Dojji

Not too worried about Lester personally. He's going to do himself credit this year. I blame a lot of his performance last year on our mediocre defense, and our defense should be much better this year with upgrades at shortstop and hopefully catcher. That said, this season is going to come down to one person. Clay Buchholz needs to be the player he always had the potential to be. The time for being a "great pitcher, but..." is over. If he succeeds we have a chance to get somewhere. If not, nothing else we can do is going to make up for that.

I'm not nearly so sure that Overbay is AAA bound. He has definite utility as a very solid defensive 1B and he bats LHH and hits righties decently. .751 OPS v. right in a very bad year last year, .821 career. As a situational lefty and a LIDR, I see a potentially useful bench player. Not a guy who you'd mistake for a starter, but maybe the guy who will play the other, say, 30 games as our 1B, come in defensively, and pinch hit a bit. Now, I did want Garrett Jones. But the way our roster is kind of put together on hope and dreams, rather than being an actual contender this year, if the price on Jones started at, say, Junichi Tazawa and went up from there -- and it could have -- I can see why they went for Overbay instead.

No, it's not a trend. It's *the* way to win. Always has been. people love the big acquisition, but it doesn't mean squat without a solid homegrown core. Every team that's ever done any sustained winning did it based on that core. And the strategy of how you try to win is usually based rather strongly on what you can muster for a core. If you're more speed than power, you try to build a team around your speedy core, if the reverse is true, you build that way.

Which it won't be. I have definite qualms about this offense. They've replaced "great" with "good enough" in too many positions since the World Series days, and that ignores the possibility that a "great" player merely has a "good enough" year.

This is Atchison doing what's best for Atchison. The payday for minor league deals lies in the chance to crack the roster. I don't think he liked his chances of cracking the roster here, so he went to another team where he liked his chances more.

The bloom was definitely off the rose for Anderson by the time of the Gonzo trade. And I never said 20X all star. That's just something you tacked on because I wasn't anxious to sign Mark Teixeira and the presence of Anderson, then a top prospect, featured in my argument of why.

Here we go again...

Why yes, I'm sure that any team would love to trade 22 year old superstars for damaged goods and a prospect. Dear lord. I'm no genius myself but.... dear lord.

Zink deserved more than one start. His implosion was no worse than some of Wakefield's more notorious games but unlike Wake that's all we remember him for . He's not one of my "faves" but until it all came unravelled in the 5th he had done fairly well. Always thought it a pity he never got another chance.

stated on the assumption that the pitching staff they had last year wasn't at least a run below their own talent level.

There's no harm in knocking. I just have so little expectation that the door will actually open that my attentions as a fan are directed elsewhere.

A tarde for Giancarlo Stanton was, is, and will for some years remain, a pipe dream.

So what if it is PR? When did PR and marketing become a bad thing in your mind? And I honestly think that Pedro is one of the, like, 5 people alive today that I'd be really interested in picking their minds about How To Pitch. If he could get some of these younger guys to use the inside half of the plate as effectively as he did and not be afraid to buzz the tower if the hitter crowds the plate, just that much alone could make a HUGE difference. I'm thinking especially of Clay Buchholz when I say this. There's a difference between pitching to miss bats, and controlling the at bat. A lot of our pitchers who have the stuff to do the latter do the former instead -- especially Buchholz. I think honestly most of our pitchers are afraid to be mean enough to really maximize their ability. If Pedro could get his special brand of fearlessness through to them, it could be a revolution for at least Clay and possibly Lester as well. Put another way -- take a guy with Dan Bard's stuff and then teach him not to worry about the hitter's life and safety and come right after him, inside high make 'em duck, inside low make 'em hop, burn 'em down the middle, and then drop that slider of his on them while they're second guessing, and then burn them again. That's what Pedro did to some of the best hitters of our generation. And it was absolutely unfair

What is made up, is your arbitrary ass-pull number of 5 years 17M. You have no idea what kind of extension he was looking for, or if he was even looking for an extension. That, and you're still stuck in a fantasy world where the Red Sox are a premiere destination for FA's. That didn't seem to prove to be the case this year. There's a lot of other teams that are closer to contention and have suffered fewer blows to their reputation, just now.

It's going to amuse the heck out of me if Nava starts to figure it out from the right side this year.

Why are you being so touchy? In the context of what Soxsport was saying, the fact that Bautista is usually so good only enhances his point. Be irritated all you want to, but don't let your irritation blind you to the facts.

I disagree. They definitely should have gone as hard as they could to maintain their position at the top of the division. They definitely should have tried to go over the top in both 08 and 09. 2010 was a strange year, I can understand disregarding it. It was when they missed the playoffs in 2011 that they went off the rails. That's when it was time to step back, but no one is going to have the stones to call that shot when the team missed the playoffs by a tiebreaker.

Considering how Adgon played for us, I'd call both Napoli, and especially Drew, serious potential upgrades. Understand that I recognize that Napoli is no where near as skilled as Gonzo, but given Gonzo's down year, I think Napoli can beat what he gave us.

Right, the reason Orr beats Gretzky is because Orr was the more complete player. It's no secret that defense wasn't exactly Gretzky's thing. He didn't ignore it exactly but, well, it's kind of like Marc Savard on defense. OK, yeah, sure, I can get that done, but that's not why I'm on the ice. As a defenseman, even a highly mobile, offensive minded one, Orr couldn't do that. Since I consider hockey the most athletic of the major sports, and Orr was the best all-time hockey player ever, I consider Orr a very, very good candidate for the most athletic all-time athlete.

Yeah, I definitely don't mind the Sweeney signing. It's not a bad move by Cherington to add some depth, and sweeney does have the talent to be marginally effective at the big league level. He's in the right place on the depth chart right now, IMHO.

Oh hell no. Better hitter, yes, probably, altough Napoli has his advantages. But as a catcher Martinez makes a good DH while Napoli has some real holes but can manage to be a nonliability back there. This is all predicated on Napoli hip problem only really showing up this year of course. The only reason people didn't remember VMart as the worst defensive catcher we've had in a long time is because his replacement was even worse. Which has to be factored into a decision to acquire or not acquire Napoli in 09. it would have allowed us to avoid the Salty experiment entirely, or at least cushion it with a guy who dominates the opposite hand and contain the worst of the damage when Salty absolutely can't get it done on D.

It's the truth. If the rumors are true that Kalish is going under the knife he's pretty much done, and the others are nonoptions at this point.

When was the last time I obsessed about a player we didn't already have. Oh yeah it was probably back in 09 when I was saying that instead of trading big name talent for Victor Martinez, we should consider dealing with the Angels for Mike Napoli.

Right. We're talking about a bat off the bench here. Someone who can work the count against righthanders and get his butt on base. No one is demanding that anyone be Manny Ramirez. Well at least no one sane is. As the roster is constrcuted right now, Nava is your best option to crack the roster and share left field with Gomes. BTW your answer to the poll above is Che-Hsuan Lin. Not because Lin is so great, but because the others are for one reason or another, not likely to stick on a big league roster at all, while Lin has a snowball's chance in hell of endearing himself to the right team at some point because he plays elite defense.

Since the wall won, I think that probes 700's point. Seriously, however much you might dislike Nava, Sweeney is not a better option.