Dojji

This is just ridiculous. Rays tie the game.

Let it go, buddy. If there's a player in all of baseball who's going to be renewed by his team it's Josh Hamilton.

I think the concern about Masterson's secondary pitches is warranted, but a little exaggerated because that sinker of his is so good. When it's on, that's pretty much all he has to throw, especially since he can mix speeds with it. Masterson's had good outings -- whole starts -- where he's mostly just thrown a ton of sinkers and mixed in a slider or two to keep them guessing. Buchholz can't do the reverse with his curve -- we know, because he's tried. Maybe he could, though, in the pen.

Actually our closest Wild Card rival right now is whoever's trailing in the AL Central race -- not the third place Yankees. Right now it's Boston -- Minnesota 2.5 New York 3.5 Texas 5 Rangers right in this thing, but they look like we did back in '05 so no way of knowing if they'll stay there.

Wouldn't say Royals fans have much room to argue that point after how they turned on Bannister despite a very decent year he put together for the club last season.

Yes he is -- he's a regular over at http://www.royalboard.com. Or at least someone with his handle is. I trust there's nothing wrong with that. I mean we've got Yankee fans here, fans of any of the other 28 teams should be kosher (except possibly the Rays this year)

Yeeah, thanks, Thumper, now we have you to thank for Aviles' upcoming leadoff HR. EDIT: Err.. that was meant to be ridiculous but I just looked at Aviles' numbers.. eep!

THat's the kind of thinking that makes hitters press and become ineffective.

Carter before Bonds.

Don't forget about Chris Carter. Dude is a legitimate hitter.

He. Has. No. Place. To. Play. Here.

Take a look at Wily Mo's Reds numbers before you laugh too hard at the parallel

God save us NO! 1: Nowhere to play him 2: I don't want to put a guy who already strikes out a lot into a completely different league 3: But mostly, nowhere to play him

Let's be fair to Colletti. He didn't trust the kids, you say, and yet I see Kemp, Ethier, Kershaw, Broxton, Billingsley, Loney and Martin all on the roster and playing key roles. Who does that leave? Chin-Lung Hu got a chance to take over at short and blew it. Jon Meloan wasn't getting it done in AAA and LaRoche had struggled when they tried to give him the 3B job. So who was left?

This is probably the most unfair possible time to start a thread like this Bay's going to look pretty bad because he didn't have a good game -- and of course, Manny did. Then there's the fact that the pitchers Manny faced were Randy Johnson in the role of Methuselah (who shut Manny down for the most part). spot starter Yusmeiro Petit, and mediocre lefty Doug Davis. That's not quite comparable with facing Justin Duchscherer or Gil Meche for 7 innings. Bay has faced much more pitching talent -- even the kids we pasted in the second and third Oakland games at Fenway are pretty talented prospects/rookies although they haven't come into their own yet.

George Kottaras is the only internal option that might be seriously contemplated as a Varitek replacement -- and he's really struggling in Pawtucket and is probably a nonfactor. 20 HR's, and a lot of walks, but even so you have to look at that low batting average and figure that it'd go down, which really hurts his ability to contribute to the team. Probably not an upgrade over 'Tek in the end, especially as that power isn't likely to translate. This organization is not starting Dusty Brown as anything other than a backup until he proves at the major league level that he's going to continue to improve as he has every year for the past few. That means that if we want to "upgrade at catcher" we have to do it from outside the organization -- an exceedingly daunting proposition. For this year no one who clears waivers is likely to help us more than 'Tek, and again, our best minor league option is probably Kottaras, which means we have no minor league options. We're stuck with the Captain. Not so bad a thing if he can start hitting and drawing walks again like he has recently.

Once again -- you run into the question of who you're going to replace. Other than maybe Timlin, that's NOT as easy a question to answer as it sounds like at first glance. Paps is obviously untouchable. Oki's pitched well lately and his season numbers are far from bad. MDC has recovered well from his midseason struggles and is on one of his patented hot streaks Masterson probably belongs in the rotation but as long as he's actually in the pen he's an asset to the pen Lopez is piching exceedingly well Aardsma's got great stuff and will be back soon. Timlin could go -- but he'll be gone at the end of next year anyway and in the meantime he hasn't blown up since June 16th so he's also on a hot streak of his own that's lasted about a month and a half. Just like last year, only this year he's not getting as many appearances to work his way out -- largely because Delcarmen is good enough recently that we don't need him This bullpen is NOT as bad as its reputation would let you believe. The real problem is actually inconsiency in the starting rotation, especially Buchholz and Beckett who haven't been "pitching well enough to win" for awhile, and a lack of clutch hitting with men on base, which one hitter more or less is unlikely to solve to any great degree. In a word, we've got a problem with bad execution. We need some guys to get hot and a lot of them are just doing the minimum for one reason or another. With time and good coaching that should get better.

For the record -- Devern Hansack has been pitching very well after some initial problems, down in Pawtucket. Over his last 10 games he has an ERA in the mid 2's with 72 strikeouts un 65 innings. (obviously, 6.5 IP/G too which would look really good in Boston)

That goes back to what I was talking about with improving over the incumbent. All moving Lowell in Youk's favor does is change it so you have to calculate for the loss of Lowell from the lineup instead of Youk. Especially you have to calculate for the loss of Lowell's glove, which Youk can't quite match. I know Lowell's had some health trouble this year but he's still a fine polayer on both sides of the ball. And he's one of the few guys I trust with runners in scoring position in this lineup.

Yankees lose. Sox officially draw a mulligan.

All of these stand out for their primary positions being ones occupied by the Sox better players -- LF (Bay) and 1B (Youk). You can replace these players with your desired newcomer but understand that the value of the addition is the gross value minus the value of the incumbent if any. In other words, bringing in an elite player over a competent incumbent doesn't give you as much of a gain as you'd think I'm just stating the obvious here but I think my point is clear: to actually upgrade the lineup we need to upgrade positions we're actually weak at. Unfortunately for us those are the positions that are probably the hardest to upgrade -- SS, CF, and C. That means that the only one of that group that even makes sense is Hamilton, and we all know how prohibitively expensive he'd be. If we filled in our biggest offensive holes I think that would be a better use of our time and resources than getting involved in an arms race in the elite power positions.

12 LOB lol are you kidding me...