SoxFanForsyth

I think an argument could be made that he was actually the most consistent reliever in our bullpen last year, especially last September.

Kind of like Alfredo Aceves? Aceves is our best option to close this year, with Padilla taking over Aceves's role as the multi inning guy. Melancon and Morales play matchups in the 8th. When Hill gets back, he can play matchups as well, and move Morales/Albers to the 7th inning role. Just takes a little creativity, but this bullpen can take the bump.

I'm not defending him. I'm saying that the Sox are better with him than they would be with any return they could get from him in a trade. Who do you expect them to get in return on a trade? I just want this team to put out the best talent they can. Trading Beckett would hurt this team. Look - the guy said he threw poorly. He isn't going to say anything about beer and chicken, but he said he threw bad. He said he s*** the bed in the final 2 starts. That's what you're going to get from him. Everytime he has a bad start, he says "I sucked. I threw like s***". To be honest, Lackey could take a lesson from Beckett. He's actually one of the most accountable pitchers on the team.

Who called him an ace? You just throwing words in my mouth now? I said the Sox can't afford to lose him. Dear Lord. You take Beckett's whole life and career so personally. Seriously, chill out man. He's going to make his next start. You need to get a puppy or something. I never said he was an ace. I said the rotation would be considerably weaker without him. Sorry he's coming off of a 2.89 ERA year. You can continue to hate him all you want for some unknown reason (that's a lot of pent up hate you've got), but it doesn't change the fact that he's going to be a huge part of this team this year, and that this team doesn't win the WS in 2007 without him.

Wow. Your ignorance is beaming. You're right. This team is better without him. They have too much SP Oh, and apologist? When have I ever defended him when he was in the wrong? Oh, never. But I'm the one who out of line because I'm defending your accusations that this is all some sort of conspiracy?? Yeah. I'm the crazy one.

Wonder what it would cost this team to get a guy like Brandon League? Hard throwing closer from SEA, FA in 2013.

Um. Can the guy miss a start before the conspiracy theorists start digging in their teeth? Didn't Valentine just say he definitely thinks Beckett is going to start?

I'm not saying it's abusive, but if you're a team who is almost certainly going to the post season (which they were), then 63 appearances with only 34 save opportunities is pretty crazy. Like I said - Save those bullets for the post season.

It's true. He threw in 63 games last year, and of those, only 34 were save situations. I know you're going to have to get your closer into more than just 34 games during the year, but getting him in around 50 games total for the year should be plenty, especially in a season like last season when this team was playoff bound nearly the entire year until September 28th. Gotta save those bullets. Valentine, I think, is quite the opposite. I think he'll play the matchups much more than Francona ever did rather than relying on 2 relievers the entire year. Have a look at the Rays bullpen the past few years. They are consistently putting up a sub 3.70 ERA. And look at the talent they have in their pen. It's nothing compared to the Sox bullpens, yet they are consistently better. Why? Because Maddon puts each of his relievers in their best chance to succeed. He throws lefties vs lefties. He's not too lazy to make a pitching change once the advantage of a situational pitcher goes away.

I agree - He's going to more than likely hit the DL, all I'm saying is that it's not a certainty. The fact that they threw him in a minor league game rather than a major league game shows that they were at least a little concerned because now they can backdate his DL stint to his last MLB game. But at the same time, it's not so serious that they were afraid of putting him back out there. Tendonitis sounds like that could be the case, though. And if so, 15 days off would be April 10th or 12th, so he'd miss 4-6 games. Still not bad at all. Closers go 4-6 games between needs plenty of times, so you never know how much they will need him.

The good thing is that we have both Aceves and Melancon who have succeeded in the bullpen before, especially Aceves, who was lights out in the pen last season. I have no doubt that Aceves can easily fill in for Bailey while he's out. To me, Bailey's injury puts a little more pressure on the SP to go an inning deeper into games so they can cut out an inning off the end of the game. But again, it's probably only 4 games. He may not even hit the DL considering he threw after the coaching staff and medical staff were aware of the injury.

