Dojji

I don't want to put a high level of pressure on a kid who's still learning how to get it done at the big league level. let JBJ ease in the same way we eased in a lot of guys before him. We don't need to throw players to the wolves in this town. I'm sure that's why Drew is even still on the radar despite the obvious presence of Bogaerts. That said, if JBJ proves with his play that he's good for more responsibility, by all means give it to him, same with Bogaerts and Middlebrooks and same with a lot of the other rookies we have worked and are working into the team. Start him off gently and let him play his way into any role he proves he can handle -- that's how it's done.

If Bogaerts does what I think he'll do next year we'll want him in the lower middle of the order.

Actually I'd say it's overDrew. Err I mean overdue.

Victorino's a little light in the OBP department for my taste. He did alright last year but his track record suggests a mild regression next year. It's a matter of difference in strategy I suppose, but job 1 in my mind for a leadoff hitter is to get his butt on base and Victorino's only OK at that. i could see him taking the leadoff against lefthanders though. Having Nava bat leadoff against righthanders for the .411 OBP v right, and Victorino hit leadoff against lefthanders where his OBP is actually very good (.386) allowing his speed to play in his favor makes some sense.

Not until JBJ proves he can hit big league pitching. Once he does that, if he starts looking like a real option, I expect to see a lot of him in the 1 hole. Until then, at least against righthanded pitching, your best leadoff option on the team is very probably Daniel Nava. Best of a number of bad options I should add, just to counter the obvious garbage from people who know who they are. It would be Pedroia but I want him hitting lower than that in the order since he has the right skillset to work the count and extend a rally if he's hitting with runners on base. Seems a shame to waste him in the 1 spot when other guys can get on base and are less useful with a man on.

I definitely want to see Vazquez before I see Lavarnway. Lavarnway was a negative on both sides of the plate in the chances he got in Boston last year. What we have here is an offense guy who didn't hit. I say give the chances we get to Vazquez first this year, let's get some real defense going behind the dish. We haven't really had great defense at the catching position since Tek got old. I suspect there will be playing time for all 3 of our Pawtucket catchers given the age of our starter and backup. Injuries are almost an inevitability.

On the subject of catchers, I'd be curious to see what Dan Butler can do if there's a reasonable time and place give him a chance.

Drew. The Yankees will put a black hole at SS if they really have to but they want a hitter really. objectively Ryan's a starting caliber SS based on defense alone as long as he's not giving you negative wins with the bat, but the Yankees are a media driven team, and they and their fans both love offense too much to be entirely happy with a defense-heavy roster. I think the only reason they don't want to go after Drew right now is because Jeter. it compromises his farewell tour to have another professional SS in the wings

I like that argument right up to the point where it becomes an excuse for failing to obtain proper depth.

Which might have informed gump's decision to stick with Pedro in 03. As long as it didn't work, everything can be criticized.

That's really really REALLY not how it went down. Schilling fully expected to pitch at some point in 2008 and spent the whole first half of the year rehabbing to try to get his problem-child shoulder into condition. His shoulder was just too far gone -- too many miles on it over a long career. by the time everyone realized it would take surgery to put him in a position to pitch again (which Schilling's doctors had been arguing since day 1 but the Red Sox hadn' wanted to hear it), it was too late to rehab from that surgery and get back to the team in 2008. the man did everything the team's monumentally incompetent medical team asked of him, even against the advice of some of the finest sports physicians outside the Red Sox organization, and when it backfired, fans want to blame Schilling? Please.

Both of other teams in the playoffs in the AL had a better pythag than either NYY or BOS. Both BOS and NYY overperformed their pythag by exactly 5 games. Subtracting another 50 runs or so over the course of the season, which is actually very generous, doesn't really change much. Either the Angels or the White Sox would still be objectively better teams, whether we happen to get a now-meaningless triangle shaped piece of textile or not.

I dunno guys, Pedro Martinez was never exactly all he was supposed to be in the playoffs. He had that one run in 99, but he just never seemed to me to be the best pitcher in the world when the lights got brighter in October. Career numbers 6-4 3.86. Not bad for an ordinary pitcher, but for FREAKING PEDRO????? How can a pitcher who can do the things Pedro Martinez could do in his prime look that mortal in the playoffs? And we are talking about the last truly effective year of his career, when he really hadn't come up all that big in either 03 or 04. and while you can write off 03 to an extent because he got Gumped, let's be blunt here -- Pedro Martinez was a huge part of the reason we came down to the brink in 04. His inability to carry us is a significant factor in why we were down 0-3 and why Curt Schilling had to do what he did to save us. And had a lot to do with why we even acquired Schilling TBPH. So no, I don't think Pedro ruling the playoffs in 05 is any kind of slam dunk. He certainly hadn't done it recently in his Red Sox career.

Pedro would have improved our biggest area of weakness. but that area was so weak that I still don't think it's realistic that we go all the way. I don't think people really internalize just how bad our 2005 rotation was. go look up the numbers sometime -- they were not pretty.

