Dojji

This rotation is a success if it eats lots of innings and "keeps the team in the game," keeping the overwhelming majority of games within reach of the offense. Top quality is not in the cards, durable innings will be the key factor to whether this rotation will succeed or fail. If they can get into the 7th giving up only 3 or 4 runs most of the time that's probably the best we can expect. The issue is that if we do make the playoffs, we have no one in our rotation that's the guy who will carry us all the way. No team in that situation has won it all in a long time. I honestly don't see even a guy who's going to be that dark horse the way Yordano Ventura was for KC in their only-just-barely-failed championship bid. That's not a death knell, since there's time, and our prospects have some talent, and who knows, but it makes it hard to get particularly excited from here.

That's an illusion to begin with. Some of those guys are going to be signed in their walk years, or traded to a new team with an extension worked into the trade. Others will, unfortunately, fall apart or get hurt or otherwise have their stock drop. The free agent market always looks spectacular 2 years out, right up to the very point when it suddenly doesn't anymore.

Ryan Hanigan? Former Tampa Bay Ray? Bats right throws right? That Ryan Hanigan?

Not convinced that this counts as "cheap." Probably is (slightly) better than Ross though, but we're talking about a catcher who has a combined OPS over the last 2 years of .605. Being not an offense guy is one thing, being a black hole is quite another

One thing I note about these new acquisitions is that they're all durable starters that make their scheduled starts and generally can go deep into games. If your offense is good that CAN be enough. In fact one could argue that the rotation in 03 was built around the same attributes, and that was a deep playoff run for us even if it didn't end all that well. Oh and yes I want Shields. You're talking about a guy who has never missed a scheduled start in his entire 10 year career. That's unfathomable.

Probably the ur-example of why you absolutely use pitch counts is what happened to Gil Meche. Pitching brilliantly for the Royals for a couple seasons, but the manager at the time has a penchant for leaving a guy with arm troubles out there for 120+ pitches on a relatively regular basis -- twice in the same month in 2009, which would up being the year his arm gave way for good. The end result is that by year 3 of his 4 year contract Meche is out of the league.

... And over less than half a season. 108 innings of 1.74 ERA would be great out of the bullpen, but for a starter, that's a lot of starts picked up by lesser arms because the dude makes you choose between "healthy" and "effective." Count on nothing from Buchholz. Nothing.

None of the guys you could bring in cheap are any better than Ross.

Well what's your alternative a700? Go with a two rookie catching tandem of Vazquez-Butler until Swihart is ready? The org has already demonstrated several times in the past it is quite uncomfortable running two inexperienced catchers out there. And if we're going to bring in "a veteran catcher" (read: a guy who can't hit, has slowed down in the field, and is just there to mentor the young starter) it might as well be Ross as anyone.

you mean with Miley, Masterson, Porcello and Kelly, will there be room for Buchholz. Because I can't honestly tell you what Clay has done in the last few years that proves he deserves a guaranteed rotation spot. He's either lights out for half a season or less and then literally gone, or utterly ineffective over a full season, and neither are good things. This doofus is on the Rich Harden trail, and will be out of the league within the next 3-4 years at this rate. If Kelly can be any steadier than that (which would *not* be hard) I'd rather give him a rotation spot over Buchholz even if Buchholz still has higher potential. The best thing for all concerned would be assigning Buchholz to the pen and seeing if that helps him remain on the 25 man roster for a full entire season while simultaneously putting up productive numbers for a full season. He doesn't have the capability to do both at once as a member of the rotation, he's made that clear with his pattern of results over the last 5-6 years.

Looks like they knew they couldn't get top quality so they went for durability? Well it worked for the Royals last year.

Name of the site is TalkSox. Not TalkRedSox. Just something to think about.

you can't pass *everything* people. Sooner or later your perfect-world grasp of what values should needs to bend to reality and you need to take SOMETHING you CAN get.

Well they'd both be in the lineup regardless, so I don't see that mattering much.

If you move Swihart, then you're rolling the dice on Vazquez, but Vazquez is a very very good defensive catcher, and would be quite a sufficient starter over the next few years, so he's potentially expendable. I do like having him around as insurance but if you need a big upgrade on the rotation, it's one of the less risky prospect trades.

OK Freddy boy, it's intervention time. It's time to end the personal pity party. You're starting to drag the whole forum down with your bitter rehashing of the same 5 or 6 arguments, and I say that knowing that I don't even really disagree with any of those opinions, but the sheer self-entrenched bitterness is starting to get contagious, and it needs to stop. I've offered you a wager in the starting 9 thread. Look at it, and tell me which of the options you prefer. I'd be down with the "do nothing but SBF agrees to chill out a bit" option personally but let me know what you think.

If I have the choice of playing Panda or Longoria at third, that's no choice. Panda's a half decent 3B, but Longoria is a two time Gold Glover.

