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But you can not look at the predicament the Sox are in and have more than hope that they might contend for something. For example you can't look at the very real possibility that the Sox are going to just let Lackey suck if he does and keep tossing him out there in hopes that he can entice some team and then in the same breadth say that this is a team that exudes more than just hope that it might contend for something. Those two perspectives on how the Sox may very likely address this season are in complete opposition to each other. I agree that it makes perfect sense that the Sox will try to suck somebody in on Lackey by the trade deadline. But I can't look at things like that and then in the same breadth say that they have anything more than a hope in hell of competing for anything. Lackey is not the only sign post in the road either. My comment about the guys waiting in the wings is the same sort of thing. If this were a great rotation you would without reservation rationalize that none of those guys will likely be really able to compete for one of those rotation spots in the spring. Unless somebody gets hurt in the spring or is a total total fail in the spring or the Sox do make a move and bring in another guy, we know today who is in the rotation and who is not. If it were a great rotation or even a really good rotation that would be completely palatable. But its not a great rotation or even a really good rotation.

None of these guys are busting down the doors of the starting rotation though and that in itself is a problem. DeLaRosa may "bust down the doors" next year but I don't see it happening this year. So you have a pretty nondescript rotation with none of the guys waiting in the wings looking like they can bust down the doors of even that. If it looked like a great rotation you could rationalize that none of these guys look like they will be battering their way into it. But this is not a great rotation and it still does not look like any of the guys mentioned will bust their way in. They will get there if somebody goes down or if somebody is just a complete fail. The Sox will likely give Lackey plenty of rope hoping that he shows enough stuff to entice some team to think he can help them if they look like they are making a run at the later part of the season. The opportunity to end up with a prospect haul out of something like that probably means that Lackey will be there, given plenty of rope and won't be pulled out of the rotation. I think the Sox would hold onto that possibility at all costs, even to a fault.

The rotation more than ever really boils down to Lester and Buch. No Beckett to point fingers at any longer. Lester for his part has been the consummate #2 pitcher but has never as yet stepped up to accept the #1 role and to be honest I no longer expect it of him. That might be alright if he can even duplicate the better statistical performances he has had throughout his career. Buch for his part has never stepped up to your expectations of a #2 in the rotation. If Lester gives us no more than what we have already seen from him and Buch does not step up in a big way, we are in trouble already cause I don't see much help coming from the rest. Dempster will likely be as advertised at best.....makes hay on the lower echelon AL teams and gets his clock cleaned by the upper half. Felix may actually have more potential than Dempster has to contribute. However that says more about Dempster than it does about Felix. I don't know how anybody can have more expectations for Lackey his first year back from TJ than that he will be a solid #5....maybe even a solid #4.5. He will be lucky to be able to figure out where the ball is going his first year back......And then there is Frankie....well OK....and..... It is easier to see the whole thing as a house of cards than it is to see it as a solid rotation. This is why so many have been pining for one more starting pitcher even if it is a gamble type of deal which has been basically all there has been out there for quite a while now. But folks would rather see one more gamble type guy brought in here than go with what we have right now which speaks volumes. So for my money it boils down to "Buch we need ya' more than ever buddy" and not just to have one of your usual, half on half off, half in the rotation half on the DL sort of Buch seasons. As for 5-6 innings on average as a rotation....if that is the best they can do from 1-5, the bullpen will be sucking wind by the end of the season again. Your #1 and 2 have to be giving you 6.5-7 innings on average to allow for #3-5 to average 5-6. If the whole rotation can only average 5-6 put your face between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye. It does not sound like much of a difference but by the end of the season it turns out to be 50+ extra innings you are asking of the pen and that turns out to be a tall order especially with half your games in Fenway as well as competing in the AL East.

Well that Yankee team is going to look like AARP has decided to become part of MLB. You look at older ballplayers and they still look good in their unis and start the season will all the hope in the world but it is hard to imagine that they can stay sown together for an entire season. As for the Sox even if Ortiz gets completely comfortable with his achilles before opening day he is so important to the Sox lineup yet is really at the same point in his career as many of the Yankee war horses. Injury can befall him at any time and can easily be season ending. True the Sox have bolstered the bullpen but we have had a pretty strong pen the last two years. You just cannot expect to get to many innings out of your pen. If pen mates could go innings they would be starters. So as a group they are better still than they were last year but regardless of how good they are....ask them to pitch to many innings they will get burned out just like they have for two straight years now.

