Dojji

Quality of competition at the big league level is at its weakest in April, when teams are still shaking down and finding out what's not working, and in September, when the rosters expand.

Not that there's anything wrong with Brendan Ryan. but I agree with jacko. Marrero has the ceiling of a really solid utility guy.

Panda for me. He's not much in the field, but he's got the stick to make up for it, and one hopes that he could settle in as the DH once Ortiz is done rather than the team making him tear himself apart in the field as he rounds 30 and starts declining. Moving to first or DH are both options within the next few years for things we can do with Sandoval after he gets too slow to play third. I hope the team is aggressive with those options rather than keeping him at third base for pride's sake.

I like napoli a lot. He's a good player and I'm pleased that he turned out more or less the way I hoped he would for us -- and that it helped us win a ring -- but that doesn't change what the challenges and opportunities for the Boston Red Sox look like right now. Trading him may be the right move.

What we have is a guy who's going to be 34 next year, still a good player, actually better first baseman than when he came here, and has the stick to make it work at his position, but he's signed to only 1 more year and there's a distinct chance that the Red Sox franchise is kidding itself about its chances in 2015. Now might be a good time to sell high to a team that needs a good two way first baseman or DH. I might feel differently if I thought the team had any intention of re-signing Napoli after this year, but I suspect that's not in the cards anyway and trade options should be explored. One trade I'm curious about is if we could trade Napoli to the Royals, who just declined their option on Billy Butler and so have an opening at DH, are in the playoff hunt next year, and have a reason to place a premium on guys signed for short years, and pick up some things that would help us on the pitching end -- say a lefty MR like Tim Collins or a durable middle of the road SP like Jeremy Guthrie or Jason Vargas. I see a possible match there. There are probably others. Thoughts?

K-Rod is a ghost of his former self. Miller is a power lefty reliever and those are always capable of contributing something.

I'm nervous about the prospect of putting two low range players on the left side. X isn't the rangiest shortstop and that range will go down a bit as he fills out. Sandoval is a good player, but a definite slug. I can see a lot of baseballs getting through the infield over there. Given the choice I'd much prefer Hanley. he isn't crazy athletic anymore from what I've heard, but he's more athletic than Panda, and we can't cover for our 3B because we're also trying to work in an offensive player at short.

I feel about the same. I think we make the playoffs in 2011 if we don't do the Adgon trade, and being able to simply slot Rizzo in when Youk started to break down was a smarter and a simpler play (both good things). Rizzo would have been good enough to give us the same chance to win Napoli does, although there's nothing wrong with Napoli as a big league 1Bman, it's just that Rizzo is still 25yo and Napoli is... well... not. Sometimes the smartest, gutsiest play is to resist the temptation to overreact. They missed the boat on the initial Adgon trade and Crawford signing. Kudos to them for fixing their own mess, but that doesn't take away from the fact that they made the mess in the first place, and going back to the originaltopic, it doesn't mean they shouldn't think twice when a chance to make the same mistake of overpaying for someone else's breakout talent comes their way.

He's Jackie Bradley Jr because his father is names Jackie Bradley. Why is this a problem?

I would like to get my hands on a couple good hitters, but we don't need to bust the bank for the best players in the league to accomplish that. For that matter, we could probably appreciate having Anthony Rizzo on the team, the man seems to have come into his own this year and actually outperformed the guy he was traded for -- and of course, now we have neither of them.

Hard for me to credit that for a kid who's still younger than Nomar Garciaparra when he debuted.

Since I don't think the Red Sox can pragmatically rebuild their rotation in free agency with multiple other teams also competing for the best talent, I feel that's all the more reason to look for a good home for Uehara in trade. My personal opinion is that I would like to see Junichi Tazawa groomed for the closer's role and given the experience he needs to be in place and effective when the youth movement begins to come into its own. Look to supplement the bullpen depth from free agency and prospect promotion, we have plenty of interesting options, and it can be a way to give someone you ultimately consider a starter, like Henry Owens, some early looks a batters, the same way Curt Schilling got his start.

Good, because that isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying they haven't done it YET, and the team needs to worry more about developing them than about trying to maintain some vague sense of being a contender.

