jung

Oh No...here comes the "its early" rational all over again. Yes Ben....its early but when you say its early I hear ....Sox not gonna' do anything until the dregs are left. I just think they are so gun shy now that regardless of what they "say"....like "we are going to have one of the highest payrolls in baseball"...blah blah blah....at the end of the day they just won't have pulled the trigger on anybody. Then we will hear that everybody just got priced out of the market. I don't mind the Sox passing on these half injured, half out of surgery, give me till the end of my life at $20M per types but if this starts looking like last year did, then they might not make a single improvement in the starting pitching and that would really be a shame. Frankly I don't think they can replenish is the starting pitching entirely in one off season anyway. However if they don't at least resolve some of it this year, I am not going to be very confident that they can finish the job next year.

One thing I don't think we will be seeing this off season is the Sox 'blowing somebody away" in a trade situation.

I think the Sox are going to do what they can with money instead of prospects cause they have money to spend. The more I think about it the more I see them trying to make a serious bid for Hamilton for one.

Well for one thing I don't think any of the guys I really thought the Sox would possibly be targeting have disappeared off the board as yet. Guys have been signed and some trades have happened but not necessarily guys you would think the Sox would have been after anyway. Johnson might have been the one guy the Sox might have been after but they sure as heck would have been hard pressed to mess with the deal that went down that included Johnson. The only other guy I really thought they would take a run at that is gone was Cabrera cause he would go fairly cheaply. I have to think that Cabrera's agent gave them a shot. They must not have offered for him what the Jays offered. Maybe I thought the Sox would at least make an offer for him but maybe in truth they had no interest.

The guys that know Hamilton best, the team that has spent the past few years sharing his fate, working with him to help him his demons in a box has publicly stated that they will not offer Hamilton more than three years. That is likely going to set the tone for years in a way that will have an impact on the final result. I suspect a four year deal is very likely with a five year deal being as far as anybody might be willing to go....In my view there simply will not enough genuine interest from enough different players to drive it to something like seven years.

I would bet to much but not to long.

What might be getting to you is that guys are disappearing off the board and the Sox so far have a Catcher their returning DH and a Manager in hand.

I think Marcum is really worth looking at. I wonder how many years Kuroda would really want. If they can go short term for Kuroda as a means of helping the pitching through 2013 and maybe 2014 he might be a great option as well. In fact, if the Sox are really going to try for more than respectability and a second WC in 2013 maybe even Soriano would be worth a go as well. They can probably move Bailey somewhere. I would take my chances with Soriano as a closer before Bailey.

I wonder if the verbal assurances that the Marlins apparently gave both Buehrle and Reyes will amount to anything as far as the trade itself goes. Apparently Buehrle is unhappy because assurances were made to both him and his wife and they had settled in Florida under that premise. The Marlins do not offer no trade clauses in their contracts. I guess the message there is of course "How can you tell that Loria is lying...his lips are moving." Doubt the Marlins will get anybody to buy into that line of BS ever again. When Reyes was asked if he received the same assurances his response was "a vehement yes". In his case part of his displease apparently stems from the fact that the trade to the Jays will cost him $8M in taxes if the entire remainder of his contract is played out in Toronto.

Hamilton surely is the best offensive option out there. However I would not go nuts with years especially at his age and whether he finds a way to stay out of trouble here or not, to think this is the same environment with the same sort of temptations that exist in Dallas is just naive. If I am not mistaken, the Rangers have had someone rooming with Hamilton full time as a means to help him maintain. It will take at least that much here. While you are on the road so much as a pro ballplayer, the dif will be that he will be coming home to an environment, Boston were there is much more opportunity....it is simply a much more wide open environment here...... Boston may take him and it may all turn out to be fine. However as I said above judging Boston not a more difficult environment for him to control his demons is just naive..... As we all know...this can be a very hostile environment to a ballplayer that is making big money and underperforming as well. There may be pressures waiting for him here that he has not really faced before in his professional career. You can well imagine what folks will be yelling from the stands here if he falls into a slump and the hostile home crowd "fans" decide to let him hear it.

No question that there is a bar culture in both places but they are still totally different environments. Dallas is still a town where people will look at you oddly for jaywalking. I have little doubt having spent considerable time in both places that Boston will be tougher on Hamilton than any part of Texas ever thought of being. Alcohol is far from Hamilton's only addiction related issue.

