Dojji

Crisp is nowhere near as fragile as Baldelli was.

You never know what you're going to get from a prospect until you throw them in the fire. That said, JBJ was in no real danger of being useless to the team. He deserved the chance he got to see if he could be a big league regular, but his floor was as a good 4th OF, I saw a comp between him and So Taguchi who was a very good backup OF some good Cardinal teams -- so throwing him into the big leagues wasn't that big of a gamble.

That's a silly statement. Crisp doesn't need to play 'half the time' to be a good backup. You're just suggesting that he's at the point of his career where ideally he should transition into exactly the role that I want him for. A switch hitter off the bench with a little speed and good defensive chops, who can't play every day (and therefore can't demand to play everyday) but could probably cover a 2 week stretch if he had to -- that would be nearly ideal.

Another situation where having Buchholz wasted an opportunity to upgrade the rotation for reals.

I don't really care how much success Young has. He's not here to carry the team. He's just here to be a warm body that plays sometimes. Personally I'd love to move him for a more defensively inclined CF/LF type who was a bit more of an unambiguous straight-up backup. Wouldn't mind having Coco in that role.

that and hard evidence of Ortiz actually abusing PED's has been hard to come by. Unlike Bonds or Clemens or A-Rod where we have people testifying under oath and in some cases bearing physical evidence. Is there even any confirmation on exactly what Ortiz was alleged to have abused? If not, I can't imagine him having anywhere near the same trouble over PED allegations than Bonds and Clemens who the substances both men abused was much more clearly documented. For another thing no disciplinary action was ever taken against Ortiz, when other stars like Manny and A-Rod were getting slapped hard for PED abuse. So that's a thing to consider as well. The evidence looks a lot like he got caught using once years ago when everyone was doing it, got called out on it, and was never known to have done it again. Basically in the absence of any particularly hard evidence, or of any actual disciplinary action taken by the league, this just becomes a he-said-she-said situation, I can't see the baseball writers really holding it against him, especially given the era -- everyone knows that in that period enforcement was effectively nil, more people probably abused PED at least once than didn't, I'd be willing to speculatively wager.. Anyone enough of a bitter-ender to harp on that stuff in Papi's case is probably someone who would never have voted for him anyway.

Swihart needs to go to a team that's rebuilding that can just play him every day at the big league level and let him learn on the job. That's the ideal way to dispense with Swihart. What remains to be seen is which of them are going to be willing to offer us what we want for them. Perhaps the Twins and Ervin Santana with a couple prospects coming back our way?

Why does it have to be a conventional platoon? young is there to rest the regulars. If you can get him into games against LHP so much the better, but he really is just there to be a warm body to put in the field when a guy needs a blow. There's no reason at all for this to be about maximizing Young's value, none at all. He's there to maximize the value of the othre 3 outfielders.

That's a bit premature. He's in a slump. Slumps happen. Whether that slump turns into a death spiral or not remains to be seen, I think he should still be good for a couple good spurts of hitting before we really really need to replace him.

We don't need a savior. We need reliable depth, guys that can take the ball without embarrassing themselves more often than not. We don't need Pedro Martinez. he'd be nice to have, but at the moment what we need is Derek Lowe. Or for modern comparison, a guy like Jason Vargas, Wei-Yin Chen or Ervin Santana. Guys who don't have massive peaks and valleys and who can pitch consistently without exploring messily on us so the offense can take over the game. That's how we're built -- to take advantage of that kind of pitcher. And we need at least one more of them. thank God for Wrigut or we'd need 2, and then you could just forget about this year.

We have a fighting chance to hang a 4th one, if we'd upgraded the rotation aggressively in the offseason. If our rotation was Price-Porcello-Chen-Wright-E-Rod/Kelly, that's a proper rotation for a playoff team and with that level of depth we could have weathered a few injuries and not rushed pitching prospects into the rotation out of desperation just because one guy got hurt. that's a rotation you go to war against anyone with. Missing that piece right out of the middle of that rotation is going to have consequences for our ability to contend this year.

absolutely -- unless you've determined that he might not be all that as catcher, which is coincidentally also the only scenario in which I could imagine trying a top catching prospect in a corner outfield position.

you do when you have a chance to do something special this year, and the guy who's carried you through all 3 of your recent World Series wins is retiring in the offseason. you mortgage the future, in other words, when the window is closing. We're about to lose a part of the team that has played a huge role in every deep playoff run we've been on since he got here. I'd say that makes this a pretty damn good year to mortgage the future on. I think some fans are overestimating just how much business will go on as usual in a post-Ortiz world.

