Dojji

Compare his production to other 1B in the league and I think the contract would be pretty reasonable at 3/45

Personally I think they'd be lucky to get him for 3/39. Even with the health issue mulliganed, some of the open questions that were there about Napoli's defense were answered, and answered very strongly in his favor. Furthermore his type of hitter by and large tends to age well. 3/45 or even 4/60 don't seem all that unreasonable when you combine his very satsifactory offense with one of the top UZR's at first base in the league and note that the hip issue was a red herring last year.

Not to mention Tom Brady's eternal shoulder injury.

I don't think Boston goes after Tanaka. Maybe we should if you were looking at iit with a structly clerical, administrative fashion, but if you think we should be the one who's rolling high to bring in Tanaka, riddle me this: Which one of Lester, Buchholz, Lackey, Peavy and Doubront isn't pitching if Tanaka is? That's a question with 5 bad answers. In a vacuum, without finance and opportunity costs in the picture, you might consider Doubront, but even Doubront isn't a bad bet to produce at an average or better rate next year, meaning anything you gain from Tanaka is gained over a stable of pitchers that's already pretty good -- not the best time to be sinking a lot of money into pitching. Especially when we already have to clear Dempster off the payroll this year. There's better ways to use the same money, such as a short term flier on Beltran to help ballast out our offensive outfield, or looking at options at third base, shortstop and catcher to shore up potential weaknesses there due to the inexperience of the players we're currently going into the season with at those positions. And there's every chance that a more conventional #6 is closer to a match for our needs, for example Chad Gaudin, who can probably be had far less expensively. I'm more interested in innings than ace-type performance, to be frank about it, and that's exactly what I'm less sure a Japanese import is going to be able to give us in year one as he adjusts to the different rotation model. We need 200 innings far more than we need a high ERA+ number, and we can get that for a fair bit less than we'd pay for Tanaka..

Why, no, no he hasn't. He's had a couple great seasons, and several OK to good seasons, one lost season, and one bad season in 2012 which was cut short by injury.

because everything he does poorly is what he'd need to do at 1B, and everything he does well is what moving to 1B renders irrelevant. We're talking about an athletic, toolsy, rangy 3B, who struggles with plate discipline and moving him to first base where his athletics and tools aren't that important, and his weaknesses are even more exposed by virtue of needing to hit at 1B moreso than 3B.

Workman lives up to his name. Excellent young pitcher I'm very happy we have, I'm sure he'll thrive in any role he's given.

Peavy's track record as a hoss is more than 5 years old. I'm not going to discout the possibility entirely, since John Lackey is right there as an example of a SP who can get their crap together after extended struggles. but I'm also sure as heck not going to count on Peavy to do it, just like we didn't count on Lackey to, and I don't think this franchise has made the mistake of counting on Buchholz.

I'm using the same prediction for Nava I did last year. 10-15 HR, .750-.780 OPS, heavy on the OBP, light on power for a corner OF.

No, Jung, no. that is not where it ends. That is never where it ends. Fundamental fiirst causes pervade every decision made in the chain after they get a ball rolling, and that decision by ownership is a fundamental first cause.

Peavy's total innings pitched by year for each of the last 4 years: 107 111 2/3 219 144 2/3 Looks to me like he's just about on the same plane as buchholz. Kudos for having one really durable year out of the last 4 though. If Lackey regresses at all, we start having to count very heavily on Peavy, buchholz and Doubront to improve on their recent performances.

We need to clear room for Varitek.

See, here's the thing, Jung, the answer to "what else they were going to do?" is easy: Continue to derp around making all the classic big market mistakes like they'd done the prior 2-3 years. You're talking about ownership here. Ownership isn't always accountable. The fact that Henry et al were able to realize they were the problem and make themselves accountable is the pebble that caused the landslide that is this World Series. It's a first cause of a lot of other things the franchise got right this year that they'd been getting wrong before. And that's why ownership really does set the culture of a franchise. Choosing to hold themselves accountable made everyone accountable, and that accomplished only good things all the way down the chain.

You don't think ownership has an impact? There's a huge and telling difference between organizations who know what they are trying to be and franchises that don't.

