Dojji

yes You are going to have to trust one of those young catchers eventually. Varitek was a rookie once. We've just won a freaking World Series, that's as good a time as any to let the youth play out a bit before overreacting to an experience deficit.

I just don't see the need to saddle ourselves with Hanigan. We already have Ross to provide what Hanigan provides. We need to run with a rookie alongside Ross in order to develop that rookie while employing a proper safety net. To do otherwise is to focus too much on the immediate best interest at the expense of long term priorities. As for our youth up the middle, I propose bringing in a soild veteran backup infielder to alleviate the problem -- which problem isn't nearly as drastic as people are letting on.

If we're going to the Royals for an outfielder, I want Jarrod Dyson, not Lorenzo Cain. Especially if we're losing Ellsbury. Dyson has the kind of big league speed and defense that makes a good righthanded partner in CF with JBJ and he can do a ton of damage off the bench with his legs. Not much stick, but enough for a bench role with his speed, and his numbers against LHP (.274/.339/.402) are not bad at all for a fast guy. Not that I don't understand the attraction of Cain, he's better balanced because he has more power, but I think Dyson's a better bet to return more value in a platoon/specialist role. If there was a way to also secure Billy Butler, let him sweat out a couple years at first base and slide into the DH hole when Papi retired, I'd be 100% all for that. the down year just drives down the price, it won't repeat if he comes here. Billy Butler was made for Fenway.

For SFF, everything translates to going after Stanton, thus the joke.

There's what you'll tell the press, there's what you'll tell your boss, and then there's what you'll tell to the guy doing you a favor.

I honestly doubt it. Cecchini is fir quality players in their prime without bloated contracts. Kemp fails 2 of those standards.

Since at least 3/5 of the league bat righthanded, that's probably workable as long as we're not asking him to pitch setup innings.

Or possibly insurance for Gomes, or a platoon partner for Carp, or both. There's a lot of good reasons to try a RHH that can hit a little at first base right now.

Right, but when you use Puig or Trout as your example for why you want to throw JBJ into the fire this year -- especially when it didn't exactly work out for him last year -- you lay yourselves open for that kind of response.

They were, but he only got in a handful of games. I don't know whether that means anything, and if so, what it might mean.

I'd hate this argument a lot less if people stopped using analogies to players like Puig and Trout that have nothing to do with an honest evaluation of Bradley's skill and talent. JBJ is not Puig. He is not Trout. Those two players can live on talent because their talent is at a level you see a few times in a generation. If JBJ had a sniff of Puig's talent that might be the way to go, but he's not nearly that good. Whatever he does is going to using intelligence and plate approach to make his mark offensively, the raw talent is roughly at the David Dejesus level -- not bad surely, but he's not going to skate by in the big leagues on pure talent while he learns to actually play the game. That being the case, letting him gain experience and develop his approach a little more would be no sin.

farther than their brutally devastated rotation should have allowed? Anyone who was paying attention in 2006 knew what the problem was. Anyone looking back at the stats at baseball reference for the 2006 Sox knows what the problem was. With the bloody murder of injuries, underperformance, and Jon Lester's lymphoma, it's a miracle that roster won 85 games even with Ortiz doing his thing all year. There's a reason we took a chance on Matsuzaka the following offseason. Heck that was the year that made moving Julian Tavarez to the Rotation look like a good idea. (in fairness, the move wasn't a complete disaster, Tavarez did a half decent job of eating innings until the workload he wasn't conditioned for caught up with him, and by then Lester was back) I look back on that year and can't help but think how far we've come.

While true Benoit is quite an RP in his own right. Ortiz just beat him. That's going to happen with the best relievers. It's hard to judge sometimes, the ones that would get away from the best, and the ones you let get away because you couldn't assemble a proper bullpen, there's no real cut and dried rubric.

And their lack of offense speaks to the same problem -- going cheap in depth and putting questionable players in key positions because they're cheaper to pay to play there.

True, but overall in the playoffs he still put up a 2.15 ERA.

