jung

Makes sense....will just have to be careful how they work around Felix. He has no options left and he can't work out of the pen. So either he stays in the rotation and pitches this year or he moves on. Not sure what they really want to do with him but there is no flexibility left in his contract situation with the Sox.

Yea 700 that is what I was aiming at....respectable in 2013 actually in the running for one of the WC spots building to a real run in 2014. I don't think a morals clause gets it done because Hamilton's "situation" will be treated contractually as a condition. I don't see a way around that. So the Sox will be able to insure his contract and maybe build in something like what they had with Lackey. But there won't be a way out of the contract since Hamilton will have divulged his condition to the Sox or whomever.

Victorino would not be a terrible choice here but I am not sure there is really a spot for him here. It does not matter who they bring in for a bat if they don't resolve the pitching issues. If they have a plan for that....great. I offered weeks ago that at the right number of years Hamilton could work here. Although, this is already a dysfunctional family. Farrell might be the most level headed guy in the whole mix at this point. Clearly Henry is a train wreck right now. LL will continue to slither this way and that. BC clearly does not ooze confidence as yet. Just not convinced that it will be as easy for the Red Sox to work out control mechanisms for Hamilton here as good as it was done in Texas. It is simply not the environment for that and the Sox are not the organization for that....neither is NY. It could be fine. We are all going to be oozing egg on our faces if we bring him here and he blows up. We will all be looking at each other saying..."boy didn't that seem obvious".....much like many of us were saying...."Valentine...you have got to be kidding right". I kinda' see what E1 is saying as well. We seem to be pushing a bit to hard to go from the basement to the penthouse or at least try to in one off season and I just do not quite understand why we want to absorb a whole bunch of risk in an effort to give that a shot. If they can improve and at least be able to make a legitimate run in 2013...one that would involve improving the team but needing a good deal of luck to really compete for a title...planning to do that by 2014, I just don't see why that would be objectionable. We have a now totally distracted owner, no matter what he says. His core businesses are crumbing under him. It is hard to tell what is in worse shape as far as FSG is concerned, his Liverpool adventure or the Sox. The team just extricated itself from a bunch of goo in the form of crummy contracts. New manager coming in having barely survived V. I am not even sure there heart would be into a Hamilton effort. Whether we want to admit it or not, everything has to work out right to go from the basement to the penthouse in one year and even when it works there are rarely any enduring elements that carry forward. For example the O's almost did it but I expect them to be nowhere this year for that exact reason.

I think if they did extend Pedey right now that would be terrific......something that would be roundly applauded by Red Sox nation.

He needs to walk more. Walking more for a guy like Iggy means he has to develop a very good, disciplined eye. Guys will challenge him if they get behind in the count. That is what makes it imperative that he develop a really good eye cause that is the real key to his batting average. Develop a really good eye...get ahead in the count....eventually generate some walks, steal some bases AND eventually he finds himself with pitchers just grooving pitches with 3 ball counts figuring he cannot really hurt them. Then he gets to jump on pitches right down main street. he won't hit them for more than base hits but who cares.

If Iggy gets all the way to .240 off of last year...that would be pretty great and sort of a surprise. He did show signs of improvement by the end of the season though.

There are deals for starting pitchers out there to be done. Media saying that the Jays wanted Reyes and I would have thought the Sox would not have wanted him. I do not want him at his salary.

