Dojji

Not so sure about that. A healthy season from Lackey will give us 3 guys who tend to be over 180 innings in an average year. Dempster and Lester tend to be each good for over 200. The real weak point is Buchholz. He's never been Mr. Durable, and he's going to have to figure out how to get there from here. If he can't that puts too much pressure on an unfinished product like Doubront. If he can complete his second-ever 180+ inning season, the rotation ought to be fine from a durability standpoint. have I mentioned recently that I really don't like Clay Buchholz that much?

Oy. There is a chance of Bailey being traded. There is no chance -- none -- that Bailey can be traded for anything that will make our starting rotation better. Could you please go out, shell out some money, and buy a sense of perspective? Because you need one badly.

If you think that, then you STILL don't get it. He's not "expendable" just because he might not be the closer or primary setup guy. Again, you're making the assumption that a high leverage reliever can't be used in middle relief. Since they absolutely can, a healthy Bailey is better than most of the options that would replace him, so "expendable" is not the word I'd use. Why would you trade Bailey? To guarantee Miller's job? because you're worried about Carpenter's chance to make the team? Because you're sorry for the rest of the AL East and want to make things easier for them? Ridiculous. Assemble the best 7 arms you can into the bullpen an let them sort the jobs out between them. That's what "closer by committee" was really supposed to be.

You're missing the point, especially if you think "we had Uehara" is a rebuttal for stockpiling high leverage relief. Sure we had Uehara. Now we have Uehara and Hanrahan, which is objectively a better bullpen. And we gave up nothing we're likely to need later. Pretending you need exactly one guy to be "the closer" and exactly one (or even exactly two) to be "the setup man" is limited thinking. As many high leverage arms you can get, the better.

I don't mean any personal offense to you, Jung, but maybe the real plan is not to be as blindingly stupid as they were last year by pencilling one and exactly one reliever into each role and saying "closer. Right. Got that one. Now on to set up. Melancon? Fine. Now, who's our middle relief?" With the result that Aceves wound up shoehorned into the closer's role because of inadequate planning and depth. 1 closer and 2 setup men is about right, and having 2 of those guys be steady durable arms doesn't hurt. If Bailey can contribute, great, if not, we're prepared to work around that with Hanrahan, Uehara and possibly Tazawa. And we have a couple guys below them not named Aceves, who could do in a pinch if called upon. Breslow has played some leverage relief before, and Miller and Morales (as well as Tazawa) are worth trying. And who knows? Bard may be a bit less dead than we think he is now. The point is that they're thinking ahead and making sure we have options. Depth and resiliency. It's a good thing.

The only two players who touch the ball more than the first baseman are the pitcher and the catcher. If you have a player at that position who strougles with routine plays, you'll know. Granted, the up the middle positions require more athleticism. Thus the defensive spectrum -- a good 1B would struggle at any other position on the field, while other athletic players from other positions can learn first base. However, that can be overstated pretty quickly. A solid experienced glove at first base can save your life just as much as any other position on the field. It may require less athleticism, but the skill requirements are not less, and it's not a "dump position" if you want to win ballgames. Defense at first matters. Maybe not as much as offense, but it does matter. We got spoiled with Youk and Gonzo there, two GG defenders. A bad defensive 1B will awaken us to how important it is to have a reliable glove at the position.

The scouting evidence is what made me think of Overbay. A quick review of comparable numbers only strenthened the comp. The only real difference i see is that Overbay throws left. Quite seriously, though, getting Overbay out of Shaw would be a pretty good outcome, considering the most likely outcome for any prospect is getting nothing at all. In his prime, Overbay was quite a competent first baseman with a lot of gap to gap power. Bigtime double hitters, good for 15-20 HR's in a given year. That doesn't sound like Travis Shaw's upside to you?

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/overbly01.shtml Shaw is pretty much this guy. If that's good enough for you, fine. Expecting more than that from Shaw isn't likely to take place. A lot of fans wouldn't have a problem with Overbay in his prime as our regular first baseman, but considering all the carping I heard about Youk in 06-07, at least a few disagree.

How about Kendrys Morales of the Angels? With Pujols on the roster there's no room for him at first base. He's had such a rough last couple ears that I can't imagine the price would be huge.

