jung

I guess you must mean immediately before that but it is hard to say that a team that never lost more than three games at any time was truly stumbling. They were 14-9 starting with the Tampa series and working up through SD before they hit LA and SF. I would hardly call that stumbling. If I cut out the AL teams they faced before going to LA and SF, their record is even better. They won something like 8 out of 10 just before hitting the road. They lost two in a row and two in a row again between June 16 and June 23. That is about as close to a stumble as they got for that period.

Baseball would not be able to survive on college ballplayers alone though and organizational depth is more a cost that eventually yields an asset than it is one kind of asset that yields another kind of asset. Early cost controlled years are critical components of team building.

and they never missed an opportunity it seems to work at it collectively and figure pitchers out....if there is anything they should patent it is the scouting and team communication process they seem to have arrived at entirely as something of an exclusive to this bunch at this point.

Ten year contracts that scale back appropriately in the out years are not terrible in and of themselves. The real disaster contracts are those that actually either reward the athlete more money in those off peak later years or close to the same money as the most annual salary in the contract....those are disasters and utterly foolhardy. They suggest that the athlete will have become at some point during the contract some sort of team icon that earns his keep other ways than on the field while in fact more often than not the opposite is true with fans hoping the guy gets his ass out of town so they can cheer for somebody that can actually still get his bat to the baseball more than once a week. Teams can afford about one of those team icon kinda' deals as that is about all the fan base has any stomach for anyway. I refuse to believe that those contracts are based on some sort of straight up calculation that the player's decline has been calculated for and that appropriate contributions early in the contract offset those later years. It does not matter if the organization has the stomach for that kind of fiscal irresponsibility....the fans won't and the organization is eventually responsible for keeping the fan base happy. They want somebody producing, not some shell of his former self carting his ancient ass out on the field in the same uni number only now six sizes bigger. For everyday players the only way to offset that is to become an AL DH at some point ....AND... work at it as hard as Ortiz has worked at it. There are maybe two or three of those kinds of guys out there at any one time and that is about it. I tend to agree with Bell on Sabathia. The Spanks were fine all the way up to the opt out clauses which make that contract hard to swallow even with CC's early contract success. I like Bell also find it too funny that the early news had CC with little to no interest in the opt out but Whoops!!! guess what..... The exception is the guy both young enough and proven...ala Mike Trout who I think sk mentioned. The Rays should really be credited for seeing what Longoria was so early that they have really gotten full value and then some.

Nor will Ells IMO take less money from the Sox than a team like Seattle offers. I think he might take the same money from the Sox but not less money. It is all about the money in MLB. There is no chance of Ells taking far less money from the Sox for the right to play here vs someplace like Seattle and taking a little less money treats Ells like a fool and makes the Sox look like nickel and dime *******s who risked losing the player for pennies. Ells has no interest in looking like a fool with his entire financial future on the line and I doubt a "little less money" makes a dif to the Sox one way or the other again IMO.

I can't see offering players 10 year deals any longer unless the guy is a proven commodity and young at the same time. Since those two things tend to reside on opposite ends of the spectrum how the hell many times can you expect to find both in the same player?...Not too damned often I would guess. Then on top of that you want this hypothetical 10 year contract player's skill set to be a solid fit for your team, not just some guy who has numbers that you think he will continue to unilaterally produce. That is the trap so many teams have fallen into by not knowing how to use the numbers as a tool, preferring to think of the numbers as an end to themselves. That is not to say that what the Sox did in 2013 is necessarily repeatable either. That is even less likely IMO at least not the way they did it.

I did not think Salty would get a qualifying offer for the reason I stated earlier. The Sox would be worried that he would take it and well they should be. A deal can be struck for Salty well shy of what the QO would cost. Salty lost lots of points in the post season and probably cost himself some money besides.

Naps, Drew and Ells make a great deal of sense for the QO. Another job well done by the Sox FO IMO. Ells is in a salary stratosphere that makes the QO a non-factor. Whoever signs him is going to pay so much money for him that the draft pick hardly end up a rounder error in their cost calculation. Losing the pick may actually make guys like Naps and Drew less attractive to some teams. Eventually, we might find Naps signing here on a two year deal and Drew taking his QO.

