jung

I don't think JBJ will be another Ells even when after he grows into the job. Just a different kind of player I think. I also think that BC is one of the most pragmatic GM's there is....maybe one of the most pragmatic GM's there is ever going to be. Somebody is going to give Ells a ton a' years at a ton a' money and I just don't see BC doing that. The thing the PA has not as yet figured but still gropes for is some CBA formula that drives the money deeper into the ML rosters. Seemingly no matter how much money there is, it virtually all gets distributed to the top guys. Ells is one of those and somebody is going to pay him like that. I think the gap between whatever that final figure ends up being and what the Sox will pay will just end up being too great.

Doesn't matter since resigning Ells isn't even a topic. Its a myth....a fantasy

I was thinking the same thing Bell. I think he would have dumped him too if came to that. Not to say I feel strongly about it but if somebody had a gun to my head and forced me choose.....I think BC would have dumped him.

Just another serendipitous event on the way to the miracle that was the 2013 team.

UN's new thread sort of forces at least me to review the 2013 team. I know we want to sift through the numbers both individual and team and point to this, that and the other of them in an effort to parse what it was. Really it is as much an effort to try to understand how to duplicate it. We can't. That team was magical. At the end of the day, that is the only word for it. When you look at the confluence of events that produced it and then produced the result, what else is there to say for it. Koji for example would never have been made the closer if Hanrahan and Bailey had not failed. How much more confidence did that team play with knowing it just had to get the ball to Koji? How many more blown saves would some combination of Hanrahan and Bailey have produced? Koji might have been worth 5 games at least on his own. Did the train wrecks of the 11-12 seasons produce such a resolve in the vets that lived through them that combined with just the right mix of them with vets coming in with something to prove, like Vic and youngsters that the result was a team wide resolve that lasted through the entirety of the 162? Did that carry them into the post season where their inherent strengths in starting pitching and defense just carried them past every competitor? Honestly I think they could have played those series over and over again and none of those teams would have touched them with a ten foot pole. Frankly the Cards were lucky to have even pressed them at all. To me, it makes the whole notion that you can buy yourself a baseball team totally laughable. It might have been doable at some point when you could rely on a baseball team to come together naturally the way the 2013 Sox team did but you simply cannot rely on that any longer. In fact the more imbalanced your roster becomes with superstars, the less likely they will come together in any way at all. If they don't, we often end up with what we so often see now....folks looking at the gaudy stats of individual players all of them on the same team unable to win a bloody thing. In truth without the solid bedrock of the starting pitching, 2013 would not have happened at all. I have to acknowledge that. But isn't it true that it all starts with the starting pitching anyway. Either you have it or you don't and if you don't, you are just passing the time in the 162....you might be fun to watch as a team but you aren't going anywhere. We should cherish this team. We should not forget a single thing about it. I feel privileged to have watched every game, every pitch, every hit, every out and every error. Really the last few WS winners seem to be in some sense similar to this 2013 team. Maybe we have seen the last of the super team at least as a means to an end.....I guess we can all watch the Dodgers and see if they can turn the trick.

Very interesting thread starter UN. Want to try reading that on the small screen of a handheld device and keeping track of the various thoughts and considerations therein? The problem with long posts is not that they are long and it is not that they are not cohesive. It is that many of you are using devices that simply are not conducive to reading that sort of material at a high enough degree of comprehension. We do not read word by word. That is actually not how our brains work. We can bring a Pulitzer Prize winner here and we would be complaining about his post if we tried to read it on a handheld. I would suggest that folks use handheld devices for use in game threads where the nature of the best is short posting but resist the temptation to change members posting habits so they can continue to use the wrong device for the wrong job.

There is absolutely no choice but to be patient this year because FA's are not going to jump at early offers anyway. None of them want to leave big bucks on the table. So, we will all just have to wait it out. BC's measured approach makes sense to me. He is not making the market for anybody which still leaves him in the position to pounce.

V had no idea what he was doing. You can blame the car or the driver. There is no rational for throwing your limping car into the ditch but Bobby managed it. The biggest dif was the starting pitching. We said before 2013 started that it would really all hinge on the starting pitching and in the end it was the biggest year over year difference. The only place where those that believed that would be the case early on erred was in the estimation that Buch would have to contribute for the entire year. He couldn't but the rest were so damned good with the addition of Peavy that it just did not matter.....amazing on its own score.

