Dojji

What makes you think he didn't understand? You just seem to have this desire to get the last word in at all costs.

Yeah, we heard you the first time.

Not the team that plays a huge big-money model no other team can safely emulate? Shocking. The current torchbearer for the ideal model franchise is Tampa Bay. Might be handed off to KC or Texas soon, and from there, who knows. The point is that any team can build from the draft and try to hold it together for a few years. NOT every team can build from high end FA's and buying out someone else's good fortune.

I'm sorry, I don't think you can judge a starter that way. W-L might be a flawed statistic, but what happens when a starter comes out of the game is not his responsibility, and that's when a lot of those games were lost. It's no secret that the bullpen sucked last year. I'm not saying it's totally useless to evaluate how many of a starter's starts result in wins, but in terms of realibility, it doesn't beat out the already low standards of Win-Loss percentage because it doesn't tell us some very critical facts, like how much of the team's losing when he's in there was even his fault, and how much went to the bullpen, or to the defense, or to the offense. It's just not useful. At least Win Loss percentage covers some of that by default.

It's not really anything that unusual. Many midmarkets assemble a core and run for awhile. sometimes a long while, before the wheels fall off and they have to start over. It's just that Cleveland is at the "start over" point now. Sometimes even the big markets get there eventually.

Lackey's 2010 can be best described as a "mixed success." My personal opinion is that the most important aspects of starting pitching are the ones he was successful at. Sure the ERA was high, but 14 wins and 215 IP isn't to be laughed at. ERA isn't that important if the extra runs aren't turning into losses and the extra durability he showed that I wasn't expecting helps to make up for that. I honestly didn't expect to get that many innings out of him last year.. Regardless of ERA, that's a pretty decent season and one that I wouldn't mind out of any one of our pitchers, with the way we can put up runs. Especially if you bear in mind that John Lakcey was by no means brought in to be the best pitcher on the staff. Lackey was brought in to be the #3 starter, behind Beckett and Lester... and it turns out he was the #3 starter, behind Lester and Buchholz. A little overpaid for the role, sure, but this is the Red Sox, we sometimes pay a premium to bring in the right player.

I do wanna say that I agree with Sox that there's something to be said for the skillset closers lack or don't demonstrate, the ability to get through a lineup multiple times, being factored in.

Carpenter is not a middle of the pack #2 or #3 starter. A middle of the pack #2 or #3 starter would be somewhere in the range of Gil Meche back before he got hurt, or the Andy Pettitte of 2-3 years ago. Carp's had his injuries, but when healthy he's a #1 starter. Besides, you're wrong. There's nothing about being a starter that would magically make you more effective in the bullpen. Starting is about a good arsenal of secondary pitches and good platoon matchups against both sides of the plate. If you have that , you can get through the lineup more times without losing all effectiveness. That doesn't mean that you always dominate the first time through like relievers have to. That's also a question about arsenal, just a different one, one that depends more on one to two really good pitches than on the deeper arsenal of most SP's. There's obviously exceptions and multiple deeper factors to this but the point is that starting is one role, relief is another, and success in either role doesn't guarantee success in the other. And closers are converted starters frequently, but they're converted starters of a specific kind, the kind with a couple overpowering pitches and a lack of durability, command or secondary stuff to get them through the lineup multiple times. The same attributes that keeps most "born relievers" up in the pen when a team is desperate for starting talent. So basically, not so much "failed starter" as "misfiled as a starter in the hope of developmental progress that didn't come."

Maybe it's because he hasn't been sharp when I've had the chance to see him in action, but I'm not sure why everyone is so bowled over by Lincecum. He's a talent to be sure, but is he really *that* good?

Free market, losers. If he accepts more money to play for you, fine, if he accepts less money to play for someone else, also fine.

This is just one of those rare situations where I come to the table knowing a little more than most folks about a given subject. That's all. For the record, one of the big reasons we take marital fidelity so seriously is that someone who has an unrepented infidelity in their past can't get into the Temples. I'm not going to get deep into the nitty gritty of why that's critical, but let's just say Temple ceremonies have a big influence on how you spend your afterlife, especially temple marriage. If you're a practicing Mormon, and you manage to make that kind of mistake, you've got a lot of repentance ahead of you if you don't want to wind up falling well short of your eternal goal. That's just one of the reasons, but if you're LDS it's a big deal. It's all the difference between having a nice place to be forever, and then being there forever, which is, you know, nice, or having unlimited creative potential and eternal growth and progression. I don't wanna miss that cutoff for the sake of a one night stand. Might feel good at the time but it is NOT worth it.

Any particular reason why you're acting like you're on trial here? I'm curious why you're so very invested emotionally in this discussion. And actually, taking the time to understand my faith might be very informative in the quest to understand why Mormons take marital fidelity so very seriously. There IS a reason, and it's CRUCIALLY important to the way we look at things. BTW this is entirely irrelevant. It doesn't matter exactly what the rules of the honor code were. They could ban walking around dressed like a chicken, getting a tat, wearing gang colors, doing illegal drugs, doesn't matter. If you do what the rules say you aren't supposed to do, you incur the consequence. Sucks for the kid, sucks for the team, but this isn't unfair. Things that suck are not unfair by definition.

When was the last time we had a major acquisition that really worked fantastically well? I think we're due.

He ought to hit above his typical numbers. He might be hitting a lot of bombs to our deepest field, but our deepest field is nowhere near as deep as San Diego's.

And switch hitting 15-20 HR power, and 40+ SB speed. If Reyes even has an average season for him, it makes our lineup ridiculous.

Palodios: Why do you suddenly have Gom's avatar?

Yeah I'm sorry, advantage is heavily on Ramirez 's side when you take the homer glasses off. Besides the slight advantage in OPS and OPS+, Ramirez production in little insignificant columns like "HR," "RBI" and "SLG" are worlds apart. Also Ramirez is a plus defender while Scoot is a minus defender. Sure Scoot is a tough at bat, not taking that away from him, but it's literally all he has to offer.

Alexei Ramirez. At least slightly better offensively, worlds apart on D. Why, Ramirez is actually good defensively. Has this thing called "range" going for him you know.

I'd be surprised if Theo isn't sniffing around the Mets situation to see if he can improve the team. No sure knowledge of this, no, but if 29 teams aren't at least discussing internally ways they could exploit the Mets' financial collapse to their advantage then someone's sleeping on the job. They're not likely to be able to re-sign Reyes anyway with their finances in this much a jumble, so getting what you can for him makes a lot of sense from NYM's perspective. I think we can say with some certainty that Reyes would make the team better. Question is, how much better and is it worth taking the risk over the guys we have. I'm willing to go for it because I suspect he's quite a bit more durable than Lowrie, and a better two-way ballplayer than Marco "Slightly Below Average In All Facets Of The Game" Scutaro. I still think he has a few years of 2007 left in him. If he doesn't, it was a one year risk and we'd still have at least one, probably more, of the options we have now to fill the gap going forward..

Chances are very good that Jose Reyes will be better than any one of those 3 options. Especially if you're scouting Scutaro.

Reyes had 600 PA last year. It was the lowest total of his career since he was splitting time with Kaz Matsui in '04. With one exception -- the SINGLE SOLITARY YEAR in which he missed significant playing time thanks to injury in 2009. People need to stop overreacting when an athlete has injury troubles for one freaking year.