lospunchados

can Bobby finally move salty down farther in the lineup. If he hits cleanup again this year i might flip out ( and i don't mind him he just should be our number 8 guy). If there is ever any situational hitting like gb to left side advances runner to third with less than 2 outs or runner on third with less than two outs , he rarely does it and just swings for the fences.

Lester is fine. He does need to see more results but i don't want to trade him.

I'm not absolving BC of blame. The incompetent buffoon you speak of made the terrible signings. There were many rumors that others around Theo did not want either of his big signings (CC Lackey). Hiring new blood doesn't fix everything either, being a disciple of Theo could benefit him. The problem wasn't the formula, theo had it right he just quit following it. It doesn't matter who is the GM they need a solid plan to save the team, that's why I said we ned to see what BC will do. Just bringing in some other GM doesn't change anything now.

unbelievable

Since this thread has gone on a tangent of questioning BC I'll throw a bit out there. Almost all of BC's problems go straight to the Bard decision and no payroll flexibility. In multiple sources Bobby V. had talked about Bard training to be a starter next year and to prepare for it. This was in the first week to week and a half of december. With papelbon allready having left in free agency and Bard moving from the setup role a strength ( 8th and ninth inning bullpen) now was a glaring weakness. They have a lot of shortstops available (lowrie,aviles,scutaro and iglesias) so getting bullpen help from that makes sense. Lowrie makes sense to move as he had been unable to stay healthy thus far and still had fairly good trade value so he was moved for a closer, who could be either close or be a setup man. That trade was great and made sense leaving three people for ss and of the three, none have had major injury concerns. They would all be comparable valueeither with the bat or better with the glove (ie. Iglesisas better defensivly, not as good a hitter as lowrie). On the same day though they add nick punto to a two year deal. To me this just screams that they really don't have any faith in Iglesias at all. Then, on December 28th, they use Reddick ( who is viewed i'm assuming as movable mostly on the basis of he is a left handed hitter and we have Kalish in the minors) to get a closer. It makes sense if you decide that Kalish will get healthy and back on track and he is more of the future, and with the lineup for the 2012 ( in theory ) all ready featuring Crawford,Ellsbury,Ortiz and Gonzlaez as lefties, I guess it is justifiable. With four shortstops again in mid January they trade Scutaro for a bullpen arm (Mortensen) and to clear up some cap space, which they use, two days later to sign Cody Ross. Great move a Right handed power bat added for half of Scutaro's contract. With 32 million in pitching contracts that we would be lucky to get half a season from ( actually it's probably better if we get no pitching from them) BC obviously was looking from within the orginization to fill the starting pitching holes. He had found cheap bullpen arms and traded for other bullpen arms so he felt ok there. The Ortiz situation, not handled great ( if they really wanted some cap space for someone or a SP they could have offered less dollars per year and a multi year to Ortiz). The main problem is the front office saw his stuff and thought hey, why spend 10 million on Kuroda or multi year deal to Buerhle when i can get a Verlander or Strasburg starter for 1 million. Some of the deals look bad now but at the time most made sense but all hinged on a big gamble that didn't pan out. For a Baseball gm with no money to use, in retrospect two of the three deals now look good. Lowrie for Melancon is still a good deal as other than a disasterous April/May he has been fantastic since being recalled. Aviles numbers vs Lowrie are very close and though Lowrie has more homers the dropoff isn't terrible ( it wouldn't be a dropoff at all if Aviles could learn to take a walk, but appearantly he can't) as aviles has a higher average and more sb's. Scutaro esentially for Ross and Mortensen has been great as Aviles numbers are comparable to Scutaro's. The Reddick deal is looking really bad now ( especially with the laughable stat that Reddick 20 HR, Redsox entire outfield 20 HR). The Punto "deal" was stupid as well. Why play Iglesisas 2 million a season and not give him a shot (500k less than the combined salary of aviles and punto combined). I think it's tough to blame BC for the terrible season so far, the first season of a baseball GM honestly has very little to do with what they have done, and his big decision/gamble ( Bard) seemed as much based on the previous GM's problems as him just wanting to throw Bard into a new situation. With a lot of young talent and some expiring contracts coming off the books i think we will see what he can do soon. At least he appears to have some kind of plan or strategy in place ( though the first idea didn't really plan out), it's more than Theo was doing in his last couple of years.

