Dojji

The game is now on Orlando Cabrera's bat.

I guess that'll do, Magglio.

Hold onto your hats, people. Miggy coming up next inning, and it could be for all the marbles. If the Tigers want to win this, Magglio Ordonez has to get on base to lead off the inning.

Hmm, carry the lead for the bulk of affair, then cough up that lead late. Sound familiar? it's the playoff game, and also the Tigers' 2009 season.

Say he struggles a little at the outset, then gets hurt for a couple weeks. In the meantime, they call up Tazawa, who pitches brilliantly. I dunno about you but I'm not going to be 100% sanguine about just handing the rotation spot back to an underperformer given a reasonable alternative. And from a "value to the team" perspective, Harden to the pen seems like exactly that to me.

I really don't think we're on his list. If he comes to Boston he's in some danger of getting crowded into the pen since we have 4 well above average starters and some interesting prospects coming up in the very near future. It would free the Sox to trade Bowden though, which is a common thread in other moves discussed on the forum. if he's willing to come here, I'm not denying that he'd be a good asset to have during the healthy times.

The first question to ask when talking about Harden, IMHO, is are we actually looking for a fulltime starter. I'm not sure we are. Not that Harden wouldn't represent an upgrade over Wakefield, but if we went into the season with what we had, we'd not only be OK we'd have one of the better rotations in baseball. I have to think that solving that #5 starter role has to be secondary to dealing with the mess at short or resolving our future at left field. I also think Harden is likely to avoid any club that speculates about his usefulness out of the pen. If he was really willing to experiment in that area he'd probably have done it by now. Otherwise he'd probably be making more money as the closer type he'd be if he tried it.

The more I look at Fangraphs, the more I realize just how little I know about sabermetric analysis. It almost scares me just how comprehensive the information on that site is.

Superb point. Especially if you bear in mind that the Sox plan to contend indefinitely and will very likely make the postseason next year.

Sox over Angels Yankees over Twins Sox over Yankees Phillies over Rockies Dodgers over Cardinals Dodgers over Phillies Sox over Dodgers in 5 (Lester MVP)

I want the Twins if only to make sure Mauer wins the MVP and not some Yankee.

While we're on the subject of often-injured pitchers with interesting stuff, has there been any news on Ben Sheets? Is he done for good? A cursory news search doesn't reveal a whole lot of recent info on the guy.

I'd like to point out that I did do research. I just came away with incomplete info. Honestly though, Bedard's been on my lust list for awhile. I wanted him last year too. For some reason I never really got the love affair with Rich Harden. On the emotional level I can't make myself want the guy. The problem is if I just say that, we're right back to where we began with me being called an idiot because how can you not want this guy. So I do my best to surround my argument with logic, which I've always sucked at, and we wind up right where I would have wound up anyway. It names no sense, but again we come back to the main point -- I've always sucked at logic.

As I recall about Bedard though, he never threw all THAT hard. He was a low 90's fastball guy who lived off his curve, unless I'm totally insane. My point is that if he can get that shoulder healthy, it's not really that unreasonable to hope he can come back. Course, that's one heck of an "if." And seriously, if I remember anything from my reading about sports injuries, you don't suddenly have a labrum injury. that had to becoming on for awhile. Meaning that the league is smarter without Bavasi polluting it, since he probably traded for an injured pitcher. Also meaning that a lot of that "dimished stuff" is possibly accounted for in his 2099 performance. A guy doesn't very often pitch worse while he's injured than he does after he's recovered. On the other hand, we've watched this injury claim Matt Clement and Curt Schilling just from this team in the last few years so I'd be a fool to underestimate it.

Ack. You're right, I missed what the extent of the injury was. I thought it was just a generic shoulder problem. I was hoping our shoulder strengthening program would help him there. OK, scrap Bedard then. Likely as not he won't be pitching in 2010 anyway. Although frankly, with Harden's perennial shoulder and forearm problems, and the fact that he's a hard thrower, I can't imagine he won't have a call from Mr. Thomas John at some point himself.

Frankly I disagree that Harden's upside is tremendous, if only because his reality is already pretty good. In the end, it's a tossup between the three IMHO. Harden has vastly superior stuff, Duchscherer puts the other two two shame with his command, and Bedard's somewhere in the middle, but has actually put together consecutive healthy seasons a couple years ago. All three will probably miss some time, and we have no real ability from here to predict who and how much, so that line of reasoning is stagnant. All else being equal, or at least being close enough, I want the guy who has proven he can handle our division. That's just my opinion, and I make no apologies for it. Why? And if we get struck by lucky lightning, I want a guy who can slide into another rule rather than sitting in Pawtucket forever. Also, if we re-up Wakefield, like I think we will, then a swing-man to back up Wakefield when he has his annual back injury starts to look like a darn good idea at that point. Uhh.... what??? Which system exactly would we be blowing? Cuz last I checked, the team wasn't exactly short on cash. And yes, to pick up two free agents who may or may not be offered arbitration from their ballclubs, that may very well be all we have to give up. If they accept arb? Then the Cubs and/or Mariners get a draft pick (I can't imagine the Athletics offering Duchscherer arb). You need to check your work for internal consistency.