It is hard to call the fattest turkey of five turkeys a 1 just because he is the fattest of them. By Bell's measure the fattest turkey of five turkeys probably does not have numbers that average out to the middle of the top 30 starters in baseball. There are things you have to be capable of that distinguishes a real staff 1. The ability to win after a lose for one thing as in stopping losing streaks. The ability to withstand the pressure of usually having to face the opponent's best pitcher for another. He is the guy that you would hand the ball to every time if you had to have one big game. Surely at this point even if Buch were healthy and even given Lackey's remarkable recovery given the time since his TJ, the guy we would hand the ball to would be Jon Lester...without question at least IMO. As I said earlier, we are likely always just going to look at Lester's numbers without really taking into account how many games he has to pitch in Fenway Park which is a graveyard for LH pitchers. That may always be an issue with regard to how we rate him because nobody will likely take into account how unforgiving Fenway is to LH pitchers.

Verlander at his peak was probably better than Lester but Verlander at his peak was likely the best of the 1's. That does not make the other other 1's out there any less of a 1. Our problem or maybe I should correct that and say my problem with Lester is that he always had this year's post season performance in him and he always had the regular season goods of a pitcher that could have that kind of post season. However he had not to this point demanded it of himself. Again for a guy like him to have not known that there was another level that he needed to aspire to, that he had not to the point when he made those comments reached is pretty amazing. As I said earlier though, if he did not know the correct answer to that question then, he sure as hell knows it now.

The Sox may have gotten timely hits but that is not the same thing as saying they had timely hitting. The former is valid but the latter is not. On more than one occasion they hit pretty decent pitches which says to me that their scouting effort eventually caught up to the much publicized but maybe not so super Cards starting pitching. Maybe add Carpenter to that mix and it could have been a different story. The Sox were guessing right many times especially against Wacha who they eventually figured out and pulverized. While on the few occasions that I tuned them in, the TV broadcast team made much of Wacha not being as sharp the second time around as he was in game 2 of the series, I thought he was leaving pitches in some bad spots in game 2 but the Sox were simply not prepared for him. I said the exact same thing in the game 2 game thread. I really thought Wacha pitched similarly in both games with the difference being the Sox working their usual process on the opponent once they had a book on him. I thought from the beginning that not only were the Cards foolish to pitch to Ortiz but that they were leaving pitches in horrible spots to a LH power hitter. Gomes had to be looking for the pitch he hit out and I think you can say the same for the Vic HR. I just can't remember the pitch that was hit for the triple. I will have to go looking for it. Salty hit a pretty good pitch although again I think they could have pitched Salty heat, up all day long instead of where they threw that thing and Salty would never have caught up to the pitch. As it was Salty hardly hit a liner. that was more of a six hopper. The pitch to Ross was just terrible...a bad pitch in a bad location and Ross made them pay. I am just focusing on the RBI hits here but in general I do think that the Sox vaunted ability to talk through the opponent really came to the fore here. Once the Sox got a read on those guys, things got much better for them. If anything given the situation, the Sox may have worked extra hard and extra fast to get these guys figured out. In fact I had given up on the TV broadcast team and the radio team was saying before Wacha's second start that the Sox were walking around like they were saying " come ahead big fella', we got something for ya' this time." The radio crew, particularly Lou Merloni claimed that the Sox thought they had definitely picked something up on Wacha.

Well the only argument I have with this is that while we might have rightfully questioned whether we really had a 1 or not even based on his regular season performance, in point of fact we did have a 1. It just took awhile for him to convince himself that he had to find that top gear within himself before he could claim it. But it would be hard to consider Lester a #2/3 ever again. I suppose there is a question about whether he can sustain it which is not to imply that he needs to put up his post season numbers in the regular season to sustain it. If he had fewer of those seemingly lost in a cutter quagmire periods during the regular season, that would be the end of any discussion that he is a 2 masquerading as a 1 IMO. He has convinced me without question. It is just always hard to know where baseball fits for these guys once they have families, money to burn etc etc. Take a hell of a lotta' commitment to be the guy at the top. Plus I doubt anybody will ever fully credit him for how hard it is to be that successful in Fenway as a LH pitcher since every little mistake you make ends up over or against that wall.

The question does not appear to be whether the Sox owners can compete with the Shanks owners. It appears to be can the Shanks ownership team compete with anybody having already screwed themselves royally. When your hopes and aspirations are riding on whether or not the league suspends one of your players such that his contract is nullified thus mitigating your thunderously idiotic decision, you know you are doing something wrong. Now that cable TV money is flowing like wine to many teams, having money may no longer be enough. You may actually have to do something intelligent with it for once.

Maybe Demps has trouble with the mid-summer heat. If that is the case, then that would suggest at least the possibility of repeating a 2013. I really don't need to see him do more than repeat his totals from 2013 some way or another. If he could do that, he is an OK 5. An average SO/9 for him at a little over 7 is fine. Below 6 is hideous for him especially since his swing and miss stuff is all low in the zone or low out of the zone. If he is not hitting that spot it is bomb city. A SO/9 below 6 would suggest he is up in the zone too much and the rest of his numbers will suffer as well.

