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Victorino's splits have been going south two of his last three years. They stank in 2010 and stank again in 2012. They were decent in 2011 but still heading away from his career splits. These guys do age you know and some of them even age a little faster than you want them to. Yea I think his numbers could easily end up bad enough that they platoon him out of necessity. The Sox will likely try to get another OF anyway. If they are going to pay Victorino 3/37.5 I wonder what they are going to pay for the next one. I suppose I can believe that the Sox have decided they don't want Kalish in RF and would prefer him in LF. But heck, we played Cody Ross in RF last year...talk about a circus. Kalish does have a good arm again unless there is something wrong with that. By the end of last year Kalish was without question the best defensive RF the Sox had but was injured and did not look bad out there at all. Kalish did NOT look good in CF I thought.

It is extremely difficult to get utilization out of multiple speed weapons in the Sox lineup. There is simply to much incentive to avoid running into outs in a park that is geared to hitting. So we saw it time and time again and have seen it throughout history with the Sox. With two speed guys, the Sox really don't get the benefit cause more often than not they are pinned to their bases not wanting to take the bat out of the bopper's hands. You can have one guy at the top of the order and another guy down in the order and sometimes make something out of that because the guy that is down in the order is not waiting for a bopper to come up. But I think the Sox have guys that are down in the lineup with speed already. Jeez though 3/37.5....OK they have money to spend but Holy Cow.

Really, Victorino is not going to platoon...have you seen his splits even though he is a switch hitter?

Yes Victorino is a better defender and I certainly hope Gomes is a backup of some sort cause he is terrible in the field. But Victorino is wasted in LF and unless something else happened to Kalish again (although what...did he fall off his couch this winter) shouldn't he be in RF. If Victorino is going to platoon are we now paying 3/37.5 for platooning outfielders? and as I mentioned earlier...I don't want to hear about Victorino's speed on the bases cause we already saw what happens when the Sox have multiple speed weapons in the lineup...nothing...that's what....nothing!

And where is he going to platoon? His speed whatever it might be now is wasted in LF. As for waiting to see who else they sign...I don't see who they would sign that would make Victorino for 3/37.5 make any sense. Even if they rope in Hamilton spending that much money on Victorino makes no sense. Go ahead Sox spend the money but "Mother of God" don't spend this kind of money on the Victorino's of the world.

This is what I was concerned about when I started talking about all of these middling players the Sox ere chasing. Why overpay for middling players that are not really going to do much for you. I was OK with Napoli although I really wanted them to go in a different direction. But how is Napoli a 3/39 player and Victorino a 3/37.5 player? If I was going to overpay I would overpay for the Mack Truck. Never mind overpaying for multiples of these pregnant roller skates. Here they go again making the market for players. Victorino is protection for Ells?...not really. So what does this mean? Does it mean Kalish is not going to play in 2013? What the hell happened with that. I don't want to see Victorino play. I don't want to see placeholders play. I want to see Kalish play. The Sox have waited and waited and waited for Kalish. They shipped off Riddick cause the A's wanted him for nitwit Bailey putting their eggs in Kalish basket. Now what...he is not going to play...again....this time cause we have Victorino! In case you have not heard by the way. Victorino is done. The Sox got him...no s*** Sherlock. Nobody else was going to offer him that kind of money.

Could be no more funny than WMB throwing across the diamond to Napoli.

Napoli will play as few games behind the plate even as few innings behind the plate as humanly possible. So his catching defense is meaningless or close to it. I am concerned with his defense at 1st base which is also not that good. My concern there is with WMB's throws which were at least last year terrible. If WMB is going to throw like that for a career he is going to need a pretty good 1st base glove over there digging his throws out of the dirt or stretching for them, left...right, up...down....all over the place. While I am on that topic WMB has so far been a defensive improvement over Youk at 3rd but in general has not so far proven to be a solid defensive 3rd baseman. As it is both Napoli and WMB might have to wear shin guards in the field.:D

Love that we got somebody...did something....but I am still leery of the expectations that the Sox will have for Napoli. They will clearly move him closer to the middle of the order and expect him to play at least as many games as the 140 games that has been his career high. I am also worried about what they will do for inter-league play. Will they move Napoli behind the plate to keep Ortiz in the lineup? Napoli may end up playing more games behind the plate than makes sense for a guy you really need to keep on the field, as fresh as possible. If I could have found a rational in Swisher's fielding at 1st base then I would have been much happier with him. Unless they get WMB to stop with these BS throws to 1st, WMB to Napoli could easily be something of a nightmare. I don't expect Napoli to bail WMB out at anything like the rate that Agons and Loney did...not even close. Maybe signing Napoli suggests they are really going to make a run at Hamilton. Hard to make anargument that they were to LHed when signing Napoli immediately made them to RHed. Maybe LaRoche AND Hamilton would have lifted them to a heavy LHed lineup.

Lackey is Illetriate. Jeez I had to go copy and paste it...afraid I had no shot at spelling it the way he did.

