Dojji

The only reason Wheeler-Krejci-Ryder isn't officially our second line is clubhouse politics. Just switch the Bergeron and Krejci lines in your mind in terms of priority. Playing with Axe on his line doesn't help Bergy's offensive #'s at all tho

The problem here is that you still have 3 swings against them. if when you do hit them you hit them VERY HARD, and this is especially true for Burnett, that takes a lot of the value away.

Not true, actually. THis is only the case if the workload for the Yankee relievers last year was unreasonable.

I'll take a wildcard whose only bad year was in Colorado over the consistent suck Timlin provided last year. No qualms about the job Marte turned in last year in his first foray into the American League East? I know if he was a Sox we'd be worrying about it. If not outright raving that he should be traded and was the next Eric Gagne. Yeah, not counting on much from Littleton, but there was a time that you could say the same about Javier Lopez, and he turned it around nicely. That's more than a little optimistic. Sox have similar power arms in Papelbon, Delcarmen, and Ramirez and have just as much change o'pace with Oki. We also have the two most effective non-closers of the group from last year too -- Oki and the Master. If Masterson's in the pen next year it's going to be a contest I have every confidence the Red Sox will win.

Been there. I'm the only passionate Red Sox fan in my family and one of only two who give a crap about baseball at all.

Assuming you mean to have Damon in LF not CF that's a pretty decent lineup but it loses a lot on defense and unless Cano turns it around a bit it's not as strong a lineup as last year, particularly with Cameron's little OBP problem. Also 2 of the players you have listed for positions are very questionable whether they can play them effectively -- Nady in right, and Posada behind the dish. And then there's the ultimate defensive controversy at shortstop. Shields, Garza, Kazmir, Price, Sonnanstine comes pretty close, at least if Kazmir's fully healthy. Also frankly, don't overlook what Beckett, Lester, Matsuzaka, Lowe and Wakefield can do in a good year. Everyone listed there is old, marginal, inconsistent, or all three put together. Mariano Rivera will break down one of these days and if he does, that bullpen doesn't have close to the depth you need to survive. This is like us crowing about having Wes Littleton, Edgar Martinez, Devern Hansack and Hunter Jones waiting in the wings. The Red Sox have the Yankees so thoroughly beat in the bullpen department it's silly.

Here's some useful links, ERS. This will help you with internal options within the Sox system http://www.soxprospects.com/org.htm And this is the best link to look for who might be available on the free agent market. http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/ Good source of stats that includes minor league numbers http://www.thebaseballcube.com/

Hey, you were the one who posited a claim that a large number of walks is a guarantor of poor performance. I'm really hoping Daisuke's command problems are related to an injury or a fluke he can recover from, such as a subtle change in approach or mechanics related to adjusting to the American baseball. We know that Daisuke can handle the league, he was eating it for breakfast before he started falling off the face of the earth early last August. But the fact remains that he did what he did with a lot of walks and I make no apologies for referencing him. Daniel Cabrera's problems aren't just bad control, he's got no command in the zone. He throws the ball and hopes it goes where he wants it to. That's a bit different from Perez and especially Matsuzaka who can at least miss bats when the ball does go into the strike zone.

http://mlb.mlb.com/images/players/mugshot/ph_493137.jpg

Quite honestly, that's why you have a pitching coach. Also I wonder whether that behavior might change with better offensive support. Peavy really couldn't count on getting more than 2-3 runs in a given game in San Diego. Honestly I don't think the whole "pitch, not throw" thing is likely to be an issue for Peavy since he already pitches at a very high level. This isn't Josh Beckett here, all talent and limited experience, this is a guy who's been to war a few times. On the other hand though, this is mostly just a waste of time. They threw the name out there because every talented player throws the name of the Red Sox out there these dfays. It's a great sign because it means the credibility of the team is high, but it really doesn't mean that player is coming here.

A pitcher who dominates the National League West automatically sucks when traded to the AL East, Manny, I thought you knew that. Curt Schilling's 2004 campaign was, after all, positively hideous..

Because the American League East is just so stacked with offensive talent and the NL West doesn't really have any dominant teams? I don't think the payment would be worth the return on Peavy for us, but that has more to do with diminishing returns since our rotation is already pretty good, and the fact that the price tag will be so high. You might have noticed, but I'm generally not in favor of overpaying for elite talent when it's replacing above average talent.

