Dojji

Fielder might become available in midseason if the Brewers' attempts to hammer together a pitching staff fail particularly miserably, but I really doubt he'll be available until the Brewers have had a chance to try and fail their efforts to try to patch together some kind of frankenpitchers to fill that unholy staff of theirs

THe mayy see Hansack as having more upside in the pen and neither of them really profiling as fits for Boston's rotation. It's not an unreasonable position.

If by start you mean "start to talk and hear the phone click." Even though I'm of the opinion that you can make a deal for anyone at any time, Prince Fielder is still a couple years from FA and is an elite run producer and face of the franchise, and the Brewers consider themselves in contention on the grounds that they made the playoffs last year. Each of these facts raises the price and I'm thinking there's no way the Brewers answer any question about Fielder with any words other than "Not for any price." And Fielder would be the ultimate buy high move and once again, we already have a very solid 1B and a promising 1B prospecty so it's the last position I'd make a big ticket trade for. If we're going to buy big on the trade market, why not swap Buchholz + for Zack Greinke and actually upgrade a position of need? Or make a deal for Edwin Encarnacion?

That or they needed a roster spot for each of Smoltz, Penny, Bard and Baldelli and thought Zink had a chance to get through waivers. Seriously, he's not going to see very much big league time for us, but a team like the Royals, Orioles, Nats or Rangers might benefit from giving him a few chances. I hope he does well.

Seriously. They locked that guy down to a long-term guaranteed deal deep into his late 30's? And outbid themselves for the privellege?

Where? When? Not last year anyway. The guy hasn't hit since 3 years ago and we're contemplating seriously playing him as a reserve 1B. The guy is Mientkiewicz with a bit of useful flexibility. NOT worthy of a spot on this roster and we DO have better options, two of them!

No, that's the Yankees.

How many of you willing to take a bet that they bury his wallet with him?

I think they sasid 4 out of 5 but I don't imagine that that's any kind of concrete mathematical formula. More like that they intend to make the postseason most years but don't intend to go crazy if circumstances conspire against them in any given season.

Bell is not "quite old." He's 26. Quite old is the going-on-29 Van Every. Bell doesn't make the top 40 at SP because of a combination of near-unpredecented depth of pretty good to very good prospects combined with a fairly ridiculous backlash against him because he didn't repeat his Lancaster-fueled monster year in Portland last year. Seriously, anyone who seriously expected him to keep producing at that pace wasn't paying attention anyway. If you take a look at what the guy actually is and ignore the Lancaster outlier what you have is a good bench outfielder and borderline starting corner OF who gets on base pretty well and has some nice modest pop. All he needs to get there is a half-decent year in Pawtucket and an opportunity that we're very likely to see the Glass Men of Right Field give to him.

Carter isn't an answer to the concern Diony raised. He can't play right and he sure as heck can't play center. If it was rated on offensive talent alone I'd agree 100% but that's always been the issue with Chris Carter. There seems to be this sentiment among a certain set of fans that if a guy isn't a top prospect he somehow doesn't deserve a chance to play at the big league level. Bell is an older prospect but he is still a prospect, and while he's off his Lancaster pace he's still on what you might call the David Murphy career track (in fact offensively Bell's been consistently better than Murph throughout his minor league career and plays a somewhat better CF).

I'm not asking that much of Smoltz or Penny. If either of them earn us a single playoff win that easily justifies both salaries. And we do have a chance, if Penny really has a great year, of getting some compensation for him and earning a 1s pick if he can become a Type B free agent. Not so much there on Smoltz, but then he's the one more likely to earn a playoff win of the two so there's that I guess.

lol indeed. Hey, if we trade Cassel and Tom Terriffic can't come back, stranger things have happened on the Patriots right?

Olney's an idiot. Smoltz and Penny are both huge injury cases and there's enough prospective DL stints in the rest of the rotation to give plenty of work to 6 maybe 7 starters over the course of the year. No way this "frees up" a young starter for trade. No way.

NO KOTSAY! The guy can't hit. I'd rather bring in Jon Van Every, who plays all 3 OF positions, gets on base OK, hit 20 HR's in AAA, and looked good in a cup of coffee last year. If it meant getting a big league job there's no doubt in my mind JVE could learn to play first base.

Who else should they have added? There's a hole in the rotation, the Sox added Penny and look like we're going to add Smoltz too, as well as having MLB-ready internal options like Buchholz and Bowden and a couple potentially half-decent Rasner types (Hansack, EMart, Zink) as emergency only options. We've got depth behind that gap out the wazoo and it's already filled with a fine stopgap player in Penny. There's a hole at catcher, fine -- no real big name FA's of any interest, so to internal options like Kottaras and Brown, we added Bard. I'm all for a deal for another catcher if it can be done on the cheap but it's not like we're ignoring the position altogether. Some say we have a hole at SS but with the signing of Furcal there's not much out there that has any chance at all of being better than what we already have, and if Lugo and Lowrie both falter, Argenis Diez will be in AAA and could step up as a defensive whiz SS if needed so unless by some miracle a Jason Donald or Hanley Ramirez drops into our laps SS is already about as deep as we can make it. Seriously, Jacko, before mouthing off about stuff like this even I have an answer for which position to spend the money at. The answer here is that short of a franchise-altering move there really isn't a place to put that money where you'd get a player better than the one you have except possibly SP, and we've already got 9-10 guys who have the ability to be league average starters.

Great to hear. He's a perfect fit for what the team needs right now. If you listen really carefully you can hear Jon Van Every grinding his teeth, but who cares. Good signing. I am a bit leery about the report until I see a dollar and year amount. Not becausae I'm worried about pinching pennies but when it comes to signing rumors, more details tends to mean a more definite knowledge of events and less details might just mean someone's talking out of his posterior orifice.

The FO might not have known that Schilling wouldn't be able to pitch at all in 2008 but they had a pretty good idea how thin the ice they were walking on was. They did work significant performance and health incentives into that final deal exactly because they were worried about his health, The upside with Smoltz is 20-25 starts by one of the more talented pitchers in the game. That's worth a heck of a lot more than 5.5M. The downside is you never see him. That's worth a heck of a lot less than 5.5M. Sort of suggests that if you balance risk and reward you're about in the right place.

It's less than they paid for Schilling, and Smoltz probably has more left in his arm than Schill had in 2007 much less 2008

Kinda shortsighted. No matter hwow much money we spend the roster can only have 25 people on it. You have to think about who's leaving as well as who's coming, and whether you've really gained that much

THat's not a little disingenoups RSR. You make it sound like he goes into the season rooting for nothing more than 90 wins and that once win 90 happens he tips his cap to the team and walks away whistling.. THe judgement call is that if you set your team up to win 90+ wins in any given season your chances of making the postseason are good and that the Sox are already pretty much at that level. There's no such thing as a guaranteed playoff appearance and at least one good team in the AL East is going to be staying home next year so really no matter what we do we have a chance of being that team. On the other hand our roster may well still be the best in the AL East and that's pretty much all you can hope for in the offseason.

At what point does Mr. Comeback... and back.... and back.... and back.... hurt his HoF chances?

Yeah I mentioned that in the OP and there was an interview at one point in that stretch where the coach was asked what he felt about the execution of his team and he said "Yes, please do."

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/K/Casey-Kelly-1.shtml Full Name: Casey Patrick Kelly Born: October 4,1989 in Sarasota, Florida Map Height: 6-3 Weight: 194 Bats: Right Throws: Right High School: Sarasota (Sarasota, Florida) "Sailors" College: None