I have no problem with seeing Wilson here. I have often wondered about moving a guy like Koji into the true fireman role. He warms up quickly....if anything there were a couple times at the end of the reg season when he came out after warming too much. So he clearly gets ready in a hurry. Probably the only downside is that it became palpable by the end of last season, not for us necessarily but for the team itself. They believed all they had to do was get the game to the 9th inning and they started to play with a level of confidence that was off the charts. They believed it and they were right.

All this money floating around baseball did not convince the Sox that they should resist the temptation to raise ticket prices. They have announced an average 4.5% increase in ticket prices for the 2014 season.

There is the possibility that along with some of the other decisions they have made about how they are going to deal with this year's batch of FA's, the Sox may have decided that they are not going to make the market for any FA. By offering Naps a 1 year deal, they have not moved the needle on Naps one bit. Some other team is gong to have to do that. If he ends up with a legit offer at two years, I am pretty sure the Sox would meet that. The Sox might balk at three years but might at the same time offer two years at a larger per annum plus an option...maybe even vesting. The Sox may have even signaled Naps agent such that there is a mutual understanding that the Sox do have interest in signing him and that they should keep the lines of communication open during the process. I think Naps wants to stay and I think the Sox want him. Looks to me that they are just not going to be market drivers for any FA whether they want the player or not.

Bradford reporting this evening that the Sox have offered Naps a one year deal at slightly more than the QO money. As much as I have been convinced of the Sox direction and approach to FA's, this one even surprises me a bit. I would have expected that there would be three year deals out there for Naps pushing the Sox to at least two years. I guess not...not yet anyway. At any rate, it should be clear that the Sox will be dragged to year's of term kicking and screaming.

Agreed, but I doubt we are blind enough to not realize that Will was rushed into the hole left by Youk, a hole Will was not quite ready to fill. But the Sox had no choice. They were not as yet completely cognizant of the gigantic mistake they had made in hiring V and felt they had have some balance in the way they handled him. First they slapped V's wrist over the ST incidents and then they supported him with Youk. So Youk was outta' here. Larry reciting revisionist history now is just Larry being Larry. BC was Farrell's proponent within the Sox organization and even if you buy into the idea that the whole organization wanted Farrell, it was no excuse for hiring the idiot they hired. My God, most of us threw up as soon as it happened and we are just people posting at a web site for crying out loud!

And what were the Sox going to do without Youk.....Will???? That has worked now hasn't it. Youk could have given the Sox what Will gave the Sox at least for that last year. Youk may have been on the way out but finally fell to the total idiocy of Bobby V. Bobby V, maybe the final straw that broke the camel's back and finally maybe lead Henry to understand that something was badly broken in the way his organization worked. He had Theo out of there by then but he still relied too heavily on Larry and Larry was still finding ways to unduly influence the rest of the organization. He is the team President. So he does wield a good deal of power as does any President. But Larry does not allow people to do their jobs unless you leash him and keep him leashed. Larry is a great pit bull and Henry will never IMO be without Larry because in business you need somebody to be the pit bull, a job Henry does not want to do. But whether Henry likes it or not he has to keep Larry leashed and Henry is the only guy that can have his hand on the other end of that leash.

So are you trying to make that case that getting bailed out by the unlikeliest of possible moves that nobody would have envisioned before it happened and would not have happened at all if not for the change in ownership in LA is just part of some cycle? I don't buy that. The Sox lucked out big time and would still today be throttled by that mess they were in were it not for the LA bail out. I don't think they will hold onto all of their prospects either. However, if they have their wits about them, they will organizationally be built to make better decisions about those prospects, separate the wheat from the chaff better and faster, and flesh off the chaff to somebody that is not as quick on their feet as they. In return they will only take the broken down vet with an ugly contract when they are backed into the position of having to do so. It is not a paradigm shift. You are using that term not me. It is simply better business. You can not look at how they got into that mess and determine it was by process. It was a lack of process. Becket was extended at a time when the Sox were flush with cash....that was a close to a red flag to just spending money because you have it as you can find. AGons was Theo's propensity to fall in love with a player and then move heaven and earth to eventually get his man. Henry is lucky he did not find his yacht headed for San Diego in that deal. Crawford was the classic, "oh lets just toss one more log on this fire" deal, I think finally recognized around baseball as a move you better make very carefully and after a boatload of due diligence has been reviewed very carefully. Before Crawford it was one more log (Jenks) and then one more log etc. There was no paradigm governing those disparate deals unless you want to call an undue influence from marketing holding baseball operations by the throat a paradigm. It was simply bad business which has since been replaced by good business once Henry climbed down out of the clouds and put an end to that mess.