Which Manny do you think? Bogaerts' upside is comparable to Nomar Gacriaparra's. He is not Nomar, but the upside is Nomaresque. It's worth being patient with Xander. Unfortunately, one of the reasons we're so bad at developing players, is because Henry is anxious to appeal to the kind of player who doesn't want to watch young players struggle to learn the game, so we don't always stick with them as long as we should.

There is always going to be at least one young impact player that qualifies as the green grass on the other side of the fence.

Kinda hoping Rubby starts to come into his own. He's shown flashes.

I'm not closed to the possibility of pleasant surprises. Pleasant surprises are always nice. Nava was a great example in 2013. But you can't fill the middle of your lineup and the top 2 spots in your rotation with the opportunity to be pleasantly surprised and expect to contend consistently. And the team needs to be doing a bit more to help ensure that the surprises we encounter in player development are pleasant

And of those players, only Pedroia is an established star per my specification in that post, and let's be honest, his star is showing every sign of fading, like a lot of little ballplayers do as the style of play they have to maintain to stay in the league starts to catch up with their bodies

No, they have cheap young depth. Most of that talent is either depth level, or depth level so far. Buchholz me no Buchholzes. All of those guys are either too inconsistent to count on year in year out, or haven't really shown us what they can do yet. Either way, contending with a core built around those guys is going to take us a few years which is NOT the right time to be buyers, no matter how desperate Mr. Henry is to try to keep the sellout streak alive..

How many years have we seen that great farm system net us zero established star level ballplayers, especially in the rotation? It's like being rich because someone owes you a billion dollars. It doesn't mean jack until they start paying out.

Think of it like nutrition. FA's are your treat foods -- some nutritional value, but a lot of delicious carbs and fats and sodium and cholesterol. Life is a boring place without them, and in moderation they're very beneficial, but the more they dominate your diet, your health suffers accordingly. Player development, is "proper" nutrition. Vitamins, protein, nutrients. What the body needs. Yeah you can get a little of that sometimes in junkfood, and healthy food is always harder to process and takes more work to prepare. It's always easier to make a supper out of a bag of chips, but if you're doing that 6 days a week you're not doing yourself any favors. This team needs to take it on the chin, deal with some bad seasons, and do what it takes to get its house in order and reestablish its talent pipeline. If they don't, a whole lot of us are going to have problems with heart disease. Sorry, I'm tired and exhausted and I'm sure that sounds a little strange but I don't care. Clicking post now

Good. Now trade him, beceause this team isn't contending for crap in the next 3 years. If they have the cojones to take it on the chin like they need to over that time and focus on getting their farm right then we can talk about contending by 2017. Since I know they don't, we'll see what happens.

If you can't get top homegrown players, then you're stuck with high risk gambles in FA, and it's hard to stockpile enough depth to go on a playoff run that way. In that environment going after them for bad FA signings is like treating flu victims by giving them a mask. FA need to be a supplement to a strong farm system. It CANNOT be a primary source of talent, if FA is your primary talent source you have bigger problems than whether the FA themselves are good or bad deals. Besides, the more you homegrow your talent the more you can devote massive resources to key positions and points of need. If you have FA at every position, affording that one more guy to put you over the top is far harder. you can't build a whole team that way, too much has to go right for that to be a reasonable possibility, even for a huge market team.

Frankly it doesn't matter. This team isn't going to go anywhere until it can internally develop a starting pitcher. It is 8 years later and Jon Lester is STILL the last starting pitching prospect Boston successfully developed into a consistent top pitcher. It doesn't matter what you do in free agency if ALL of your young starting prospects for the last 8 years bomb out, turn into nothing, get hurt, go to the bullpen or are simply too undependable to count on. You just don't get enough opportunities to get a fair deal in FA to turn something like that around without at least a bit of internal organic growth, and we've had none for nearly a whole decade. For that matter, who was the last one before Lester? I don't even freaking know. D: Who were the two best performers for each team in the World Series. Madison Bumgarner and Yordano Ventura respectively, easily. Home grown ace types. you can't buy that level of talent in free agency once much less twice, if you can't homegrow it you're at a major disadvantage. Until this team figures out what it's been doing wrong with developing its starting pitching (have you noticed that even the guys we trade away aren't getting it done? I'm sure other teams have) this team will not see the playoffs again no matter how much it spends.

Yeah, that's one of the lessons this season should have taught us -- a durable rotation is more important than a top quality rotation.