Dojji

Anything but shocked. On the whole I approve. I think the man will be a good managerial candidate sometime a few years from now and would not object at all to seeing him as a bench coach sooner than that.

They also have a lot more ability to make strong moves without eliminating their ability to compete long term. We are not the yankees. And even the yankees have their turns in the gutter. Think about it.

I'd be willing to put up with virtually nothing from the shortstop position with that kind of glove, in the hopes that with time the bat will move up in the general direction of at-least-he's-better-than-a-pitcher. We haven't had a guy who can play SS like that in a very, very long time. Bearing in mind that we have Bogaerts to fall back on if the bat is too bad, I think it'd work out pretty well.

Forget about freaking dealing for an ace. Not happening. People seem to be under the delusion that we'll be able to pull Pedro out of the aether any time we want another one. That was a once in a generation thing, not likely to be repeated in our lifetimes. Not that I'd say no to another Schilling either, but I don't see that guy right now either, unless you want to talk about trading for Roy Halladay. It takes more than money to build a championship caliber roster. Even the Yankees have had their turn in the basement. Which is why I feel people are being a little hard on our ownership now. Entropy is the natural order of things, and that means it takes extraordinary skill to continuously avoid it. The fact that they're not superhuman doesn't make this team's staff incompetent. It just means that all things end. It's going to take a long time getting back to the level we awere at before, not because the ownership sucks, but because there's unique challenges to succeeding in this division and not everyone can play well here. If we're ever going to get there though we need to stop throwing away talented-but-flawed young players in the name of short term solutions. Masterson for Martinez, Lowrie for Melancon and Reddick for Bailey are all exactly the kind of deal that should never have been made by this team and if we ever want to be good again we won't make them again.

That was a bad joke. That fieldgoal missed. Didn't miss by a lot, but unless all you have to do is break the plane, it was wide by about 3-4 inches.

The last time I heard that argument used to defend a Red Sox shortstop, it was being used to justify the acquisition of Julio Lugo. Players who are inconsistent in the NL West have no business in Boston. That's just the facts.

or perhaps the job is harder than you think it is and your standards are too high.

You've proven that you'll have no patience with exactly this kind of pitcher in the past, a700. A starter who goes 200 innings with an ERA in the high 4's will keep us in the game for the most part, and we'd benefit a great deal from a guy like Jeremy Guthrie, (or at least like Guthrie was 2 years ago) but if we actually got a Guthrie, then if not you, certainly other fans would accuse them of squandering resources on Guthrie we could have saved for a front line man. You've done this from time to time, IIRC. For that matter, Justin Masterson would have looked really good in a Boston uniform this year. Years later I'm still rueing the VMart trade. We spent too much for a short term solution there when we needed a long term answer.

Unfortunately I don't see what constitutes a good source of pitching from ''elsewhere'' either.. The demands for pitchers in boston are pretty high and there aren't a lot of guys you know will dominate here. and most of those are premiere frontliners that you might not be able to get if you offered your entire top 10. That's one of the big reasons I suspect this will be an extended process whether we like it or not.

I disagree with you entirely. Both Morales and Doubront have shown that they have significant potential as lefthanded pitchers who can miss bats. Their problem isn't a lack of potential, their problem is that they aren't consistent. Few developing players are. The difference is that the clock is ticking when it comes to Morales. Doubront could shock us all in 2-3 years and it would be entirely in character. I want guaranteed all stars in all 25 positions too. Unlike some of the rest of us I am able to recognize that just because you don't have that, doesn't mean you "stink." Having Doubront and Morales around is better than not having them. If you're fixated on their presence on the roster as in any sense a negative to this team, you're barking up the wrong tree. Regardless of any other consideration, knocking Felix Doubront for not dominating hitters in his rookie season playing for a bad team is laughably absurd.

I don't agree with that necessarily. A lot of these guys are salvageable. But you need to fix the culture, and that's going to take some strength from the ownership. If you can keep the talent and jettison the culture that led to the debacle, a lot of these guys will perform better.

as for who will come up through the system that can help lead us to prominence -- Middlebrooks, Bogaerts, Lavarnway, a few other interesting position players. Pitchers are a little light, but we don't have too many other options than to fly with what we have for awhile. Greinke is the only so-called frontliner on the market and he's a horrible fit for Boston. Unless they manage to make the kind of blockbuster trade I don't see us having the pieces for, or one of those two pitchers we got from the Dodgers makes good, I'm not sure what's going to happen there. If Lester stays on form next year though, things start to look a lot better.

Less time than your denial-ridden high roller strategy will. We've painted ourselves into a corner and we're left with two bad choices. Failing to acknowledge that and trying to pretend we can buy our way back to prominence in short order is, in this case, the worse of two evils.

Well there's always the option to go root for another team or another sport I guess. Not much of a choice for the likes of us though.

It doesn't matter if I'm willing or not. It's not like I can force the Sox to win the big one with my own personal impotent fury if it takes longer than I'd like. They're not going to be able to buy their way out of this one and I think they finally realize that themselves.