Well no question that there would have been more players besides WMB and Bogaerds. But I don't think the Sox had a legit way to send WMB packing. What would they have done without WMB, Bogaerds and Iggy. I would have been happy to see Felix go in any deal that brought back the two arms that the Jays got so I would not have had an issue with Felix. I could do without Ryan Sweeney also. Barnes I think falls into my category of a pitching prospect that is closer to the bigs than the so called comparative Nicolino. So that is my problem with that comparison. Iggy can go as long as we keep Bogaerds. They could have Salty also. Even though he is a pitcher, I would be OK with seeing Pena go also cause he has a way to go to get to the bigs. So lets see, so far, I would be OK with seeing Salty, Iggy, Pena, Sweeney and Felix go. I think I would have offered Owens instead of Barnes. So that would have gotten them Salty, Iggy, Pena, Sweeney, Owens and Felix. I wonder if adding Ciriaco and Gomez would have been attractive to the Marlins. Not sure we have a way to give them WMB. They are dumping Salary. The issue is not one of the Jays giving up crap as much as it is not feasible to give them WMB and Iggy and Bogaerds who was in the earlier posts with WMB. I probably would have tried to find a way to keep Owens but I would not have said offering Owens in the deal was out of the question.

If anything it almost looks like the Sox really overstepped the BS this time as I am having such a hard time believing that the Marlins asked for WMB and a B from the Sox and then took what they took from the Jays. I would more believe that the Sox balked at Reyes.

Well unless I missed something, it did not look like the Jays overwhelmed the process. I do wonder if the reports about WMB and one of the B's are accurate and the Sox never counter-offered. Hard to tell at this point. Maybe what happened is that the Sox rejected Reyes out of hand and the Jays didn't.

I like how Kalish was "healthy" for most of the season and then when the numbers...all bad were in, he is suddenly still suffering from his poo' bwoken' shoulder after all. I swear the money is turning baseball into a racket. Between PEDs and the BS we end up having to hear pretty constantly it is getting to be just about all a body can take. Lets see, we have Kalish and his suddenly still ailing shoulder. Then there was AGons first with the unbearable travel schedule and next ya' know he's the innocent victim of the left field wall he purposefully aimed at all the beginning of 2012 season. Agons will be much safer out there in LA where there will be fewer folks around that actually can tell what a hitter is trying to do from watching him hit... or should I say try to. Maybe I should cut Kalish some slack and maybe not. Since he has already spilled the beans this year he will have to come up with a new excuse if he craps out this time around.

Upton is in a completely different price category I would think...something around what SFF is talkin' about, maybe even more.

I would be OK with those three guys becoming Sox. I would love for them to have another arm but they must think enough of Felix to give him another year to develop. Honestly I can't see Felix as ever making it up past a 4 in the rotation though. So I would be willing to say goodbye to Felix to make room for another solid middle rotation guy.

Wow Price beat out Verlander for AL Cy Young

Just a general statement....I guess to generalize farther, I would be more reluctant to let go of high pitching prospects even if they have sone development time ahead of them cause it is so hard to develop pitchers. Don't know what the heck to think about or the discussion might have been with the Sox....I cannot imagine the Marlins talking about Middlebrooks and Bogaerts...that is a long way from where they were with the Jays. I would not have given Middlebrooks and Bogaerts in that deal. Maybe a couple of guys SFF put in his post would have had me thinkin' but WMB and Bogs....would have been a non starter for me.

I would always more willingly give up guys that are three and four years away from the ML roster even if they are high on the prospect list as opposed to guys that are a year away. High on the prospect list and three or four years away is not all that impressive. Much can happen to a kid in three or four years.

Not sure how to value the guys the Blue Jays sent the other way. Look like high level single A guys I think but I could be wrong. If that is true then the Sox would likely have not had to send anybody from the system we really talk about here south to the Marlins. Maybe the Sox balked on Reyes while the Jays were willing to take him.

I don't think 2/$26 is that much of an overpay for a Hunter. As I have said here I think teams will opt to pay a bit more money per annum in order to cut the number of years they are committed to players. Heck the sox paid 2/$26 for a guy that will only DH with PR value. Hunter is not the hitter that Ortiz is but he is one heck of a good hitter and not a bad fielder at all.

