Dojji

If your late innings are good enough you can use Ross as the LOOGY

Do you think for one second that Papelbon is going to be happy setting up for Kimbrel, Kimmi?

The Tigers are still enjoying the fruit of DD's labor. If you want to know what DD did for Detroit, take a look and compare the difference between the 2003 Tigers and the 2006 Tigers. In jusrt 3 years DD took a team that had won less than 50 games and turned them into a team that made the playoffs a lot more often than it didn't. The Tigers were a powerhouse for the last decade becaose of DD. Did everything he tried work, no, but for a team like the Tigers, which has money but isn't the richest or most powerful team by any stretch of the imagination, and which had had the worst stretch of years in its entire history before DD signed on, what he did in Detroit is pretty impressive

Well yeah, that kind of goes with the territory. I completely agree

If Espi becomes the next Pedro, Padres development staff will have had so much to do with that that it will be easy to dismiss the idea that he would so defnintely have done the same thing in Boston. Especially because the difference between pitching in Boston and pitching in SD is night and day, and no one demonstrates that better than Drew Pomeranz We traded potential talent for developed talent in a year when we had every chance to make the playoffs and teams do that ALL the frigging time. Espinosa is not THAT special.

I don't think they're blowing smoke, I do think they're preaching the best possible outcome rather than the 50-percentile outcome, if you will. The problem with doing that consistently is that it does set fans up to be disappointed later on.

Right, I forgot, the Jays won. I thought this team would be neither dominant nor awful, and would finish somewhere in the upper middle of the AL, enough so to potentially wrangle a playoff berth and then who knows. We're still on track for that.

All I expect of Owens and Johnson is to be competent emergency starters. I think they can accomplish that much.

It's nice to know that the young bats are coming into their own BEFORE we lose our aging centerpiece

Can I just say that Betts' emergence is really dulling the pain of losing Ortiz in the offseason.

The thing is, I worded it that way deliberately. In Spring it wasn't quite cetrain that Pablo was done like dinner. He might have been able to work his ass off and save his season. A lot of GM's would be tempted to throw in with Pablo and hope he worked his issues out. But if he'd done that, then Shaw would have had to break himself back into 3B in live baseball with only a cameo or two at the position over the Spring, and that would have negatively impacted his defense. It's just one of those little things where I'm glad we have DD because he tends to play to the odds rather than the egos.

They don't grow on trees, but Buchholz is ready to fertilize one.

I think we can find a better place to put that money.

Taking a step backwards for a second... when I was asked what my objective was for this team last offseason, all I asked was that the team go into the stretch with a fighting chance. Well, we're in the stretch now, and we are tied for first. That's a good fighting chance. For DD, this year is a solid "mission accomplished" as far as I'm concerned. There's still plenty to do to put the roster right, but it's nice to be trending upward again.

We have sort of an ideal situation right now in the defensive outfield. Both JBJ and Betts are now battle-hardened, highly athletic young centerfielders who are good at what they do, and Benintendi is just as athletic as talented as either of the others and also a centerfield talent, wanting only for experience which he is now getting. I expected him to struggle from time to time, so far he's actually struggled less than I was anticipating, which is only a good thing. In the meantime we're already seeing a benefit from having three highly athletic outfielders, all with the range and athleticism to cover centerfield, playing our 3 outfield positions. I don't think it's a coincidence that the pitching staff got better when the gaps in the outfield got smaller. And the great thing is that hopefully this is going to get better as Beni settles in.

Dombrowski is one of the most veteran general managers in the entire league and usually puts a good team together. I've been extremely pleased with his performance overall this year. I especially appreciate the times when he refused to let the money dictate who played when, such as insisting on getting Shaw extensive practice at 3B in the Spring rather than coddling Sandoval, and not letting Buchholz drag the team down this year. I also like having an older, more battle-scarred GM who's not afraid to spend our assets to improve the team now, it's a nice contrast to Theo and Cherington who never seemed to want to part with anyone they'd drafted -- one of the traps of youth is to buy too much into the hype of this one guy or that one guy and wind up paralyzed when you have to make the decision of who to make available. DD's seen all that before, so he's less susceptible to this.

I can't think of a better time to be a little silly, if she's OK with it

I don't think we need to be tearing down Edgar Martinez here. To do that is to miss the point. Ortiz AND Martinez both have strong HoF credentials if you can ever get the NL sportswriters' heads out of their posteriors vis-a-vis a ~50 year old rule change. IIRC the DH has been allowed for longer than the spitball has been illegal, people need to get over it.

Another WS win before it's all over would put him over the top. Aging well and being productive into his late 30's will also help a ton, but I'm not sure I see it with his body type.

I don't see a need to rush Shaw out the door. He's going to be valuable off the bench even if Moncada does supplant him at 3B, and I'm for damn sure in no rush to hustle him out the door before Moncada has done so.

2 years. The man has had 2 years of shots. How many shots is this buffoon going to get?

No there isn't. Any spot made for Pablo will come at the expense of a more deserving player, probably a hard working benchie like Hernandez or Travis

I think I hear an echo. Oh wait no, that's just what we were saying last year until Pablo showed up to camp looking like a cross breed between the Goodyear Blimp and the Michelin Man. No thank you, I've tried that brand of kool-aid before and don't like the aftertaste. I don't even think a team desperate to justify a sunk cost would be dumb enough to just hand Pablo the reins after 2 years like these last 2. At best he breaks camp on the bench, and we saw how well he handled that this year. Frankly I wouldn't inflict Pablo's ass on that poor unoffending bench that works so hard for this team.

I can't trust Pablo to keep his word and do what he says he'll do. We've done that before, and the result was a player that I'm honestly convinced was at least 120 pounds overweight -- he promised to lose 20 pounds and came in looking like he'd gained 50. I don't have time for that nonsense more than once, either your word means something or it doesn't, and Pablo's doesn't. There is no room for Pablo Sandoval right now. Even assuming someone like Sam Travis doesn't wow us this Spring, where is Pablo going to play? He's not a 3B anymore, he proved that last year by playing a couple innings at 3B and immediately getting hurt. I don't think even the best case scenario has Pablo going all the way back to full playing condition at 3B, and that's even assuming he keeps his word at all, which he's already proven indifferent to doing. That being the case, why the hell even bother. Shaw breaks camp with Moncada in the wings and Holt on the bench. First base, Hanley breaks camp with any of Swihart, Travis or possibly even Moncada jockeying for his position and Shaw able to move over and cover first base ably. There is simply no need for Pablo Sandoval, nothing he can provide that someone else can't provide better and higher quality production in. The guy is done, at least as a Red Sox, and after 2015 and 2016 I just can't even begin to see any other big league team investing in the guy without a lot of hard work and convincing, and that even assumes that Pablo is capable of the sea change in his behavior that his agent last year tricked us into believing he could make. Pleased the guy's losing weight though, that's important, it will help his transition into post-baseball life.