Because they're not the same pitcher. Perez is fully capable of a good year, Cabrera is not and never has been. Also, Perez has shown himself to be capable of making progress and Cabrera has not. Finally, Perez is younger than Cabrera and is in the age group where improvement is still a reasonable thing to predict, and Cabrera is not.

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Little nervous about Kawamaki. I'm not sure you can count on the guy to make it in the American League East.

Perez wins more games than he loses, and pitches a lot of innings. He walks a lot of people but he's still a pitcher. Cabrera just sucks.

Put him in the bullpen and see what he can do there.

One thing you need to remember in order to survive a Red Sox offseason is that the Boston front office is very tight-lipped. We often have no idea a move is going to happen until it actually does. All indications are that we're going after Teixeira. If that's important to you then relax, it'll probably get done. What we absolutely don't need to do is sabotage our chance to be in the same position we are now for each of the next 4-5 seasons for a doubtful upgrade. Fortunately, we're dealing with house money a bit right now since the players who had the worst years are the ones who are most poised to improve, Lugo excepted, and we don't have to worry about what if the catcher we get is worse than Tek offensively because that would be difficult. The only two kinds of targets I want to see Theo going after right now are durable starting pitchers to fill out our rotation or failing that, that elusive catcher. I would not object to seeing the Sox acquire Saltalamacchia. I think the concern that he can stay at catcher is likely overblown. If the price is Buchholz+ though, then you look at other options like Napoli or Shoppach. What you absolutely don't do is overreact and gut the system for marginal gains now. That will gain us fewer trophies on average over the years because the one year of dominance will be followed after awhile with many years of suck and watching our talent win trophies for someone else.

This isn't Nick DeBarr. This is a guy who just pitched pretty well in AA ball and reportedly has good command. It's still a longshot, but only in the sense that all prospects are long shots.

Moss >>>>>> Owens, on field and off.

Nope. He has to be on the team. He put up decent numbers as a starter in AA so I have no problem with him as a potential Lenny DiNardo type pickup. Unlike most of our recent RuleV's I think this is a guy who could actually stick.

I could see it actually.

Article: http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081211&content_id=3713297&vkey=news_bos&fext=.jsp&c_id=bos Stats: http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/G/Miguel-Gonzalez-1.shtml Soxprospect scouting report: My thoughts: Looks pretty decent. He could get by, possibly, as the long man in the pen. He seems to have good command of stuff that is not particularly overpowering, and he's made some starts. I suspect in the end we'll just wind up giving him back but he does have a chance to make it.

Soxprospects.com is announcing that the Sox current plan is to start Kelly out this year as a pitcher. His stuff is described by SP.com as low to mid 90's fastball and 2 good offspeed offerings, which is a nice start for a pitcher, but I can't help thinking that they're missing the point here. Frankly, the maximum upsides are a wash in my eyes. Ace pitcher or 25 HR shortstop, take your pick, each one is equally rare and equally valuable. The problem here is flameout potential, and the fact that pitchers have a lot more of it. Kelly's a pretty decent fielder, if he picks up enough offensive skills to just get along as he develops, and improves his defense with practice and coaching he's going to have several chances to make the big leagues and let his talent come through simply by virtue of being a shortstop. Since he has some power, life as a Juan Uribe/Khalil Greene type would probably be good to him. I personally think he has much more ability than that but that seems to me to be his big league downside. Pitchers are much more volatile. I mean, how many high-ceiling league arms did we see either flame out, fall apart, or suffer catastrophic injuries just in this organization the last year? I can think of three right off the top of my head. The risk of winding up with nothing at all is much greater, and since Kelly has stuff the universe has seen before I'm not sure what the slam dunk is that he'll even be that good as a pitcher. A skillsy teen with a 90's fastball and 2 good offspeed pitches is tempting, but a 25-HR shortstop is ALSO tempting so in my mind the tools cancel each other out and you have to go with what you think is the player's best chance to get there, and I don't honestly think Kelly's had enough time as a professional hitter to determine what that is. Unless the organization really saw something in his hitting approach that disturbed them I think they made a mistake here by not giving Kelly a full season worth of chance at short.