Dojji

It does come hard, but you need to put the best lineup in the field. I like Scutaro, if Jed's hurt or terrible I have no problem having him on the field, but Jed has every chance of being the better ballplayer next year if both are healthy.

I'd go after Putz or Dotel for that open spot. One of the two should be available. Of the two I prefer Putz. I like the idea of hard-throwing righties in Fenway with that deep right field to contain their mistakes.

And a shoulder is any less of a concern? Shoulder injuries have ended as many careers as back injuries, and if he has both...

I'm not saying definitely cut him, but crowding Salty into the minor leagues is not the answer, besides which we already have a glut of minor league catchers with issues to work out. If you don't have enough of a read on Salty by now to say what he is, then you need to cut him and let him go to a team that can afford to let him work out his issues at the big league level. Between Expo and Lavarnway you've already got your starting catchers for Portland and Pawtucket in all likelihood, since both need starters' minutes to work out the issues they need to develop on. Neither prospect needs Saltalamacchia interfering with that development, so unless the franchise is no longer taking Lavarnway seriously as a catcher (and I've heard no indication of this) there is no spot in the minors for Saltalamacchia. The only reason to put Salty in the minors is a failure to understand sunk costs. The talent to bring him in has been spent, it is gone, and it won't come back for holding onto Saltalamacchia. Either you trust him with big league time in which case one of our veterans needs to go and be replaced by him, or you don't in which case you cut him. Stashing him in the minors is a three-way loss to Salty, the team, and our other catching prospects in the high minors.

The party's going to end at some point moneywise. Boston is only about 12th or so in overall market size and are somewhere just outside the top 5 in capitalization. The Sox have done a great job getting the fans out and whipping up interest in the team over the years, but Boston can't run neck and neck with NY indefinitely. We've had a great 8 year run, but let's not pretend that it's always going to be this way. This town can in no way sustain a team that is expensive and also bad, like NYY can.

All Lowrie has to do to deserve the starting SS is maintain an OPS north of .716. His injury-riddled career numbers are still north of that. even if he's exposed and nursing an injury, I would still expect Lowrie to be a better offensive player than Scutaro, and if he's healthy there's just no comparison at all. Especially because Scoot is only an average player defensively too. Not that I mind having Marco around, he's respectable and he's brought stability to a troubled position for the team, but Scutaro isn't that great, his selling point was stability to a franchise that needed it badly at the time, and he's provided that at least. But every sample Lowrie's put up at SS is better than Scutaro's best defensively, and offensively it's really no contest. There's no risk in giving him a shot because we still have Joe Consistent on the payroll if he can't hack it, so we owe it to ourselves to find out one way or the other whether the kid can sustain his numbers.

Until they sign him he's an option.

Can I just butt in here with a mention of a serious possible Plan C? Paul Konerko is still a pending FA, and if Fielder's a no-go and Dunn signs elsewhere, the Sox need to kick the tires on a short-ish term deal, maybe 2-3 years. He's a good righthanded stick and has been fairly consistent for Chicago. Not a worldbeater by any stretch but a solid power hitting guy who could play the field if needed. That might be useful depending on whether we can keep Beltre and/or how well we could replace him. I don't trust either Dunn or Fielder to play the field for 130 games, Konerko could actually do that if the situation called for it. Heck, if Beltre walks, go after both Konerko and Dunn/Fielder. You take a defensive hit but the offense makes up for it and as a nice little bonus you trade a first and a second for four picks (two for beltre, two for Ortiz).

What he does in Pawtucket has no bearing whatsoever on whether he should be a big leaguer, therefore putting him in Pawtucket at all is beyond pointless. If you're not going to put him in the bigs there is no poiint to the acquisition and he should be cut immediately.

Saltalamacchia is going to be 26 YO. I just don't think there's any point in keeping him at all if you're going to put him in the minors next year. He's either a big leaguer or not, and what he does in the big leagues next year is going to play a huge role in determining which. If the answer there is "nothing because he didn't get a chance" then we shouldn't have dealt some really rather nifty prospects for him.

I disagree. Saltalamacchia has proven all he possibly can in the minors with Atlanta and Texas. He needs to prove he can be a big leaguer. We know he's a good minor leaguer.

Dang. Just..... dang. That'll break your heart if you have one. I want him back in a reserve role. This is a guy who knows something about baseball. Sometimes it's not all about the numbers after all. It'll make us weaker short-term, but Salty up with Tek to mentor him could make us a better team in 2-3 years than making the short term move and keeping VMart If he could transmit his level of hard work and preparation into Salty, they just might make a catcher of him after all.

But he won't be a player, he'll be a coach. That's a big difference.

I want no part of Aramis Ramirez, and I doubt Theo's doing much more than kicking the tires anyway.

