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Xander is better than Drew offensively but not defensively. However Xander is likely better than Will at 3rd right now both offensively and defensively. Will's only advantage their is more time at the position. I still don't think they will try to do anything with Will at this point because: - they don't have to and Will likely gets some opportunity to play up here as guys get injured etc - they would like to see if they can build some value back into Will while they are not paying him very much then see what they want to do with him at that point As for Salty, he is in something of a spot I think. Oddly enough, it is the backup catcher that gives the Sox stability at the position. Salty commenting that he wants to stay is a dead give away that he is in a rather weak position and knows it. This is one time when a specific team situation is overarching to the usual situation of FA availability by position etc etc. IMO the Sox will make Salty a very team friendly offer which Salty can either take or leave. If he leaves it the Sox will just go elsewhere. I think they are fine with either overpaying for McCann or possibly paying much less and taking Ruiz. By the way, taking Salty now is no guarantee that they will keep him. Again IMO if they do make him a team friendly deal and if he takes it, they will have him under contract at a price that will make it easy to move him if they want to go in a different direction later. The news that the Sox have contacted Salty may make perfect sense. They will likely dispense with Salty one way or the other first and then either have the catching situation worked out for 2014 or move on to the next step in the process.

I did not see anything in Naps that would suggest a downturn. For one thing his confidence at 1st base has got to be sky high. He was fine around 1st base and has to be feeling good about how well he played defensively. Naps has never looked like a very versatile hitter to me. His swing is his swing. On the other hand that also means he really does not screw himself up. Choking up a little is about as exciting as things get for Naps. Watching him can be frustrating at times but at the end of the day it is hard to argue with what he accomplishes. Just have to be patient with him at times.

I know this is a way outside prediction for a number of reasons but I think Drew stays and takes his QO. Naps stay but on a deal, not on his QO. Ells goes and Salty also stays on some sort of deal...somewhere between 2-3 years with Salty being very favorably disposed to stay here......as in hometown discount.

One of the more interesting things I have seen the "talking heads" do in the last couple of days: Took all of the existing high ticket salaries and lined them up from top to bottom. That starts of course with Aroid and his disastrous contract. They went through them one by one all the way down through $18M per year. Interestingly, the only guys you could convince yourself were worth their contracts were.......... starting pitchers. That is not to say that all of the big starting pitcher contracts were "good" or reasonable contracts either but the everyday player contracts were all total ********...well on their way to being disasters if not already there.

Ruiz is not a bad idea at all although the Sox are really still just looking for a bridge I think. It may make more sense to bridge with Salty/Ross than with Ruiz/Ross. I would think that Ruiz would make way more sense than McCann.

24/3 is close but I actually think that if the Sox can get away with it, they will pay more money to keep the contract at 2 years plus an option year. If not they will go to 3 years but probably at some number a bit more of 24/3. I heard some cryptic damn thing about Drew not accepting some offer from somebody. But the gist of it appears to be that the talking heads now think Drew intends taking the QO.

$20 sounds too high for McCann even with the best in FA market premium. I would say that just the negotiation and bidding process pushes him over $15 but not by much....

Have you guys heard anything about Tom Verduchi's "Bonus at Bat" idea which would have a manager able to pick a batter once in a game and have him get a Bonus AB. In theory Farrell could have Ortiz bat twice in a row with a pinch runner running for Ortiz if he got a hit his first time up. Now guys like Tom Caron saying that he likes the idea for both leagues with the AL giving up the DH. I think both the original Verduchi idea and Caron's added comments are ridiculous. Just makes me want to throw up. Yes the game needs some offense, mainly in the NL though. The real issue for the new Commish is the length of games. I seriously doubt we need gimmicks to make that happen and I do not want the DH abandoned. It simply makes too much sense. If anything we need the NL to adopt it.

3/27 would "be" Salty taking a hometown discount I think. I cannot see anything south of $9M per year realistically given the scarcity of catchers out there. The Sox would be doing really really well I think to sign him for that or a couple mill per north of that on a 2 year deal with an option year. The other thing to factor in is that I really do not think leaving here is in Salty's best interest at this stage of his career and I think he knows that. Part of Salty's value is tied to his knowledge of this system and this pitching staff. I do not think Salty has matured enough to cut himself away from the Sox and have anything but a very rocky road for at least a year. If a team is looking to sign him for 3 years, what kind of value are they going to attach to that rocky first year. I definitely think a deal can be done here and I think a deal should be done as opposed to paying McCann some totally ridiculous premium based on his being the best catcher available in this year's FA market. Look for the Sox to try to get Salty done quickly and look for Salty and his team to try to drag their feet a little.

