Dojji

But by the same token, one defense-first player at a key position like shortstop means more to run prevention than one hitter at the 9 spot in a lineup means to run scoring. I'd say that cancels out. Besides, this is silly because Iglesias is hitting.

I'm just enjoying the ride.

Curt Schilling, Adam Wainwright, Nolan Ryan, and the list goes on.

And when you strip away all the clarification that comes afterwards and impose your own interpretation of the thesis, that, my friend, is cherry-picking.

Sure, if you want to cherry-pick SFF's post and ignore all the several different ways in which he made his actual point abundantly clear.

I honestly think you're overrating Brentz then. He has power, but he's a bona fide hacker, I doubt he's much more than a platoon bat at the big leagues.

That's not what I said. It's not that he could adjust to AA. It's that he CRUSHED AA at age 20. You really think that doesn't mean anything at the big league level? Because the Red Sox have demonstrated for about 7 years now that they disagree with you.

It may be different, but my version reflects this franchise's attitude about AA and AAA as repeatedly demonstrated between 2008 and this season. Once you're established in AA the team believes you're in range for a proper callup. That's why Jackie Bradley broke camp with the team as a result of a hot Spring (which everyone knew really didn't mean very much). This team acts like AAA is the big league reserve squad and AA is the last level where you have to prove yourself. I'm convinced Bogaerts satisfied the team's need to understand that he can handle a callup when he cleared AA. Calling him up wouldn't just be to call him up -- not even as much as, say, Bradley was to start the year.

Bud Norris is an interesting name. I'm not in love with him and I wouldn't put Cecchini on the line for him, much less Bogaerts, of course. But his name is worth keeping in mind. I disagree that Iglesias carries the requisite value. I feel a deal for Norris will be built around prospects that other teams have a better read on, and the rest of the league is waiting patiently for Iglesias to fall back to earth. Would hardly be the first time I was wrong however. As much as I've pimped that big Shields concept I'm honestly not sure we're going to be in the market for a SP at all. I see upgrades to the rotation being beneficial but not a desperate need, and that's not a great time to overpay unless what you're overpaying for puts you over the top for mulriple seasons.

I wouldn't say untouchable, no. What I would say though is that with both of our corner infield positions in play over the next multiple seasons it would take a nice deal for me to want to move a promising corner IF right now. I wouldn't trade Cecchini before I traded Bogaerts, but honestly, it's a close thing.

Well I can confirm that Ellsbury debuted in June 30th, stayed up for about a week, and then was called up on August 17 and stuck for good. What I can't confirm because I can't find AAA game logs was how long he spent in AAA before the first promotion. He was promoted early on, but had late April, May and most of June in AAA before the callup. That's about 2 months, so probably stands outside the criteria I set. Lowrie and Masterson still apply.

Lowrie in particular was promoted and debuted briefly at third base to cover for an injury to Lowell, and "demoted" to AAA after. Masterson similar when he started a game against the Angels, but I can't remember who gave way for him. Both took place in 08. Gut says it was probably one of the early efforts to cover Schilling's spot while we still hoped he could get his shoulder into playing condition. In both cases these players have AAA numbers for those years, but they happened after the big league debut. Ellsbury barely had any experience before his first callup on 07 as well if I recall correctly but I'm less sure of this one.

With Workman that makes some sense, since I doubt he breaks into our rotation. Kinda surprising about Ranaudo though.

No to Drake Britton. He's completely underwhelmed me throughout his minor league run. Nothing about him wows me, so he's probably going to have to earn promotion the hard way. We're far enough down on our LHRP depth chart that going after Britton just to have another lefty is probably not the smartest way to handle things. Fully agree on de la Rosa. The only reason not to call him up at some point is if you want to make sure he gets his innings preparatory to being stretched out to start next year. I wouldn't mind seeing what Brandon Workman could do out of the pen. He's been a little more consistent all the way along and I like the scouting reports about his stuff in terms of bullpen work. Apparently he has a really solid fastball-cutter combination. Soxprospects had him pegged as an RP in the majors -- but then they did the same for Justin Masterson and he's leading the league in CG's right now. Still, if relief help is what we need, Workman's old enough and far enough down on the prospect depth chart that a callup to the bullpen wouldn't hurt anything if the team thinks the kid can do the job.

I don't think anyone can be that guy for very long. Every time a team thinks they've found that vaunted reliable high leverage 2 inning reliever, he's not the same the next year. There's a reason that usage patterns look like they do these days, and contrary to popular dogma among internet baseball nerds, it's not all because major league managers are miserable hidebound uncreative doodyheads.

"Bogey" proved he could probably handle big league pitching when he took AA by storm, Under the team's pattern, he's a candidate for callup at any time, whether or not he was performing at AAA. Several times in the last handful of years they've called up a guy who was not producing in AAA or even hadn't played in AAA at all before they debuted in the bigs. Jed Lowrie, Justin Masterson, and Jacoby Ellsbury all approximately fit that profile. If they have a need, and they don't like their AAA depth options, the team is fine with calling up a high end prospect either fresh from AA or newly arrived in AAA, regardless of AAA numbers. Which was all SFF was saying, His lack of performance in AAA was no reason not to give him a well-earned callup unless something was fundamentally wrong -- which it clearly was not.