J Your missing the point. They have to spend the money in LA. It is a star studded market with plenty of activities to distract the potential fan's attention. It if had NFL teams, they would have to be star studded NFL teams. Does not mean they would win necessarily just like having a star studded baseball team does not mean it will win necessarily. However you won't convince that fan base to come out unless it is profiled along lines of what Dodger's ownership is trying to accomplish in LA. It is far from the reality of many of the other franchises around baseball.

The point about John Henry stating the obvious makes it more surprising that he said it at all, especially with such conviction. Why say it at all unless your level of conviction is very high and you think it is in your best interest to inform the fan base and agents and players. That is what comes through Henry's dialogue and that is IMO why it was worthy of posting by Pal and worthy of comment. I am less interested in Henry's comments relating to guys like Ells who I think will be gone or guys like Salty for example. Reports are that the Sox have put a two year deal in front of Salty and I would be surprised if it is anything but the very team friendly deal that I and probably others have been expecting. Reports are that it is 2/10 as in $5M per. Is that team friendly enough for you? Further I don't expect any serious stabs at a Beltan or a Kemp or even a McCann. Maybe Beltran to play LF....maybe. I think that today's reports that the Sox are not even in the running for Drew are not based on Drew getting some fantastic, humongous offers out there as much as the Sox are just way off and have no real interest in extending themselves for some guy with an injury history that is a great fielder but cannot push past the 8 hole in the lineup when they have guys that can play on the left side. If somebody wants to get really stupid on Drew....I think the Sox are OK with that. Same goes for Ells with JBJ waiting in the wings even with the very high likelihood that JBJ is not ready to produce at Ells levels. Pedey was a special case in more ways than one. I just don't see how you can simply look at his position as one of the top 20 position players in the league and just stop there. Pedey is the face of this franchise. He is the heart and soul of this team and will be there after Ortiz is gone. Ortiz is the star without question. But Pedey is the guy that resonates with the rank and file Sox fan. More important, Pedey did not take the Sox to the max to get the deal done and that is the important other element to Pedey's deal. So just stopping at top 20 position players is IMO too simplistic a view of the relevant driving factors in Pedey's deal. So lets say they get past all the current shuffling and scuffling about guys like Ells and past the current crop of crumpled up vets bouncing around this year's FA market. Further, lets say they find their way back to Naps who by all accounts likes it here enough to be willing to come the Sox way if they can get close enough to the offers he is likely to get. While I really believe they get Naps done, suppose they are not even willing to meet Naps part way. Reflect on Henry's comments either way really because if they do get Naps done it will be because Naps did meet them part way, not because the Sox went to the mattresses to sign him. The Sox current process and the one that the Rays have followed and that other teams are now following is that you have to have faith in your development system and if you extend yourself, it is for starting pitching. Well first, you have to have a good developmental system, especially now when you are getting a sandwich pick back every time somebody pilfers your lunch box. You have to have one and you have to build from that. Could the Sox position be any better in that regard. They just won a WS and have a very solid bunch of players sitting at AAA and even AA. Further, they are not going to forget that it took a team acting nuttier than they had been acting to bail them out of the mess where they found themselves. How much is it going to cost to hold onto proven 1 hole, WS starting pitcher, Jon Lester when the time comes? How do you value a SP that gives you innings during the season and steps to the front of the line in the post season? Lester appears to like it here and now the Sox have Farrell as a big factor. But will Lester be willing to talk extension with all the money out there? This is where all the money floating around does have an impact. You would love to think that this option year gives the Sox more time to throw something in front of Lester that he bites at. I for one doubt it. He may stay but I am inclined to think it will be after he tests the market. We tend to focus on the money part of the equation with regard to change. "Teams are flush with money". Guys will cost more" etc etc. What else has changed. Young talent is coming up earlier and producing at a faster pace than we have seen in the past. Organizational ability to judge and further manage young talent appears to be on the rise. So the other change is that it is no longer acceptable to just rest on the old saw about the low percentage rate of success for prospects overall. Further, fans love to see the kids play presuming they can play. They are not willing to support the Keystone Kops out there especially in a big market but a healthy mix of vets that can play that drive the personality of the team and kids that can play makes for a very appealing marketing opportunity...way better in this market than having any bunch of fat cat superstar FA's you can think of. That LA has not been able to avoid their position is as specific to their market as the things that are specific to our market. LA can't support an NFL team sufficiently. So that market is a beast unto itself. Eventually I think guys like Boras are going to be far more dependent on an LA than will be comfortable. I see Boras trying to impact the CBA as a means to change the current dynamics as I don't think he likes what he sees regardless of all the money out there.