The market for starting pitching is perennially inflated. There's never enough starting pitchers to go round. And we *knew* our rotation had a potential to become a sucking chest wound. No expense was spared to bring a top of the line guy in but we didn't do anything to address the bread and butter of the rotation. I would rather have gone after 2 #3's than Price, truth be told. it would have meant more overall. As it is we got lucky the middle of our rotation was as strong as it is. NEITHER of Price or Porcello were guaranteed to be off to the start they've been off to, in fact Wright is still a bit of an unknown quantity and Porcello's on pace for a career year. And these are our "#3" starters. And that luck could still regress to the mean. EASILY. We are on a precipice with this rotation. There is a HUGE potential for disaster here. Average luck has us holding at about this level of performance, which is already unacceptable. below average luck -- losing even one additional SP -- could see us throwing away the entire season due to a lack of foresight and an unwillingness to step out of the dogmatic track of what you "never do" and engage in actual risk management. And this is Papi's last year. We have everything else we need to be a major frontrunner. This could be/could have been a very special season, the kind you load up and throw everything you have at. Even in that situation Slasher, are you sure you *never* make a QO to a durable bread-and-butter middle of the rotation starter? Even when you're *ABSOLUTELY DESPERATE* for one? Even when it was plainly obvious in the offseason that not making that move could force you to trade multiple top 10 organizational prospects in order to make the same acquisition later?

We do not have 4 #3 starters. Porcello and wright are #3 starters. No one else in this rotation other than Price comes up to that level. And you could still EASILY make the argument that Wright will settle into a 4-5 role once hitters get used to him. I could wish we had 4 #3 starters, with this offense that might be all we need. Right now we have maybe a 1, a 3, a wildcard, a guy on the DL who showed some promise, and half a bazillion bottom of the rotation types that might stretch up to the middle of a rotation in a great year but cannot be counted on in any way. Wei-Yin Chen would have represented a fantastic upgrade to the biggest area we're hurting right now -- durable rotation depth. I'll tell you this -- the guy we trade for is going to be very much like Wei-yin Chen. Because this team bent over backwards for Price and is not in a position to get a TOTR guy right now. Too much dead money for one thing.

if you're willing now to trade prospect talent for starting pitching, why the hell does a QO matter in the offseason in order to better avoid the need to do so? I'd rather lose a draft pick to address a serious potential hole in the rotation than lose actual tangible prospects to fill the same hole later. Worrying about QO's is the textbook definition of the adage about being "penny wise, but pound foolish." It's not like any of us who were paying attention weren't deeply concerned about the quality and depth of the rotation and that we might be forced into a trade with even slightly below average luck. If all of us can see that coming, then signing a guy with a QO is an exercise in paying 1 to avoid losing 2-3 later -- a reasonable investment in the future.

Swihart is not a normal case when it comes to his minor league offensive numbers. I do not care what he's hitting right now. He was sent down to work on his defensive game, and we know that's what he's focusing most of his time on. The guy's already proven that he can hit a bit at the big league level, he's already demonstrated that he has the offensive skills he needs, I have no doubts there at all and neither should anyone else including the FO. He has nothing to prove offensively until he gets back to the majors. People have a tendency to freak out a lot about minor league numbers, when the real question is skillset. For the most part minor league numbers are only useful as an evidence of skillset, and not always useful even for that. In this case we already know with some confidence that the offensive skills are there, so these numbers over a month here and a week there just don't bother me at all

Yes he could. So why is he learning left field in the minors again? If you're not going to commit to him as a fulltime catcher, he's probably good enough to play part time as a third catcher right now if the bat can stick as a left fielder. If you're going to make the guy a left fielder, let him play left field and let us have his bat in the lineup. It's not precisely a difficult position to master, Hanley notwithstanding

