Dojji

Ellsbury, CF Crawford, LF Youk, 3B Adgon, 1B Pedroia, 2B Drew, RF Martin/Salty, C Scoot/Lowrie, SS Nothing sacred about Pedroia batting 2nd and I'm giddy at the prospect of overloading the speed at the top of the order ahead of our best hitters. Now put us over the top. Trade for Jose Reyes. That would be 3 different players with 50SB ability. Unstoppable. That would be the one trade I'd use Lowrie for, as we'd replace him with a better, still young SS. Throw in a strong secondary prospect like Felix Doubront and we're there. If the Mets don't want Lowrie, for Reyes I happily tender just about any prospect left in the system not named Kalish. Picking up a 28 year old with that kind of talent would be legendary with the lineup we already have.

Let's hope this looks like as great an idea at the end of this year as it did at the beginning.

Any combination of Crawford, Ellsbury, Martin, Pedroia, Lowrie and Scutaro would make an effective one-two punch in a lineup. We're pretty much going to have a bottom third of the lineup full of leadoff and #2 hitters, which is incredible.

What's more, in this market, an in-his-prime Lofton would definitely have fetched that much.

Doesn't follow. Scutaro, Drew and Cameron are all coming off the books at the end of the year, the players you name are on hand to replace them.

Don't forget the clam chowder fountain. I still think that's a terrible idea in the middle of august heat, but good luck getting anyone to do something about it.

All that means is "trade speculation is OK but I'd better be involved in the decision making process." Have a hard time believing he'd refuse a trade to Boston and a better chance at the playoffs than he's had since 06

While true, you just can't go and buy all the best RP's. That's a horrible waste of money. You're going to need to bring in some guys who you project to improve on their current #'s to flesh out the pen. Jenks is a fair investment on that basis.

I could get behind a Jenks pickup. He's not that old and there's reason enough to predict a bounceback.

Good. I would love to pick Martin up. He's got a very rare combination of talents for a catcher. If he can get healthy he could turn into an incredible asset, even if the injury does take his baserunning down a notch. As long as it doesn't affect his pop time once he comes back we're good.

Padres announced that they were in rebuild mode when they dealt Gonzales. The only question is whether they tank or bridge. I hate tanking, so I hope they keep Ludwick and look for other veterans to bridge.

Yeah but that guy has now gone on to be a fairly effective starting QB with the Chiefs, who are a good bet for the playoffs at this point. Sure Moss helped him look good, just like the KC running game is helping him look good, but he's always been a competent quarterback. The reason that he didn't play was because he was stuck behind better QB's, not because he himself was terrible. Now that he's had his time to shine, Matt Cassel looks to be making a solid career for himself as an upper mid tier QB making the Chiefs' decision to spend a pick to bring him in a smart one. Besides, this is kinda the Tim Thomas argument all over again. When a guy gets his chance and does well with it, the fact that he took as long as he did to GET the chance should not be held against him. Cassel by and large held up his end of the bargain -- way better than most backup QB's would have, in fact. There are plenty of quarterbacks in this league who would NOT have gone 11-5 even with the crew Patriots put around Cassel that year. And there are at least 3 games I can remember where major screwups by other facets of the team, generally the defense, cost us games Cassel put us in position to win. The Colts game, the Steelers spring to mind and I'm dead positive there was at least one more. (EDIT: Jets' overtime loss) Hey who'd we get with that pick anyway? EDIT: Looks like it may have been Patrick Chung? If so, that was a real win-win. I've been pretty impressed with Chung at times this year.

Guessing here but I'd say that if we sign Martin, it will be at the expense of Varitek, not Salty.

Waaaaattttt????? Turns out the transition was a little shorter than I thought it would be.

