Dojji

I said going into the season, the Royals are much better. This team isn't even firing on all cylinders and it's still putting up a fight against all comers. They're rather reminiscent of the very good Royals teams of 2-3 decades ago. Lots of pitching, lots of speed, and enough power to be a credible threat. The way they've assembled their rotation this year has been impressive and Dayton Moore strung together several very good moves that panned out above expectations over the last 18 months. Quite honestly, I look at the way Cherington's built the Red Sox, and the way Moore's built the Royals and I see more than a few similarities. If their corner infield starts hitting, the AL Central might be a real dogfight for the first time in awhile. Basically what I saw in this series was two teams I went into the season expecting about 85 wins out of, fighting like equals. Someone had to win the swing game, it happened to be KC, but this was a very well fought series, against a team we're not used to thinking is good but is really about at our level this year..

True but he did still finish with a 100 OPS+ overall. Not a bad thing to build off. The fact that he seems to have handled adding 1B to his arsenal fairly well is another encouraging sign, and in interviews, he comes across as a smart kid who gets what he is and what he needs to do to stick. I seem to recall he was a player-coach for awhile in college, from what I've seen (and I've seen no more than anyone else who may be paying attention) that doesn't surprise me. And he seems to have a lot of fun out there.

He got a lot of negative reactions because I went over the top backing him up, and wound up making the skeptics feel like they needed to dig in and fortify. I can bring so much energy to one of these discussions at times that it triggers backlash.

Why even swing there?

Salty needs to get a hit here.

Well we've given ourselves a chance to get back into the game at least.

And with that catcher they've got, they've got good defense up the middle and solid at first and third as well. This team's going to be tough to score on all year.

I've been impressed by KC's pitching by the way. Their fans have to be happy for what Dayton Moore has put together there this year.

Lorenzo Cain is a very good ballplayer. I would love to have him.

No it would be premature to conclude anything about Nava right now. He's off to a good start, but he was last year too and fizzled out -- whether he did it because of skill or health is somewhat beside the point, since there's no reason either one wouldn' rear its ugly head this year too. Let's see where he is at the break.

And Papelbon and Rivera between them make 5 teams that won with proven elite guys in the same timeframe. EDIT: 6. I still try to forget about 2009

If there is such a club, Papelbon is in it. Whether you like it or not, that is a fact.

Granted the rotation did the lion's share of the damage, but the back end didn't exactly help, stalling momentum in a few key games can make a huge difference down the stretch. Even if they weren't the worst part of 2012, if you can't see how the bullpen hurt us, I don't know what to tell you.

No it does not usually work. Of the, like, 10 teams that try it in any given year it works for 1-2 of them and they make the playoffs and the rest are forgotten about. I would not call am 80% failure rate usually working. If it "usually worked" there'd be a lot more true elite closers out there.

You mean they'll try to. Sometimes it even works. When it works, the team wins and we remember the succeeses. When it fails, we get 2012, which fans even in Boston are already desperately trying to forget. It can lead to a nice little bit of selection bias. Again, with 30 teams, you're going to get some hotshot kid making the closer position his own on a few teams in any given year, but pretending that your one team out of that 30 can expect it to happen all the time just because you don't want to pay out of pocket for the level of talent you actually get, is misguided. In other words, if it were that easy, where's all the veteran closers no one wants to pay? Clearly the evidence of our eyes and the unavailability of all those proven elite closers everyone cheaps out on because that's the smart play, means it isn't the smart play and someone's ignoring the significance of the closer's role just because it's a little tricky to understand or quantify.

And when it's time to get paid, his agent will exact what he's due from somebody. This is a bad argument. You're basically saying we should be able to count on Craig Kimbrels coming up and providing elite relief for no money all the time. Or if that's not your argument, I have no idea why you'd even bring it up because it has nothing else to do with our situation, in which we clearly don't have Craig Kimbrel, and by the time we could get Kimbrel himself, we'd be paying full price for him. I mean, sure, of the 30 teams, someone's usually coming up with a young hotshot closer any given year, but that's because there's 30 teams. If you think your team can always obtain that guy, not only are you dead wrong, but if you're the GM your ignorance is going to do more harm than good, as it did last year when we had the mighty combination of Alfredo Aceves, Mark Melancon, and Andrew "Injured Pinkie" Bailey to keep the wins rolling in. And we saw how well that went.

Career IP: >200 And you can bet your bottom dollar that if he keeps this up, he's going to command 8 figures sometime within the next 3 years.

Because that won't change by year 4 of these young pitchers' tenures. If they keep it up, they'll get paid like the elites they are. And if they don't, then pretending they are because of 1-2 good years is failthought itself. I mean sure, if you can luck out with a rookie to get the job done, rock on, but let's not pretend that rookies are predictable. For every Papelbon, who goes on to have a stable high level career, you have 2, 3 guys who don't. And even the guys that do, eventually get paid like guys that do. So if you want to throw away your productive, steady elite RP just because you have to pay him what he is, and go back to the grab bag, don't be surprised if it bites you in the tail. Basically it comes down to what you're saying here: I want the best, but I don't want to pay for it. One of these two statements is going to have to give way, either you pay for the best, or you settle for less than the best -- especially because "the best" is frequently not available for any money at all -- as is the case for us right now.

It depends on how much you really, really like the taste of antacid. Won't pay for elite relief, don't get elite relief. Simple as that.

Well we had one, but decided we'd rather sign Carl Crawford than pay for a top quality playoff proven closer.

That might be one of the all time great Red Sox games.

That was way more intense than it needed to be but they got it done.

Do not walk the bases loaded for Billy Butler. Do not do it

do it do it do it

comeoncomeoncomeon...