I think the Sox will be very cautious about how many games Napoli catches all the way down to as few as possible. Having him catch Lackey could be about it. They are paying for his bat. Don't want to take it out of the lineup due to fatigue or inflaming that bad leg of his. Ortiz is already the full time DH.

Napoli can't be a regular catcher. As I mentioned earlier, the biggest issue or one of them with Napoli is that even as a three position player, he has not played more than 140 games at any time in his career. He has to play 1st. For the most part he has averaged far fewer games than 140. Now he is not a great 1st baseman either but he can certainly play more games at 1st without wearing down than if he does much catching. Should be fun watching Napoli try to dig out throws from 3rd from WMB. Napoli is not that kind of 1st baseman but if last year is any indication there will be some ugly throws from WMB that Napoli will not be able to handle the way AGons and Loney did.

Agreed, so his walks are coming as a consequence of having good plate discipline.

Odd in the sense that Napoli's walks appear to come as a consequence more of patience at the plate as opposed to being pitched around. Usually guys with power, high K's high walks get many of their walks by being pitched around. Does not appear to be the case with Napoli...more a matter of good plate discipline and that is odd for a high K, high power guy. Although maybe the part I am missing is that his K's are climbing again. Maybe that is the trade off.

Napoli's K's have gone back to pretty high as they have been throughout most of his career. I would expect his K's to go up with more at bats as well. He might not make it to Granderson and Salty K numbers but 140 or so is not out of the question. I am not sure where he will bat in a Sox order that his BB's are that important but he does have a history of walking a fair amount. Sort of an odd duck...good power numbers...walks and K's.

Since this is a year when they are looking for players, the years and the per annum are the best news out of the whole thing. I think this says something significant about the direction baseball is taking particularly in a year when there are not a lotta' options out there. It is not he richest year for FA's. Yet clearly teams are not jumping all over guys and driving the $$ nutty. I doubt any of the everyday players the Sox are looking at are going to go nutty with the possible exception of Hamilton. I don't think they will offer Hamilton 2 years as somebody will surely offer him 3 if not 4 or 5. The first major pitcher signing is the next one that should be interesting. I suspect that there is a chance that there is an inverse relationship between what FA pitching will cost and what FA everyday players will cost in a trend that is likely to continue.

Well 3/39 also suggests there was less interest in Napoli than folks thought there would be. That is also interesting on two scores. Not only are teams holding the line on years but even to some extent on $$. and It also suggests that for teams without that friendly left field wall....Napoli did not quite pass the smell test. 3/39 is surely a steal for the Sox...probably would not have been a steal for everybody though...especially teams intending to use him as a catcher.

3/60 would be idiotic but I have also claimed from the start of the off season that teams would do exactly that. That should of course have its limits. I suspect all they did was move a hair past the competition and if the competition pushed Napoli to 20 per annum the whole league needs its head examined.

The really interesting aspect if true is that clearly it implies that teams (plural) are holding the line on years, something I have suggested would be the case this year. 3 years is clearly not what Napoli was interested in but you would have to believe that if true, nobody offered 4....a good sign for the Sox and baseball generally.

I am not at all convinced that people realize how bad this rotation could be. For one thing Lester is the only guy that has gone innings for a team that has beaten the hell out of its bull pen two years running. While Lester has not provided the kinds of innings you would expect from a 1, he has eaten more innings than anybody they are likely to bring in even on these anticipated one year deals....which I have supported.

TB does do pretty well. They are always drafting pitching which tends to make them rich in pitching and there are few teams that can make that claim. I guess that might account for their success rate when it comes to trades as they are one of the few places a team could go to find some pitching.

I would be willing to bet Hamilton may well grind on players after awhile...one reason i would not want him on a longer than 4-5 year deal. As for the fans of the Rangers, I would bet that they are looking for scapegoats all over the place. They have had a couple years now when they Rangers have seemed to be the team to beat and have not gotten it done. Boy I would love to see those same fans suffer through what we went through or what the poor Cubies still go through.

We are down to struggling just to establish any level of reliability at this point whether it is 1 in the rotation reliability or some other level of reliability. We can bring in a guy or two for a year to get us through 2013 but one 1 year deals they will be costly. As stated earlier these most recent BC comments are really disturbing...suggest that they might not even do a 1 year deal for somebody. Granted it would seem they would have to do at least one as we don;t even have 5 guys for the rotation at the moment even with Lester.

I don't think Hamilton will get 7. In the first place there are not that many teams that can even afford him. I just don't think there are enough teams out there in the running to drive him to 7 years. I suspect the teams with money are making an effort to cut into these screwy long term deals. We shall see.

Well something sounds wrong in those recent BC comments. Most disconcerting is that BC has been the most accurate barometer of the management guys that talk. What BC has said in the past has generally turned out to mean something. You cannot tell whether snake LL is about to bite you or curl up around your ankles and cuddle you....yikes what a thought...what a mental picture. Anyway I think you really cannot separate BC out for criticism. He is a nice target but I think that might be his most effective role in the Red Sox org. In fact if there is an org chart posted down there I would bet there is a bullseye over BC's name instead of a picture.