At this point, Fred, I think it's time to put your money where your mouth is. You've had a lot to say about the state of this team, let's see how well you mean it. If the Sox make it thorugh the ALDS in 2015, you change your name, or have it changed for you, to "Negative Nelly" with an appropriate avatar selected by your choice of either myself, Youk of the Nation, or UserName? You in? Or perhaps you'd maybe rather chill and let the offseason play out with a bit less melodrama?

Pablo is a good handsy 3B but his range is nothing to shout about. Couple that with a shortstop who is also bad at range (along with everything else) and I don't hold out a lot of hope for our defense if a righthanded hitter hits one on the ground.

It's going to be made even better with an outright bad left side D, with an OK but immobile 3B and an outright horrible defensive shortstop. Righthanded hitters are going to find a lot of chinks and holes to work with.

Tell you what, the guy on that roster that I want right now is not Longoria, although he's good. It's Ben Zobrist. He's exactly the sort of person you have as many of as possible. I mean how do you even define this guy positionally? I suppose technically he needs to be thought of as a second baseman but Zobrist has played every position but pitch and catch and combines that with switch hitting at a consistently acceptable level and even throws in above average speed. Whatever you need done on the field, Ben Zobrist is pretty good at it. He's the ultimate jack of all trades and one of the most underrated players in the big leagues right now.

We could really use to get a bit more lefthanded somehow. Wow. if you recall that Victorino gave up batting from the left side in 13, right now our only LHH off the bench of any quality is Daniel Nava and we only have two lefties in the lineup, Papi and Panda. If I knew who to go for I'd be all for finding a way to get a good LHH 1B to replace Napoli. Don't suppose there's any chance the Reds have fallen out of love with Joey Votto and his huge contract now that he's gotten a bit older and they're no longer contenders? Maybe the Royals might want to sell high on Alex Gordon? I dunno, I have no idea. Just throwing out possibilities here. As it is right now we could really use a great development year from Cecchini, he's the only LHH I see coming for awhile, and we just overloaded his position.

Well let's be clear about one thing SBF. Bogaerts' performance in 2014 wasn't really that bad. He needs to bring his average up about 30 points next year. He does that and every other number he put up is acceptable. If the numbers I'm seeing are correct, then the one thing the kid really needs to learn how to do is bat with 2 men out -- figure out how the dynamics of an at bat change when you're the last out of the inning and protect the plate better. With 2 men out last year regardless of other situation concerns (in other words whether there was or was not ROB or RISP) Bogaerts had a very dismal .236 ON BASE PERCENTAGE. The kid does not know how to extend the inning when a pitcher's going after him. Frankly it's a sign IMHO that the kid's a decent hitting talent but is getting overmatched in key situations when the pitcher's fighting for his life. He was brought up quite green and young, that's probably about what you should expect. In other situations he was far more effective. With the bases clean he had a .750 OPS and .350 OBP. Perhaps the best way to keep him going is actually moving him up in the order where, statistically, he'll be in more situations with the bases clear and he has a chance to be a bit more comfortable.. One thing is clear, batting him in the middle of the order is a mistake, probably a big part of the reason why the team invested in 2 more hitters to bat around Big Papi so there wouldn't be a need to use Bogaerts there instead. Hopefully he figures it out in the long run anyhow. If not 12 HR's still isn't bad from a shortstop regardless of the slash stats and situational issues. It's a lot better than many teams get out of their shortstop. My real issue with Bogaerts is this: Come on, stop kidding around, that is NOT a shortstop. Kid has very, very mediocre range at short, he's worse than Jeter defensively, and that's saying a lot. And this is when he is a spry 21 year old that has yet to fill out and slow down. You're going to tell me that this kid's future is as a 6? Pull the other one, it's got bells on it. I know the ship sailed a decade ago but I'd really really rather play Pedey at short over 162 than Bogaerts Oh, and good job signing not one but two people to play the only position Bogaerts could naturally move to WHEN you decide to give up on this experiment and go get a defensive guy. I'm not nearly convinced that transferring from the good version of Stephen Drew we got in 13 (at least defensively), to this pylon, has nothing to do with the downturn of several of our pitchers. If you're going to run Bogaerts out as the every day duty starter, do yourselves a favor and get a guy who can play high level LIDR at short. Brock Holt is not that guy. Maybe Marrero? Either way we NEED a high level bench glove and high range at second and third if we're going to carry this guy, and right now we only have one of the three.

So when does Reddick get traded?

I agree. Worst case scenario maybe he can learn to hit enough to be solid off the bench. I see a potential situation devloping with Pedroia's career that could sidetrack the outfield plans we have right now which involve Mookie Betts heavily. What I'm afraid of is that while he probably still has several good years as a decently productive regular with a great glove, Pedey's days as an elite player are behind him, and that has implications when a player who has the potential to produce the way Mookie potentially could, could play the same position. It's uncomfortable, but a time may come up in the future when we need both Castillo and JBJ to shore up our outfield depth as Betts is needed at his original position. Besides, Vic's on his last year IIRC, and he was not effective last year, not sure what we can count on him for. Point being, JBJ occupies a spot on the depth chart that it's important to have a warm body in, if we didn't have him we'd need to sign an MLFA of about the same quality, so I can't see a trade.