Dojji

Problem is next offseason he's competing against Holliday and Bay unless those two get resigned..

Which again, is not so much statistical performance as it is health, durability, and the ability to punch a clock. The closest you come to rebutting me with that is that you have to be doing some kind of job to be trusted with too many IP or games played.

Who comes out of the lineup when you put Dunn in?

http://www.pets911.com/breeds/dogs/images/breeds/neapolitan-mastiff.jpg

"NomahsHammSammich has not made any friends yet "

I don't think you have the roster spots open to play all 5 of those guys at the same time. Besides, it's been demonstrated that this front office values defense at 1B, which Dunn can't provide. Personally? I think Dunn is an Oriole waiting to happen.

In all honesty I'm neutral on it. I never said they would or wouldn't, my point was not to rule it out. All I've been saying all along is that I'm not going to answer that question until at least the 2010 season. That writing Ortiz off as gone after 2011 is silly. He's still gonna be only what, 36? Plenty of chance that he might still be worth a one or two year deal at that point.

Sure, why not? I mean, the guy could die tomorrow of a coronary, he wouldn't have any peak years then. Or there could be a personal tragedy or major off-field distraction or he could just plain "lose his touch." None of these things are likely, but one thing anyone who follows baseball knows is that you better hedge your bets at least a little or the unforseen will bite you in the butt. Barring something unforseen and unreasonable, though, no reason he won't have a couple more great years in him. There are plenty of players built more or less like Ortiz is built who are able to be productive into their late 30's. Oh and, I didn't call for the Sox to sign Ortiz per se, what I said IIRC was that there was no particular reason to believe that the end of this contract was the end of Ortiz in Boston -- and there isn't. Seriously, though, why even play the semantic game over something that small? There was no reason to even attempt to call that out. My statement stands on its own as a reasonable statement -- if I'd spoken in guarantees you would have called on that louder and been more right. So what's the point of this?

Well since you can't actually put it in a contract I wouldn't think so, but we already have issues where players with games and AB incentives wind up having to fight their front offices for playing time so I could understand why the union would not want to go there.

Not quite. They're the result of good statistical performance bes, but they're not a hard number themselves. What you can't do is give an incentive for batting .270 or posting a .340 OBP.

The only problem I have with signing Tek as I think about it is the likelihood that Tito will use him as if he was still 2004-05 Tek, out of respect for him if nothing else. The problem there is that we have other catching options who can hit better who need to take on leadership roles in the ligh likelihood that Varitek can't do it offensively anymore. Varitek is going to be the presumptive starter for as long as he's on the roster and as much as I'd like him back as long as he's willing to take on a reduced role, I don't want him starting over someone who's putting up better numbers.

Define "decent." Kottaras, Brown, Wagner, Exposito, Lavarnway, and until they formally change his position, Jon Still round out our catching prospect corps and run the gamut from nearly MLB ready guys with interesting utility to high ceiling A ballers to 1Bmen getting playing time at an alternate position.

Yes. Yes, there is. Because performance based incentives open a can of worms if a front office finds itself in a position of needing to not hand out the incentive. Rather than having to field a whole lot of borderline cases the union just negotiated the whole concept of production-based incentives right out of the CBA.

I think you've hit on the biggest issue why this is good news Italian. If you look at our minor league system we are very, very weak at 3B so if Lowrie's the starting SS the ability to replace there is pretty dependent on Youk and will be the next few years..

Oh definitely. Disregard the monster contact skills, two consecutive near-batting-title performances, and the 20 stolen bases with only 1 caught stealing in 2008. Pedroia will never consistently hit 20 HR's, and that's an absolute requirement for a big league second baseman. Bad deal for the Sox.

Jimmy Rollins is 5'8" lolwut?

Look at it this way guys, we've been bringing in washouts and low-risk high reward gambles on 1 year deals for everyone else's players, we've got a shot to pull a similar deal on one of our own guys, and at a position of need. While I do believe in Bard, Kottaras and Brown's ability to between them field 2 average catchers, I see no reason not to apply the same philosophy to guys who were on our 25 man roster last year that we apply to everyone else's veteran castoffs -- if you can get a cheap deal on a player who you think has a good chance to do the job, why not?

Great defense at 1B is easy to underestimate. A lot of the touches a 1Bman gets are on routine plays, but other than the pitcher and catcher the 1B gets the most touches by a lot of any other player. Our infeild has been very good each year Youkilis has been playing first for us. He makes Pedroia and Lowell better and makes Lugo tolerable. All things being equal great defense at 1B can really make a huge difference. I'm glad he'll be sticking around.

I think Henry legitimately wants to keep Varitek around. IMHO that's a mistake but it's not a very big one. I believe in Varitek's intangibles -- we saw them in full profile after he got hurt in 2006 and we saw the disaster that was Javy Lopez the catcher (while the Sox were ~.500 in Mirabelli-called games during the same stretch!). That said -- I dojn't believe they'll reach a deal because Varitek will want to be a starter and Theo will want to cut down his playing time and treat him like a platoon guy. Also, Varitek isn't the only guy who can call a game -- both Bard and Kottaras have shown signs of decent ability in that regard. My vote is Bard -- he did a great job with the Padres staff in '07 and has a pretty similar profile to 'Tek really and I fail to believe (despite wanting it to happen) that Theo will just promote both halves of the Pawtucket tandem. BTW whoever is the starting catcher, unless there's a trade Kottaras will make the roster. He's shown some lefthanded power and great discipline at the plate -- and each of the othre 3 current catching options either are RHH or hit best from the RH side. He's not the worst candidate in the world to be mentored by Tek and he's shown success as a platoon catcher in AAA so I think Kottaras is the most likely (least unlikely) of our current catching threesome to make it.

I really don't think that we need to worry too much about Papelbon being enthusiastic about his work.

More seriously, nothing stopping Manny from going in with the Guardians on his cap.

He's already on one of them.

Great great news