I guess my concern for Dempster is mostly about the direction he was headed in as we got deeper into the year. What will Demps be in 2014? Will he be some version of a 2013 average or was his trend through the year indicative of the aging process and directionally indicative of what we might expect in 2014? April: ERA 3.30, IP 30, WHIP 1.133, SO/9 12.9 May: ERA 5.51, IP 32.2, WHIP 1.622, SO/9 7.7 June: ERA 3.55, IP 38, WHIP 1.368, SO/9 5.9 July: ERA 4.87, IP 20.1, WHIP 1.82, SO/9 7.1 August: ERA 6.75, IP 30.2, WHIP 1.467, SO/9 7.3 Sept/Oct: ERA 3.20. IP 19.2. WHIP 1.424, SO/9 9.2 Totals: ERA 4.57, IP 171.1, WHIP 1.452, SO/9 8.2 His SO/9 fell off and stayed off after April. His WHIP was decidedly poor after June and June was nothing to wright home about. If he duplicated 2013 in 2014 that would be a fine rotation 5, I think. But if in fact his 2013 performance from July on is indicative of a trend and he just picks up where he left off, then maybe you have a guy you are moving to the pen sooner than you had hoped or....as has been suggested....moving out while picking up part of his salary. Demps recovered in September but on only 19 innings pitched. Earlier in the season while he had his usual 1st inning problems (usually in the form of a bomb given up), he was able to pull out of it regularly before and had some decent showings. Later in the season, he continued to have early problems but then would really nose dive his way out of a game more often that not. Would he really be better that Workman in the 5 hole? Would Workman even be ready for the 5 hole?

It will be interesting to see how FA will play out for Naps. Have to think any team that has any interest in him would question the hip.....So I am having a hard time convincing myself that Naps ever gets to escape hip concerns. If anything maybe it ends up making it easier for the Sox to sign him if that is what they want to do.

If anybody was wondering if Leyland's retirement would end up with the Tigers finding their way to one of the Sox coaches, they have tapped Brad Ausmus to be their new skipper. Has gotten kinda' popular to tap these guys to manage that were not playing too long ago. Not sure I can even guess what kind of a manger Ausmus will make for the Tigers. Catchers are surely popular choices as well.

For those like me.....already jones'n for baseball, game 4 of the WS is being shown on MLB right now....6:26 EST. Must endure Cadaver and half-Buck though.

I guess we will never know but I wonder if Will would have been better served left down at the AAA level instead of coming up for the 2012 season. He may actually have lost some development time in these last couple years. He just turned 25 a month ago, this past September. 23 is considered pretty darned young for a full time ML ball player. So he has gone from really young to not so much in the space of two years of ball, partially injured, partially up with the big club and partially down at AAA again. Not sure he was well served during the 2012/2013 season. given the amount of time spent in each of those three spots. I would suggest that given the time that has been lost to injury and from bouncing back and forth, he really should have two years to get it together. However, none of it can be wasted. He should be getting himself ready to work really hard this off-season. Best case, he does not need more than this off-season and can at least perform at a competent level in 2014, improving the entire time. Depending on how SS and 1st pans out the optimal situation for Will would likely be XB gets SS and he gets 3rd. Will does not have great range going left which might be why he was so far off the line late in that game where he was just nowhere near the ball as it scooted past him down the 3rd base line. 1st base could be an option but I would think that is an absolute last resort....I mean very last resort.

The Sox have Bailey for one more year...Don't they????

He does not have to prove a damned thing anymore. But at the time when he uttered those now famous words "I don't know what more I can do. I don't know what other level there is" there was another level for him to seek and achieve. Now that he has achieved it, if he really decides to take that to the bank to the max it is going to be worth tens of millions of $. He already had proven his durability as a starter which is automatically a big check mark on the plus side. Now you add pitching at the highest level to quality to pitching at the highest level under max pressure to durability and he can just about name his price. I think he likes it here. I think he likes Farrell and Nieves. So while he might not make it as easy as Pedey made it, I don't think he will take the Sox all the way to the max. That might be wishful thinking on my part but I really think there is a good chance that he will ultimately make an effort to make it easier for the Sox to keep him than it will be for another team to take him when the time comes. If he looks in the mirror and is honest with himself there was another level for him to seek and to achieve. I doubt he will hold it against people for asking that he see in himself what so many saw in him.