Well at least Hamilton might actually be an anchor. Agons was turning into a lead weight...not quite the same thing.:D

It could work out if they keep the years under control. I think there is less true interest in Hamilton than people perceive there to be which could play into the Sox hands if they really do make a run at him.

If you could find a way to tax $$ and economic impact flowing back into the community that would make the expenditure of tax money worthwhile that would be one thing. But how do you explain to people out of work, losing homes, trying to feed their kids that the County and City are on the hook for the construction costs of the stadium, on the hook for long term operating and maintenance expenses that will be there even at nominal facility usage and neither tax money nor economic impact coming in at anything like a rate that makes this any sort of a venture for them? How do you explain that Loria pushed and pushed and lined up political and judicial allies in such a way that the City just could not gain any protections and could not get out, even when it tried to before a shovel went into the ground. Theo used to have state troopers around his home here. Loria might need the National Guard. By rites it should not take baseball to get him out. The community should run him out of town on a rail.

The more I read about the Marlins new stadium the more the deal that built and maintains it appears to reek to high heaven. Large amounts of taxpayer money has been used to fund the construction of the place and much of the operating expenses including maintenance of the facility and the lease of the parking facility from the County are all expenses incurred by the City of Miami. So while the Marlins get to run the park and generate revenue in the park the operating expenses are the responsibility of the City. So the Marlins performance as a business is in the main detached from a big chunk of operating expenses that the City must pay for regardless of how well the team does or does not do. It looks like at a minimum the City ends up with $2.25M in annual expenses that it must pay regardless of what happens. Apparently before the deal was finalized the City tried to get some protection in the contract with the Marlins but all efforts to do so got shot down with the Marlins continually pressuring government officials to act promptly to "save baseball" in South Florida. The Marlins cried poor the entire time. Then their balance sheet was leaked to the press showing that they were actually making double what they were plowing back into the team in payroll. At the same time, the league called them to task for not taking its cut of the league dollars that come back to them and using appropriate percentages of that money for player payroll, choosing to pocket the difference. The Mayor of Miami was ousted in a recall vote primarily attached to his support for the project and other government officials have been ousted as well. In effect Loria sits in the catbird seat with expenses fleshed off on taxpayers. So they get the risk....he gets the profits. It looks very much like the City tried to work with Loria while protecting itself but Loria was able to pull together support from key political figures and and judicial officials such that each time the City tried to get some protection it could not get it done. It almost seems like once the taxpayers got roped into initiating its dealings with Loria it confronted a stacked deck at every turn. You almost get the feeling that if they could have done it, the City would have extricated itself from the deal but Loria had the muscle even to keep that from happening. Talk about being held by the nose and kicked in the ass.

I want to look further at games played before offering specific opinions. We are being told (rightly or wrongly) that the contemporary PED is helping players maintain their strength and fitness more than the old steroids that used to add strength. They make recovery easier for example. I also want to see if I can link players to some extent as one thing we have seen is players on the same team or traveling in the same circles involved. Possibly Encarnacion and Bautista for example. Encarnacion's games played has risen steadily from 2010 though 2012 and his power numbers have actually climbed much faster than his games played has climbed. Bautista's power numbers have climbed substantially while not making a change like home venue and both of them play for the Jays. Gonna try to see what I can find that is linked between 2010 and 2012 and that is linked player to player either by agent, by team or some other way.

One thing I am really beginning to wonder about is the number of guys that really made improvements in their offensive numbers after the 2010 season, in 2011 and 2012. Since we know newer, harder to trace, PED's that the league may not be as well prepared to test for have been making the rounds of the sports world generally, I am starting to wonder if there is a link between what is a two year stretch of remarkably different numbers for some guys and PED use. It it were me, and I was inclined to that sort of thing, I would use them until I had a big contract under my belt and then discontinue usage at that point. Why risk being caught when your bug guaranteed contract is in place. Pick it up again when my contract came up again.

Cabrera would have to find a way to generate negative stats to do worse than Cameron. Although you can actually generate negative sabre stats.

His numbers really spiked the last two years. I think he goes back to what he was before the 2011 season. His deal is only two years. That would seem to still be a bit of an overpay. However I agree...the Jays are all in for 2013 and that makes this deal work for them.