Reports are that the Sox called Salty today which makes some sense. He will cost much less than McCann and both are bridges to future at this point. You will end up overpaying for either but will pay much less for Salty than McCann. I expect them to try to sign Salty and maybe try hard enough to avoid McCann. Clearly the Sox believe the number for Salty will end up far south of $14.1M per. They are likely right about it being south of there. How far south is the question. I would bet it will be hard to pay Salty less than $10-11 per on a 3 year deal and sign the player. Sox are probably going to try to hit that number for 2 years and an option year would be my bet.

There is surely a lotta' information out there regarding Tanaka at this point. Much of it seems like PR stuff. I guess the one thing that I have seen a good deal that bothers me is the comparisons to Darvish a guy that is worth comparing because he has been able to come over here and pitch very much like an MLB pitcher. The reports I have seen say that Tanaka does not have Darvish stuff. He apparently has more pitches and throws them for strikes more often than Darvish. But in truth is that not the big differentiator between guys that succeed in the NPB and guys that can quickly transition to MLB? Darvish has looked like he was a US bred pitcher right away and at least from the reports it does not sound like that is Tanaka at this point. Sounds like Tanaka is sort of in the middle of a dice-k and a Darvish. That would suggest he could be a really good pitcher. But we sorta' know what Darvish is at this point. If his ceiling is not as high as Darvish's then that implies to me that he has the potential to slot into a good ML rotation as either a 2 or a 3. This is probably why ML GM's have their jobs and we have our web site. If he can in fact develop to slot in behind the 1 on a quality staff well then you are pretty much getting a decent return as paying for pitching goes these days. If he cannot make it that far and ends up a solid 3, well a solid 3 is a nice to have but there are certainly ways to get to a solid 3 that don't involve so much cash and so much uncertainty. We have guys coming up now that look every bit like they could be a solid 3. I would resist the temptation to at this point compare him to Greg Maddox, one of the best pitchers of his generation and a guy that successfully transitioned from mainly a pitcher with terrific stuff to a pitcher with pinpoint location as he aged and his velo declined. Honestly I would not be much disappointed either way. If they sign him it will be fun to see what happens with him here. If they don't sign him then we will surely end up seeing some ball player or another, likely one that does not have so much uncertainty attached to him. No question the Sox have things they are going to have to do with this roster for 2014. So it is not like they will not be making moves and spending money.

Before I forget, the Sox offered the QO' Monday so it is this Monday coming that the three guys in question have to respond...not Wednesday...my bad.

AGon was older though. I do have to admit that I don't know if Stanton would be the same kind of mismatch here that Crawford was and that Agons was. I have not looked at him in that light. One of the other counter arguments to paying too much for a Stanton is that if you get even one of the sandwich picks if somebody picks up one of your QO guys, players are coming up and producing at a major league level so much earlier now that maybe you can turn a pick into a Stanton type that just requires a couple of years of patience and there you are.....Not that I would know who that guy is either but some guys are developing at a faster pace than we are used to seeing.

I don't think we have talked about him in a long time but boy would Stanton look good in a Sox uni or what? Young guy...probably would sign to a long term deal willingly instead of grudgingly. But at the same time he is likely the one guy that the Marlins could absolutely demand an overpay on because he is still cost controlled. It would take a bunch to get him here but my God would he just answer so many questions for the Sox for what....ten years I guess???

Not that there is that much angst about it here but I hear and see a lotta' angst about how much 2014 is up in the air as far as roster goes. Who is going to play here. Who is going to play there etc. I actually think this is something we are all going to have to get used to. In fact I don't really understand the angst. It has been years and years since you could really expect to see the same guys wearing your laundry that many years in a row. Maybe there is a little more of it this year because we had so many short term deals. But we will know who takes the QO's soon and that will tell us a good deal about who is playing where. I still think Drew takes the QO. I think it likely that we see Salty back here. Not sure we will bite on McCann. I don't think Naps takes the QO but I do think we get him back here because we are in a better position to negotiate for his services. Hopefully we use 2014 to take care of Jon Lester. Although I can see him deciding to test the market. It would not be a complete surprise.

