jung

Well now like it or not they have made their decision on Iggy. He is officially trade bait. They had this year to give him and they took that away. So with one of the B's flying up his butt hole, they have no choice but to trade him now in some package or another. The Sox will likely do that without regret as Iggy was never going to be a classic Red Sox SS. Not that the classic Red Sox SS is all that much to write home about but he is not Iggy.

Buch and Lester don't have to suck for this team as currently constructed to be in pretty rough shape. The problem is that they have to excel for this team to go anywhere. They have no margin for error in the rotation as currently constructed. Every starter they have will have to pitch to the peak of their potential for this team to succeed. Those two guys did not exactly suck last year and the team went nowhere with the bullpen utterly spent by season end again.

Well that suggests that they are right back where I thought the Sox should have started with this whole process. Sounds to me like the Sox proposed different language in the contract....Napoli's people rejected and the Sox counter offer is fewer years at the same AAV. Brilliant....Offer the player what you think he is worth, with his existing injuries taken into account. Either the player accepts or he does not. An existing injury should be addressed in the basic terms of the contract not with a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo. Once again I think the Sox are going to end up looking like buffoons.

Fine.... chemistry and heart and all of that are great and I more than anybody here loath these teams full of overpaid idiots waiting for their limos to take them back to the Ritz after every game. However the great leveler between the teams that on paper look like they have the goods and the teams that don't is pitching. We once again are going to end up with to many question marks in the rotation, to many guys that will have to perform to absolute peak of the expectations that we might have for them if they are going to succeed and that is just to much to ask especially for a team that plays 81 games in that band box down on Yawkey way and treats overall team defense like it was some sort of disease. This was just not a good year to try to rebuild a rotation unless you were going to gamble on some 1 year deals with some guys. Some of that has gone by the boards and if looks are any indication it looks like the Sox have no interest in going down that road and will prefer to wait till the end to make their next pitching move, when the dregs are whats left. Some of us said the same thing last year's rotation and no matter who was swinging the bats that inevitably is what did in the 2012 campaign. We still had some people chaffing at the notion that the game starts with pitching even while watching the rotation sink the 2012 campaign. Dempster will not be enough....not nearly enough.

I suspect the guys that want a Drew brought here still hold out hope that the Sox can make something of 2013. Drew or no Drew they are not getting to the post season. They are right now not a better team than the team they started 2012 with and that was a failed team BEFORE the trade. Whether they finish 3rd in the AL East or last makes no dif. They both will represent failed seasons. However if they don't make the post season and do not make progress with the crop of guys from Pawtucket, that will be the cruelest waste of a season. If I had to guess today, I would guess this Sox team would be doing well to finish 3rd in the AL East and am more inclined to think it will finish 4th.

Well lets see....Iggy turns 23 on January 9th. After the 2013 campaign he will be 24. When does he turn from a hot young prospect to a kid that disappoints and never made it at least not for this team. I simply think that Iggy needs at this point to pull his head above water against ML pitching. He started doing it the end of last season going from not even able to stand in against ML pitching hitting weak grounders to second base at best to actually beginning to get his nose above the water a bit. I would put him at SS in 2013 and leave him there. He either drowns or swims. There is no time left with one of the B's already barking up his *******. And my earlier point remains a whole field full of Drews and Napolis and Swishers and Gomes will not save this team from rising past its maximum potential...mediocrity. I might feel better about their chances with a team like that if the rest of the league would just stand still for them but that is not the case. Jeez the Royals think they are going to kick our ass and they are probably right!

Well lets see....Iggy turns 23 on January 9th. After the 2013 campaign he will be 24. When does he turn from a hot young prospect to a kid that disappoints and never made it at least not for this team. I simply think that Iggy needs at this point to pull his head above water against ML pitching. He started doing it the end of last season going from not even able to stand in against ML pitching hitting weak grounders to second base at best to actually beginning to get his nose above the water a bit. I would put him at SS in 2013 and leave him there. He either drowns or swims. There is no time left with one of the B's already barking up his *******. And my earlier point remains a whole field full of Drews and Napolis and Swishers and Gomes will not save this team from rising past its maximum potential...mediocrity. I might feel better about their chances with a team like that if the rest of the league would just stand still for them but that is not the case. Jeez the Royals think they are going to kick our ass and they are probably right!