I am not sure I hate any Red Sox player or system guy enough to send him off to Loria and the Marlins. I suppose it is OK to take advantage of the situation down there as long as you can take a long hot shower after any meeting with Loria. The guy appears to be a snake of epic proportions. I think I agree with those thinking that MLB needs to pull an LA Dodgers here and run Loria out of baseball before he does something that we all regret like forever. Maybe he already has in the way he managed to get that stadium built and the way he whipsaws his player payroll up and down....up when he needs to try to convince the world that he is "serious" about building a team and a fan following and back down again when he cuts the knees out from under everybody stupid enough to have believed in him so he can take a bunch of cash off the table.

I think you will see fewer 7 year contracts as well as they will IMO be held out to the guys that used to get consideration for 10 year contracts and so on down the line. As for extensions especially to pitchers, ala Beckett and others, they have got to be even sillier than the 10 year contract. I do think that the real change is less of a frenzied attitude by teams with regard to players. Players are no longer seen as the path to financial stability. A cable TV contract is what you want or ownership of a sports network. It does appear at least to this point that the increase in LT tax for multiple year offenders coupled with the extra penalty in the form of a percentage cut from the moneys expected back from the league are having the desired effect on the biggest offenders. When the baseball organizations that really do swing the pendulum make changes that has an impact on all of the teams and players. I think LA will have turned out to have lost its mind only temporarily .

It is not an unreasonable list of expectations just an unlikely list. There is not a single arm in the Sox rotation that you could rely on to meet his expectation. They are all a list of question marks. As much as I like Buch, I would actually consider Lester resolving his mechanical issues, taming his temper and returning to form more likely than Buch giving us 30+ starts and 200 innings. That I would consider Lester's chances better is pretty telling when you consider how much work a pitcher has to do to fully resolve issues of mechanics. Doubront may or may not be ready to step up. It they don't ask more of him than to be a 5, that would seem a reasonable expectation for him. As for Lackey, coming back from TJ is a complete roll of the dice especially in the first year back. In the case of the Sox, they are going to end up relying on Lackey to come back and be effective. How did that work out for us with dice last year? I actually think the Sox will need two solid arms coming into the rotation so that the Sox would not be relying so much on question marks to come through in the rotation. Looking at the list of Lester, Lackey, Buch and Felix, I think Felix is the most likely to meet expectations as a 5 mainly because expectations are pretty low. However that sort of stuff takes us back to last year where for a period of time, before one of them went bust and the other finally just tired, the "bright spots" of our rotation were 4 and 5. Happy to have Felix work out as our 5 in 2013 but if any of the other question marks fall the other way, Felix working out as the 5 will be small conciliation. In fact, they are really in sort of a spot with Felix. He has to start to be effective. We already went through this question last year. The Sox can't just dump him into the bullpen for a spell and he is out of options. So if they do bring in two arms they don't have a place to put Felix except as a 6th starter. Do they give up on Felix or does his predicament take the Sox even closer to the other option.....try to compete without resolving all of the starting pitching issues this team has in one off season and just bring in one arm for the rotation. That would allow them to continue to work with Felix to see if he can continue to improve. That said, many posters here do not think he will ever even be a 3 for a competing staff. So maybe Felix is not worth the effort.

But that would have left the Sox with Shop and Lavs....clearly as it turns out they did not want Shop so trying to off Salty in June was simply outside the realm of possibility. Shopping Salty before ST this year will likely yield the best result they can expect for him. Besides I would be more comfortable leaving the catching duties to Ross and Lavs than leaving them to Shop and Lavs.

There is some demand for Catchers this year. Heck there is demand for catchers every year cause there is so few good ones out there. However this year there seems to be even more interest in catchers. Ya' want your kid to be an MLB player? Teach him to get into a crouch before you teach him to walk...probably your best shot. Anyway, it makes more sense to shop Salty this year. They could really get max value for him if they do this right.

Wouldn't it drive you nuts if that guy Crhis McGuiness that went to Texas as part of the Salty trade came up and turned out to be a decent ML 1st baseman for Texas? ....Salty....another one of Theo's coveted guys.

I think it would take more than Salty in either case but I commend whomever in the FO is talkin' like that. No sense in negotiating from a weak position.