Dojji

That's a lot of $10 beers

I want to trade Pedroia too. I'm really concerned about his body's ability to sustain him as he ages. He throws himself around the diamond pretty hard and I appreciate that, but it's clearly taken a toll on his durability. I still am not convniced the injury bug won't bite him this year too. I think it's unrealistic to move Betts back to 2B at this point, with so many years of not playing the position at all. He was a good strong big league 2B, and would have had a star studded career at the position, but I honestly think it would be a tall order to bring a guy back to that level after 2+ years of complete inactivity at the position. Even Shaw had some practice over time at third base, and clearly practiced at the position to keep sharp, I don't think Betts has played a second of 2B since he was moved to the outfield. My answer to replace Pedey at 2B would be Holt if he's healthy, Hernandez if he isn't.

I really doubt Verlander's on the table unless the Tigers think they're ready to go into a full rebuild. Verlander is central to the Tigers' pitching core and the big reason they ever got anywhere. I don't see them trading him at all unless they're sure that it is time to rebuild from the ground up and if that's the case, then Jordan Zimmermann is also available and he'd be the guy I want.

Whether they're worth it or not, they're the price of admission. All this financial parity was always going to force the talent price skyward. you have to throw out old ideas of how much players cost. The big contract is simply one of the numerous ways to build up a talented roster, not to be either overutiluzed or underutilized. We've kind of overdone it in the last few years trying to end our basement days, it will take some time before the Red Sox are really unencunbered financially again enough to use their financial muscle. Then there's the fact that said muscle while still among the top 10, isn't one of the top 2-3 financial teams anymore, as other teams have managed to exploit the same factors that allowed us to wield financial strength well above the actual size of the New England media market. The fact of the matter is we are now a big market team but no longer one of the top 2 markets by an absurd margin like we used to be. The rest of the league has caught up to our level of market exploitation and the New England market itself is more top 10 than top 2. So we should be more prepared than we were in the past to have our financial overtures beaten by other rich teams.

And I'm saying that for 28 million dollars a year, I want a sure thing, not a maybe.

I also love the fact that he did it to carry the team over our strongest divisional rival at the moment and expand our lead. Nice timing there, Mookie.

THe Angels just traded for Chacin. I have my doubts they'll flip him at this point. If we're sufficiently unhappy with Joe Kelly or just want to stretch our SP deoth, Josh Tomlin may be a not-altogether-awful option as a bottom of the rotation guy, sort of a Paul Byrd redux.

And the thing is we HAVE an ace. Price has been making a steady comeback over the last month from his horribad April. He's taken a full run off his ERA this month, and he still has a decent shot to have good numbers by the end of the year. Why buy someone else's expensive reclamation project when our own guy is rebuilding his stock? If Wright holds to form, and it's beginning to look like more of a possibility than any of us dared to hope for, then Price-Wright-Porcello isn't exactly the worst rotation anyone will be taking into the playoffs this year.

From 2014 to right now, Justin Verlander has an ERA of 4.11 and an ERA+ of 97. he is average to a tick below for the low low price of 28.8 million dollars per year for the next 3 years not counting this one. That's quite a risk, especially considering the price it would take to lure him out of Detroit.

Maybe we need publically available umpiring metrics. You know the number of borderline called strikes and borderline called balls, that kind of thing.

I'm looking around and the closest I see to that guy is Cole Hamels... who plays for another team that still thinks it's in contention. There is no TOTR starter who's likely to be actually available right now. I'll remind you that the Royals just won the world series without a true TOTR starter. Yordano Ventura and Edinson Volquez are both decent pitchers, probably not quite up to the level Price is capable of, or the level Wright has displayed so far. We have better starting pitching, right now, than last year's World Champs. The Royals won with speed, defense, alert baserunning and a very strong bullpen. Other teams have won in other ways. It's not always the ace that gets you through in the playoffs. The Mets did in fact have an ace, and the Royals beat him cleanly despite a momumental effort thanks in part to a series of defensive breakdowns in late innings.

I've changed my mind on Ervin Santana. He's still providing average production by ERA+ (101 exactly) but I crunched some numbers and realized he's only going 5 1/3 innings per start. Yuck. That's exactly what we don't need right now. I'll look around the league and see if I can finger a better trade target. However, I'm not positive we're in the market for an SP right now. Our rotation is Wright-Price-Porcello-ERod-Kelly, and that's a decent rotation from top to bottom, the only guy I'd want to replace had a good start recently enough that I want to go through the rotation with him a couple more times before we pull the trigger on anything. With E-Rod having a great first start of the year last night the urgency factor goes way down. Hopefully this rotation can stick it out until something starts to perculate in the minors by way of an obvious replacement starter.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BOS/2003.shtml *ahem* once upon a time we had one year when Manny, Papi, AND Nomar were in the middle of the order and all producing. Now that said replicating the 2003 offense would make me very very very happy of course

Right now Hanigan has an OPS of about.470. I dunno about you, but I think Leon can equal that production, and he's supposed to be a world class defender. I just think it wouldn't be a terrible idea to see if he could receive Wright. There are worse backup catchers in the league than Leon would be. And Hanigan is 35 -- he wouldn't be the first catcher to drop off the face of the earth at that age. Is he going to bounce back to the somewhat decent level of offense he's known for? I don't know if he will or won't, but he hasn't done it yet. I wouldn't have even mentioned the idea but Hanigan has been SO bad that you kind of need to examine your options.

