Dojji

It's a fact, yes. Many things are facts. The relevance of this particular fact escapes me.

If they wanted to go trade for Billy Butler, I have a hard time imagining that not being worthwhile. If the Royals are at all talking trade, there's not a lot of our prospects I'd hold back. If you want to look for the under the radar move that improves our roster and gets a lot of fans excited pretty quickly, Butler is that move. Just don't undermine the future of the rotation any more than we already have.

And this is exactly what BSN07 is talking about. The fact that you can't grasp his point IS his point.

When was the last time an overly specific analogy led to a cogent point?

If the FA pool is thin, the trade market is either going to be thin or prohibitively costly. Sometimes the option to "be competitive now" does not plausibly exist. You need to deal with the distinct possibility that this is one of those times.

I'm not convinced that reasonable options were available to them to fix the rotation this offseason. FA has been getting shallower and shallower over the years and I can't think of a single guy on the market this year that I'd look at and say, "Yeah, this is definitely a guy who pushes everyone else in our rotation down on the depth chart." Our problem is that our homegrown rotation options have either been flaming out or getting traded for position players, consistently, for a period of about 4 years now. When young guys aren't coming up and making themselves options at all for that long, that's going to start taking a toll on any rotation. That's a problem that needs to be fixed by NOT trading our young guys for every offensive stud that comes along just for one more attempt to contend.

Yes I am, and with good reason. In retrospect, losing Papelbon on has cost us Reddick, Lowrie, and a number of prospects, and forced us to sign Shane Victorino for more money than paps wanted. It was questionable at the time, and absolutely burned us in retrospect.

Kalish was hurt when the hole was made. If we had a stable RF who had been productive the 3 years before and signed for multiple seasons after, I can see trading Reddick. Such was not the case. I judge these deals at least in part based on how well I can understand what the GM is thinking. I don't like the thought process that deal represents. It was a desperation move and not very clearly thought out. The correct move would have been to re-sign Jonathan Papelbon and keep both Kalish and Reddick in the mix in right field until one of them made the job his own. That would have played out much more in our favor this year, and even if it hadn't, it would still have been the better move to try.

Why not?

I disagree to a point. A trade can be defended because: 1: The idea was fundamentally sound, and the player faltered for reasons unknown at the time of the trade. An example here might be a player who is traded for, and then becomes injured and ineffective. An obvious exception to that is if the injury was predictable, or one that was a known risk at the time of the deal, such as the Bailey or Gagne trades. 2: the trade was an attempt to seize a championship and, whether the championship was or was not itself seized, the player lived up to his end of the bargain. I didn't like the trade for Victor Martinez, but it can be defended based on the fact that he played up to his ability in Boston. 3: The reward turned out to be low, but little risk was taken in the transaction. This could mean that the trade return wasn't effective but also wasn't necessary or expensive, such as in the Gagne trade, or that the outgoing pieces had no place on the team, such as in the Martinez trade. The reason I'm down on the Reddick for Bailey trade far more so than Lowrie for Melancon, is that the latter trade was ultimately in category 3. We really didn't give up all that much. As much as I liked what Lowrie could have done if healthy, he wasn't. And really, while Melancon struggling a bit more in the AL East than he did in Houston was predictable, the order of magnitude of the disaster really wasn't. Bailey on the other hand, we gave up a player who had already played at a high level for us, at a position that wasn't securely held by anyone else, to get back a player who was under control for less years and had well documented injury concerns going in, you don't get any pity points when the coup de fail is complete and the guy actually gets hurt.

Two people who I feel should be pointed out for obvious reasons, were injured at the time with potentially career-altering injuries. They wouldn't have asked for Sweeney back if they weren't worried about their outfield depth. That should have been a sign to them to rethink their strategy.

Sure, I agree you need to look at the longish term for these trades. So I tell ya what. See you after 4 years when Bailey has gone to another team and Reddick is still a cost-controlled lower middle of the order bat. Long term, short term, midterm, any term. It. Was. A. Stupid. Deal. Creating one hole to fill another hole is not smart. Ever.

There you go again, assuming that the actual results were always inevitable. Must take a lot of the drama out of life. Why do you even watch the season? Why not just come back in September to see what was always going to happen anyway?

Please don't get me started in the Bailey trade. That was such a shortsighted move. I mean which was smarter? Paying Papelbon, or trading away Reddick for Bailey and using the savings on Victorino? I think that's pretty much a no-brainer. Even if Bailey had pitched up to his ability and been able to pitch 50 or 60 innings, that was STILL a bad trade.

About sums it up, actually. What it's going to come down to is this team has put itself in a position to get lucky, but only in a positon to get lucky. They're not a lock for anything but they CAN win. Basically on the same spectrum where at least 85% of the league is. There's maybe 2 locks to make the playoffs and 2-3 locks to fail dismally, everyone else is in play. We need to have good years from a lot of people to get there, but it's hardly something that can't happen.

IS that exactly what it means? Are you sure it has nothing to do with the fact that teams would be giving up a pick? And what's wrong with Cleveland exactly?

Indeed. There's a difference between a statistical analysis of all involved factors, and a witch hunt. If you're ignoring factors that play against your point rather than adjusting your thinking on the basis of those factors, that would be a witch hunt.

Every single one of these things happened to Jason Varitek at least a few times in his career. The difference is that Tek is a "great catcher" so we shrug them off in a well-crap-happens kind of way. Because Salty is a "terrible catcher" his mistakes get remembered and itemized. This is one of the reasons that I tend to make an ass of myself sometimes bucking the groupthink. Because if I don't, it just gets completely unbalanced and tends to snowball quickly to completely unfair proportions. Not that it really does any good, since if there's any sport where people re set in their ways it's baseball, and if there's any region set in its ways, it's New England, so I've always got two strikes against me, but I'd feel like dirt if I didn't at least try. 20 hr's springs to mind pretty quickly as something they'd lose. As Ryan Kalish taught us, there's never anything guaranteed about prospects. I was sure he'd be hitting 20 Hr's himself for us by now.

A nice thing to hope for. If our D up the middle is better next year than it was last year that can only help. I'm particulraly thinking about shortstop. Stephen Drew oesn't exactly have a high standard set for him by his predecessors. And if Drew could reclaim his pre-injury form, he's a well above average defender.

Next year, sure, but if the Stros ever sort themselves out they're one of the better teams in the league.

Not behind the plate, I don't. I've been calling for him to move to 1B this offseason if we can't sign Napoli.

It's not a bad starting place when that's his weak side. Cody Ross last year was a very comparable .256/.308/.422 against righthanded pitching. In fact that's so comparable it's pretty much dead even. Really easy to see why the FO is trying Gomes, when they had that level of success with Ross. Could it fail? Absolutely. But we don't have another player that's an undisputed better idea right now.

Interesting point BSN07. Schilling is as clean as any pitcher who played in that area can be, which really is a factor to think about. That does give him both extra credibility (played "clean" in a very juiced up era and still dominated) as well as some political ballot votes based on disapproval of the doping culture. Endorse the clean players a little excessively as a way to spite the juicers a little bit more.

I don't think he's first ballot, but he absolutely makes the hall. He's got a borderline case even without Bloody Sock, and Bloody Sock is a borderline case all by itself. Between the two it ought to be a lock to eventually get in.

Show me the last guy who pitched 200 innings with an ERA of 5. If you're eating innings, you're making quality starts. Otherwise you're out of the game before you can eat any innings.