italstallianion

Buster Olney's projected lineup fwiw: Dustin Pedroia Carl Crawford Kevin Youkilis Adrian Gonzalez David Ortiz Jed Lowrie JD Drew Jarrod Saltalamacchia Jacoby Ellsbury

BSN just meant that that's what we have at the moment (although we do have Atchison and Kalish etc), so it might map out what we need to get to get to 25 players on the roster.

We don't have Martin, so technically it's 21 with 4 spots left.

I could use the Baseball Reference feature to help build my fantasy team. Haha. Is there a link for the feature?

I'd look at it as "3 people who can catch" rather than 3 catchers. I'd imagine that Salty and Martin could play 1st (only if needed) and that Martin could play 3rd base. In addition, Varitek and Martin could really hit LHP's and Varitek is known for having hot starts and ice cold finishes, so maybe we can start Varitek for the first month or two and then retire him. It might be a bit to help us against lefties by allowing us to play Pedroia, Youk, Scutaro/Lowrie, Varitek, Martin, and Gonzalez as a lefty that can hit lefties.

To expand a bit, Downs might not cost as much money because he's a type A, and teams have to give up a high draft pick to get him, so that hurts his leverage (look at Saito for example, while he was a high FA, in his contract with us, we could not offer him arbitration, so the Braves did not give up a draft pick for signing him, which allowed him to get more money. So I think that Down's AAV might not be as high as one thinks, although I do think he'll get the years, which quite frankly, I'm ok with giving to him because of his consistency and AL East experience. As for Russell Martin, I'm also confused about the hype. This guy was the man a few years ago, but has seen declines in most numbers for his career. He's still young, but he's not the .290/.375/.470/.850 with 20 HR's and 20 SB's machine that he was in 2007. He's still reasonably young (27) but for the past 2 years he's hit about .250. His one saving grace in my opinion is that he is a career .294/.405/.444/.849 against lefties. However, even looking further into that, he only hit .235/.353/.329/.682 against lefties last year, and .275/.413/.343/.756 in 2009. His power is down, his speed is down, pretty much everything is down. I'd rather have had Miguel Olivo than Russell Martin, especially because he signed for 2 years $7 million.

Or "set up men" which I don't think we can have too much of. My point is that our bullpen is by far more important to fix than to add a "meh" RH bat like Russell Martin. Sure, I wouldn't mind signing Russell Martin and 2 good relievers, but if given a choice as to which one I wouldn't sign if the money was tight, I'd drop Russell Martin like a pass thrown to Braylon Edwards.

If we were that forward thinking, we wouldn't have signed Varitek and we would have put that 2 million towards Martin.

I disagree. I think that we're going to be in trouble if we don't add at least 2 good middle relievers. I'm talking along the quality of Downs, Guerrier, Crain, Soriano, Fuentes etc. I'd love to sign 3 of them, but I think we should just sign 2 of them and call it an offseason. I'd take Downs and Guerrier if it was my call. I'm not that impressed with Martin and I don't think we need him, at all.

The problem is that it probably eats into what we'd look for in relievers. I'd rather get a few really good relievers over Martin.

Any word of what Martin is looking for?

Crawford is also younger than a lot of FA's, so it's not like he'll be 40 when the contract is over. So while his speed will diminish, he'd be around Ichiro's present age when his contract is done.

I'm taking my time and sifting through all of this before I vote, so I probably won't cast my vote until tomorrow. A lot of the top teams spent A LOT of time on this and it wouldn't do them justice to cast a vote quickly.

Of course, I agree that the Crawford deal is better than the Jeter deal. What I'm saying is that Jeter's deal does NOT justify Crawford's deal, or make the Crawford deal acceptable if Crawford fails.

No. It. Doesn't. Crawford's deal is good or bad based on his own merits/age/teamplan etc. Jeter's deal may be bad in it's own right, but only the stupid would look at that deal and "feel better" about Crawford's deal. In other words, whether or not Jeter's deal is bad does not change whether or not Crawford's deal is bad. It's like having 2 fat chicks in a room arguing at one other because one of the fat chicks called the other fat chick fat. Whether or not the first fat chick is fat doesn't change that the 2nd fat chick is fat, and thus the first fat chick is right in saying that the 2nd fat chick is fat, however hypocritical (and mean) it'd be.

Or Justin Upton.

Like when I'm involved...

I bet you wish that your boyfriend was like this with his money.

In addition, there's a huge difference between hitting the salary cap once, and going over it in consecutive years. That s*** will f*** you for a long time, unless you have more money than some continents.

I think that if this signing was next year, I'd have liked it more, but with Drew, Cameron, Ortiz and others off the books next year and a crappy FA market, this deal would look better. I don't like the years or the AAV, but my main concern is that this deal doesn't look like a Lugo deal (you know, another TB Ray we had signed) after a few years.

There is a bright side, and that means we can sign Downs/Soriano without have to surrender a first round pick.