Dojji

And it seems to me that the primary reason for your concern over this (that Varitek was the starting catcher) is now null so you are officially whining about a nonproblem. Anyway, we have Victor Martinez. The original problem posed by this thread is resolved making the whole conversation moot. So feel free to gloat about Varitek's decline. Your victory is as assured as it is irrelevant to anything.

The Phillies are good enough for third place in the AL East. Even without adjusting for having to face us and the Yankees 19 times a year instead of the Mets and Nats, record and run differential would dictate that they wouldn't make the playoffs if they were an American League team. The pitching performance they've put together is remarkable and Any other division they'd probably run away with, but the AL East would daunt them.

Just to confirm, we're talking about a .025 drop in Jason Varitek's OPS as if it's the end of the world as we know it. Think about it. If he's been that bad since the break, and his OPS has only dropped marginally, what does that say about how many at bats he's been getting? Seems to me that you're trying to set up a rant over the offensive value of the backup catcher.

Yep, he's fallen all the way from .769 to .744. Precipitous decline, that. Jason Varitek was never a consistently great hitter. Other than his three peak years in 2003-2005 did the guy have three consecutive years of .800+ OPS. what he's doing right now is more or less what it's reasonable to expect going forward.

The Mariners may have a few holes, but if you'll look closely and count on your fingers and toes, you might have noticed that they are winning more games than they lose right now. That makes them a "winning" franchise. And one not too danged far from making a move up the AL West ladder I might add, especially if they can build around King Felix in their starting rotation. They haven't spent their money wisely in recent years but you can't pretend they don't have it to spend. The Mariners are a team with above average fiscal strength right now that's willing to spend what it takes to keep key players happy (see Ichiro) What on God's green earth makes you think that Felix wouldn't be one of the players they'd most want to keep happy? they were polite enough not to hang up on Theo Epstein instantly. That's not the same as listening and you know it. Trading a player like Felix for less than a perfect return will doom that franchise. They're better off paying the money to keep Felix and then going to the free agent market looking for high-OBP, high SLG types to flesh out the middle of their lineup and finding a #2 starter. Whatever fans said this are nearsighted. For one thing, the kid's in his mid 20's and still getting better, for another, this is a team that just spent $20M for Ichiro Suzuki, who certainly won't get any better and doing to be in major decline before the end of that deal. The things holding this franchise back are a combination of the aftermath of the Bedard deal, and the Silva and Washburn contracts. If they could resolve these issues they'd be able to build around Felix and get into contention pretty quickly.

Kilo, where the heck are you?

Sure, I think they will in fact do exactly that. True aces are all but impossible to come by. If you have the resources, spending them on keeping an ace is one of the best possible uses of those resources. Even cash strapped or confused teams do what it takes to hold onto them as long as they can. Seattle is a midcap team; they can afford to hold onto a few prime talents, and it would shock me more if they decided Felix WASN'T one of those. Maybe if the old regime was still in place you could have acquired Felix Hernandez from them but I doubt the new GM fails to appreciate the unique talent that this guy is and I have confidence that Seattle WILL pay a high price to hold on to him. Besides that, the Mariners have some bad money coming off the books in the next couple years, freeing up some cash to hold onto true assets. Unless there's some serious bad blood between King Felix and the Mariners, he will be a Mariner through 2012 at least IMHO.

Yes, I was aware. I have a hard time believing the Mariners can't buy out at least a couple years of free agency from Felix Hernandez. That makes the nearest possible non-insane acquisition of King Felix probably 4 years from now. If you didn't like the Jimenez mention, we probably have a crack at Zack Greinke before Felix. I would happily deal Expo, Kalish, Bard, Anderson, and Kelly for Greinke. Debatable whether that's enough from KC's perspective -- true aces are expensive.

I'm sorry, we just don't have the pieces to go after Felix while he's still cost-controlled. We'd probably have a better shot at Ubaldo Jimenez.

I think Pap's went and gone and got right.

LOLRAYS

Nice work by Wagner, and the guys he fanned are very tough strikeouts.

The excuse for Buchholz is that he's young and it's not time to really turn him loose yet.

Wagner doesn't have his best heat today.

Great hustle by Youkilis.

you sound like I do sometimes when I'm trying to defend a pet theory that I know deep down is at least a little unreasonable.

This could be a wild game.

This inning should be OVER. Buchholz got screwed by the umps.

That was right down the middle. Awful call.

Even if Gonzo/Lowell get that hit, RR is the guy warming and the inning doesn't last much longer.

Good trade value he may have, but he's still an above average pitcher last time I checked, and THIS team has need of those too. I don't think the minor league depth justifies dealing an asset like daisuke unless the return is larger than I think it will be. Just because he has SOME value doesn't mean we'll get anything immediately useful out of him, and we kind of need that to justify stripping our starting pitching depth by one healthy, above average, professional veteran starter. Even if he has some warts and flaws and wasn't quite worth what we paid for him, if he's still justifying his spot on the roster then he will be needed in Boston.

OK I'll buy that. It is a bit of a head scratcher put that way. But RR would have come out no matter what in the bottom of the 8th so I'm not sure it matters.

Of course the wild card here is that we don't know how Lowell was feeling. We all know that he's had injury problems this year and it's not really a question of getting over them as much as it is having good days and bad days. It's entirely possible that he wasn't available. We don't always get told these things. So before I wrote the manager off entirely for a nonmove I'd like to be a little surer the move was actually possible.

A-Gon has come through in the clutch quite a bit since we acquired him, and Lowell pinch hitting there meant Green in the field -- something to be avoided. I dunno, I probably would have gone with Lowell myself. Might as well use the best available hitter.