Is Puig actually on the block or something. I guess I am not sure why he is part of the discussion.

Wow that was some pretty detailed information from Henry. He Certainly did not beat around the bush.

Wouldn't Kemp be another big deal? I just don't see the Sox needing the likes of a Kemp or Beltran. Broken down vets are one thing...high priced broken down vets are really tough to swallow. Why do they need to gamble like that? I think the biggest deal they do will be bringing Naps back (hopefully back). Then if you want to consider Ruiz a big deal...well OK there is that. I would not consider Ruiz that big a deal. McCann is the big deal at Catcher.

Well I can see not taking the votes after the post season making some sense though. Unfortunately, I think that if the votes were taken after the post season then not only would the only managers that even had a shot be post season managers but in all likelihood the field gets pared down to the two WS managers. Logic would suggest that with the number of teams making it to the post season, your Manager of the year is likely to come from that group. I am just afraid that the natural tendency would then be to take your Manager of the year from the two guys that made it to the WS. Not sure that would be fair. Not sure what to do about it really. Beat writers are attached to a team. A team is attached to a city. Unfortunately I think once everybody acknowledges that there are biases and it is a subjective process, the number of subjective influences become infinite. "I don't like guys that wear wire frame glasses". It is katie bar the gate once you acknowledge that there are biases in the process. Once that became obvious a few years ago, then I think writers figured they had the freedom to let any bias they might have allow them to withhold a vote from what might otherwise be a deserving candidate. I really don't like that aspect of it but when an individual writer is asked why he did not vote for Manager X, you never hear "well I just think Manager Y was better". You always hear some subjective negative bias BS about Manager X.

The voting process is kinda' flawed to begin with. There are so many agenda's out there that the real hidden monkey wrench is the number of different reasons separate voters might have to withhold a vote from somebody. I think those tend to tell the story as opposed to the reasons separate voters might have for voting for somebody. Who won't vote for a Manager from a big market team? Who won't vote for an Exec or a Manager from a specific team for any reason. How many voters came from Toronto and would any of them have voted for Farrell? Who will only vote for a Manager based on one very specific criteria. While a different set of voters from the pool votes for Exec of the Year vs Manager of the year I think everybody thought BC was a cinch to win Exec of the Year. Maybe there is a bias against giving Manager of the Year to the Manager from the same team as the GM that won Exec of the Year. Pile all those negative biases up and maybe deserving or not Farrell never really had a chance. Like I said, I think the negative influences to withhold a vote for somebody are more relevant than the positive influences to vote for somebody and that is screwed up.

Buster Olney claiming that the Sox have made an offer to Salty but it sounds like the kind of offer I was describing earlier...very team team friendly....sounds like the kind of deal that Salty might take but only if there is nothing better out there for him. Olney also claimed to have talked to as many as twelve GM's that thought Drew should have taken the QO. Who knows though...maybe just the right 12. That does sound like a pretty high number although it does only take one GM to make a deal and two to make a market. Sox also apparently chasing Ruiz pretty hard according to Olney. However he also said that there are reports that some team (not the Sox) offered Ruiz 2/20.