This may sound bleeping crazy, but I think I'm going to wait and see how deep our SP go and how Aceves/Bailey/Melancon do closing before I declare Papelbon irreplaceable. Let's at least give these guys a chance first. They all 3 had great success last year in their various roles, so who is to say it won't translate.

Before we all jump off the Tobin bridge, let's remember this is a minor thumb injury (he threw in a minor league game just a few days ago, and the reasoning was so that if he needed a DL stint, they could backdate it to his last MLB start. I'm pretty sure that if this was anything serious, they wouldn't have let him throw in a minor league game, and they were clearly aware of it before his work that day. If he hits the DL, he'll be eligible to come back on April 10th. That's missing a mere 4 games. I'm pretty sure we can get by with Melancon, Aceves, Morales, Albers, and Padilla over 4 games.

As Gordon Edes pointed out, there are now 4 homegrown starters in the Red Sox rotation - Lester, Buchholz, Bard, Doubront. Gotta love that.

Bard named 5th starter, per Pete Abe and Nick Cafardo, among others. I like this a lot. Lester Beckett Buchholz Doubie Bard. That's a solid 5.

From ESPN New York. Very interesting. If Pineda misses significant time, that rotation looks an awful, awful lot weaker.

I've since deleted it, so I'm not sure. I think Andrew Miller had a few starts to a 5.70 ERA as well and maybe like 4-5 wins, bullpen probably had about 20-25 wins, so that's my guess. I didn't look at it enough to really get to know it. Just kind of simmed it and then looked and then deleted it.

I think Doubront is going to be a hidden gem this year and is going to be a 13-14 game winner for us, ERA anywhere from 3.6-4.0. Probably around 175-180 IP. I said earlier that Bard, I thought, would be a sub 3.50 ERA pitcher. That was too optimistic. I actually think Doubront will be a better pitcher than Bard in a starting role this year. I think Bard throws 150 IP to around a 4.2-4.4 ERA. He'll probably go something like 9-7, may reach double digit wins, but regardless, he'll be better than the league average #5 starter. DiceK is a bit of an X factor this year. If he's ready to rejoin the team on June 1, he could steal a few starts away, especially if he comes back strong. To be honest, between DiceK, Cook, Padilla, and let's not forget that we will, in all likelihood, trade for a pretty solid SP come July, I think we've got much better SP depth this year than we did going into last season, and our SP doesn't look nearly as bad as all the analysts are predicting.

In the sim, Lester and Buchholz both spent significant time (2-3 months) on the DL.

I disagree completely about this part (the rest I agree with). I think this team may be the most talented in all of baseball to be honest. The question is health and durability. If we finally have a season that isn't riddled by injuries, this team is a no doubt PS team. Think about how well this team played from April - August. 30 games over .500 on September 1. That's insane. A 100 game win pace. But injuries and fatigue finally caught up to this team. One thing I love hearing - pitchers saying "My legs have never felt this good coming out of Spring Training". I know it's always the obligatory comment to say "I've never been in better shape", but actually specifying a part of the body that feels so good, especially a part as vital to a pitcher as the legs, that's pretty meaningful. If this team, this season, has a season with new medical staff, new conditioning staff, and a new manager, where they play the right way, and physically, more goes right than wrong, they are a 95+ win team. Also, sidenote - I think FINALLY we have a coach who can go toe to toe with bullpen management. We finally have a coach who isn't too lazy to go change pitchers once the matchups have come out of our favor. When the Rays come up L L R R S, and we have Rich Hill out there to start the inning, lets up a single or a walk, Valentine will actually pull him once the RHH come up. Francona would just roll the dice. I always hated that. Maddon wins a lot, lot, lot of games by bullpen management. I have a feeling Valentine will do the same.

Valentine will have a lot more success against the Rays than Francona did. Francona always, always, always waited for the 3 run HR. Against the Rays, they have such a lowly offense that if you manufacture a few runs you're in good shape. That's where Valentine will be so valuable - in games like those vs TB where we get a man on 1st and he'll go 1st to 3rd on a hit, or swipe 2nd and bunt over to 3rd, etc.