If Lowrie and Scutaro are both on the team, Lowrie should be the starting shortstop until he proves he isn't better than scutaro. Nothing against Scutaro, but his calling card is as a low-risk guy who definitely won't kill you but is only an average shortstop in all facets of the game. Lowrie has at least the potential to do better than that both offensively and defensively and has demonstrated that he's close enough to realizing that potential to deserve a string of consecutive starts next year to see if he can stand up to them or not. If not, then slip him back into the sub role. But don't banish him there without a good long chance to make the starting job his own. That would be ridiculous with only Scutaro to play instead -- even assuming Scoot is healthy next year, we know exactly what we'll get from him and it's good not great. And he'll be there to stabilize things if Lowrie falters anyway, so there's very little to lose.

if V-Mart moves on, Tek should be re-signed to mentor Saltalamacchia. I would not be at all surprised if V-Mart moves on.

A little patience with Nava is in order, he has demonstrated elite level contact skills at every level of the minors and flashed them up here before he got exposed. It is not that unreasonable to hope he can learn how to handle the big league pitchers well enough to be a productive .750 OPS 4th outfielder or so. I agree that ideally Nava ias not a starter, at least until he provides better numbers than the ones he has right now, but I'm not for giving up on the guy when he's showed real flashes of effectiveness in his rookie campaign. It's going to be critical t hat Nava demonstrate an ability to play right field however. If he's just a left fielder in the bigs, then he is indeed AAAA, at least as far as Boston's concerned.

Those concerns are a lot easier to suppress when a player is playing well than when he's coming off the kind of year he had in 2009.

The thing about all the time Lowrie missed is that it wasn't all because of any one thing. The wrist complications were only part of the story and that part was over midseason last year. Mono is not an injury, so he's actually been injury-free for more than a year now. This isn't a video game where a player can't buck his Health Rating, and Lowrie is entering his physical prime, the period of his life where he's probably the least likely to sustain a major injury. Since what killed his season last year was a wrist injury that is now gone, and this year he seems healthy other than a bout with Mono, I do think the people concerned about health are overselling the nature of the problem.

My point is that bullpens need to be evaluated on a year to year basis, and the GM should neither get undue credit when he gets lucky with a great one, nor undue blame when things fall apart far worse than could have been reasonably predicted, which is what happened here. Blame or credit only goes to the GM when a consistent pattern emerges. Years of solid success or consistent failure with the bullpen is to a GM's credit. Theo is neither a great nor a terrible GM as far as the bullpen goes. He's about average, he had a great pen ain 2009 and a terrible one this year and had a lot of people in common between the two. It happens. Of course, the fans tend to overreact when you hit either extreme, lauding the GM when it's great and saying he sucks when things largely beyond his control conspire to knock down his house of cards. I don't think anyone could have predicted that all of MDC, Oki and Paps would have terrible years for them and there's only so much you can do on a year-by-year basis. It's far more important to have a consistent plan and stick with it/

Oh sure, but I trust my reads on guys until given a reason not to. I've held the course on Lowrie for years, as a potential .850 OPS 15 HR guy, I'm not about to buck that just because things start looking good for once. I'd like to welcome some of you guys back to the bandwagon though.

Bullpens are unstable. There's a lot of fluctuation that no one can control. Panicking and flinging talent around trying to "improve" the pen is just as likely to make things worse (see Gagne, Eric) as it is to result in anything good.

I get accused of being overoptimistic when I project a guy like Lowrie for 20 HR's. I was just trying to head off that paticular bitchfest fron a certain quarter. 15 HR from third isn't terrible anyway. We think of it as a corner infield position, but it's definitely not first base where you need a big bat to win. I mean heck, Bill Mueller wasn't exactly Albert Pujols. never hit 20 HR in a year in his life in fact. And we still remember him sort of fondly.

Is this, or is it not, the same Jason Bay that was dominant for the Pirates before he came to Boston? For the record, I think bringing back Beltre is, at this point, more important than bringing back Victor Martinez. If only because Beltre is more likely to still be playing third base regularly in 4 years, which is the likely minimum length of either player's new contract. I have no problem with letting VMart go for a pick and "figuring something out" at catcher, if you start with the presumption that VMart may not catch for much longer. Beltre on the other hand is elite at his position, at least this year, and if his price isn't a killer I'd like to see if he can do it again a few more times. He's had no real issues with his health and while I don't think he'll be as good as he was this year, he should still be more than serviceable. Vmart is much less likely to still retain his value by year 3. Theo deciding to bring Salty in rather than a similar young 3B suggests to me that he's made the same call. He's putting himself in position to replace at catcher. And it's entirely possible that Lavarnway will force his hand in the next couple years too, he's looking fantastic, especially offensively.