Dojji

EMart barely showed up in this decade. He's a player of the 90's.

if you change that to "tell the difference between good offensive players and great ones" then I'd be more inclined to agree.

For the most part we'll be replacing those contracts with other similar contracts. IIRC only the Lugo money is really freed up. That'd cover Beltre, unless we need it to keep one of our relievers (read: Papelbon) happy.

Not from the Marlins' perspective. From their perspective they'll control him less long because we've burnt arb clock. They might go after him anyway because he's a unique talent, but they won't value him as much as teams that actually pay their ballplayers would.

Swap Ellsbury with Bard and Weiland and it might work though. And given the choice between Scutaro and Beltre as the everyday 3B I want Beltre. And I've made no secret of my feelings about Adrian Beltre.

A few too many relicso n your list who established themselves mostly in the 90's. That applies to Pedro, Johnson, Bonds, Jeter and Chipper Runner up in parentheses LHSP: Johan Santana (Mark Buehrle) RHSP: Roy Halladay (John Smoltz) Reliever: Mariano Rivera (Trevor Hoffman) C Joe Mauer (Victor Martinez) 1B: Pujols (Carlos Delgado) 2B: Chase Utley (Jeff Kent) 3B: Chipper Jones (Aramis Ramirez) SS: Derek Jeter (Alex Rodriguez) LF: Manny Ramirez (Carl Crawford) CF: Torii Hunter (Andruw Jones) RF: Vlad Guerrero (Ichiro) DH: David Ortiz (Jim Thome)

OK, I screwed up on scutaro a couple different times. Let's get past that, and see your plan.

The fact is that if we gained Hanley, and kept Buchholz, there aren't too many places I can think of that would be in urgent need of replacement within the next 2 years. First base would be just about it, and that's not a difficult position to fill adequately. And I didn't even tough our catching depth, maybe one of those guys moves over. Also, I was overbidding so I wouldn't derail the thread by someone pointing out "this guy's worth more than that!" I don't think either player would cost MORE than my posted price -- they might cost much less.

Yeah, agreed again. There's maybe 10-15 pitchers of that caliber in the entire big leagues, and Sabean developed two of them. He gets a lot of leeway for that.

Yeah, I agree. He's drafted well, especially pitching.

If we got Hanley, what does anyone care what happens to Scutaro? I'll admit I forgot completely about him, I guess that'd make him a very well remunerated, #1 pick costing utility man but that's more what Scutaro's career role is anyway.

I dunno, Berkman's interesting. Also, that list somehow omits Paul Konerko, who at 35 would have a good year left in him perhaps. And I can't help but notice Reyes at SS either.

I'll start: Signings: Nick Green, utility IF Trades: Paul Konerko to Boston Manny Delcarmen and Ryan Kalish to Chicago. The Chisox have been looking for a CF prospect for awhile, and Kalish is one of our better ones, boasting good speed and power even if he doesn't really show one incredible tool yet. Manny Delcarmen is the kind of power arm that teams like to gamble on in these kind of rental deals, and he's an upgrade on guys like Octavio Dotel. Hanley Ramirez to Boston Casey Kelly, Ryan Westmoreland, Daniel Bard, Kyle Weiland, Anthony Rizzo, and Stolmy Pimentel to Florida. That's a LOT of talent, including at least one untouchable. If that price can't pry Hanley out of Florida, nothing will. For a shortstop of Hanley's sheer talent level though, it's a fair price to pay, especially if we're able to keep him around past the life of his current contract. The trouble in dealing with Florida is that they're unlikely to be as interested in Buchholz, since they don't pay money for ballplayers and Clay's used up some arb time. So you really have to throw together a pupu platter of prospects before they'll really take you seriously, maybe add some money on top even. On the other hand, we might get a bit of grace here for taking a large contract off their hands that we wouldn't get with any other team when discussing a talent the likes of Hanley Ramirez, so perhaps I'm being too pessimistic. Anywho, final roster Lineup: Ellsbury, CF Pedroia, 2B Hanley, SS Youkilis, 3B Martinez, C Ortiz, DH Konerko, 1B Drew, RF Cameron, LF Scutaro, SS Hermida, OF Green, IF Varitek, C Kotchman, 1B Beckett Lester Lackey Daisuke Buchholz Papelbon Oki Ramram Ram-a-ram* Richardson* Bowden* Tazawa* *these are just fill-in names for whoever we bring in to fill out the lower 4 spots in the bullpen. Those roles don't tend to be vastly important and can generally be filled well by a team with good scouting. That said, shred away, good people!

