Dojji

He doesn't have to. Teams carry backup middle infielders for a reason. MI's get rested more regularly than most other position players, and we have some good replacement level guys like Lin and Nunez, and possibly Phillips down the road. But if he can play 3-4 games out of 5 and leave the rest to the bench guys, that's probably good enough to provide at least some value out of the second base position.

Reviewing the options we might have for 2B in trade, one of the things that jumped out at me is that in terms of raw slash stats, not too many of them are clearly superior to the guy we have out there right now. Of the guys out there available for trade (meaning, not guys who we merely think should be available like LeMahieu and Dozier but players actually being dangled) the only obviously superior options are Cabrera and Machado. Holt isn't a superstar by any means but I certainly don't mind him hitting 8th and 9th, or even occasionally second. He gives us the luxury of having a replacement level guy who can make contact with the baseball and not embarrass himself with his glove. This prevents us from making stupid desperation trades to further drain our farm, and if we need to save our ammunition to bring in a durable lower rotation starter instead, he gives us that luxury too, since he can provide ~1 WAR level coverage at a position where it can actually be pretty hard to find guys much above replacement level. In other words, he gives us options to limit the damage of what IMHO is looking like a but of a seller's market at the deadline. And it's worth pondering given the injuries to our rotation whether it might be the course of wisdom to pass on filling the adequately-covered hole on the roster and move towards filling other more obvious holes, like 5th starter. If things fall through and we can't upgrade at 2B, I'm certainly comfortable with rolling with Holt and upgrading other parts of the team instead. I doubt I'm the only one here. Which since it's a serious possibility if the prices on the trade market don't come down a bit, I think it's fair to consider the possibility that that is exactly what happens.

You don't replace an injured player with a player whose knees could explode at any moment

Beni has a shot if his power improves in the second half. He's def got the speed

Another off the wall idea: To the Minnesota Twins 1B Josh Ockimey SS CJ Chatham RHP Darwinzon Hernandez OF Rusney Castillo To the Boston Red Sox 2B Brian Dozier RHP Ryan Pressly

Again, you're talking about a player currently on the Disabled List. If they're shopping for a 3B, that tells me they're concerned that that stay on the DL might be a bit longer than the official 10 day listing. Quite frankly, while it can always be better, our bullpen is actually very, very good. the recent struggles of Kelly exposed it slightly, but you have to control for the lighthouse fallacy when assessing the bullpen. You never notice the bullpen when it DOESN'T blow the game. And quite honestly our bullpen doesn't blow the game very often. If they're concerned at all about the health of Devers, then 2B and 3B are both far greater concerns than late inning bullpen arms. Which I still expect Dombrowski to trade for one, but possibly a power MR with upside rather than the premium big time bullpen ace we probably don't actually need.

That depends on just how serious the injury to Devers is. we've been assuming it's precautionary. If it's more serious, a rental 3B with championship experience is a pretty good get.

And Giambi, and Sheffield, and, and, and.... basically no one who roots for pinstripes has the right to complain about any other team for steroid abuse. At least Pettitte and A-roid had the intestinal fortitude to admit to it

Mookie was Theo's last gift to us, drafted in his final year with the team.

I lost it at "MOOLIE."

I might add, "while I wish the Sox had more success drafting and developing pitchers, the object of the game is still to win, and a general manager who isn't prepared to exhaust all options in the pursuit of victory is not someone I want in charge of a large market team with an extensive recent history of competing at a high level." Cherington might have been excellent as the GM of a team that could take a few losing seasons philosophically and wait patiently for the peak years he was trying to build up to. That doesn't exactly describe the Boston Red Sox however

I'm sure there's at least a few fans that realize the incredible season Andrew Benintendi is having, but he's being hugely overshadowed in press attention by the obvious guys, Sale, Martinez, Betts. It was only in going through the stats this evening that I realized just how dominant AB was in his own right. Imagine if you will, a LF/CF on pace for roughly 20-25 HR's and 35-40 SB's, hitting just under .300 with an OPS just barely short of .900 while playing lockdown defense in left field and most importantly, remaining healthy. How many teams in this league would a guy like that not be the center of attention and the keystone on which the team's hopes depended? Nope. It's Sale. And Martinez. And Betts. And most people probably think of Bogaerts before they remember Benintendi. I'm not saying this to shout at anyone or accusing anyone of truly overlooking the guy, don't get me wrong. I'm just realizing just how deep and talented this team actually is. We've got a guy on our hands whose career track rather closely resembles that of Bobby Abreu, and on this team he's just that other guy. That's insane.