I didn't say surplus. There's a difference between a surplus and a luxury. It's all the difference between a player who's unnecessary, and a player who you can do without if there's a good reason to. We can fill our spots going forward without Bogaerts which means that if you have a deal that you're convinced makes a big enough impact to the team, it's fine to pull the trigger. What I see in this thread is a whole bunch of people underestimating the HELL out of James Shields. He would have a huge positive impact to this team if you could get him away from KC. I'd easily count on him down the stretch or in the playoffs far more than I'd count on Clay "Blink And He's Injured Again" Buchholz or John "Do We Even Remember The Last 3 Years" Lackey even if the latter two techincally have a higher ERA. None of Buchholz, Lester or Lackey deserve pride of place over Shields if he were brought in, as all have been too inconsistent, and all but Lester have been far less durable. If I'm trading high for a guy over the short term, he'd better make all his starts. Quality is almost secondary to that, and Shield's quality is very high anyway. And need I remind you once again, Shields is proven in the AL East. That's worth something right there.

You're wrong.

For a year and a half of one of the most durable and reliable starters in the entire major leagues, a man proven in the AL East who's never pitched less than 200 innings a season in his life and who's been a legit ace type each of the last 3 years, plus an instant solution to our closer problem? Yer darn tootin. We're one of the teams that would have the ability to sign Shields after his contract expires, and you have to factor that in. We'd never have gotten him from the Rays, but now he's in play, and he's exactly the sort of pitcher it's safest to take an expensive risk on from our perspective. And for clarification, I meant one of Webster and RdlR (not both), plus Bogaerts and 2 B+ prospects, which for an ace and a top young closer is a fair price to pay even if the bill makes you cringe. Heck, it makes me cringe, and it's still a fair price to pay.

Wat. This fails both the numbers test and the eyeball test. This is not a matter of opinion. You are in fact wrong, by every measurable standard... ... except that of home runs, the one thing you outspokenly declare that you're not disappointed at Ellsbury over. So how again is he having his worst offensive season since his rookie year? It's hard to realistically audit a player's ability once he gets that 5 tool designation, but with Ellsbury we need to step back and realize that this isn't actually a 5 tool plaeyr. He's a 4 and a half tool centerfielder with really good tools and ability, good swing, good range, good OBP, fantastic speed... and above average power. Enough to string together a good power year with a combination of health and luck but not consistently enough to make a career of it. That's what he is, and he's finally realizing it. Ellsbury is better served using his swing to sting the ball on the line, use the power he does have (which isn't 25 HR, but isn't chopped liver either) to plug the gaps and "slug" with his feet. Frankly there are few ballplayers that aren't better off learning to do that rather than swing large, but that's another debate.

I'm not trading high for Garza. The extra risk of his injury history combined with the fact that his team will expect to be paid as if for a top of the line starter puts him comfortably outside my price range. We're talking about replacing an injured starter. Durability needs to be the key word here, or all you get for your assets is two injured starters. Haven't we been down that road often enough to figure that out by now? That doesn't necessarily mean Ervin Santana, who's the guy I want, but one guy it definitely does not mean is Matt Garza. If we were trading big for a starting pitcher and putting our top guys on the line, I'd want nothing less than a true frontline guy. That being the case, I have to wonder -- if we dangled Bogaerts, who is incredibly valuable but honestly something of a luxury right now, is there any way we could bring James Shields to Boston? Sure, I'm going back to the KC well again, but I'm doing it because I think the teams line up fairly well. What KC has going spare tends to be pitching right now, and they're starving for offense, while what we have to trade is position players and position prospects, many with high offensive potential, and any major weaknesses we have are in pitching. If I thought we could get both Shields AND Greg Holland, I would happily dangle Bogaerts plus Webster/RdlR plus Brentz plus one more prospect in the B+ range -- someone like Workman or Swihart. I'd expect that kind of offer to at least keep Dayton Moore on the phone. It would solve all our major evident problems in one fell swoop, and set us up for the future as well, and we can technically spare all of these prospects while fielding a highly competitive team. Considering they're unlikely to keep James beyond next year I have to think that offer would keep KC on the phone even with all they've invested in "Big Game James" and considering that we'd get an additional year out of him, and he's one of the most durable and reliable starters in major league baseball, I'd have no problem knocking the doors off Kauffman Stadium to get him.

I suspect the team has Carp in mind as one of the first guys to try if a hole opens up. But yeah, we're very light at 1B in terms of depth. Frankly I think it's philosophical. I don't think this organization believes in 1B prospects per se -- their definition of a "1B prospect" over the Theo/Cherington era seems to be a player at another position who's struggling to maintain the athleticism required to thrive there. Michael Almanzar springs to mind as an example. In fairness, their prejudice has borne out in reality. Our best 1B's have come from other positions over most of that time, from Millar who came in as more of an outfielder who moonlighted at first base, to Youkilis, who was always much better at first than at third, and now to Napoli the former catcher. When we've tried to go straight 1B we've wound up with disasters for the most part.

I thought they got rid of Carp because they were committed to Smoak and didn't have the playing time to develop Carp.

The return seems solid, and fits Boston's MO if trading 1 stud for multiple chances at solid contributing players.

I don't understand this mindset. Ellsbury is doing everything you could possibly ask of a premiere centerfielder and leadoff man. How many teams in this league have a 360 OBP guy with 60-70 SB speed hitting first for them? Ells is bringing more than enough power to let his speed have maximum play. He leads the league in triples and slugs more than .400, and with speed like his, I can't figure out why anyone would demand more than that. Forget the 30 HR fluke in 2011, and what you see is one of the premium offensive roleplayers in the game and a fantastically well-balanced leadoff man.. So just don't hold him to that standard. It won't happen and we don't need it from him anyway. The guy I see in front of me is someone I'd be willing to meet a slightly unreasonable price to keep around. Bradley or no Bradley. that skillset is not particularly replaceable. That, and frankly despite my mancrush on Nava, I see Bradley, Victorino and Ellsbury being able to split the outfield between them next year and giving us the best defensive outfield in the game bar none. Was kind of hoping Nava would make some progress from the right side so he could stick around and back up, but I guess the world can't be perfect.