I doubt seriously that Iggy will make any more progress in AAA and what are we hoping to achieve out of 2013 anyway? They are going nowhere...they can't pitch and have done very little to resolve that. They are headed to mid pack mediocrity at best. So why send guys down to languish more in a season where you will accomplish nothing relative to standings or the post season?

Well if in fact they are trying to negotiate language that is tighter than the Drew language, I would say that at the very least Napoli's attorneys would have to review it and unlike other kinds of negotiations they likely would not counteroffer but would instead just point to the language that they are unwilling to accept and ask the Sox to try again using different language. All by way of saying that if this is what is going on.....this could easily be a very long process. I might even suggest that since there are no guarantees of success, the Sox might be best served killing the deal and finding somebody else.

We still have Ciriaco to share time at SS don't we? So why do we really want Drew?...We really do want to corner the market on mediocrity apparently. Lets just keep jammin' guys that have not seen over 100 games a season and literally describe mediocrity into this roster. But hey there is a 2 as the first digit of his age. That is getting to be a rarity around here even if it represents age 29, one year short of 30. We will probably even pursue Drew. Make him another player where we make the market. By the time he is done with us, he should be a $10m SS.

The rotation as it is is going to beat this pen like a drum....as it already has for two years running. I would try to get some additional rotation help either in the form of a one year deal to somebody left out there or a longer commitment involving a larger basket of players coming from our end. As it is now, plan on seeing this pen with arms dragging by the end of this season AGAIN. Of course it makes it that much easier to blame our crummy pitching on those guys. If they can't do anything in the rotation then I would try to secure anything and anybody that can throw for the pen in order to stave off the inevitable overuse of the guys that are there.

Sure lets trade the player with the upside so we can keep the player that we know like a book.....a dime novel for that matter. As for trading for Drew....all the Drews and Napolis's and Swishers and Victorino's in this world are not going to lift this year's Sox team out of mid-pack at best..So why?

Sending Lavs to AAA in this year of going nowhere is just plain stupid. However that would not be a surprise now would it.

Terrific...if that lineup they will be playing one guy from down on the farm in a year where they won't be able to find their way to 1st place or even the post season if their life depended on it. On top of that, nobody is going to care about Gomes and Napoli or Swisher. They are going to doom themselves to a crummy record AND poor attendance. At least Victorino can play every outfield position and frees up Ells if they are going to do anything with him. This should have been the year where they stop giving guys that won't improve down on the farm a cup of coffee up here and then decide they know what they have or don't have. I said months ago that Riddick's success (as it is) in Oakland was much more a result of Oakland giving him the job in RF. He didn't have to look over his shoulder every five minutes which is in the main how we do things here in Boston. Give Iggy the job and SS. Even though he started to show signs of improvement late in the year last year initially he will likely sink like a stone. Who cares?? Let him find his way to ML level play or let him drown but don't for the love of mike take the usual Red Sox approach, not in this year. Give Kalish RF and put Lavs behind the plate for a majority of the games. Here in Boston its "your not distinguishing yourself kid". We already have a boatload of mediocre ballplayers that we can insert into that position". No s*** Sherlock. You sure have the market cornered on mediocrity. I would take LaRoche at 1st cause he would help our young left side. Napoli is going to need shin guards over there at 1st. And I got news for you, I hope Dempster on opening day is an effort at comedy because if he is your opening day pitcher, stick your head directly between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.

The dynamic the Sox are trying to change is the use of FA to build the team as opposed to using them to fill the odd hole now and again. The only way to change that vicious cycle is to lay off signing multiple big FA contracts which also keep the kids down on the farm languishing. Once they get the pump primed again, they should be able to keep a flow of good young players coming up to Boston relying on FA to fill in instead of making FA the meat and potatoes of what has in recent years not even gelled into a team. My issue with what they have been doing is that I really think they had as close to an opportunity as they were going to get to having their cake and eating it too but really have not played it that way. Long term I agree with what they appear to be doing. I think it could work out a bit better for them than it appears it is going to work out in the short term.

It is a little like having baseball teams constructed the way pro basketball teams are constructed. However the games are completely different. While a pro basketball team that has many highly compensated, superstar players in its ranks may often be able to fight back to win games in the 4th quarter having lounged through the first 3 and might also go on a season ending run to make the post season, a baseball team full of defocused superstars would often find that by the time they realize they are being embarrassed by teams with half or less their payroll, they simply are unable to do anything about it. That even assumes they would figure it out and then care. It appears that baseball is still a game that can be won by a blend of teamwork, sound fundamental play and hunger overachieving against defocused talent. I hope 2013 is another year where the "buy anything that moves" crowd gets knocked right on their rear ends.