Not precisely an uncommon failing in lefthanded hitters For a shortstop, Stephen Drew is a power hitter. He's not Nomar, but he isn't Brendan Ryan or Nick Punto either. His power numbers last year were in range of where they were for his pre-injury career, especially if you ignore the career year in 08. Please check your facts. Before the ankle injury that messed him up a couple years ago he was about as prone to miss games as Dustin Pedroia. He missed a month with a concussion, which no one plays through anymore, and he still played about 125 games which tells me that once he got back from an injury no one plays through he was almost never out of the lineup again. and by the same token, dominant at home, where you play just as many games, and the whole package still averages out to an OPS not far south of .800 at a premium position, so if you want to make some kind of point here, I'd like to hear what it actually is. You concluded your tirade by begging the question, which is rather strange. Why should we hang the team off an unproven rookie when we can have both the rookie and a solid veteran? If you honestly think that 3 infielders, 2 of which bat left and 1 of which bats right, can't share time nicely on the left side of the diamond I don't know what to tell you, because that's just an odd argument. I would be delighted to have a player of that caliber as a sub. Absolutely delighted. And if those two players are ACTUALLY giving us run production, that won't happen. If they're giving us ups and downs and growing pains and a whole lot of frustration, which I firmly expect to happen, we'll be glad of a high caliber veteran to smooth over the rough spots. It would tell me more if we had any idea why the Mets passed on Drew -- by which I mean any at all. It would tell us even more if we knew for a fact that it WAS the Mets that passed on Drew, rather than the reverse

Actually he doesn't have a lot of question marks. he has a lot of pluses and minuses, I'd say there's a pretty big difference between the two. There really aren't a lot of SS who slug over .400 to make me think the market for him is that bad. There is something else going on. Something Drew himself is holding out for. If Drew was open to all takers, he'd have one by now.

Even if you're exactly right, teams that get to the playoffs on the basis of their bats, with adequate at best pitching, tend to be losing propositions in the playoffs. We've all seen it. you need those 2 top arms to be a serious world series chamion contender, and regardless of regular season performance, the Sox were just not in that kind of position. If Big Schill was able to magic himself back into top starting pitching shape at some time in the postseason maybe it's possible that that plus Pedro puts us over the top, but that's officially too many moving parts in this game of what-if. Pedro or no Pedro, we didn't have Schilling and we didn't have Lowe, and their replacements weren't up to what was asked them in the playoffs.

The Royals might be another surprise bidder if Drew expresses interest in second base. Normally they wouldn't be but they seem to be in one of those 2-3 year windows where their team might actually be good, which is a good time to hit the gas pedal, their big hope at 2B, Johnny Giavotella, flopped bigtime, and they dropped some payroll over the offseason by allowing Ervin Santana to move on. It's an interesting combination of circumstances that could make them a dark horse bidder. (for the record if there's any idea that Santana's price is coming down I'd take a look at that as an option. Santana probably isn't everything his 2013 campaign makes him out to be, but we do know that he's hella durable and has good command, and soaking up as many innings as he does has a value all its own)

WTF? seriously? the only reason to move on from Drew is because we have Bogaerts. Drew himself is a very acceptable shortstop -- like his brother he's not great at an one thing but he's pretty good at everything for his position and that rounds up to a solid player. Sure we don't need him per se but to deny that he'd find a way to make himself useful is a little silly. Personally I'm absolutely flabberghasted why a shortstop with that caliber of performance last year is having this much trouble finding a new home. I suspect that he's holding out for something specific, a particular team or situation he'd prefer, otherwise this makes no sense.

I don't. If we'd had Pedro, even if he'd pitched exactly as well as he did in the NL East (which I doubt) he'd have been the only pitcher in our rotation with an ERA south of 4. We had the bats to contend but we weren't even close to having the arms.

he was hurt in the ALDS too. In fact if I recall correctly the actual injury came in late August or early September -- too late to easily replace him in the rotation so he stayed out there and did his best.

Let's not forget that Beckett had a strained lat in the 2008 championship series. he was pitching through some pretty serious pain. He'd have other situations whre he simply donked out and did nothing useful, but 2008 in particular was not his fault.

2005 was Pedro's last good year, and to get him in 2005 we'd have had to pay him through the life of his Mets contract. And our rotation in 05 was outright bad, one Pedro more or less wasn't going to fix it or save us in the postseason. If the White Sox hadn't handed us our butts in the first round like they actually did, we still weren't getting anywhere with that rotation, even that rotation with Pedro instead of, say, Wade Miller. We knew we were giving up a couple final decent yeas from Pedro, but Theo was still right to move on. Even if it set us up for a couple rocky seasons as the rotation rebuilt it was still the right thing to do to set the team up going forward.

By all means, weasel out of the argument you started. Bye! I mean what, I'm supposed to care? You called me out dude, not the other way around.

Mike Lowell's run with Boston is what tips the scales for me. Beckett and Lowell combined for a huge impact in 07. Lowell was re-signed for too long but his significance to the team in 06 and 07 is not to be underestimated.