I would not be completely surprised to see both the Yanks and the Sox turn out to be somewhat irrelevant in 2013 with a slight edge to the Yanks for their propensity to focus on starting pitching....something we never ever seem to do, certainly not often enough. The Yanks also seem more likely to pull out the stops and make mid-season moves if the Yankee flag is not flying close to its usual spot whereas the Sox seem more likely to let the team they constructed at the start of a season play out the string making moves to acquire players only if it looks like they have a legit shot at post season play. Most disconcerting is that Ortiz status appears to still be very uncertain and once again the Sox seem to be building out on another question mark filled roster. The starting rotation that is being trotted out is already wearing Riddler costumes plastered with question marks and Ortiz alone makes for a big enough lineup question mark to be disconcerting. More often than not when a team starts the season not sure if it is standing on quicksand or solid ground it turns out to be quicksand.

Well gptta' credit the Sox for one thing. At least they bulked up in the right places. It appeared that we had an overabundance of OF and C's. So what happens....bang...No more catching for Napoli and we are already down one OF.:lol:

Ah yes.....another fail from the vaunted Mr. Kalish this time before the season even starts. I do feel sorry for him though...talk about a hard luck story.....Jeez he can't catch a break. Clearly Bailey will be next followed by the rest of the Sox veterans from the hospital league.

I had a bad feeling about Kalish when the Sox were clearly not doing more than setting him up to platoon someplace. He seems like a nice enough guy. But I am sorta' done with him. Whatever they get out of him should be treated as gravy at this point.

Nice move by the O's. Danny Boy seems to be doin' OK for himself in birdland.

Not sure they should catch Napoli unless they have to. I mean what now...Lackey has to have his own private catcher? They should try to get all the mileage out of that bat that they can. If the Sox backed him off to 1 year then that suggests they don't even have confidence in a second year. Professional athletes put much more strain on damaged joints playing than just walking around town. Who cares if he has the versatility to catch at this point. Its a one year deal. Get all the production they can out of him and then see where they are after the year. As far as I am concerned, the just kicked the 1st decision down the road by a year which is likely as good a decision as they could make unless they wanted to just let Gomez or Salty play over there for a year.

I am at this point surprised that the Sox even offered one year at $5M although the incentive end of the deal seems fine. Since Napoli is clearly staring into the abyss maybe he will have a great year. I think catching will be completely off the table. They will want to get as much of his bat as possible. Both hips are shot it boils down to which one gives out first.

Now that they have him I think the Sox will need to see Napoli in the lineup as much as possible. I don't think a platoon partner makes sense for him either.

The combined weight of the offense (run production) and defense (run prevention in all its forms) has been where I have focused a number of posts this offseason. I don't think we will be able to score enough to keep up with the really potent offenses and won't pitch well enough to win the low scoring games. It does really look like a team stuck in the middle to me. I have picked them for 3rd in the East struggling to stay out of 4th and I think that is where they are going to end up. A guy like Morcom may well help the pitching. However I don't view a Morcom as enough to make a significant dent in the dynamic I just described and that I think we are likely to see played out time and again this season.

I guess...He got 28 starts in 2011. Hard for me to call 28 starts for a starting pitcher less than a full season of work. That is only two starts short of the standard 30. He was probably pitching in pain for a good many of those 28 starts I would think but still took the ball and likely had to be dragged off the mound regardless of how badly things were going. That is kinda' what I was driving at. If Lackey repeated his 2010 that would likely be a pretty good sign for the Sox I would think. If he has something more like his 2011 only with more innings and lets say something like an ERA maybe just over 5 but not as hideous as what it was in 2011 then I think that would be indicative of a bad overall year for the Sox with Lackey being called on to pitch even though his ERA was suffering for it. I think he has already proven he will take the ball in any event. That is one of the things that maybe distinguishes him. That willingness to take the ball regardless of the circumstances and still have to be dragged off the mound. We probably don't like it very much but I can definitely see how it would endear him to his teammates.

