Dojji

We're not getting both Jackson and Buehrle when our payroll is already this bloated. 2 years without playoff revenue to provide ROI for Henry's inflated payrolls suggests to me that the team will be looking to find ways to reduce the payroll for each of the next couple seasons. Henry doesn't strike me as a man who wants to sustain losses indefinitely -- very few people in his line of work are. We're not the Yankees and the pocket does have a bottom.

It depends. If that player is a first baseman, absolutely not. If that player is a catcher who also threw out 31% of baserunners, that's probably above average production for his position. Baseball-Reference has him as a positive WAR player. He wasn't great by any means, but he wasn't a liability either, and a catcher who hits 16 homers and can throw out about a third of the guys who try to steal on him definitely has redeeming qualities. The only real marks against Salty right now, are leading the league in passed balls, and the low OBP. The passed balls thing is a problem Tek had at about the same age, and for the same reason (handling Wakefield regularly) so I'm not worried about it, and the OBP thing is fairly typical among catchers (look at Pudge Rodriguez, Rod Barajas, and Bengie Molina, all considered good catchers, none considered great disciplined hitters). And frankly, 31% CS means that in aggregate, teams didn't turn a profit in runs by running on Salty. Which is a good thing. It's not like we were counting on Salty to carry the team anyway. This guy was a reclamation project who turned into a net positive on the team. No idea why you are so obsessed with trying to prove that he's somehow terrible. Throw in the fact that the kid is working cheap, and there's a lot of teams doing worse behind the dish than we are right now.

Watched the game last night until Stoke scored. Tried to pick up some of the nuances in the game. Still looks like a lot of people kicking a ball around and I can't grasp more than the basics right yet. Give me hockey anyday -- same basic concepts, much more speed and action in the execution. Although for a soccer game, the pace wasn't terrible -- seemed to be fairly up tempo on the whole with a fair bit of back and forth play. Am I wrong? I will say that I'm not surprised LP won after I found something else to do, since the scoring chances were radically in their favor in the part of the game I watched (Jones got pretty lucky and there was this one Liverpool player who seemed to get chance after chance denied by a fair Stokes keeper).

How many miles can the man lose on his fastball before he starts getting tattooed though?

Disagree that he's being groomed for the DH role. This organization has proven unafraid to go to him as a catcher. I think he's being groomed to ultimately be our primary catcher, but it's going to be a project, much like it was with Tek.

Yeah the issue is more SBA than SB. We were run on quite a bit this year because runners don't fear Tek's arm anymore and Salty is a work in progress defensively (he has a good arm, but his technique needs a lot of work). The real solution is a better catch-and-throw guy behind the plate. Since we insist on hitters at that position though it's not all that likely to happen.

They're not that hard to comprehend. Buehrle is a good pitcher, but he's a slowpitch guy compared to most big leaguers, and the Yankees obliterate him. There's room for finesse pitchers, but his margin for error would be much smaller here than it would be in any other division, and with his relative lack of velocity it's narrow enough to begin with. Oswalt I could get behind. He's always had good stuff and command and I don't think he's too old to bounce back from a relatively down year this year. Buehrle is exactly the kind of very good pitcher that you don't bring into the AL East pressure cooker. Let him mow 'em down in the NL west or the NL Central for the rest of his career and have his shot at the Hall. Because he won't do either here.

Yeah, no.

Because the solid starters are going to be overpriced too.

Sabathia's looking for Cliff Lee money. Maybe even Lee-to-the-Rangers money. And that includes years as well as AAV. There's plenty of teams with a contend-now, pay-later mindset that will probably outbid the Sox right now, because our bloated payroll really hampers us.

Disregarding the fact that it would be a phenomenally risky idea to sign a player that heavyset going into his mid to late 30's, especially to the kind of deal that would make NYY back off, I agree that it could be amusing and an effective move to disarm a rival. If ever a big market team was over a barrel right now, it's NYY -- they have to give this player literally whatever he wants given the state of the rest of their rotation. Unfortunately that contract would hurt us VERY badly on the backend, since I don't see a lot of resemblance between Sabathia and Wells. Overweight power pitchers don't tend last long after 35 or so, and whoever signs Sabathia is going to bleed for it for the balance of the contract most likely.

