Dojji

Again, there are ways that the salary could have been cleared. Thomas is not the sole cause of losing out on Kessel.

Which is probably going to be a prerequisite price of admission to even get the Mariners talking Hernandez.

If we get Adrian Gonzalez, and then offload Lowell for a bit piece to make room, I will be a very happy Sox fan. Once the dust settles up in Toronto after the firing of Ricciardi, we need to be all over Halladay. the chance to get him is too good to pass up, especially if a)it does not cost us Buchholz and we can extend him.

The Phillies broke a 27 year drought of their own, although with 30 teams it really wasn't much of a drought anyway.

The first year AD was AD 1. So to which decade of all the ones since are we assigning only nine years?

So what historic events happened in the year AD zero?

ehh, like I said, of the 4 major sports I know the least about basketball. And who the baseball team of the decade is kinda depends on that whole 2000-2010 vs 2001-2011 thing. if it's the latter, then the Sox are the only two-time champ in the decade (D-backs, Angels, Marlins, Bosox, Chisox, Cards, Bosox, Phils, Yankees, ____, _____) Either way though it's premature to talk about since there's either 1 or 2 more seasons in the decade, and if we do win the World Series in 2010 that'll make a huge difference in perceptions.

Basketball isn't my strong suit but I thought LAL did most of its damage in the late 90's.

The Mariners are a good offseason away from being a Wild Card contender. that's not the time to trade your ace. We'd have a better shot at Zack Greinke of the Royals. They're not close and their farm isn't really very good yet (Dayton Moore is sinking a ton of money into it so that should change, but it hasn't yet) so given the choice of which one is most likely to trade its ace, Kansas City is probably that team.

Agreed. The only other franchise in sports who can touch what the Patsies did this decade is the Detroit Red Wings.

You are underestimating the heck out of Rajon Rondo. He's not exactly a charity case on the starting 5. I watch enough basketball to know that Rajon is easily the fastest and most athletic starter on the Celtics roster, and he's also the only guy in that starting 5 that really counts as "young." I'll take Ainge's word over yours on what the kid is worth, and Ainge's signature is beside Rondo's on that contract. If no one goes over $11M for Rondo as a UFA, then he doesn't sign him to that money to keep him out of RFA status. Either you're wrong or Ainge is, and I know which one I'd put my money on. BTW you're one to be talking about being capable of civility with the disgraceful way you and Emmz behaved in this thread..

A young player like Rondo who's shown consistent improvement, plays at a star level and has upside beyond his current level? If he goes to RFA, he might get that much. If the Celts don't think they're getting a decent bargain on Rondo, the deal doesn't get done. That right there tells me that Rondo's worth more than $11M AAV if he was a UFA. How much more? I dunno, I don't watch much basketball, but it's not that insane.

I read it. Not much to it though. The last 4-5 pages of this thread amounted to b407 repeatedly stating his position well enough for a 5 year old with FAS to understand and you and Emmz doing your best to drive him nuts. Short of it is, he thinks that by the end of Rondo's deal he'll be worth more than the deal he landed. if that's hard for you to understand, I think you might benefit from remedial classes.

Fixed.

Which has pretty much been the tenor of the knuckleheads in this thread throughout this idiotic discussion. Name-call, word-twist, give bosox all the hell you can for as little reason as possible, and then not take any accountability at all for it simply because you outnumber the guy and he doesn't articulate his points well. Real cute, guys. way to be classy.

No they aren't. By pythag we're not that far behind the Yankees, we just had some epic slumps at the wrong times this season. We need to pick up about +30 runs this offseason and we should be good to go. With black holes last year at SS and C for much of the season that shouldn't be too difficult to do.

What the guy's saying isn't that difficult to understand guys, and he's got a point. The discussion kicked off with someone saying Rondo's a bit overpaid with his extension. B0407 disagreed. His skillset is a little easy to underestimate since he's a distributor rather than a shooter. The $15M he keeps mentioning is clearly the value he sets on the player. Much like Theo sets a value on guys he's going after. That value is a MAXIMUM, not a MINIMUM. Like it is for, you know, every other GM and armchair GM who's expressed such a point in the history of ever. ALL OF YOU have expressed similar monetary values for at least one player in the sports spectrum in the past. NONE OF YOU wouldn't leap at the chance to bring in a player for LESS than your stated value. His clear and obvious point, which you bucketheads keep walking right past in your eagerness to paste the guy, is that he feels Rondo's value is higher than his AAAV even after the contract. And the kicker? MOST OF YOU AGREE WITH HIM! So can we please shut this idiot circus down and talk about something else?

The only reason Beckett moves on is if his demands are unreasonable, and I don't see that happening. There is no reason whatsoever to "move on" from Beckett.

Does anyone else see a bounceback year for Big Papi next season? For the first time in what, three years, he finished the season healthy. maybe instead of focusing on rehabbing this and surgery on that he can actually go into his normal offseason preparations this year and actually put a last hurrah together.

Numbers in the AFL are compltely irrelevant BTW. I don't care, at all, what a player's numbers in fall ball or winter ball look like, since it's not predictive of *anything.* All the AFL is is an excuse to get additional reps.

Tim Wakefield hasn't pitched 200 innings since 2005. But he is a steady, average pitcher to round out the bottom of a rotation, I agree with that.

He's just nailing it down with corroborating evidence. II think we've pretty much wrung this one dry.