Dojji

Or means that he'll be even worse if/when injury IS a problem.

After this draft that rating will go up.

I don't think we need to spend 4M on a situational hitter. If we really need some oomph against one hand or the other for a stretch we have guys we can call up from the minors. Or we could bring up a guy like Nava who while he can't hit for Vlad's kind of power regularly can hit situationally from either side of the plate. With the kind of monsters we have in the regular lineup that strikes me as something we're more likely to need.

OK that made no sense at all. I had Napoli figured for their starting 1B, you don't trade a full time starting power hitter for one over-30 reliever unless you're a lot closer to contending than the Jays are.

Meh, the Angels have always been too much in love with 5 tool outfielders. 's why I thought Crawford was going there.

So can Jeter. He can make routine plays look very pretty indeed. Not that I doubt that Igelsias will be a great defensive SS in time, just saying, I'm certainly not going to say one thing or the other based on video of one routine play.

Because Marco Scutaro is somehow such an amazing shortstop defensively that his preference over Lowrie at SS deserves to be written in pen? By every standard I've looked at, Scutaro is an average shortstop. At best. Believe me, there is nothing Scutaro can do with the ball at short that Jed Lowrie cannot. Furthermore, Scutaro has extensive experience as a utility swingman. there is NO reason why it couldn't be Scutaro playing all over the place as needed. He's done it before too.

Then you do what you usually do. Play the utility man. If Lowrie wins the starting SS job, that guy is probably Scutaro. Who would be the starting SS anyway. Whether Scutaro's at short and Lowrie's swinging all over the place, or the other way around, it's the same bats in the lineup. The issue you're raising here is nonexistent. The only question to ask is when everyone's healthy and rested, which bat between Lowrie and Scutaro you prefer to have in the lineup. I know my answer.

There is no reason to relegate Lowrie to platoon substitute duty if he has the talent to be a better starting SS than Scutaro and he is healthy. There is no need to coddle Marco Scutaro in this way. Not only is Scutaro unlikely to outproduce a healthy Lowrie, he has health issues of his own. You play the better player fulltime if he can handle it, and you FREAKING FIND OUT whether Lowrie can handle it or not. There is no reward in playing Scutaro that's worth the risk of typecasting Lowrie into a fulltime bench player when he clearly has the ability to be more than that. MLB don't stand for Mama's Little Boys. You do not wrap a talented player in cotton for fear he might get hurt. You don't do it to players nursing an actual injury, and you definitely don't do it to a player who is fully healthy at this time. If he gets hurt again, you deal with that. The payoff of winding up with one of the best offensive shortstops in a very offensively stunted American League shortstop pool is worth that risk.

Every player in this entire sport is at risk of injury every time they take the field. I haven't seen any reason to believe Lowrie is at any particularly increased risk anymore. His last 2 "injuries" have been a virus and a pulled muscle and once he got back onto the field from those, he showed no evidence of complications. He's been working as hard as he can all offseason to improve his conditioning, which is the only possible remaining question mark. He's being judged on the basis of one whopper of an injury that struck early in his career and spanned 2 seasons before he got over it. That's patently unfair to Lowrie.

One thing that is true, Lowrie gives us lots of options for developing our prospects. However as at least an average defensive SS with a decent bat, he needs to be in the mix as the starting SS if that's what makes us the better team. Scutaro has been a backup much of his career, he knows how.

While you're there, pick up a clue about the difference between medial issues and skillset issues, and the different effects having questionmarks in each area have on projections. Lowrie has always been at least somewhat productive when healthy. The issue with Iglesias is that we aren't sure he's going to be productive even when he is. What that means in theory is that Lowrie has a distinct upside if his health issues are in fact behind him, as they appear to be. I'm not convinced his numbers last year are all that fluky -- certainly north of where he'll be for a full season, but where he'll be for a full season is well above the level, at least offensively, that Iglesias will be able to match as a rookie. I think the upside on Iglesias is at about the Orlando Cabrera level while Lowrie could potentially reach the level of a John Valentin. It's a question of style choice whether you'd rather have a Cabrera or a Valentin. I'm persuaded that as long as Lowrie's glove is not a liability at short, his bat makes it more likely that he returns high overall value relative to Iglesias, whose defensive skills would make him an excellent substitute while he's learning to hit at the big league level.