JD replaces what we lost without Papi, but the real reason is threefold, all basically rounding up to the kids developing First of all, the rotation. Sale was expected to dominate, and we'd be a winning team with him as long as we didn't have 4 sacks of potatoes in the rest of our rotation slots. But the emergence of E-Rod over the last couple seasons has been a pleasure to watch. With Porcello, E-Rod, and Sale in the top 3 rotation slots our rotation is an easy nominee for best rotation in MLB. Throw in Price as not quite what we paid for, but at least a highly durable starter who can save the pen, and we have the weapons we need to make a push in the postseason, with a little luck Secondly, the young guns taking over on offense. Mooke Betts has been outstanding. Bogaerts has been living up to the hype so far. Benintendi has held up his end of the bargain. Devers is showing signs of "getting it." Our catchers have... managed not to be offensive liabilities at least. The rebuild is well underway. Yes having Martinez as the centerpiece of the offense helps, but he can't do it all by himself either. Betts and Beni in particular deserve a lot of credit for the role they're playing. Benintendi has been having a low key fantastic season hiding behind JD and Betts. Most teams would kill to have a single young 5 tool prospect. We have two, even if one is so out-of-this-world good that the other kind of stands in the shadows a bit. But Andrew Benintendi's excellent showing this year is absolutely not to be overlooked. He's tied for third on the team in HR's, leads the team in steals, and has the 4th highest bWAR behind the obvious 3 -- Sale, Betts and Martinez. The fact that the team is so talented that it can actually hide a monster like Benintendi behind 3 other superior players should make us fans very, very happy people. Thirdly -- consider the number of our relievers who are either homegrown or "found talent". A large number of our current relief staff spent at least some time in Pawtucket before they got there. I could be mistaken, but I think that Kimbrel, Kelly and Thornberg are the only "mercenaries" among our relievers and replacements. We've had enormous good fortune with cost controlled middle relief options, and that gives us the freedom to pursue the mercenaries we need to complete a shutdown pen. I dunno about anyone else, but if I needed a closer after Kimbrel's gone, letting Kelly and Barnes fight it out isn't the worst of the available options IMHO. We shouldn't just leave it at that, but at the very least it gives us the luxury of a better bargaining position with Kimbrel or whoever might ultimately replace him. Long story short, our bullpen is strong, deep and cheap thanks to homegrown and "found" relief talent. That's pretty exciting, even if the lighthouse fallacy applies to every bullpen and they're only ever noticed when they fail. The fact that the bullpen ISN'T a major topic of conversation is a pretty ringing endorsement when you think about it.

Assuming a relatively endless supply of nameless good talent, it's optional. If you only have the choice between the talents actually on the market, you have the choice to be endlessly beaten up and your lunch money stolen by the teams who are willing to deal with the wasted years at the end of these contracts, or competing in that market, or to compete in that market.

No it is not optional. If you aren't doing everything you can to win more games, you are selling your team short and risking winding up out on your can like Cherington if the team struggles.

Free agency is a crapshoot. That is also a part of the cost of doing business. That doesn't mean you ignore it entirely.

All jokes aside, looking at the roster, I'm still very much in favor of LeMahieu To the Colorado Rockies Sam Travis (they need a 1B, and we have Ockimey ready to move up behind Travis) Mike Shawaryn (low ceiling high floor prospect, no more than a depth starter here, but might crack Colorado's weak rotation in the next year or two) Tzu-Wei Lin, to replace the hole in their infield with a competent cost-controlled stop-gap To the Red Sox DJ LeMahieu Thoughts?

And we saw the opportunity costs of running a business this way -- we didn't meet the market for top starting pitchers, resulting in us not HAVING top starting pitchers and living in a yellow submarine for 2 years straight. If you want to be a top team, you have to compete with other top teams for top talent. The negative consequences of the last few years of these contracts is part of the cost of doing business in major league baseball, especially as a big market team. If you can't face the idea of having the occasional bit of lost money on your payroll you have no business running a large market team

Time to start paying some serious attention to Josh Ockimey, if you haven't already. He's on the verge of earning himself a promotion to Pawtucket, and as we all know, once a prospect is in Pawtucket the team starts eyeing them for promotion to the big leagues. He seems like a line drive hitter who'll take some walks, and he's taken some steps forward with his power this year. We may see him starting to compete for starting time over the next 2 seasons with our incumbent first basemen.

My opinion, the Red Sox are just taking advantage of the All Star Break to get Devers a bit of extra rest. Everything about this trip to the DL sounds precautionary to me. If it was later in the season or the Red Sox were battling for a playoff spot he'd probably be asked to play through it.

Exactly. Gibson and Koufax were legends, and it wasn't their fault that the postseason sample is so small, it's just a different baseball era where the regular season meant a lot more than it does today, and postseason statistics mattered a great deal less.

No, but there was nothing wrong with Scherzer either. If we signed him in 2015 we wouldn't have had to overpay for Price in 2016 There's a thing called opportunity costs. It weighs the risks and costs involved in making a move with the costs and risks of NOT making a move. The cost of NOT making a move for Lester or Scherzer was desperation in the following season after the lack of good pitching torpedoed the team and sent them to the basement. That enabled Price's agent to skin us alive. Yes bad contracts can have terrible consequences, but NOT acting can also have consequences. This is business 101 stuff here. This is a thing I'd expect Cherington to realize, but if he did realize it he couldn't get ownership to give him the freedom to act on it, and that's just as bad. If we spend the resources we need to in order stay competitive in the first place, we DON'T have to do what DD did upon entering Red Sox management, and have to empty the magazines buying talent in a buyers' market in order to repair the neglect to the rotation caused by our penny pinching ownership and a feckless prior GM.

No knock on Gibson, he didn't have a lot of chances to show his stuff in the postseason. He was dominant when he was tried, but due to the playoff structure of his era, he only even made the postseason twice. Koufax dominated the postseason the three times he was there. Schilling on the other hand was exposed to playoff baseball 5 times in his career and rose to the occasion every single time. Gibson and Koufax were legendary pitchers, but Schilling's right up there with them as a postseason pitcher in my book, if only because he had so many more chances to fail, and didn't, even in his advanced years as a ballplayer he always got the job done in October, that's pretty legendary in its own right..

Yes. I can't think of another pitcher as consistently effective in the postseason as Schilling

Doubt it. It's a bedrock of statistics. If you get a deep sample, go wide. The width of a sample can control noise almost as well as raw quantity of sample.