Holy hell. Do you really think anyone here WANTS to wait? Do you think the decision not to win is based on a conscious determination to try and lose for a change, just to see what it's like? Do you think that the ownership has a magic fix-the-team wand that they're only refusing to wave out of sheer masochism? Are you really that stupid? This team is broken. Fixing the problem is not a matter of adding two starters and a power hitter. THE KANSAS CITY ROYALS are two bigtime starters and a power hitter away from the playoffs. Every team in this league would be a playoff team with two more bigtime starters and one more power hitter. If that's what it's going to take to fix this team then it's well and truly dead and should be ripped up and rebuilt properly. Something that you and your ilk will only tolerate with the worst of bad grace, kicking and screaming and trying to lynch all and sundry for doing what every baseball team in history -- even the Yankees -- have to do when the core starts to age and weaken. WHen you're in a position like the Red Sox are in right now, you have two choices: 1: The sane choice: Consciously work to restructure the team into a long term winning mode with an eye towards developing your talent streams, promoting worthwhile prospects, and making smart, precise acquisitions. Doing it this way, you can return to relevance in short order -- as little as 2 or 3years of real futility as contracts expire and prospects advance. 2: The insane choice. Flail desperately around buying everything in sight to make one last, or one more, halfhearted grab at glory, get yourself strangulated financially, and watch the core collapse into ruin leaving you nothing to work with and a 5-6 year rebuild process to undergo in the best case scenario. For the last 3 years, the Sox have made the insane choice. They're at the cusp of the point of no return and have made decisions that more closely resemble the sane choice -- for which people like you want to tar and feather them. So be it. I'm honestly beginning to hope we get to see what the fallout of the insane choice looks like. Fans here are absurdly spoiled, and a little dose of harsh baseball reality -- a bit of real, honest extended futility -- would clear a lot of dead weight out of the bandwagon. Maybe people will start appreciating regular season ball for its own sake again.

No. No more so called "5 tool" guys who don't have the fundamental patience and skill to control the at bat. This is a patient, station to station team that draws walks and works the pitcher. Our assets are based on the power of our lineup and the strength of our starting rotation. That's the identity, and affirming and strengthening that identity needs to be the focus. We just saw what happens when a team tries to do everything at once. Don't repeat the mistake. Stick to your strengths and build on those things. If you can do that and also bring other elements, so much the better, but don't -- DO NOT -- allow your core strengths to slip because you're casting too wide a net. Going after Upton would be doing exactly that.

Those other guys are solid MR's don't get me wrong, but Miller has the kind of stuff that puts him in the conversation for the late innings. His stuff is easily better than Melancon's and Aceves, and I don't say the same about Bailey mostly because I really don't have a point of reference for Bailey.

Can I put in a write-in vote for Andrew Miller? He's shown a lot of improvement this year. He's harnessed his stuff and found the strike zone with it, and that's all he ever needed to do to dominate. I'd guess he could be a sufficient closer, he's got the power stuff for it. That would preserve our other good arms for middle inning work which can be just as important. I'd particularly like to see Aceves back in the middle inning multi inning role that is so rare in modern baseball. That 2 inning reliever with an ERA in the mid 3's can be a season saver. If Miller can continue to make progress, and Bailey and Aceves are able to back him up, that's a heck of a pen.

The fact that you think that's funny shows you don't know one little thing about substance abuse.

Mmm. And note that the team can suspend him so he misses his quota if he becomes too much of an alcohol problem. That might help. But Boston is still a horrible town for him to play in. Especially if there's alcohol in the clubhouse at any point, live games or not.

I agree. Hamilton needs to spend his career somewhere out in the midwest being the franchise player of a decent team that can help him stay dry.

In 2014, you MIGHT have King Felix. Seattle is on the upswing a bit, they have a talented young roster and attendance is up. They're not Tampa Bay at the worst of times. This is a team that can spend money to make money, and they're not about to let the centerpiece of the rebuild walk if they can help it. And it would not surprise me one little bit that the Ichiro trade was sparked by a desire to clear out anything that might force them to give up on the king. That's the problem with projecting any FA 2 years out. The lion's share of them are either re-signed outright, or traded and then signed by the recipient team. Teams don't like letting big names walk for nothing. As for what they need to do, most of it amounts to the long-term, boring, media-alienating, non-headline-inducing process of drafting, development and promoting from within -- the exact same thing they did to get themselves out of the doldrums in 2006, and the same thing they did to get themselves out of the doldrums in the late 90's. If there's a sure thing out there, sure, go nuts, but the core of every great team is homegrown. Even the Yankees knew that lesson, at least in the Dynasty years. It might take more than one year. But if you really want this team to be a great one, you're going to need to take it on the chin, get through to the far side of the rebuild, and THEN build AROUND the young core that comes out of The minors. Trying to sign your core never works.

That's underselling Brentz like it was underselling Reddick. That kind of high tools, raw-skills player is a kind that can surprise you when they hit the majors.

You're conveniently forgetting the work he did with Lester and Papelbon. To say nothing og Buchholz, who's solid now but needed a lot of help to get there.