The rotation does have me nervous, I will say that. Lester aside, we don't exactly have multiple 200+ inning guys. And we're going to have a couple pretty fragile characters in our main 5 in Peavy and buchholz. We're going to need to make sure our pitching depth is up to scratch. Would not mind seeing the franchise puck up a dedicated go-to #6 type like Chad Gaudin to help shore things up. And if by some miracle a trade for a real horse of a #2 like James Shields becomes available, I'd expect to see Cherington move on it. Pushing Lackey down to #3 and counting on Peavy and Buchholz to dominate out of the bottom of the rotation would make me feel a lot more comfortable about the youth we'll have in the lineup if Drew and Ellsbury and Salty move on.

I think we can count on Cherington to find a home for Dempster. They're not kicking any of Lester, Lackey, Peavy Doubront, or Buchholz out of the rotation. They're not going to pay 7 figures for a reliever.

Eh, I stand by my statement. That Giants roster underperformend to a 2012-Sox-like degree, so pretending that their failure this year was because the band was kept together... I have to question that. Maybe to a degree it fed some complacency, but that's really the only argument to be made. They will have to shake things up at least a little this offseason, picking up a left fielder who was worth his salt would be a good start for them, but that core is strong enough that despite its uncharacteristic struggles this year I expect to see SF in the playoffs again in the VERY near future.

With two world series rings in 4 years? If you don't think the players on that roster can turn it around and win again next year, I respectfully disagree. They're not as bad as they looked this year, not by a lot. They're a left fielder, another SP, and a return to form for Lincecum and Cain, away from pushing 90 wins and making the playoffs again in the immediate future. Do NOT count the Giants out.

So who else voted for everything? if I had to pick one, it would be "other." The main reason we won is that ownership got us back to what wins, and we got lucky that everything clicked back together quickly. Ownership spent a couple years forgetting what got them where they are making the big market mistakes of trying to force the team to win, I ranted on this subject repeatedly at the time it was happening. To their credit and to my delight the ownership itself took stock and applied a humility you never see in billionaires. It takes some real character to take honest stock of the situation and blame the guy in the mirror. It took only one year of humiliation for them to figure out what the problem was and fix the problem at its actual root -- themselves. Fortunately for us, the character we see in the players springs from the ownership and flows downhill from there, which is the best possible way to lead any group of people, be it a ballteam or anything else. One major shakeup later, they fixed what was broken, and here we are, and I couldn't be happier.

Don't see why not. It's not like they're not well ballasted by veterans like Pedroia, victorino, papi, Gomes, Lester, Lackey, etc. It's not that I don't understand your concern, more that this was clearly part of the plan all along anyway, so as much as I might have trepidation about some of these young players, might as well go in for a pound as in for a penny. if we really need that veteran presence behind the plate, Ross will be available to go back there for key games like he did in the World Series. This team loves its crusty old veteran backups, and I don't see that changing. Besides, with the level of defense he's shown this year "backup" might not be an accurate way to describe Ross's role. I'd expect him to start at least 30% of the games next year whether or not we keep Salty.

When I wanted Swisher, I was looking for a guy who could play at first base and move to the outfield adequately when we played in the NL. Sort of the way Cleveland used him. For that kind of role a guy like Swisher would still be very useful to us. Do not regret Napoli coming here over Swisher, I want to make that clear. I have lusted after Napoli since 2006. Ectstatic to get the year out of him we did and I hope we keep him.

That's telling. Pretty much means Salty's gone. With Lavs and Vazquez, AND Butler AND Swihart, hard not to see why. We're overloaded with young catchers who deserve a shot sometime in the next 24 months.

I'd go 3/45 for Napoli. It's not like the Drew or Ellsbury situation where we can argue about the quality of the replacement, but everyone knows who the replacement is. We lose Drew, Bogaerts is our shortstop. We lose Ellsbury, the answer is one of Victorino or Bradley, depending on who looks good at any given time. Those positions are not going to be gaping holes unless 2-3 guys all break down at once. First base is much more exposed. We really don't have that guy right now who can come in and replace at a high level. The closest thing we have to an heir if we fail to retain Napoli, is Carp, and I like Carp off the bench a lot better than I like him starting.

Crap. He'd have been good for us