In the first place everything about a Internet site is people expressing opinions. That is it. People come on and express the opinion they want to express. I don't think anybody is particularly expressing the view that it matters to them with specificity what the Sox spend or don't spend for a particular player or what fees are paid to engage in a particular process. Some might be expressing the view that on the surface of it, $60M sounds like a lotta' money and quite possibly that money might be poured into an effort that maybe has a more concrete basis in player performance numbers built out of real MLB experience because pitching in Japan is not the same thing as pitching here. So what...that opinion is at least as valid as any other. Beyond that, I do think they are expressing the view that all of the potential expenditures an organization might make are allocated and accounted for by the company execs and accountants responsible and are part of a plan. I cannot tell how much the Sox asset value was effected by a particular move but I will guarantee you that it has been calculated within the Sox organization using real data and estimates and that those numbers mean something to those people. They have a very real view of what particular expenditures have meant and do mean to their organization based on real numbers and accepted accounting methodology.....math. I don't want to speak for others here but I think what tends to happen is that some of us as fans want to suggest that an opportunity arrises and that the Sox should just spend the money...just because they have it! It is there....they should spend it and as long as they have not hit the bottom of the barrel after spending that chuck of money, they should just spend the next chunk of money and that is what I think people are reacting to here....the idea that the Sox will or should just spend it because it is there. The Sox IMO will spend everything up to what they have allocated for particular ventures within the enterprise but there are finite limits for everything as well as calculations for what those ventures can or will yield. It does not matter whether there calculations are based on categories of expenditures or specific expenditures. The numbers exist within that organization and if you as an exec within that organization want to exceed a limit that has been set, you are going to have to justify it and more to the point, your ass is going to be on the line for it. It does not matter if I know those numbers or if you know those numbers. I think the discussion is more about whether the Sox organization has those numbers and will act or not based on them. If an exec within that organization goes back to management and asks for funds beyond the limits that have been set, he is saying that the plan he was vested into producing is flawed. "I need more money". Really....."Well what went wrong?" The answer back better not be "Huh." This is how people are held accountable in a business. I am not saying that I know what is on those balance sheets but the suggestion seems to be that those balance sheets either do not exist or that they should be or will simply be ignored when an opportunity presents itself. To suggest that these numbers do not exist within that organization is to suggest that nobody is being held accountable for anything. Since the Yankees have been used here as an example of what may or not go on at a Yankee board first I will suggest that it does matter what goes on at a Yankees board just as it does not matter to the Sox organization what grey matter exercises we may engage in here. But then lets go on to a real example. The Yankee owners decided to allow Aroid to leap past the organization allowing Aroid an audience without the participation of their GM. The result.....said Yankee owners were convinced to act like fans and completely ignore the same sets of number that I content exist within the Sox organization. Those sets of numbers said to GM Cashman that he should tell Aroid to go pound sand and that is what he told him. Aroid did not like that answer and decided to go over his head. The idiot owners not only gave Aroid the audience, but bought the ********. As a consequence, they have ended up with a contract that is historically bad, monumentally bad on so many levels that they are desperately hoping that charges of PED misconduct and the league itself bail them out of that contract. I can swallow a bad decision that was made within the context of the organization far easier than I can swallow people that should have known better going off willy nilly and ignoring all the work that has gone into doing the job the right way and I think that is the basis for the discussion we have been having here.

