jung

As my earlier post indicates, if one it would be Marcum for me as well. If two then probably Haren although there are a couple other guys out there.

Ya beat me to it MVP

I really don't know what to expect of this team based on that BC comment. BC will need more than all three of those everyday ball players and DRoss to get to 88 wins.

I think that comment from BC about the Sox pitchers pitching to their potential is scary as s***. They Sox have to do at least one of Haren or Marcum and if they deal Lester they have to do both. Yikes.

Price is better than Shields. Problem is that the Rays have so much pitching that they have several options they can throw on the table for Myers if they really want him.

Anybody is fine if they are not a ridiculous overpay. I would not be paying Mike Napoli superstar money. If they don't do that....its as good as doing anything else at 1st base. Depends on what they do or don't around such a deal and what they pay for him.

Here we go again. Lets combine two years and extrapolate to 162 games, a number of games that Mike Napoli has never sniffed before. The max number of games he has ever played is 140 and that was an outlier. Most games other than that, 114 games. While he can play 1st and Catch and has also DHed, you would think that teams would find a way to use him in more games if he was either A) that good or that durable. Napoli should certainly last longer at 1st base than behind the plate. While splitting the dif between 2012 and 2011 sounds like a nice compromise, Napoli's career numbers are much closer to his 2012 than his 2011. 2011 is another outlier. He is a nice ball player but I think he is a trap. I would not overpay for Mike Napoli although dollars would likely be easier to give up than years. Maybe the Sox are not all that high on any of the three guys being tossed around. They clearly have not come up with a deal for any of the three that they have accepted. Maybe have not even offered one yet. It is not at all clear to me that there is a plan other than generate the most revenue at the lowest cost. As for not wanting another LL deal....IMO, they are all LL deals. I don't think there is a single deal the Sox do at this stage of the game, big or small that LL does not sign off on.

Lester may be younger but your argument is that KC wants to make a move to win now. So how does the age matter when competing with Shields or Price with Lester?

That is the other interesting aspect of this potential trade. Even with Lester being an established ML pitcher he has work to do to get back to what KC would need from him. He is as much of a gamble to be the kind of guy KC needs as Myers is to be the next Trout. The dif of course is that they will be paying Lester $11.6m as soon as they pick him up. If I were KC and could trade with somebody I would be looking for somebody that would cost me more money but that was more likely to give me what I need than Lester. Maybe that is why this deal has not actually been done as yet. Why aren't the Rays a way better candidate for a trade than the Sox just as an example.

I will take Macum also...maybe Haren too.

I am being selfish about Swisher. I hate the guy so much that I do not want to be conflicted seeing him in a Red Sox uniform. Truth be told, I would prefer one of three if anybody and that one would be Swisher. Keep Napoli and keep Ross. For the life of me I don't know what i am going to do if that jerk ends up in a Red Sox uniform. I am really going to have to take one for the team if that happens.

Funny he would be the opposite of Ells who can catch it but can't throw it. But saying Myers cannot catch it at all would seem extreme. Clearly the way they describe his defense he is not going to chase down and catch balls in the outfield. I would prefer a guy that can chase it down catch it and throw it. Baring that give me somebody that can chase it down and catch it. What Myers appears to be would be my last choice, especially for CF. What the Royals accept in their CF would not be what I would want in ours. Then again the Sox will take a bat and live with lousy fielding almost all over the field.

I don't think a LH 1st baseman is to much from the left when we just had a LH 1st baseman

Now that would make some sense UN. I have to admit my confidence in the Sox ability to pull something like that off is not very great though. That would be fine though. That would at least Parley Ells and Lester into something meaningful as their contracts come to a close.

ding'...ding....ding. That has been my point for two years now.

Looks like Myers can hit and throw. I don't think I saw anybody making a case for him as a 5 tool player. I still think it is funny to see the "Sox will find somebody to pitch" comments when it should be clear to all of us that pitching is going back to some form of the dominance it had in the 60's and early 70's. If you want to get a look at baseball without all of the things baseball has done to pump up offense in the intervening years and most importantly without expansion you need to take a look at some of those numbers.

All three of those players are not far off of each other value wise or interest wise. Once one of them falls to somebody the other teams will focus on the two remaining in all likelihood. Sox better focus on the one they want cause they will not likely get all three.

Sox appear to be desperately trying to find their way to the middle of the pack. I don't see anything in those three players that move this team anywhere really. Better but.... meh. Napoli does nothing for me. Swisher does nothing for me. I guess would take Ross back at a reasonable price.

