw PR. Good PR is winning. Good PR is leveraging your assets to put your team in the best possible position to win. If you're not willing to do that just because of PR you have definitely put the cart before the horse and you have announced to the world that there are things more important than winning -- which ironically probably is also not good for PR, especially not in a town like this. Put a good team on the field and let the PR take care of itself. Everyone will know what it means when an over 30 veteran is moved along and a younger model played in the same position and this might come as something of a shock to you but as long as the young guy makes good, nobody will even mind. Everyone who's spent any time watching baseball knows about the life cycle and knows what a team needs to do when it's time to shake things up. And a shakeup is definitely called for in the Boston Red Sox. Heck if the team did trade Pedroia and replace him with Holt I would put money on the table that once that move was made, you, personally, Kimmi, would defend the move. Because trading an over 30 veteran and shaking up the leadership of the team are both logical moves for a team that's struggling to win games. Or to put it another way -- Nearly every team Dustin Pedroia has ever captained has lost more games than it's won. How much are we really going to miss his leadership?

I think the offense as constituted has a better chance to get worse than get better. We've got a lot of over-30 talent in our lineup, and our best offensive player is definitely on the back 9. We're tied into a couple bad contracts that the team nade to try to contend with this offense now and that has turned out to be another terrible idea. We would clearly be in a better position to do what we need to do now as a franchise without Panda and probably without Hanley too but that's water under the bridge. At the end of the day I don't see huge offensive upside here. I see the team able to manage an average offense, but an average offense that results in several defensive compromises won't help the pitching. Basically the lineup is in a holding pattern until and unless Bogaerts and Betts start to seriously break out. Once that happens the team can consider bringing in a free agent of some sort, preferably at first, and the offense will probably work out as top third in the league. But that depends on severa things going right for the team and I'm not sure I'm willing to outright predict any of them. This team needs a fundamental overhaul. It needs to get younger at most of its positions, and especially first, third, right and DH. Nothing's going to happen for this team in the next 2-3 years so it's time to ask some serious questions, especially about some people who we don't like to think about moving on from, especially the aging Ortiz and the increasingly fragile Pedroia. Guys we hate to lose who aren't likely to be effective the next time it matters. Thing is if we can't make some tough calls here it's going to push our next contending window out several more years. We need to bringn the players who WILL be effective in thoe positions the next time it matters and start getting them experience. That's the move right now and I can't possibly see the Red Sox FO actually going for any of this, which is one of the big reasons I don't see us contending in the near future.

I agree. I know he's a fighter and a gamer, but there's nothing to play for anymore. Besides, I'm still terrified of the long term ramifications of his body type, play style, and that contract and what the three combined can mean for us. Fully aware that this is not going to be the popular opinion by any means, if a team wanted Pedroia in trade I'd move him 15 times out of 10 right now. I don't see us as contenders in the immdediate future and we have a top of the line caliber replacement on staff right now (Brock Holt would be at least 24 teams' starting 2B right now) who's far more likely to be in his prime when the team makes it back to relevance, which I estimate to take about 2-3 years.