Lackey lied. Repeatedly. Because they were dumb enough to give him a huge financial incentive in his contract to deny he had a problem, or at least deny his problem was the elbow. Remember, it's macho, manly and proper to swear up and down that you're fine, hale and healthy in pro sports. Put money on the table too and there's no way to avoid problems like this. The point is that because he lied, and because the organizations saw fit not to call him on it, we got to suffer through what he was this year. And they likely lost an additional year of service time since Lackey clearly should have gotten TJS sometime at the beginning of this year rather than the end -- that being the case he might have convalesced in time to give us at least 2010 Lackey next year -- which would have been highly welcome out of one of the bottom 2 rotation spots on the whole. Never give an athlete a financial incentive to lie to you. Because he will. Especially if he can rationalize it somehow as being a good teammate, sucking it up and staying out there. That's two highly powerful motivators for a guy like Lackey, and Ego makes three. Heck, Ego, Money and Machismo are the 3 reasons most of these guys are out there trying to make a living this way in the first place. Ultimately the FO set Lackey up for this and what happened this year with this player falls directly on them.

Not in any way we could meaningfully discern at the time. Don't forget, we weren't out of the playoffs until literally the lasy day. No matter how much your top players are underperforming, when the players are on the line you use the best of whatever you have. All it would have taken was one lucky break and anything could have happened in October.

Ahh yes, a "lie about my injury" clause. Those are very stupid whenever they apepar. General managers never outsmart themselves more than when they give players that kind of financial incentive to pretend they're fine when they're not.' Just makes the Lackey contract even more bizarre and boneheaded. NEVER, EVER give a player a large financial reason to lie to you about how hurt he is. They're already inclined to do it because of macho pride. Don't make matters even worse for the medical staff.

Yeah, but then you have the problem of a command pitcher with no fastball and on the far side of 30. Against the Yankees. Buehrle should not come to Boston.

I wouldn't close with Bard until I had no choice. His reputation isn't the best in terms of mental fortitude. I don't think he has a true closer's mentality. You can't get in Papelbon's head because his skull is too thick. Paps succeeds because he only has to think about throwing one pitch most of the time. Unfortunately I think Bard is a little smarter and can be made to think on the mound -- usually a bad thing.

Jackson would be a solid #3-#4 here. Not a great pitcher's pitcher, but durable and dependable. A guy who can give your bats a chance to win. Buehrle would be killed at Fenway, which is geared exactly against his abilities. Oswalt could be a really good idea if you don't make the fatal mistake of adding that fourth year. 4 is a bridge too far, even for a big marlet. 3 is really kinda pushing it but he'll get that so it's no use pushing back against that.

No idea why people insist that Bard is a potential starter. He burnt that bridge in 07. Daniel Bard has NEVER been even a REMOTELY successful professional starting pitcher. The man is a relief pitcher. A good one, September hiccup notwithstanding. But definitely a reliever.

Good luck finding one of those.

I think Lavs needs a good long chance next year if it can be arranged. No Tek. Let Lavs and Salty split catching duties. Lavs has the looks of one of those looks-ugly-doing-it-but-gets-the-job-done kind of players that makes people crazy sometimes, but he could easily become a Jorge Posada type player for us (minus the switch hitting obviously) and that would be a hige and welcome thing for us.

LaRussa outmanaged himself. All Washington had to do was field a decent team and let a man with far less control over the game than he think he has, put himself at a disadvantage by overmanaging. If the Rangers win this, it will be because LaRussa decided to try to impact the game himself, instead of letting his players do it.

Middlebrooks is not Laird. Just because there's a relatively comparable guy in the same organization doesn't mean it'll turn out the same way for them. Besides, the book on Laird is hardly written. You could easily wind up eating your words on both of these guys. Laird though is going to have to compete with A-Rod for playing time at his starting position, and I really doubt that's a winning proposition for him. If WMB is hitting there should be much better openings for him to get some work in and refine his skills at the MLB level. I wouldn't write off the ability of either one to rake either for that matter. Maybe even put up some Silver Slugger years. What a kid is in his first and second year in the bigs isn't always all he'll be. Not every prospect that ultimately breaks out does so like Pedroia, in his rookie campaign, Look at Ellsbury this year if you want some big evidence of that These high school type prospects require patience, but have a way of rewarding it. They're not comparable to the college guys at all. And that's never more true than when you start talking about slash stats, patience, discipline, etc. The development cycle is way too different for me to be that worried if they don't have a perfect progression through the minors and the first couple years of big league ball like we demand of a college pick. It's just a different animal.

So I guess I'm not as crazy as I used to be, for arguing extensively that the Sox needed to bring in Mike Napoli. One can only hope that Lavarnway evolves into a similar hitter.

Some very interesting baseball in this series. Lovers of high strategy and close games should e happy so far.