Since this thread has gone on a tangent of questioning BC I'll throw a bit out there. Almost all of BC's problems go straight to the Bard decision and no payroll flexibility. In multiple sources Bobby V. had talked about Bard training to be a starter next year and to prepare for it. This was in the first week to week and a half of december. With papelbon allready having left in free agency and Bard moving from the setup role a strength ( 8th and ninth inning bullpen) now was a glaring weakness. They have a lot of shortstops available (lowrie,aviles,scutaro and iglesias) so getting bullpen help from that makes sense. Lowrie makes sense to move as he had been unable to stay healthy thus far and still had fairly good trade value so he was moved for a closer, who could be either close or be a setup man. That trade was great and made sense leaving three people for ss and of the three, none have had major injury concerns. They would all be comparable valueeither with the bat or better with the glove (ie. Iglesisas better defensivly, not as good a hitter as lowrie). On the same day though they add nick punto to a two year deal. To me this just screams that they really don't have any faith in Iglesias at all. Then, on December 28th, they use Reddick ( who is viewed i'm assuming as movable mostly on the basis of he is a left handed hitter and we have Kalish in the minors) to get a closer. It makes sense if you decide that Kalish will get healthy and back on track and he is more of the future, and with the lineup for the 2012 ( in theory ) all ready featuring Crawford,Ellsbury,Ortiz and Gonzlaez as lefties, I guess it is justifiable. With four shortstops again in mid January they trade Scutaro for a bullpen arm (Mortensen) and to clear up some cap space, which they use, two days later to sign Cody Ross. Great move a Right handed power bat added for half of Scutaro's contract. With 32 million in pitching contracts that we would be lucky to get half a season from ( actually it's probably better if we get no pitching from them) BC obviously was looking from within the orginization to fill the starting pitching holes. He had found cheap bullpen arms and traded for other bullpen arms so he felt ok there. The Ortiz situation, not handled great ( if they really wanted some cap space for someone or a SP they could have offered less dollars per year and a multi year to Ortiz). The main problem is the front office saw his stuff and thought hey, why spend 10 million on Kuroda or multi year deal to Buerhle when i can get a Verlander or Strasburg starter for 1 million. Some of the deals look bad now but at the time most made sense but all hinged on a big gamble that didn't pan out. For a Baseball gm with no money to use, in retrospect two of the three deals now look good. Lowrie for Melancon is still a good deal as other than a disasterous April/May he has been fantastic since being recalled. Aviles numbers vs Lowrie are very close and though Lowrie has more homers the dropoff isn't terrible ( it wouldn't be a dropoff at all if Aviles could learn to take a walk, but appearantly he can't) as aviles has a higher average and more sb's. Scutaro esentially for Ross and Mortensen has been great as Aviles numbers are comparable to Scutaro's. The Reddick deal is looking really bad now ( especially with the laughable stat that Reddick 20 HR, Redsox entire outfield 20 HR). The Punto "deal" was stupid as well. Why play Iglesisas 2 million a season and not give him a shot (500k less than the combined salary of aviles and punto combined). I think it's tough to blame BC for the terrible season so far, the first season of a baseball GM honestly has very little to do with what they have done, and his big decision/gamble ( Bard) seemed as much based on the previous GM's problems as him just wanting to throw Bard into a new situation. With a lot of young talent and some expiring contracts coming off the books i think we will see what he can do soon. At least he appears to have some kind of plan or strategy in place ( though the first idea didn't really plan out), it's more than Theo was doing in his last couple of years.

better him having a setback than ellsbury

The Dh arguement is the dumbest thing i have ever heard. It is a position iin the american league. There should be dh's in the hall of fame.

No one seems to mention that Morales is only 26 and was called up at 21. Very few pitchers in that 21-24 year old range have excellent control. He's been learning on the job and seems to be showing great improvement over the last year and a bit.

yep he is. But I doubt he will retire after next year though

The move had to be made so tough to see Youk go but it needed to happen. Though we didn't get to much for him you couldn't expect much either as everyone knew he was getting dealt. On the positive maybe Stewart could be ok with some Triple AAA time as the Sox have done a good job with some reclamtion projects/never quite good enoughs (like Miller, Atchison, mortenson somewhat and maybe prior)

I don't think everyone is intent on letting ellsbury go it's just that his agent is Boras and they just paid a similar player a 7year 142 million dollar contract it seems unlikely they will pay ellsbury that much ( or more) to keep him. There is a whole year with ellsbury still under contract next year so we should have a good idea by the moves they make or don't make next offseason. Hopefully Youk can find a good landing spot as he has done a lot for the sox over the years

Crawford should outperform Nava in every facet of the game ( though to be fair we don't know what kind of arm strength he will have with a whole new throwing motion, and coming back from elbow surgery), but Nava has had a great obp and is reminiscent of the old philosophy of the team, guys who take pitches and get on base. I don't think he should take Crawfords place but i think with the strong possibility of Youk leaving Nava needs to find at least a couple of games a week because other than Ortiz the walks aren't happening very often on this team (Gonzalez went May 15 to June 11th without a walk). Expecting the 2009/2010 Crawford is pretty unrealistic. I hope he can keep around 15 plus homer power but the sb's are going down. By the 09/10 seasons he wasn't the guy who just took bases at will no matter who was pitching or catching, he destroyed the bad teams ( ie 21 steals in 35 games against the sox , and 86 in 289 games against everyone else). I'm not saying he can't still get a bunch of steals but 55 seems highly unlikely especially since he went 21 for 21 against the sox and 86 steals and 21 caught stealings against everyone else. Should crawford be closer to the 2010 numbers than 2011, Absolutely, and hopefully, for the sake of the team he will be.

And an Update 3 weeks into June- AVG OBP SLG 283 405 633 yes i can't believe no on has mentioned him as a problem with those numbers and averaging 6 homeruns a month.

There's no way they will pay him 20 mil with arbitration eligibilty left. The highest anyone has got is around 10 mil so they could reasonably assume him to get around 10-12.5 or like lincecum(2year 23mil), avoid it and sign a multi year deal around 10-13mil per year to buy out his remaining years of arbitration. Lincecum got that kind of deal after winning back to back cy young awards so giving ellsbury 20 mil right now wouldn't make any sense.