Oh god no, no no no no no no no no no. You absolutely do not EVER EVER EVER evaluate a pitcher based on his last appearance. No. No. The decision is about what he can do for you over the entire life of the contract, not what he just did. You start changing your price, or even your willingness to pull a trigger or not pull a trigger, based on the latest flashy outing, then you have just made the Eric Gagne trade, the Crawford signing, the Panda signing, and a whole horrible host of others. Look at the while pile of data or nothing at all I'm not really against bringing in Hamels except that I think the whole idea is [hilosophically flawed, based on a delusion that this team is going to be playoff-relevant anytime within the next 2-3 years. It is not. Pretending we need to make the kind of move to put a team over the top, when we're still sitting on the bottom, is a horrible use of resources. Realistically the recovery HAS to take more than 1 offseason. Because it took more than one offseason for the situation to get this bad in the first place. Acting now as if the World Series is just around the corner when we're umpteen games under .500 is the worst kind of pigheaded nonsense. By the time I see this team being ready to contend again, Cole Hamels will not be 32, he'll be between 35 and 37 with his best years very much behind him. This team is offensively and defensively flawed, pitching is nowhere near the only problem, if it was maybe I'd feel differently but right now we'd be devoting all of our resources to patching one of several holes in a ship that's already sinking. Basically I feel like if Hamels is your solution you're probably asking the wrong question. When you have to fundamentally overhaul both your offense and your defense as well as your pithing while maneuvering around several dead-weight contracts, that's not the time to bring in an ace in his 30's to put you over the top in the playoffs. That's the time to make fundamentally unpopular moves to strengthen the franchise in the long run and hope you have a good 3 year plan. Making big moves as if we were contenders would simply keep us here in the basement for longer and doing it over and over again is the literal definition of insanity.

all that means is that there's nothing physically wrong. It takes more than that for me to be convinced he's recovering in all aspects of his game, especially in a position like catcher where there's no substitude for reps. Especially since this kid's talent on the offensive side of the baseball was pretty mediocre to begin with. I'm honestly not sure what missing a year of at bats is going to mean for Vazquez' offensive development but I can't think it's good.If we want a great defender guy who can't hit we have Sandy Leon for that. Vazquez NEEDS to hit at least a little to be useful, if he can't do that he's a career backup catcher -- a very very good one, but still just a backup. And he's just lost one of his most formative developmental years to pick up his offensive game. Let's not forget that this was supposed to be the year Vazquez proved those like me who were 100% behind him, right that he was a starter in the first place. That remains unestablished. We cannot spare Swihart at the moment.

Until we know that Vazquez is back and healthy I want no part of trading Swihart.

My ideal deadline right now is one in which the team either does nothing, or sheds contracts. Adding contracts now is insane.

Pitching of what caliber? You mean the caliber of pitching where a replacement level player takes half his innings DRASTICALLY reducing his impact? I think you can find value worth the combination of 20 starts with Buchholz and 13 starts of a replacement level player for $13M, because that averages out to an average pitcher at best. And then there's the playoffs. In the playoffs Buchholz has made 5 starts and averages 5 and a sliver innings per starts with an ERA of 4.20. Again, I think you can replace that level of production for $13m

GOD no. DO NOT buy at the deadline, we're at the bottom of the division, and 6.5 games out. We. Are. Not. Contenders.

You know what? Can anyone think of a single moment when David Ortiz put his own personal comfort ahead of doing the right thing for the team? Even once? The only times I can think of that even come close to that are simply issues where the man is a full time DH and the problem was finding playing time for both him and our normal 1B in a National League park, and the issue was more about getting all the bats into the lineup in order to somehow get the best offense out of an 8 man lineup than anything about Papi's ego. Maybe there's something I missed, but if you bear in mind that Ortiz is a full time DH and that isn't going to change, not somehow because of Papi's ego but because that's the best way the team has found to use the talent that is David Ortiz, I can think of maybe 1 or 2 times, if that, in his dozen plus years with this baseball team, that he's even come close to putting his ego first and foremost. And those aren't even a pale shadow compared to the sheer number of times that man has put this team on his back and carried them bodily as close to the promised land as they were ever going to be, even disregarding the 3 times he actually got them all the way home. That, and David Ortiz gets a huge break from me on the very occasional times his pride may get the better of him, simply for keeping the industrial strength level of crazy that was Manny Ramirez on the straight and narrow for 4 years and 2 world championships before Manny finally shot his way out of town. David Ortiz an ego problem? If the big man is an ego problem on this team, then I'll take another just like him when he's gone. If that's what a me first player looks like I'll take 25, please and thank you.

Thank you kind sir. I take that kind of assessment as worth more coming from you knowing that you don't give it out lightly.