Both sides (Buch's team-family, friends, agents etc) and the Sox need to sit down and decide a plan aimed at increasing his durability. Doing it all by a Red Sox plan has not seemed to work and doing it all Buch's way has not seemed to work either. Maybe Pedro is right. Maybe it does just takes a monumental amount of work for guys without much size to manage to stay on the mound. Pedro says he spent 2-3 hours each day just working on his shoulder. Probably means that on "days off" he was putting in 4-5 hour workouts anyway. At the rate Buch is going he is going to end up having one of those almost careers if he is not careful. But if he can arrive at a solution to his fragility then he really does become a monster IMO.

Man talk about withdrawals. Would give just about anything to go back to the very beginning without knowing the outcome. This season had everything. How often do you get so many players on one team at one time with so much to prove to themselves and everybody else. They played baseball like it was meant to be played....hardly something you can expect to see very often any more from a group of professional baseball players under contract. We even had the "made for a movie", obligatory pep talk from team leader Ortiz just when it was really needed and it worked. They did loosen up and started playing again the way they had played to get there, within seconds of said pep talk. They were the best "team" in the post season by a long margin. I have heard some ******** the last 24 hours or so about how LA would have given the Sox more of a fight. ********. The Dodgers went down like dogs to the Cards for crying out loud. The Sox would have beaten their asses too. The whole season was an eye popping example of what can be accomplished if you get enough ballplayers together with just enough talent that are just there to play the game. Nobody was worrying about their next shoe contract or razor commercial. The Sox had just enough of the right kind of veteran leadership in the form of Ortiz and Pedey as well. These guys to a man really did not have any time for the crap that tends to infect baseball these days. They had a ways to go before they could even think in those terms. So playing the game was really all there was for them to do. How was Prince Fielder going to beat a team like that.....Heck he had to move his next t-bone steak out of the way just to see who was pitching for the opponent that day. The Tigers were woefully ill prepared to play s team like the Sox. They were a team of superstars with no real team personality...just a bunch of very skilled athletes playing the games but really so much like so many squads of highly skilled athletes. They did not look like they should be on the same field with the Sox. I don't even think a healthy Cabrera would have made that much of a difference. They would have played the same disjointed, disconnected baseball regardless. For the most part the Cards were kinda similar to the Sox as far as lack of star power and star power problems at least from appearances. However you could tell that they had not blended into a team in the same sense that the Sox had and in truth the Cards are lucky the Sox did not go through them like a buzz saw. Take a whacky play here or there out of it and the Cards probably get their asses swept. Certainly the Sox would have pulled Wacha apart like a rag doll even in game 2 had they been able to see him during the regular season. Taking the DH away from one of the very few AL teams that had a full time DH and then only winning one game out of three straight in their home park is almost an embarrassment. Even though Ortiz played, he certainly did not hurt the Sox in the field and the Sox still lost Napoli's bat. The Sox may win it again soon but it is hard to imagine that they will win it just exactly this way again. As somebody pointed out...many things worked out for the Sox the way they tend to for championship teams. Only I think even more so because the Sox by their own admission had even less talent than it usually takes and you have to replace that with something. I don't expect to ever see anything like this again at least not in ML Baseball. It is interesting that "teams" loosely similar to the Sox have been the teams that have gone all the way of late. The less we see real teams playing the game the more likely that a real team or something close to it comes away with the brass ring I guess. The Sox did not necessarily have to maintain the same offensive approach against the Cards that they had used all season long but having used same process all season had given them the confidence of knowing that no team in baseball ever successfully broke them down. So when it came time to win games with even more pitching and defense and less offense than they had showed earlier, not only did they do it, more importantly, they played like they knew they could do it. Then just at the moment when it looked like they might just crack, Ortiz steps in and reminds them of who they are.....series over!

I have tallied them yet but I would bet that the LOB totals for the post season Sox are not anything like as worrisome as they were doing the regular season. The Sox did not get that many guys on post season in the first place. So I would think LOB percentage is pretty darned small for the post season team compared to the regular season team.

3rd base is not SS and Catcher though. Those are the top two defensive positions on the field. 3rd base is pretty far downstream from there and a position where you have to be expecting some offensive grunt. I don't think Pawtucket performance would do much to enhance WMB's value. He is so so young and I think that is one thing we tend to forget....maybe because he has been a topic of discussion for so long at the ML level. The way the whole Youk thing went down may have turned out to be something of a set up for WMB. He has so much more time to develop as a competent ML 3rd baseman. The other thing that may be hurting him a bit is that some players do develop on a faster time line and guys like Will end up looking like their development has just stopped. I would be pretty surprised if the Sox end up getting suckered into giving up on Will too early.