Well I don't think buying the Boston Globe really has much to do with paying the posting fee for a Japanese ballplayer. John Henry's historical view on businesses that he acquires is based on building value in the business. His real payday comes on the back end when he sells whatever asset we happen to be discussing. This is really a very common approach to investing. The investor, in this case John Henry likely has an idea or ideas about how he can build asset value in the Boston Globe and buys the asset in order to execute his plan. So if the point is that buying a newspaper and just running it as the previous owner ran it looks like it would be a pretty bad investment, I would agree with that. Henry likely sees the Globe as a platform. He will bring people into the Globe that are linked to his plan and those hires will likely be the things that analysts will look at early on in order to gain some understanding for Henry's plan for the Globe. Henry already owns the Red Sox and he already has people in baseball operations assigned the task of dealing with all aspects of personnel related issues. Just because the money for a posting fee does not count against the LT Tax cap does not mean that it is just funny money. Money spent is money spent and it is always a finite asset. That $60M or whatever it is could be spent any number of ways with any number of other pieces of the Fenway empire vying for those funds. It does appear that posting fees have an impact on the eventual salary negotiated with ballplayers transitioning from Japan to MLB accepting of the role the posting fee plays in providing them the means to make the transition to the best baseball league in the world. I am not convinced that the player is at that point looking so far downstream as to have calculated for his next ML contract. The chances are too great that there won't be a next contract. I hardly think it matters at the point the player has the opportunity to make the transition. At any rate if one of the views being expressed here is that the posting fee is severely discounted by the organization paying it because it does not count against the LT cap, I would disagree with that. It is discounted for sure but it is really no different from any other part of the organization looking for funds. Posting fees are likely a category that has an established limit within the Red Sox organization. BC can likely spend to that limit and will not likely be given more beyond that limit within any given time frame. In other words, the degree to which the posting fee is discounted is already known by the Sox organization. It does not matter if we know it or not. However it is not funny money. It is real money that could have been spent elsewhere if not here and I can absolutely assure you that somebody is watching how it is spent, where it is spent and the result.

There has yet to be a MLB FA formula devised that spreads the money deeper into the player pool although the PA would love for that to happen. So far during periods when CBA changes or other changes have created more opportunity to flow moneys to players, the top tier FA's have been the guys that have in the main soaked up the lions share of the additional money and the expectations are that this is what is going to happen this time as well. We might see fewer of the top tier players moving because their current team has the money to offer them an extension and hold onto them but still in all it appears that the top tier players as a group will be the guys most advantaged by the additional money. I also do not think that there will be a big swing in contract term toward more longer contracts. I think a guy that was a 2+option year or maybe 3 year contract guy before is still going to end up offered deals like that now but at a higher annual salary. It is becoming common knowledge if not a downright trend that teams want to hold onto their very best players and want to take away some other team's best players but value flexibility deeper into the roster. The interest dividing line for a Drew might be right at the dif between 2+ a team option vs a 3 year deal. Although just like the other players offered QO's Drew must decide to accept or reject by Wednesday. Unlike the situation with Salty, if Drew decides to accept I am inclined to think he would believe that he is one good batting season away from hitting the real jackpot....real long green for a SS and 3 years anyway....maybe 3 + a team option for s 4th. You have to think that in not offering Salty a QO, the Sox do not believe the bidding is going to get too crazy on Salty or as they have with other players, they would have been willing to risk the money's offered through a QO against the ability grab the pick if another team would take him. I think the Sox are quite willing to pay Drew were he to pick up the QO but wanted no part of paying Salty should they have offered and Salty accepted. I think pitchers might see more money go deeper into the staff. That might be the place where more money gets down past the big FA pitchers that are available. Of course the players involved in QO's don't have much time. They have to tell the teams if they are going to accept a QO offered by Wednesday.

I definitely don't want to see WMB moved to 1st. I am just wondering aloud what the Sox do if Drew takes the QO because if I were Drew I would find $14M to improve my hitting looking for a much bigger contract offer one year later pretty appealing. As for Salty, just because the Sox did not offer him a QO does not mean they won't try to bring him back. I just think for one thing the Sox were unwilling to lay out QO money for Salty even for one year and likely believe that even with few catchers out there, the bidding for Salty is not going to get outrageous. In fact, Salty may well decide that taking shorter money to stay in Boston is way better at this point than moving on. He knows this pitching staff now and Salty may not be ready to leave the security blanket of knowing the lay of the land in Boston. Leaving here right now could actually turn out to be very disappointing for Salty. So it is entirely possible that the Sox are banking on getting Salty back here on a reasonable deal and making Salty/Ross the bridge to the next catching solution. On the other hand, the Sox may be ready to say goodbye to Salty and bring up Lavs or go in a completely different direction. I doubt they want to pay big bucks for the really big bucks catching option out there this year though. So realistically it looks to me like Salty/Ross or Lavs/Ross for 2014.

In Ells case you have to figure the Sox made the QO purely for the pick. Drew may just take the QO and look to improve his offense over the course of a year. Imagine how many dollars it would mean to Drew in a contract if he just added a bit more offense to his defense? You would think his defense is not going anyplace over a time period as short as a year. So maybe the way he might figure it, the downside to taking the QO is nothing barring injury and the upside could be pretty tasty. $14M for 1 year at SS is a hell of a sweet way to get paid to work on your hitting. If that happens it makes for an interesting situation for WMB. You have to figure if that happens Drew gets SS and XB gets 3rd. Will gets to go back to AAA or maybe ends up with some time at 1st.