Travis Shaw. Apparently the Sox don't really believe in drafting 1B. Any 1B we wind up with is going to be converted from some other position like Youk was..

And if he is a closer, then hooray, because we need one, but I expect this team to at least try him in the rotation Papelbon style before settling him in as a late inning arm. They'd have a cause to be gunshy post-Bard, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Indeed. Pretty similar story with Ryan Dempster actually.

Pretty much. It might be 2 of the 4, but's easily the 3rd and 4th most valuable players in the deal too. By a huge margin no less.

... or we could break camp with Salty and Gomez splitting first base and Lavarnway and Ross splitting the catching duties. Rather than give up valuable assets or bring in barely adequate talents, I might prefer that option.

Depends on how you mean. Numerically, it's not hard. Nixon's Red Sox career was basically 3 years. -- 01-03. Not hard to beat that level of production over a half decent career. Iconically, it'd be really difficult. Trot was larger than life. And Bryce Brentz isn't nearly as awesome a name to say as Trot Nixon.

I wouldn't call it a dump when we used the fair market value of both players to improve the team's outlook. We were desperate for quality depth at both middle infield positions. Sands for Holt is absolutely defensible. More to the point, trading Sands now for a guy like Holt -- which I consider roughly fair value -- doesn't preclude them from having intended to use Sands themselves if the deal didn't come up. Dejesus was never anything other than a makeweight. I can't see getting worked up over him even if he was "dumped." Basicallly you're making the same mistake you always make a700. Looking at the results as if that was the only plan there ever was.

Not so sure about that vis-a-vis Iglesias, I think he is what he is. Drew is here for 1 year. Bogearts might be as many as 2 years away or more -- there's a gap there that we only have Ciriaco to fill right now I think Holt could be a significant part of our picture at SS over the next 2 years, longer if Bogaerts falters. If Middlebrooks gets hurt next year, we could see Ciriaco as the regular third baseman and Holt backing up short when the inevitable Drew injury happens.

Apparently he only has average tools as an SS, but average tools and a very strong OBP is a cut above what we've had there over the last several years, so I'm on board with putting Holt in the mix at short.

If Holt's any good defensively at shortstop, with his OBP, I doubt he's just a UT guy here. I think we just found the guy Bogaerts is going to have to beat to make SS his own,

*checks numbers* OK what we have here is an offensive prospect who's played some short in the minors. and has a .808 career minor league OPS led by a very high OBP. Also boasts some speed, although he gets caught a lot. All I ask is to be able to see what Cherrington is thinking, and I can definitely see why Holt was in this deal. Solid move shoring up our depth at a very weak position.

I see relievers a bit differently than you do. With a very few exceptions relievers are pretty much interchangable parts. A good consistent reliever can be hard to find, but is less valuable than what I feel Jerry Sands can be if he gets going.

The success of the deal is going to depend a lot on who the other player coming from Pittsburgh is. If it's Sands, Pimentel and melancon for just Hanrahan that's absurd. None of those 3 have incredible value, but they all have positive value, and all three for a reliever is just odd, especially if Hanrahan isn't going to close here.

I agree. This is a team that can get into the playoffs with a shot to go further. Players have to play up to their ability, commit to paying the price, and gain confidence in their teammates. If they can do that, I think they'll shock a lot of people.

OK so I'm wrong. Morales gives us versatility and flexibility when dealing with injuries and crap-that-happens. It's a resource the Sox aren't going to squander by stuffing him into the bullpen and leaving him there. On the other hand. Lackey and Doubront are both probably going to be in our rotation along with the obvious 3 (Lester, Buchholz, Dempster). Morales is probably going to break camp as the long man in a swing role to maximize our options. That said, I freaking love the idea of leaving Morales and Aceves both in a long role all year. The upside is freakishly good if you combine Aceves' durability and flexibility in a MR role, with another multi inning option in the body of a power lefty. Combine that with the leverage relievers we have if everyone's healthy and the starters may not have a lot of work to do this year.

No one's saying Morales breaks camp in the rotation. But they're going to be trying to keep Morales stretched out and first time someone goes down, he's going to be the go to guy.