As for Agons contract....it will not be team friendly unless his HR swing comes back. $21M defensive studs at first base that hit singles and doubles are not $21M player by a long shot. I just don't know what we think is going on in baseball but unless you can hit HR's as an everyday ballplayer, long term contracts that reach up over $20M are all a joke....all a consequence of teams reaching and hoping that this is the last player they need to go all the way. Hopefully we have turned the corner and will see some sanity come back and an end to paying $20+ per in long term deals for guys that are either aging and making money with the legs or can't get the ball over the fence for whatever reason. Paying that kind of player $20M in a 2 or possibly 3 year deal is one thing. Paying it for 7 is nuts. You may have noticed that AGons was already wearing out his welcome in LA at the end of last year, hitting HR's at an even lesser rate than he was hitting them here.

I don't care what the Jays will look like in 4 years either. I don't think the Jays are that bound up about 2016 or 2017 at this point. However I do think they believe they have a legit shot at going all the way in 2013. This is exactly the way many teams believe they have to play their hand of cards and I can't argue that it is right or wrong for them. I think I could rationalize what they are doing. This is a risky deal that at the end of the day, may well push them over the top. That deal would have been just as risky for anybody but in the case of the Sox it would have been harder to see the reward side of the deal. It would not have been the kind of deal that I would have considered as pushing the Sox over the top. They just have to many other holes to fill. It might.....MIGHT have at least resolved the pitching...that is if Lester comes back and Lackey has the kind of first year out of TJ that is hard to expect. Maybe it would have taken some of the pressure off of Buch to pitch for 30 starts and 200 innings for example. If they had gotten both pitchers, Felix would likely be traded cause he is out of options and as has been discussed here many times, can't come out of the pen. For all the players and money and what have you, if Johnson fails, that deal will be a bust for the Jays. Also, in a more general sense at some point it just takes to many deals to think in terms of going from the basement to the penthouse because the law of averages is against all of those deals or players that you bring in working out. That is where the Sox are. They can strive for legitimacy in 2013. They can work to be competitive for a WC spot. Taking risk to go beyond that in one off season pushes the risk:reward ratio off the charts. Then you are left with the wreckage having never really gained the competitive position you had hoped for in the first place.

I don't think the Sox are or were in any kind of position to consider what the Jays did but I can see the Jays doing it. They think they have a legit shot at a 2013 run....good for them. They will be left with the wreckage win or lose. They could off that contract. They might have to send some money off with Reyes but if they won it all in 2013 it would be worth it. I may not have said it strongly enough but I think it would have been a bad way for the Sox to go. If they could have cut Johnson out of it, that would have been enough of a gamble for the Sox IMO. Maybe the two arms would have been worth a shot by the Sox IMO. Reyes is a poison pill contract IMO and that is likely what shied the Sox. Certainly if the Marlins insisted on WMB, that would have killed it as well I think.

That is certainly true but an unfair comparison....Crawford's might be the worse contract of all time...easily vying with Arods stupid deal cut with Yankee ownership. The high side of the Reyes contract is that it is back end loaded. You can take him as part of a peak effort to make a run at a championship...which is what the Jays are doing and if he plays well, dump the back-ended money onto somebody else trying to do the same thing in a trade if you want to do that. However I don't find paying $22M a year for Reyes appealing and those $$ are right around the corner. This is the same guy that just finished the 2012 season. Did that look like a $22M player? Heck I am not even talking about him being an aging speed guy that has trouble staying healthy.

I did not say Reyes is a poison player. I said it was a poison pill contract. That is another ridiculous contract and I just don't think the Sox are ready for more ridiculous contracts especially for a SS.

Well I just don't think the Jays Miami deal is even a fair test. That is a monster gamble. Fun to talk about but if you had your druthers you would have cut Johnson out of that herd and forgotten the rest. Reyes is another poison pill contract much like the ones we just got rid off. Buerlie has been on the slide and now has to pitch in the AL East. Even though Johnson is the prize, how is it more than a 50-50 shot which way he is going to go. I just don't think the Sox were in a good position to risk going from the frying pan to the fire. I think they would have found a way to get the two arms but likely balked on Reyes. Who knows how much thought or time Henry can even allocate to this stuff given circumstances and this is yet another deal that at its scale would have had Henry involved very early mainly because of Reyes. I do think the Sox FO is somewhat hampered both from within and without but should get enough done to at least compete for a WC this year. I don't see Hamilton happening though.