AtWork

It will be interesting to see how they handle shortstop. They could just hand the job over to Iglesias and have Scutaro be the backup, they could have Scutaro start and use Iglesias as the backup to ease him into the role or they could go out and acquire another SS altogether. I also wonder if they'll pursue a righthanded outfielder like Jonny Gomes. If we went with Reddick or Kalish in RF, our entire outfield would be lefthanded.

That would not be at all surprising, I assumed that no options were picked up for the purpose of calculating how close we were to the luxury tax threshold. When I get a chance, I'm going to try to find some more realistic arbitration figures since they all seem a bit high. Also, I calculated .5 million as a salary for each remaining person on the roster. So each person we sign, you can subtract .5 million from since that amount is already figured into my salary calculation. I don't think the team would be opposed to going over the luxury tax threshold so long as it's only by $10 million or less.

Also, I'd expect the Red Sox to acquire a starter or two. They never go into the season only 5 deep in the rotation if you think about it. This year they had Wakefield as a 6th starter and they still went out and acquired Aceves and Miller.

The Red Sox site is listing the first game at 1pm, not 10am. http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/schedule/index.jsp?c_id=bos

It is a doubleheader at home. Lester vs. Shields at 1pm and Bedard vs. Niemann at 7.

Considering Ortiz will likely cost $8-10 million a year, I don't think it would be worth signing Papelbon to a $13+ million a year contract and either not addressing our starting pitching or going well above the luxury tax threshold.

He's not the only one on the list that's been traded. But given someone with as limited knowledge about our farm system as you have, I wouldn't expect you to know that. If you want a more up to date top 20 list, I would suggest Sox Prospects. They're updated regularly. http://www.soxprospects.com/

Let me preface by saying that I calculated every player's salary by their annual average salary over the length of their contract because that is how they are calculated for the purpose of the luxury tax threshold. All figures are in millions and rounded to to the 100th. Players Under Contract Gonzalez - 20.71 Crawford - 20.29 Beckett - 17 Lackey - 16.5 Youkilis - 10.31 Matsuzaka - 8.67 Buchholz - 7.49 Pedroia - 6.75 Jenks - 6 Lester - 6 Iglesias - 2.06 Scutaro - 1.5 (cost of buyout) These arbitration estimates are based on the 40/60/80 rule with two exceptions. According to the 40/60/80 rule, Ellsbury would make over $20 million next year and he's obviously not going to. For a comp, I used the $12 million that Josh Hamilton asked for coming off an MVP season and downgraded it to reflect the fact that Ellsbury is in his second year of arbitration, not his third. For Morales, his salary would have been below league minimum, so I simply increased it by 20%. Arbitration Eligible Players Ellsbury - 10 Saltalamacchia - 5.6 Albers - 4.28 Bard - 2.97 Lowrie - 1.32 Aceves - 0.99 McDonald - 0.88 Morales - 0.51 That would give us a salary of $149.83 million going into next year. If you round out the rest of the 40-man with players making an average of 0.50 million a year, that would mean our base salary going into 2012 sits at $159.83 million. The luxury tax threshold in 2012 will be $186 million. If you reserve $5 million for contract bonuses, that leaves us with just over $21.17 million to work with in free agency next year to sign a DH, a starter, a closer, a backup catcher and possibly a right fielder. Some of those arbitration figures look a little high though so that's probably a slightly conservative estimate.

Here come the big bats! http://2pep.com/funny%20pics/super%20funny%20pictures%20of%20animals/hilarious%20funny%20cute%20pictures%20of_thats_A_bat.jpg

Pedroia would be a better shortstop than Lowrie.

Lowrie sucks, Crawford sucks, Salty sucks, McDonald really really really sucks.

Yup.

Both Doubront and Tazawa are a couple starts away from completing their rehab assignments.

If I said that Lowrie's defense is worse than Aviles at shortstop, would anyone disagree?

I wouldn't be all that upset if we lost the division considering the garbage we've been throwing out there at the bottom of the rotation.

Good job by Wakefield to get Furbush right back out there.

That makes up for the web gem Wilson made to lead off the inning.

I hope Harden's put on waivers. Also, did anyone else notice the poor defense from Lowrie or do we only point that out when Aviles does it?

Highest ERA in AL (min. 100 innings) 1. John Lackey - 6.13 2. Joel Pineiro - 5.48 3. Jo-Jo Reyes - 5.30 4. Fausto Carmona - 5.12 5. Jake Arrieta - 5.05 6. Francisco Liriano - 5.00 7. Brad Penny - 4.99 8. Rick Porcello - 4.93 9. Tim Wakefield - 4.92 10. Luke Hochevar - 4.89