In the AL West, yes, which also hosts several of the larger parks in our league. When a guy has an ERA of 4 in the NL Central, why are we assuming he belongs in the AL East? If the NL Central is a hitter's paradise, we're a hitter's Utopia. Furthermore, why exactly are we playing the my-division-is-scarier game without acknowledging Bedard's prior experience in the AL East while playing for a team that faced both the Yankees and the Red Sox? Most of the changes seem to be within a standard deviation of the mean. I mean, I'm supposed to be worried about a fastball velocity drop from 92.1 to 91.6 over two years that you yourself admit represent smaller sample sizes? Not to mention that most of these numbers have a minimal baseline at best from Bedard's healthy years to form a basis for comparison. This falls under Mark Twain's "damn lies and statistics" heading as far as I'm concerned. What argument?

Go back and read the articles from around the time they traded for him. that year Seattle was in the Wild Card hunt and actually led the Yankees at the end of August. I don't think it's much of a stretch to think that their GM thought he was close and the Silva signing and the Bedard trade bears that out. Of course their offseason was a freaking disaster, their first baseman evaporated in a puff of slider batspeed, their best player was killing the baseball for the Orioles, the ghost of Kenji Johjima haunted the back of home plate providing virtually nothing and inexplicably batting fifth, Jose Vidro stopped providing... whatever it was they deluded themselves into thinking he could provide from the DH spot, Carlos Silva nearly outdid Barry Zito as one of the worst contracts in MLB, and their rotation fell apart completely even without Bedard's own nonparticipation. Bedard was promised a contender and instead the Mariners collapsed utterly -- thanks in large part to the deal that brought him there.

I'm not trying to. I'm still trying to figure out exactly why Dipre is making such an issue over this. The hypocrisy of defending the acquisition Harden while simultaneously bashing the FO for bringing in veteran question marks makes my jaw drop. Of course, I recognize that teams take chances with personnel all the time and that we are in a great position than any other team (yes, even NYY) to take this kind of risk because of the stability in the rest of our rotation, so I don't have a similar problem. I would overpay for neither of Harden or Bedard. Which is why I brougth up Duchscherer. Who I would mostly acquire as a reliever to replace the (proably) outgoing Takashi Saito You're having trouble processing the potential of one of the best, richest, and most financially stable franchises in the sport being able to afford multiple free agents in the same season? I mean seriously, we spent more on Daisuke alone than the total contracts Bedard and Harden are likely to bring down combined.

NL Central. So either you think Hideki Okajima has horrendous stuff, or you're prepared to admit that velocity is not everything. besides, Harden isn't exactly Justin Verlander when it comes to fastball velocity. If you keep bringing irrelevant extras in here we'll be here all day. He was promised a contender and was delivered a cellar dweller. I'm not loving the attitude but I can understand the frustration. Upside is questionable IMHO. If only because you have to be on the field for the upside to mean anything.

Right, because a guy advocating Harden really needs to be railing on the FO for bringing in question marks, injury bait and National League underperformers.

True, but the fact that Penny has been by far the more dependable pitcher over the last 5 years is neither here nor there. Yeah, and I went back and looked, and his las three years are his three best years by k/9. What diminished stuff would that be? Taking the small sample size at face value, Bedard had the highest ERA+ of his career and the second highest k/9. H/9 and OOBP also suggest that when he is pitching, he's as good as his 2007 breakout season suggested he was. Bearing in mind that that 2007 result came in the AL East I'd say if he's behind Harden, which he probably is, it's not by a great deal. While we were waiting for Lester to break out, he was being compared to Bedard in terms of stuff and future projections. The concept of having two of them appeals to me. That is a factor, and you do have to think about that, but when it comes right down to it, Erik Bedard hasn't really been in very motivational situations with the Mariners. the GM who brought him in was fired for doing so and it was transparently clear that his team was going nowhere. I really feel that the motivational factors for a guy who can pitch as successfully as Bedard did for a team like the Baltimore Orioles are overblown, and that giving him a good clubhouse and a chance to contend would be good for him. And Rich Harden of all people isn't a question mark?