Did you know that if you hold down ctrl and scroll the mouse wheel up, you can make the font of whatever you're looking at larger? I find that that's actually an easier way to upgrade the visibility of text than playing with the font. I have eyesight problems myself and I usually view this forum at about 125% magnification

Or Curt Schilling to Pedro Martinez.

the reason for people to be upset about Swihart playing places other than catcher is that the WHOLE THING about Swihart is that he needs to improve at catcher. If he's playing games regularly in a position that is not catcher, that is not going to progress us toward the point where Swihart is ready to be a #1 catcher either for us or for another team. The whole concept smacks of a counterproductive mixed message that may result in a worse product in the end (and therefore lower trade value) Also because his bat is pretty much big league ready now so if you're not going to grind him on the catcher's spot, just bring him up and let him work on his hitting against major league pitchers.

Chen's a solid #3. That's what they look like. A guy you put behind your ace and your big inning burning #2 to eat additional large numbers of innings innings at an approximately average performance level and not make a lot of self-inflicted mistakes The problem is he'd come off a hot year and marketed himself as a poor man's #2 when he's really an exactly average mid rotation starter. Chen would have slotted in perfectly behind Porcello and ahead of Wright and Kelly and have given us a very nice rotation indeed. Not a world beater but solid. Unfortunately we were too committed to Buchholz and Kelly to countenance the move, which is a pity as it turns out.

Catching takes time to master. There's a reason catching prospects are usually older for prospects when they advance to the big leagues. Unless you draft a polished college catcher it takes that extra year, or year and a half for a catcher to master everything he needs to know in the minors. Well Swihart wasn't a polished college catcher, and I'm judging how much devtime he needs on how raw he looked in the majors. Now Swihart did show improvement over time, like any kid will when given a chance to just work for an extended period. That said he's nowhere near ready. The kid has some major learning to do, no shame in that, also no point pretending he doesn't have some issues to deal with. If we were a small market that was used to spending 2 years building for every year we were contending it'd be no problem at all -- just roll Swihart out and let him season on the job. Since we're trying to win every single year, the foibles of an underskilled catcher are something we just can't tolerate right now so we can't use him until he's sorted that stuff out in AAA. And even if we do call him up, and even if he hits a little, the kid would go the way of Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who got a bad rap here because he came right after Tek and we were used to catchers who take their defense seriously, which never really described Salty -- a good offensive catcher, and his performance in the regular season earned him that ring of his in 13, but there's a reason David Ross did the majority of the heavy lifting in the playoffs where games matter much more and individual mistakes can destroy a deep playoff run That's the kind of defense we'd be seeing from Swihart. He's having to think plays through that should be automatic for him and it shows up as hesitation. He needs just solid reps, the level matters less than the fact that he works behind the plate every day, until he becomes fully comfortable defensively at the position which could take 18 months to 2 years of consistent everyday play. If you're not going to do that with him than call him up now, stash him in left, and let him go as far as his bat will take him.

you guys know that in the offseason I wanted Wei-Yin Chen. I would have happily dropped Buchholz on someone and used the money to bring in Chen as well as Price, even if it meant paying more on the payroll tax. Chen is the #2-3 starter (more of a 3 really but he does fit the description) that we needed in the offseason and the FO clearly wasn't even thinking of going in that direction. Why? because in theory if everyone was healthy and effective we didn't have a spot for him. This is what sucks about Buchholz though -- you can't commit to a professional to take over his innings because he's physically present on the roster, but you K-N-O-W that you're going to need to pick up some of those innings and there's a possibility he's going to be completely ineffective. He's like a walking immunization shot against any possibility of upgrading a key mid-rotation spot in the offseason. Because we had Buchholz there was no way the FO was going to commit to Chen, even though our rotation problems would be minor ones if the team had decided to go for that solution.

Hanigan is an excellent backup catcher and a perfect fit to pair with a young up-and-comer like Vazquez. There is no reason to throw him away just to rush Swihart back to the majors. Swihart will get tons of chances after this year. There is no need to be overaggressive with promoting Swihart. people forget the only reason he was ever in the majors was as an injury replacement. There's simply no need for him right now. The man needs at least 2 years of full time reps in order to get his catching skills down and there is NWIH he wuill get that in Boston. He needs to be in the minors right now.