Funny thing is, results disagree with you. Moss's departure changed their style of play. You were right about that at least, they certainly aren't the same as they were with him here. With him here they were geared up as a quick, explosive offense looking for quick possessions, big gains. With him gone we play underneath, go for YAC, run the clock and have to play smarter football to succeed. Where you miss the boat is, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady are both perfectly positioned to play the style we have to play without Moss. Gronkowski, Hernandez and Woodhead probably don't play the same roles if Moss is here, and collectively that's as big a loss as he was a gain. Those three have been key to what we've done in the post-Moss era and they don't get the ball if he's here doin his thing. The other point you're missing is that the style the team is playing now is anathema to a Moss. It's not a fit with what he's out there to be. He's an explosion/quick possession offensive player who gets the ball all the time, the entire rest of the team is built around time of possession and a steady progression downfield and having a number of targets. Having him here when he'd declined enough that the time came to get back to playing Patriots football again was always going to be a chemistry issue because no way was he going to keep getting the ball thrown to him as much as it had been. Finally, Patriots style football was what we needed to get back to for the sake of our young, developing D. Moss's style calls for quick possessions, one of the things that means is the D is on the field a fair bit. Our D is too inexperienced to have a lot of success that way. You need tough veteran D to succeed in Moss's style, that can eat a ton of minutes without hurting the team, that's not what we have. Hasn't been since 07. We needed to limit time of possession by the opponent, that meant plating a style of football Moss would never accept. You could see it even while we were still here, Belichick was trying to control time of possession and shelter the D, and Moss wanted the ball and wanted to go get a touchdown. It was a problem that wasn't going to get better this year. We do have one of the, if not the youngest defense corps in the league after all. I just think on the whole, just assuming that adding Moss adds offense without taking anything else away, is such a shallow analysis that it fails the "think about it for a minute, then post" test. You change your whole style to accomodate a guy like Moss. That's what "game changing wide reciever" means. And that also means you change your whole style to compensate for the lack of a guy like Moss. You really think that keeping Moss, that the only thing that would be different is a few more touchdowns? When the Patriots over the last 9 games have played a radically different style of football that has no room for a player like that? Seriously? ... Seriously?

I think we can forget about the Lee-Daisuke thing. Matsuzaka is here for the life of his contract. As he's not nearly as terrible a pitcher as he gets accused of being here, I have little problem with this

Agreed. If you have 2 3B, any 2 3B, on your team and one of them is Beltre, you find another position for the other one.

I'm sorry, what was your point again? It seems to have been lost in a sea of denial and a lame attempt to CYA.

THe Nationals plainly would mean to be contenders in Y2 or Y3 of Lee's deal, not necessarily Y1. Interesting to see them ramp up like this. Washington is not a small market, they might be able to sustain a decent sized payroll over the longish term.

Except that Pats fans have been here before. All through the early stages of the dynasty the Pats were called fluky, outperforming, whatever term you want to use for "they're better than the stats seem to indicate they should be." Any objection along that strain just makes weathered Pats fans chuckle knowingly. We've heard it a few times over the last decade. Simple reason why. Because they know what they're doing out there. Because BB is a coach that knows his playbook, Brady a quarterback that knows his playbook, and both of them know how to integrate new elements into the old schemes. Because they know how to make the plays that really matter, when they matter, and they know how to amp themselves up for critical games. And because the young players on their roster are improving as the season goes on because they're being well coached. This isn't outperformance, It's growth, This is a team that has turned over its roster and has many young, developing players, and they're getting better as time goes on. The Moss trade did catalyze this growth, because it signified what style the Patriots would play going forward and the fact that it was time to hand the ball to the next generation as they've been drafted and readied by BB. They're not playing as badly as you projected simply because you underestimated the hell out of the Patriots youth movement, that's the end of that as far as I'm concerned. Guys like Hernandez, Woodhead and BJGE on offense, McCourt, Chung and Sanders on D, these are the new Pats stalwarts, and I'll be very surprised if they don't take us back to the Superbowl in the very near future. Sure there's no reason to have supposed that they could get it together this fast -- if you're a Vikings fan. Pats fans have seen this before a few times. We know better than to understimate Belichick and Brady when they have a team worth working with.

Oh yeah and that terrible D? The one that no way it could carry the team? The one that was full of talentless rookies who definitely and absolutely sucked? 3 INT's and had Sanchez off balance all game. Yeah. So how's that working out for ya?

I like Crawford's speed but with Ellsbury on staff we don't need it quite as badly. More speed is always better of course but I have no problem if Boston misses Crawford, especially if he winds up out West where he can't do us any harm. I actually look to SFG and LAA to dominate the latter half of the bidding as long as their GM's haven't already decided he's too rich for their blood. Besides, I think Kalish is ready to take the reins in a starting position and he's 5-tool potential where Crawford really isn't quite.

Pass on Magglio. I think he's nearing the end of his shelf life. Besides I think he re-ups with DET. IF we sign him i'll support him but I don't think it's the best possible idea.