Not sure if you are asking me UN but I would think 200 innings at 4:40 in the AL East would be a very respectable first year back from TJ. We should know how easy it is to get to 4.50 since so many of our starters found it difficult to stay below that number. It does not take much to be at 4.50. So I would think 4.40 over 200 would be a good first year back for him.

Actually I think there is one chance of Lackey pitching 200 innings but not at an era below 4:00. IMO if Lackey pitches 200 it will be much like his last full season with the Sox when he just kept going out there game after game...staying out there because the Sox had no other real options for starters and had exhausted their bullpen AGAIN. So if he pitches 200 IMO it will be because he simply takes the ball and pitches until somebody comes out to get him regardless of the consequences. Maybe that is one of the reasons why he is beloved by his teammates. That sort of willingness to sacrifice goes a long way. His teammates in all likelihood were waiting for him to throw the ball one time and have his arm fall off. Surely he had to be pithing in some amount of pain and his teammates likely knew that. I would be a bit surprised if the Sox used him up that way his first year back from surgery if it comes to it. But I won't be at all surprised if he takes the ball every time just like he did his last year before surgery.

The first post in this thread is full of bold predictions most of them to do with the pitching. Lackey... 200 innings....don't think so. I don't think a team with four lamp bound genies, 25 rabbits feet, a genuine four leaf clover with guys runnin' around with horse shoes strung around their necks could have that much good turn out for it in one season.

At least when we are into the game threads we are watching actual baseball. The offseason grinds on forever with a number of us getting sort of testy. Then the numerous pissing contests begin often not having a single thing to do with baseball or the team or the organization or anything other than....a pissing contest for the sake of a pissing contest. Take it from me, if there is one thing true about a pissing contest that involves older men (myself included) the one thing that is almost universally true is that physical issues dictate that we have to "go" alot'. Expect several salvo's if you get into a pissing contest and that is about how some of these go as it gets later into the off season.:D

I sooooooooooooo long for the game threads it hurts!

I could be wrong but I think it made more sense to get Salty into a contract than not.....he is still a "catcher"....sort of.....and could still be somebody that could be part of a package that got the Sox something decent back. Don't get me wrong...I don't see Salty as the centerpiece of any trade but I think he can be a useful trade piece none the less. However if Salty catches something like 90-100 Sox games in 2013, it will likely be indicative that they are going nowhere. Salty does provide a good deal of comic relief though. Actual catchers must die laughing about every half minute or so.

Well then based on what Theo is saying now he would have to change the comments he made when he first hit Chicago to "I felt pressure from the media consultants" to do thus and so cause what he is now saying the media consultants were responsible for is the exact stuff that he claimed came at him as pressure from above. In fact, Theo said it with such conviction that LL felt compelled at the time to defend himself and ownership AND did so publicly. More lying ********. Staggering how much these guys just want you to forget what they said...sure sign of a bunch of ******** is when they forget the last bunch of ******** they slung in your direction. Nobody ever has to remember the truth because it is the truth.

Ut-ohh....watch out here MVP...thems fightin' words for some folks.... I have said the same more directly. May I commend you on your diplomacy. The moderators will be pleased with the occasional respite from their toiling.

It is even better than that Bell. "Ben has been snookered on the deal." Napoli knows that his surgery is so eminent that he took the $5m 1 year deal so that he could make some income on the side while recovering from going under the knife. The plan is to trip and fall somewhere around 1st base (ala' Bailey) the first day of the season and then be off to surgery and a vacation bought and paid for by the Sox. Sox FO goes into extreme depression and based on their recent luck around 1st ask the league if they can just rope it off and award hitters a double for anything that falls to the ground that gets over or gets through the infield. Sox ground crews rerouting the base paths as we speak.:D

Cook's sinker did not have to linger around the belt to get tagged. Low for Cook is between the bottom of the knee and the middle of the knee. Outside of that....its orbitsville.

Interesting except that Theo seems to be skirting parlously close to contradicting himself when he was trying to publicly pull ownership into the same bed with him with regard to moves made from about the Beckett extension forward. Maybe he should go back and read his own remarks before commenting. It almost does not matter whether some will ignore the book or soak in its contents it appears. The circus continues unabated. Should not have an impact on the team though. That is unless the current Baseball Operations group which does have many from the old Theo crowd gets roped into the thing.