Dojji

http://news.soxprospects.com/2009/04/busy-sox-add-denker.html Not bad at all. He has a decent bat and plays 3B as well as 2B. Not much of a glove, but then there's always a reason why these guys show up on the waiver wire. He could fill a need for Boston right now. Picking up power-hitting infield depth is never a bad move.

It did net us a lot of talent, considering that $105M or so netted us Daisuke, Oki and Tazawa.

I'd really like to take a look and try to find the LF's in this league that are definitely better than Bay. I don't think there are that many of them.

It certainly looks that way. Not that most of us didn't see it coming well enough to worry about it long in advance. The only counter to that position is, is the good-name we're gaining in Japan, and the other talent it might net us (examples: Tazawa, Okajima, probably more in the future) worth the 100M investment even if Daisuke runs into these problems associated with his obligation to pitch for Japan in tournaments like the WBC?

Called up in the wake of Matsuzaka's trip to the DL. Another young reliever with plenty of innings in his arm gets to play in Boston. Possible that he gets to debut for the right to turn Javier Lopez into trade fodder? A bullpen with Jones at the bottom of it seems stronger to me than one with Lopez.

THat means two things 1: Jones' assignment isn't the usual Pawtucket busfare, otherwise with not being able to use him until tomorrow, they'd have waited until tomorrow. If Daisuke needs extended downtime Jones will be here throughout. 2: Bowden and Buchholz remaining in Pawtucket means Masterson is in the rotation. Until we hear otherwise, depending on how you want to calculate it either Tim Wakefield or Justin Masterson is our 3rd starter right now.

Neither is flinging generalities and woulda-coulda-shoulda around. Are you honestly trying to tell me that Theo didn't try to improve the offense in the offseason? Your point about payroll is pivotal in the discussion of the Teixeira question. New York was going to match or exceed any price we offered for Teixeira and Boras was going to make sure they got the chance. His job is to get his client as much money as possible for his client, and that means keeping New York in the bidding as long as possible. How ever much you might not want to hear it, there was no way Steinbrenner was going to let Teixeira go to Boston without turning down more money than we were offering to come here. Teixeira has little reason to love the Red Sox that much. As for catchers, we had two catchers who looked pretty big league ready last year with the upside of league average backstops. Either Brown or Kottaras has the ability to be serviceable big-league catchers with a few warts and a lot of good points, and on a lot of teams both would be in the big leagues right now. I'm not convinced Montero is that much of an upgrade over either of those two, and certainly the upgrade isn't worth Bowden unless the return puts us over some kind of threshold that gains us a significant number of wins. And once Laird went to Detroit, Texas was under no obligation, nor did it have any particularly pressing need, to trade anyone a catcher, as evidenced by the fact that they did not. I just don't see where this supposed drastic improvement in the Boston lineup that we passed up on last year was supposed to come from.

Not if he's going to pitch the way he has in his first two appearances this year, I don't. No, thank you. Masterson should be adequate if given proper time to prepare.

http://redsoxgirl46.mlblogs.com/Jason%20Bay%202.jpg WHY do people just keep doing that? It's not like we traded Manny away for NOTHING.

What good catcher should they have gotten, and what would you have paid? I want to push you off the banal generalities into specifics so you realize that what you're proposing really isn't as easy as you're making it sound.

How should we have upgraded the offense? I don't think signing Teixeira alone would have fixed what's broken here. Teixeira has been cold for 8 game stretches too.

http://assets.espn.go.com/photo/2007/0918/pg2_over_nat_575.jpg

Really? Number I looked at said .250 BABIP. Not that that's very good either. Anyway, not the point. Guys at the plate are doing their job and not getting rewarded with the proper result. At some point when things just aren't quite falling right despite the best your hitters can do you just have to let them take a mulligan.

Some people seem to be failing the math test. Lowell's only a year or so older than A-Rod (Mikey only LOOKS like he's 70 years old, in reality he's 35) and as BoSox said, is signed to a much less hideous deal than A-Rod. If we needed to pay for a guy the Lowell deal wasn't stopping us. If we'd matched prices with A-Rod, THAT would have stopped us. I dismissed the A-Rod thing offhand because only a total lack of intracranial activity would have suggested it as a real option. No way was Theo paying that much money for one guy, even a guy as talented as A-Rod. That said, if we get our paws back on Hanley somehow, he will probably find a nice little extension in his inbox that would take him well into 8 digits AAV. But that's an entirely different situation because Hanley is a great deal younger and has a far greater chance of being worth that kind of contract at the end of a 7 year extension.

"Daisuke Matsuzaka will make his next scheduled start." I really think he needs some DL time to help him get his stuff together -- like a month or more to really get his arm right. Masterson can do his job better than he does right now. "The Red Sox will make major roster or lineup changes as a result of a bad 8 game stretch at the start of the season." Cold streaks and slumps suck, hard, especially in a tight pennant race, but that's all this is. Each of our competitors will have their turn too "The Red Sox have suffered another injury." Seriously, enough already.

Cooked not = cold. All we know at this point is that the bats are cold. If you want to play defeatist I guess you have that right, but you're sounding like one of those ridiculous knee-jerk specialists that populate places like NYYFans. For the record, yes we have not played well, but I'd like to bring up two points. First, is that we haven't really been out of any games either. Seriously, it is a good sign we have yet to be blown out. Means that only a couple more things need to go right before we start winning again (as long as nothing else goes wrong of course) Second, we've had a fairly nasty schedule, following up the Rays series with two road series on the West Coast, one against the Western division winner, another against a team that always shuts us down at their place. That's a little rough on anyone and our record in that stretch of games is hardly representative. Also, we've had stretches as bad as this game in every season we've ever played. It's just bad luck for appearance's sake that we're having this one right at the start of the season instead of having the decency to give guys something close to their career average numbers before plunging them into a slump. Also, our "shortstop controversy" was just solved by 2 trips to the DL, I expect a resurgence when we actually don't have a scrub at SS again.

Papi will get a little better when other players around him start having their hits find holes. Right now we have 4 players in severe BABIP doldrums -- Tek, Lowell, Ellsbury, Pedroia.

SOme time well after 8 games, against: -- the team that beat us in the ALCS last year -- the regular-season Angels -- a team we've lost 23 of 25 games against over the last 3 years (including when we were good) at their park -- Not to mention starting the season on a West Coast swing. Again.

http://www.dls.ym.edu.tw/chudler/ppreflex.gif

I've had enough, folks, Enjoy the game.

You kidding? Between Crosby and Giambi their infield D has been wretched -- and we still aren't scoring.

That was outside, Meals.

C'mon guys, someone needs to get lucky here sometime. At what point do we get Beckett warming? We have a bit of flexibility there with the suspension.

That would be a strike.