Lack of a reliable closer is only a symptom of the real issue I'm calling to with either of those teams, which is about a refusal to stockpile real depth in bench and bullpen roles. Makeshift closers tend to be at the end of makeshift bullpens, and a makeshift bullpen won't hold in the playoffs. Similarly, platoon roleplayers can have great years over a regular season when their slumps and hot streams average out, but when the level of competition goes up in the playoffs I wouldn't expect them to sustain their surges very long if left exposed in starting roles. Heck, look what happened to Nava this year. Fortunately, we had stockpiled enough depth and were sufficiently nonstupid that we didn't put the entire postseason on Koji's arm. Which of 3-4 talented arms to use in which role, is the same discussion it would be if we were debating which of 3-4 utterly talentless arms to use in the same role. It's the talent that matters, which reliever used where is mostly a question of rearranging furniture, and any possible gains are minor enough to make the whole argument little more than noise to me. I'm not a slave to the closer mentality. Most good relievers can probably close at a decent level, but when you have a guy who's getting it done at a level well above decent, that's a good time to leave well enough alone. I just feel that it's misguided to make the issue about the closer when it's really about picking up quality arms and building the bullpen as a whole, top to bottom, to save leads.

The closer v relief ace argument is an utter red herring. It's an argument about how to make a bad bullpen do the least damage to your team's chances to win, when the solution is to get a good bullpen. If you don't have enough talented bullpen arms to both close out the 9th, and cover the preceding innings sufficiently to consistently to hold leads, it literally does not matter which of those two bullpen imperatives you short change. Either one is going to bite you in the tail 5-10 times a year which is going to make the difference between playoffs or not, and each one is going to be a good bet to cost you bigtime in the playoffs at least once as well unless you have talented go-to people to handle every situation.

Tigers, probably. Anyone who wants to think that the closer's role isn't highly significant must be selectively blocking all memories of Calvin Schiraldi. Having your late inning guys go unstrung on you is a luxury a team can't afford once the playoffs are underway. And it's hardly just the closer. you need multiple guys you can go to in late innings. Uehara wouldn't have meant much if we hadn't had Tazawa, Breslow and Workman to help get the game to him. If Uehara had been injured, say, then Tazawa is probably your closer and he would probably have been sufficient. And if Uehara is injured or not his old self next year, that's probably exactly what happens. This much I'll give to the closer skeptics: If paying a big salary for your closer precludes bringing in multiple solid setup options, then it's the wrong thing to do. you need to stack depth in the bullpen just like anywhere else.

While true, when was the last time either Tampa or Oakland won the World Series? They're great at doing the regular season on the cheap, but when the chips are down, their cheapout tactics don't leave them the depth or internal fortitude to weather problems.

One does not get to be President of the United States by riding on daddy's coattails. It's too impressive a task in its own right for me to think that the daddy issue is not overblown. Now what he did have that gave him a leg up politically, was the remnants of his father's political machine that he'd built up over the years. That gave W a rolodex full of names to call on for support that he might otherwise have come up with on his own. but any Governor or senator would have built up such a rolodex by the time W made the run for the nation's top office. And the name recognition also serves to make HW a factor in W's rise to power but that only takes you so far. He had to get the rest of the way himself. Besides, let's face it, George W. Bush was more successful as a President by any reasonable standard than his father was. He was reelected for one thing. He managed the aftermath of 9/11 (well, IMHO) for another. HW is going to be remembered more as reagan's Veep than for anything he did while in office. Love him or hate him, W's presidency was far, FAR more notable.

Our accents seep into the way we type via the way we think in words too. It's just interesting to see it from a similar but distinct culture.

Interesting choice. I'd actually be interested in kawasaki. I'd assumed that with only 1-2 years MLb experience he wasn't on the market but it turns out he apparently is.

He was. Prior to this year of course, he had a well established track record as a roughly average starter with a very high level of durability. Those guys are more valuable than their ERA+ lets on.

He got less money per year for Jackson than Dempster got. he got more years, true, but they're the age 29-32 years, the ones that are usually worth paying for. if you assume that you have to evaluate free agents strictly based on what similar free agents get paid, Jackson really wasn't overpaid. Now he did underperform for what he was paid to be but that's an entirely different question IMHO.

Don't see why not, he's trying to convince us his durability problem is a thing of the past. Why not ask him to share the risk? Just a thought to throw out there. A lower AAV with incentives for games played (which we know is legal under the CBA) might be a way to get a deal done that satisfies both sides.