You've at least got to get a 0 WAR bat out of the guy. His bat at least needs to not drag his glove down. If you can get .270/.320/.360 out of Iglesias you're doing pretty well. You might not even get that in a rookie campaign. Until I see more out of him in the minors I can't consider the concerns about his bat anything but legitimate, especially when there's so little power projection from the guy, much less any real hitting discipline. And on the other side of the same discussion you have a guy who could be an above average defender in his own right and hit much better, and will already be on the roster when Iglesias is trying to break in. I don't think it's fair to relegate Lowrie permanently to the bench without giving him a couple solid months to start and see what he does with it. He is not Johnny Brittlebones, and he's been working hard this offseason. And he has the ability to dramatically outplay Scutaro this coming season and make the shortstop job his own -- if he's allowed to and we're not stupid enough to disincentivize good play by sticking with a plan in the teeth of the facts. Basically all I'm saying is, before we decide that Iglesias is definitely our SS going forward starting in 2012, let's see what Lowrie -- who is by any reasonable standard a possible viable contender for the starting SS position -- can manage to put together in 2011.

Glovey McNoodlebat is a fairly common term around here describing a whole category of limited offense shortstops that are there for their defense. I didn't invent it just for Iglesias. Anywho, all signs point to a productive Lowrie next year from here. It'll have to translate from theory to practice of course, but Lowrie's doing what he needs to do right now in order to take the next step in his development, and before I get too sold on the new kid being the starting SS in 2012, I wanna see what Jed can do in a full, healthy season in 2011.

This is the American League East. Every player at every position needs to hit, at least a little. At least as much as say Gonzo a couple years ago. You cannot have Tony Pena, Jr. on your roster no matter how well he fields. Not in this division. Theo is talking like a guy with confidence in Iglesias to figure out offense on a relayively consistent basis, at least well enough to be merely below average. I'll take it on faith that Theo knows what he's talking about. But it's not like there is no competition for the shortstop job in 2012 either. Iglesias is going to have to get through Lowrie for the job, and Lowrie has made it plain he plans to make a fight of it by the way he's trained this offseason. He'll need to make good use of this year, but he has more than enough raw talent to play at a high level as a starting SS if things fall right for him and that puts Iglesias in a tight spot, especially because of Jed's relative experience forming a potential tiebreaker. If Lowrie is hitting up to his ability ans playing average to above average D I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that that's a better package than Glovey McNoodlebat, so if Iglesias wants to work in Boston, he needs to offer more than that package. He needs to hit.

I'd go looking for an RHH bench outfielder who you could stash in the minors in the event Cameron can't get it done. Right now the closest guy we have to that description is Nava -- which isn't bad unless he's also the ONLY guy.

Let's not forget that 3-4 years ago Justin Duchscherer was a pretty fair setup man. IF he wants to start that won't work out here, but if you want another reliever who can play setup caliber innings, Duke could be in the mix.

Yankees have a way of overhyping their prospects to increase their trade value. I think Austin Jackson is the one really high rated Yankee prospect since Cano that's come up and actually lived up to the billing. So you have that and Gardner being a pleasant surprise. Cue applause.

Don't forget Zack Greinke. He was a fairly talented hitter before he was drafted. Just a better pitcher.

The problem I've seen with Papelbon seems to center around his inability to throw anything for a strike but fastballs. All of his offspeed stuff is of the "dives out of the zone" variety. That's a kind of guy that a league can adjust to and start taking pitches for balls they used to swing over the top of. So they wait for him to go down to 2 or 3 balls and then cheat on the heat. He needs to find a way to back them off the fastball behind in the count. That happens when he can hit the strike zone consistently with something other than a 4 seam fastball. Just my $.02. If I had to come up with a verdict, it would be "work on a cutter or two-seamer to throw off the fastball timing." We'll see what Young comes up with.

But I could number you a hundred setup men with great peripherals, some of them as good as the closers, and none of them will sniff the hall. The closers get attention because of Saves. You can call it right. You can call it wrong. I call it accurate.

Winning the World Series has no impact on hall of fame status IYHO? I'm not talking about it like it's a negative thing. It's more about the absence of a positive.

Hoffmann doesn't have to match Rivera to be a Hall of Famer. It would have helped if he' been a more common sight in the playoffs though. A closer without a ring is a tougher sell than a starter without a ring. But I think he still gets in. Saves is a stat that gets paid attentntion to, and all-time leader in a category like that is something to hand your hat on.