OK so my sense of it from what I am reading from a bunch of baseball fans that care enough about the sport and a particular team to participate on a board like this is that there would be more tolerance to the Sox taking longing to come back to a competitive position. I think were the rubber may well meet the road though is that when push comes to shove we are talking about THEIR revenue line....their bottom line....their incomes. At the end of the day the people that work in baseball are judged there, not by the number of flags flying over the place. Though surely there are parts of the organization that by function are more engaged and occupied by the winning of championships. Having a Myers coming up maybe just a year after the B's get here or as they are getting here might well be appealing but the Sox with notable exception have few pitching prospects down there and for the foreseeable future it appears will have to supplement what pitching they have from outside the organization. This I suspect in an environment that more and more is beginning to remind me of the baseball I watched earlier in my life where pitching was even more dominant than folks who have been watching maybe since the 1980's have ever seen it. Certainly its getting more expensive. The loss of more time before coming back to a competitive footing is on some level acceptable to me as well. But Sox Management can't sustain themselves on a level of acceptance that is below a threshold where I and others like me are willing to buy tickets and may even find things other than the Sox worthy of TV viewership. Certainly offing Lester in the face of incredibly weak pitching as it exists right now says to me that regardless of what big everyday signing they might make including Hamilton that they will not have enough pitching to elevate themselves from 5th in the division....with the exception of 4th. A big everyday player signing may be enough to overcome the lose of a pitching asset by 2014 but certainly not by the coming season. Or is it simply that Lester only has two years left on his contract and we don't think we will resign him even if we wanted to. Interesting cause how similar is that to Ells. Ells is an injury waiting to happen. He has not shown any signs of repeating his big break out season sooner or later. I sensed back when this was a hot topic that more people were in favor of keeping Ells regardless and would have been in favor of it even if some big everyday prospect for later years was being dangled. My issue is that I think giving up on Lester is the equivalent of packing it in on the 2013 and the 2014 season and doing it so visibly that not only are the Sox going to have trouble with ticket sales and other revenue generators this year but next year. I am not convinced they are going to do that. Plus we now have BC telling us he thinks the best option for the Sox is the pitchers they have pitching to their potential, that there is no option that they can reach that would be better than that. Who do we think BC is talking about?

They already don't really have any pitching. Who throws the ball for the next couple of years. Is Red Sox nation willing to see them bridge as cellar dwellers for maybe two more years? Guys that have been life long fans are already indicating here that for the first time in years they are not buying tickets. I am not buying tickets. I suspect that they have to become competitive again before a guy that has not even seen AAA pitching is ready to come up and do something for the big club. Did you see that quote from BC that 700 put up? Does that look like a team that is really trading Lester? Lester is a pitcher. If he gets back to peak form, you don't think the Sox wouldn't just resign him?

I was not in favor of keeping Paps at the price for a number of reasons but he was misused in 2011 as he and Aceves were all that was left of a damned good bullpen after that starting rotation was done with it. Paps ended up pitching to many 1+ stints at the end of the season and it wore him out to the point where he became ineffective in 1 inning and in 1+ inning stints. This rotation has burned through good bull pens two years in a row under completely different management styles. At some point you have to believe it is less about the manager and more about the rotation.

The guys we can lay our hands on this off season would be guys that could fit somewhere in the middle of the rotation if they succeed. So in that sense I guess I would agree the BC. The only thing I can pick out of that which might be revealing is that it sounds to me like Lester is staying. Frankly IMO they can't move Lester for some bat prospect regardless of what he might someday be. I do think they are gong to be forced into Hamilton though. They need to field an interesting team with an eye to competing for the division in 2014 and Hamilton would give them one of the elements that a team seemingly must have these days....two big bats anchoring the middle of the lineup. If they let the kids play this year, sign LaRoche for 1st, take Hamilton and grab up some of the short contract guys that might come in and improve the pitching, they end up with an interesting team worth watching in 2013 and then they end up with LaRoche, Hamilton, Ortiz, WMB, Pedey the guys that work out this year, plus the arriving killer B's for 2014. That also gives them all of this year and the 2013-2014 off season to fix the starting pitching. It would seem to me about the only way the Sox can continue to make the formula that they have used to achieve financial success through 2013 and 2014. Even with Hamilton and LaRoche and Ells for one more year the starting pitching is so uninspiring at this point that I still think they are likely competing for a WC and not the division just yet. However they surely should be competing for the division again in 2014.

Not in "every sense of the word". There is not able to really compete for the division bridge year and at least remain competitive for a WC with an eye toward the immediate (as in 2014) bridge year. Giving up a 28 year old starting pitcher gives up on even a WC effort in 2013 and may even bring the plan for 2014 into question.

I don't know that it is that easy to give up a 28 year old experienced, reasonably successful pitcher that admittedly has some work to do but is healthy for a guy that as yet has not had a ML at bat. At Lester's age of 28 it is not IMO an easy decision to make even if the Sox are giving up on 2013. Make no mistake though....taking a prospect for Lester would make 2013 a bridge year in every sense of the word.

I just don't see Buch suddenly emerges as a 200-220 innings pitcher in the ML's. Without being able to draw down those kinds of innings....he is not a 1 anywhere. Either he needs a little vacation in the middle of the season or he breaks down or his stretches of less than solid pitching are just to long or just to numerous through the course of a season. Give it up....ain't gonna' happen.