You know, I didn't realize Hanigan was hitting so bad. With him having this much trouble hitting, is it worth switching over to Sandy Leon, who's supposed to have great hands and might be able to do the Kevin Cash thing?

Not only does he homer three times, but the first one was to center, the second to left, the third to right. Each of his HR's was hit over a different wall. Yeah, Mookie, I think it's safe to say you had a good night.

But OBP aside, scoring runs is the #1 job of the leadoff guy, OBP is valuable because it leads to more opportunity to... score runs... betts has scored the most runs of anyone in the league this year so if you want to talk about his roleplaying ability, he's playing his role. Betts gets around OBP by hitting a lot of leadoff XBH. Putting himself in scoring position instead of first base to make up for being on base less often. I wouldn't be against dropping him to a more RBI position, but if you want to talk about a leadoff guy, he's doing OK.

You don't need an external I/O port to call balls and strikes.

How about this? Set up a machine behind home plate that determins ball vs strike. The machine is carefully tuned to be at leat 99.5% accurate on all strike and ball calls which would mean it would usually make about 1 or 2 mistakes over the course of the game. On every pitch, either dugout can appeal a ball-strike call to the machine. If the machine agrees with the umpire, the dugout gets a strike. If the machine disagrees, the ump gets a strike on him. Dugouts with 3 strikes can't appeak ball strike calls. If the umpire gets three strikes, the machine takes over the ball and strike calls for the remainder of the game. The umpire still calls fair and foul, safe and out, but balls and strikes are taken out of his hands for the remainder of the game, unless he's as good at them as the machine is.

I'm with you. There's no reason to cut Buchholz any slack or give him any benefit of the doubt any longer. We like to like our players, but this guy has broken my heart a few dozen times too many. I want him gone.

We've banned more Sox fans than Yankee fans over the time here... because of course we have. Being a Sox fan doesn't give you instant credibility. And I remind you that by launching personal attacks on TheBabeStrikesBack you are technically violating the terms of service. At the moment you guys ahve trolled Babe more than Babe has trolled you... think about that please. Best way you can get rid of Babe right now is just give him rope. If he's as advertised he'll practically ban himself. Personally I think the guy's nothing but a gadfly. An irritant nothing more, posting inane comments that you eye-rollingly tolerate and then get back to your own business. We've dealt with those before. It's nothing new here. If he insists on trying to be more than that, he'll probably go.

Lynn won the gold glove 4 times in his brief tenure here. Rice won it 5 times in his much longer tenure. Yaz won 6, one in the era in question (77). Rice was a roughly average defender, which in Fenway's left field is fine. THe problem here is we're comparing kids who are still learning their job to guys who came to the majors ready to dominate that job. All of Rice, Lynn, Evans, and Yaz came out the gate stronger than any of Swihart, Betts and Bradley. The talent level is simply an order of magnitude different. We have a good group of outfielders. We do not nearly have the best group of outfielders we've ever had, ever. Heck the Drew-Crisp-Manny outfield might be better defensively in 2007 than the Swihart-Bradley-Betts outfield is right now, even with Manny dragging the 07 numbers down. Coco and JD were that good. but it is nice to have all those young guys with upside there to point the team in the direction of the future. That looks like it will be fun.

With Wright's and Porcello's surges, and Price showing signs of a strong comeback from early season disappointments, I'm not convinced we need to make a big trade to shore up the top or the rotation. I think that if Wright or Porcello stumble, Price is going to pick up the slack as the season goes on and he returns to form so I don't consider upgrading the top 3 a major priority. More top starters are always helpful of course, but I think at the moment that the thing to do is to buff up the bottom of the rotation, bring in at least one more solid inning burner. Hopefully E-Rod is that guy.

Two of the very best black athletes we've ever had in Boston were Jim Rice and Mo Vaughn... one's up on the wall and the other one would be if his knees had held up better... neither exactly known for speed. Another was George Scott, also one of the first black athletes we ever had ... and not exactly a burner. How are you not being racist again?

I meant the guys who led off for us by the playoffs. Obviously Lugo wasn't the leadoff guy by the end of the season. Also can't believe I forgot Ichiro. Definitely not black and one of the best leadoff hitters of his era.