I suppose you could argue that the power expectations for a 1st baseman are greater than those of a 3rd baseman. On the other hand Will's real problems at the plate are more like, will he hit at all. Might be easier to assume that if he hits at all he will have some pop than to worry about him being a singles hitter.

I wonder if Vic stood so close to the plate the last time he hit RH against RH pitchers. Maybe he has a better view angle on the ball from that close to the plate. I think he had said that he has not hit RH/RH since his last year in high school. So it has surely been awhile. Will be interesting to see if he continues that way. Expect pitching coaches to be looking at the Verlander game closely as I think that is the only game we saw where Vic felt compelled to move back over to the left side. Surely not every RH pitcher is Verlander but there must have been something there that Vic simply felt he could not handle.

I think that it was important to us as fans that the Sox did so well on that West Coast swing but not because they had done poorly before it and I just think it was games to them, game that they had to win, series that they had to win just like any other series. But for us, I think we considered it a watershed kind of event considering how poorly previous Sox teams had done on those West Coast swings. It was another of those occasions where many of us would have said "the 2012 Sox would not have done that on a bet nor did or would the 2011 Sox for that matter". So I think it was important for us always looking for differences between this team and the 2011 and 2012 teams. Don't think it was nearly as meaningful to them as players or coaches.

All the reports have the negotiations for Ells focused at Crawford money or even slightly beyond. Seattle IMO would definitely pay Ells as part of a "face of the franchise" kind of deal for one thing and that sort of intent will add $ to the contract that the Sox will simply not pay. The Sox already have their face of the franchise. I think the money will get pushed just past $20 per for 6 to 7 years with the Sox wanting to stay on the teen side of $20 and I don't mean $9-teen either. I know these sorts of numbers are mind boggling for regular folks like us or at least me but they do absolutely mean something in baseball and to baseball players. They will fight and scramble for $0.5M a year on a $20M contract...never mind a full $1M or $2M. As for his agent...we absolutely know what Boras is thinking and if that was not aligned with what Ells was thinking, Ells would just fire Boras. If anything at least what has been publicized is that while Boras was going through his bout of losing clients, Ells was very supportive and adamant that he was staying aboard.

I think it is pretty exclusive for this day and age. It is so hard to get enough "under contract" players that are willing to work together this way. "Come on man, time to look at tape of pitcher xyz". "Nay can't do it buddy. Gillette is here with the new razor blade contract".....like that. Heck these guys are making so much coin that at some point I would bet they begin to want to spend more time with their families than in days past. 2004 and 2007 teams had more raw talent as Ortiz himself said and I think depended far less on an actual process that encompassed the entire team. Those guys may have had individual processes that were very successful but I really don't think we have seen this sort of thing for a couple of decades...not this deeply embedded in the entire team. I absolutely think the Weaver Baltimore teams functioned this way.....probably out of fear of the original "little ball of hate". Unfortunately I am old enough to have watched them. 1998-2000 Spanks...could probably buy that one....maybe. They were lucky enough to have guys under contract that you could tell, liked each other and were a very well blended team of good athletes...O'neill, Jeter, Williams, Knoblauch, Spencer, Brosius...God I hated some of those guys but grudgingly had to admit they blended into a hell of a team, another whole greater than sum of parts team. The similarity between the 2013 Sox and the Spanks of this era is that they had a bunch of guys as we did that had much to prove to themselves and to baseball generally. They really had a chip on their collective shoulders. Weaver's teams did it but even at that time, in their era they were acknowledged for their overall "team" mentality. They did it more as a consequence of playing for the little dictator and the fact that the little dictator had Brooks Robinson who really at that time was a baseball version of what Larry Bird later was for the Celtics. Brooks was past his prime as a hitter but not by much and was without question the team leader and a consummate team player. Brooks would do almost nothing offensively for the bulk of a game and then just when you thought you had gotten past him and the Orioles he would just break your heart in one single at bat.....sound familiar? or he would make some ridiculous play in the field that just completely took the legs out from under a rally and just like that the O's were walking back to the dugout for their ups and your guys were standing there going "what the f*** just happened"...."Did he actually do that....from 3rd base????"