I think the interesting part is how tightly they make the language and how much resistance comes back from the player's legal team as a result. The Sox at least had enough language in Lackey's contract to get something for it. However you have to remember that Lackey probably could no longer throw at the point where he finally threw in the towel and went for the surgery. I don't think there is much of any chance that he could have thrown last year. The general feeling expressed by some in the media appears to be that JD Drew adroitly danced around the language in his contract all the way up until the last year in which case it no longer mattered. So I suspect the Sox believe there is a lesson in there for them someplace and they are probably trying to tighten up the language. Could be interesting to see how Napoli's people respond if this is in fact what is happening now.

So would I Pal. LaRoche is the guy I wanted them to snag all along.

Last I heard he is lookin' for three years. He could be tough to move at his age if things don't work out. Clearly they would not throw in the towel anytime next year no matter what happens. After that Dickey is a 39 going on 40 year old pitcher....although a knuckle ball pitcher.

Ya but you can't equate what the Jays are doing with our current predicament. If in fact they are going after a Dickey it is because there in that classic "we are only a body or two from going all the way " situation. They are all in for this year and are pulling out all the stops. A Dickey fits that sort of predicament to a tee. That is not to say he might not blow up in their faces but I can easily see how they can rationalize chasing Dickey. When you really think you are all in for a particular year you don't stop betting on bodies until there is simply nothing left to do. What wreckage you leave in your wake, you convince yourself is worth it and something you will deal with at a later date.

Without knowing more about what has fueled the recent numbers some of the Jays have posted I don't know if they will come down to earth or not. Suppose they are using and that is what has fueled some of these bloated numbers? Not really sure what to expect of the Jays "core" since they seem to have overachieved at a pretty remarkable clip of late.

We don't know how Cabrera will do without "aids". Reyes IS a gamble. Really I think THE TRADE for the Jays really all hinges on Johnson. If Johnson is a bust, then the Jays will have spent a pile of money without getting much for it at least as far as that trade is concerned. If Johnson does finally pitch to his potential which is formidable, they will really have put themselves in great shape and what they get out of Reyes and Buerlie and even Cabrera will be gravy at that point. In truth, if they could have hacked Johnson free of Buerlie and Reyes, they would still have been a formidable team with one hell of a pitcher at the top of the rotation IF he works out. Rumors at the time were that they actually wanted Reyes. Not sure if that is more a comment on their disappointment in their SS situation or if they actually coveted Reyes. If Johnson and Reyes and Cabrera all work out...Jeepers Creepers....they might just rocket to the top of the East. In fact I don't think we would be surprised if the Jays rocketed to the top of the East and the LAA rocketed to the top of the west. I agree that the Jays are probably not done. Once a team gets it into their head that they are pushing all their chips to the middle of the table, they tend not to leave a stone unturned...preferring to deal with the wreckage that might result at some later date.

Pal and I (initially Pal to his credit) have been petitioning for these pitching signings for a long time now. Bring them in....see what we can sift through. The difference between what we have been talking about this year and what the Sox have done in past years is that the guys they have brought in have not had much in the way of a high ceiling so the best they could do was not far off the worst they could do. That list of one year deal potential high ceiling pitchers has been the same list for weeks now with some now off the list. In my case that is as I stated earlier all that is really left of what I wanted to do. The rest got blown out of the water with one other exception....trade Ells at some point. I do think it is kinda' funny how quickly we got to be "to right handed". The whole board was concerned about having to many LH batters and one trade later we were suddenly to right handed. I hardly think there is anything we could have done to have been as left handed as we were last year. To be honest i think the board was a little to concerned about how left handed we might be this year.

My idea is past executing at this point. The players are gone. There are still some one year pitcher deals that can be done but the basis for what I wanted went out the window already.

All of the everyday player gambles and gambits would be just fine if we had some real pitching. But the team right now is gambles and gambits all the way up and down the line with what looks like little pitching in one of baseballs most notorious hitters ballparks. This looks right now like a glass that is half empty more than a glass that is half full. But then again, heck I just never thought there was a way to do much better for 2013 anyway. My concern all through this "process" they have been involved in is that I don't see much building to a 2014 effort. If we are going to end up with a lost season at least get something for it.