In the first place, the 2004 and 2007 teams had the traditional monsters in the middle of the order approach to offense. They had Ortiz and Manny. Nothing the 2013 team fielded came close to that sort of means to an offensive end. The 2004 team put the young Youk, Johnny Damon, Bill Mueller with Varitek contributing a .390 OBP and a .872 OPS around those two guys. The 2013 team had nothing that got even within pissing distance of that. The 2007 team again had the monsters in the middle surrounded by Youk now in his prime, the up and coming Pedey, JD Drew, the much younger Ells, Mike Lowell and Varitek still contributing a .367 OBP and a more modest .787 OPS. No less an authority than David Ortiz himself is not bashful about saying the 2013 team was not what either the 2004 or the 2007 teams were for talent. For Ortiz to have said that at all with a very straight face suggests that the gaps between the 2004/2007 teams and the 2013 teams were great indeed. As for Drew and his "OBP/OPS" I have said it since coming here. Baseball is going back to its roots. Nobody is going to look at those offensive numbers for a SS and attach anything significant to them. SS is going back to the time before Jeter. However I should also note that I doubt that is the sort of player that will draw relatively huge salary numbers. Saying a SS had this offensive ranking amongst SS's and that ranking amongst SS is like saying a VW GTI or a Subaru WRX is a racy sports car. Yea against a bunch of rice burners....but put them next to a 1970 440 magnum charger and they are pussy cats. Ortiz is the Charger and Drew is the Subaru in this example. Only the top two or threw SS's across the offensive categories generate that sort of offensive interest and well they should because their offensive production leads to runs. You are asking GM's to put Drew's offensive production in the same category with those guys and it just it not going to happen. It just is not going to move the needle much. The best way to look at it within the Sox team is by looking at Pedey and Drew. Both play middle infield. Both are defensive stalwarts with Pedey being a bit flashier than Drew. SS is the more defensively oriented position than 2nd but not by much and neither are positions that necessarily make you think offense compared to defense. But are we ever going to think about Drew's offensive contributions in the same breadth with Pedey's???? No not now not ever. A few points of BA is about the only thing Drew can do to lift his offensive numbers enough as a SS to make himself more of a stand out. Iggy is ranked higher than Drew in OBP for AL SS's. Do we think Iggy is some sort of offensive monster? OBP and OPS are just wonderful as we all know and BA is past its prime. But at the end of the day, in order to be considered relevant to a team's offense you have to produce runs. You have to muscle your way into the part of the lineup where you can be driven in or can drive somebody else in. Drew is 17th in Runs and while being 5th in RBI's for SS's Tulo, at the top of the RBI list for SS's only drove in 82. Drew is 7th in OPS if you count Hanley Ramirez shortened season at 304 AB's. Is Drew in the same class with Hanley? NOT. He is 10th in OBP if you count Peralta and Hanley. Is Drew in the same class with either Hanley or Peralta offensively? ....NOT. By the way...MLB has Drew officially at 442 regular season AB's. If Boras can convince some team to pay Drew based in part on his actual offensive production, more power to him. He will get my vote for agent of the year if he pulls that one off. If he gets somebody to pay Drew in part for his offensive potential, I would be more willing to believe that one but again I would bet it will be because he can convince somebody of his offensive value in the traditional sense for SS's not based on some SS power expectation. Just putting those two things in the same sentence is hard to do and we would not be considering it at all were it not for the whacked out steroid era numbers. As for my take on steroids and there effect on the numbers. I am of the mind that at one point in baseball's history well over 50% of all players were using something.....maybe more and I am also of the mind that the pip squeaks, the Braun's of baseball skewed their numbers through usage more than any other category....meaning SS's for one. You can parse numbers any way you want to and have them say anything you want them to say but if you are not producing runs your offense just does not matter. SS's are in the main defensive players. They have been defensive players throughout history and if you take away the steroid era where we had pip squeaks that naturally had warning track power at best knocking the ball outta' the park then they have always been in the main defensive players paid the way baseball tends to pay mainly defensive players. The only exceptions within SS are the guys who can generate offense that is meaningful to run production. Anything beyond run production is picking through the chaff after the wheat is already gone.

McCann is going to command huge money...don't see Red Hose in his future. Napoli however is coming back I think....I hope!!!