It's more realistic to think Hanley gets moved than Adgon will actually. Hanley is less affordable to his team, and has had some personality issues leak out, and is a pretty dang big failure as a "draw," if Florida's attendance is any indicator. Adgon on the other hand is squeaky clean, dirt cheap and popular in the home country. He actually IS the kind of face-of-the-franchise that Florida is wishing Hanley was. Hoyer is fully capable of waiting til next year to trade Adgon anyway, and considering how cool he's been to some really quite generous Boston trade offers you have to wonder just how available Adgon really is.

Actually the Marlins have a fair offense, they just have no pitching outside of Josh Johnson. Turning Hanley into two or three high upside SP's and Daniel Bard would appeal to them I think.

Actually, I'm not so sure that's true. If you replace Kotchman with a league average 1B I don't think run production takes that much of a hit, especially with a full year of Victor Martinez balancing the loss of Jason Bay. All the more reason to look for a veteran RHH 1B. Which is one of the reasons that Adrian Gonzalez doesn't really top my list of "World's Greatest Fits With Boston's Current Needs."

Yeah, NWIH Kotchman goes into the season as the starting 1B. That said, snag a veteran 1B with some productive years left and we're good to go Not the same level of lineup that the Yankees have, but a lot of their key players are aging or gone and we have the vastly superior rotation, so I think it balances out.

Jacko: You can apply exactly that same argument to Adrian Gonzalez.

Even if that's true, they don't need specifically Gonzalez. Frankly I'd rather they go after Hanley because as a shortstop with unprecedented level of offensive talent, it's easier to justify a large return in talent than it is for yet another LHH slugging 1B. He's also a better fit for the Fens, and the upgrade over Scutaro would be much more beneficial than the upgrade of Adgon over Youkilis -- or even Adgon over Kotchman for that matter. A rental like Konerko wouldn't add that much to the price tag and would provide average to above average production at first base and a full replacement of Lowell's lost production. Kalish and Doubront gets that part done. I'm also absolutely positive that the Marlins are very interested in players like Casey Kelly and Ryan Westmoreland and even more sure that you can load the deal with big league ready makeweights San Diego would be reluctant to take on. the only real difficulty dealing with Florida is that they'd be less interested in Buchholz because of the arb years we've already blown.

We've had to wait a whole heck of a lot longer than that in the past. And we don't need specifically Adgon to compete with the Yankees. Going after a second-tier guy like Paul Konerko would complete the offseason fine and leave us with a talent-rich upper minors, putting us in a good position to make moves as the situation demands during the season. You can't argue that the Sox aren't serious about getting Adgon with the prices they've put on the table. Hoyer keeps moving the goalposts. If Hoyer won't bite, then he just won't bite and you move on from there.

in a rather limited set of at bats, and he had no problem fielding his position. He was an interesting prospect as a position player and I think that can only help his defense and athleticism as a pitcher. As I said in the other post, the concept of a pitcher athletic enough to play SS isn't discouraging to me. Heck, if he's that fit it might cut down on injuries. And having a pitcher with at least SOME offensive talent would be an interesting novelty.

We're in on Adgon, but we should not allow ourselves to be put over a barrel, especially if we're anything but 100% completely positive that we can resign him at market rates or below. Two years of Adgon isn't worth 4 years of buchholz' upside, much less 6 years of Westmoreland, Kelly and Anderson.

And don't forget that with Reddick, Kalish, Exposito, Anderson and Rizzo, we have some offensive prospects of our own with large upside. We might wind up not really needing to go outside the org to find power bats -- except for maybe at SS and 3B, where we seem to be fairly light right now -- our best 3B prospecty was the uninspiring Jorge Jimemez, and he was just seized in the Rule V draft.

Maybe we'll get Max Ramirez and then he or VMart will play regular 1B

*shudder* THAT is NOT okay. Kotchman is not an adequate bat for first base.