jung

With any luck at all, the Sox end up keeping their young, cost controlled everyday ballplayers and have them come up and be starters for the big club....giving them the flexibility and cash to go out and supplement some of their young pitchers coming up with a front line FA pitcher or two. That might be their key to another WS. I think you have to plan your way to a WS. I am not at all convinced and never really have been that the "get into the post season where anything can happen" thing actually works. Anything can happen if you have pitching. As has been said here many times, trading for pitching is almost impossible as the price in prospects is simply to high. That leaves you with paying the price in cash for FA pitchers which can be fine if you at least can develop some pitchers in your system and can feed cost controlled everyday ballplayers into the MLB team from the farm. I have never worried that much about letting go of prospects that have not gone through any development cause those guys have a long way to go before they can make it to the big club and that road is not only long but twisted and full of banana peels and land mines. However I really would have difficulty with the Sox trading off guys that are only a couple years away from being up with the big club because I don't think the team they could construct that way would be more than a long shot contender.

I think the B's are the future cornerstone everyday players of this team. They will be playing with Pedey in the remaining productive years of Pedey's career, the early best of WMB's career and are likely central (along with pitching) to the next Sox WS. So I don't really care who comes after them and for what, realistically, I don't see a reason to trade them away on the hopes of cobbling together some sort of interim, lucky to win 90 games "contender". If they get top notch ace quality pitching that is young and healthy that is a different story but trading either of the B's for some package of current MLB level everyday players at this point makes no sense to me at all.

I think he has slumped so far that the Sox will be able to get away with a minor league contract and invite to camp with Bay. He has much to prove at this point.

Bay's contract with the Mets was a joke, 4/$66.....really......while he had a good year his last year before going to the Mets you would have had to have taken that year and extrapolated even better years from it to justify 4/$66 and that was want went wrong with baseball the last few years. Teams were not just paying for repeat performance from a contract year. They were paying for better than the best performance from the player. At this point with the exception of special cases, I think you will see teams maybe pay based on repeating a contract year performance but will not see teams willing to pay on speculation that the player will perform even better than that. As for Bay, a one year deal for cheap based on Bay making some effort to restore his rep, now in tatters might be fine. Bay is at an odd age though...34 now....35 after next year.

I don't know why we would put Ross in RF. He is anywhere from a liability to terrible as a fielder and RF has so many more elements of difficulty than LF at Fenway. There is more room to deal with in RF, there is that ugly corner from hell, there is the depth of throw from RF and it is the sun field when there is one. LF has the wall....the wall....and well....the wall and that is about it. Every once and awhile a ball zips past 3rd base and bangs into that angle instead of continuing on down the foul line but that is an issue of chasing the thing down if that happens. Sometimes the LF actually can't chase the thing down and the CF has to come over and get it. Even last year Ross went to RF out of necessity but Sweeney and Kalish played RF when they were there to play.

I don't think Ross will convince anybody to give him 3/21 with Willingham and his 35 HR's staring them in the face. Ross could not do that sort of damage even with 81 games aiming at the Monster. If the Sox sign Ross it should be for something in line with his production. Ross will simply end up being one of I don't know how many players this season that are not going to get their asking prices. The pendulum has finally swung to far over to one side and is due for a correction back to some sort of sanity.

I don't think V could get a job in his own restaurant at this point.

Now that is funny!

The problem I see in all of this is that unless Uncle Bud does something like what had been done several years ago and finds some way to pump offense then pitching will likely get back to as dominant as it was in the 1960's. The problem is he would have to do it without making sweeping changes that are as obvious to baseball as the rules governing what Defensive Backs and Receivers and QB's can do in football. In that context, as I said earlier, I would want my FO to be the most adept organization in baseball with regard to evaluating, retaining and bargaining for pitching. While I believe pitching is once again headed for the kind of dominance it had in the 1960's it is not developing as it did in the 60's. In the 60's it was all about starting pitching. While starting pitchers is on the rise again, relief pitchers are becoming much more specialized as starting pitching is getting better. A relief pitcher that can hit 97 may well be an important asset where we are going. Once we have a baseball organization, if we ever have a baseball organization that is truly adept at evaluating pitching then I will feel much more comfortable about a guy throwing 97 headed for some other club.

They must have really gotten Olmsted throwing downhill with that big body. His motion must be unrecognizable from what it was. You don't just gain that sort of velo without making some major changes.

Regardless of the numbers he posted is Olmstead still throwing 89-92 or not? To me that would be the question that seemed left unanswered in your post above SFF. I admit, I did not make an effort since looking at your post to check myself but thought you might know.

If I were anywhere in the FO of any MLB team I would be doing things to increase my performance as a FO as it related to pitching. I would want to have as finely honed a machine at evaluating, staying abreast of and moving on pitching and would likely work at it until I felt I had the best crew in the business in that regard. As for the Sox in particular, it would not be a complete surprise for them to really focus on pitching and use 2013 to try to bring everyday players along from the system. The only way to really do that in their case would be to bring some guys up before they are ready. However given where they are at this point that might be preferred to their norm, leaving guys to languish down on the farm. So I would want the Sox to eventually have such a finely honed system that they would be giving a look to a guy like Masterson as a matter of course.

Aren't we ignoring how Aceves was approaching this whole season? He either wanted to start or close. He had no interest what-so-ever in his customary role, figuring it was his time to reach for the brass ring and move up to the higher profile, higher paycheck pitching opportunities. I have got to believe that if he was not made either a closer or a starter at the start of the season, we would have seen his antics far earlier last season. The guy has proven to be a certifiable nut bag. The fact that the Sox are willing to give Farrell a shot at somehow keeping this guy on the mound, not committing some act of felonious assault on his pitching coach says a good deal about how desperate the Sox are to keep guys that might be able to get the ball up to the plate. Last year the Sox came very close to the embarrassment of watching their pitcher chase their pitching coach off the field for coming out to have a word.

Unfortunately, the trend is toward pitching becoming even more dominant in MLB. If that were not the case it would be easier to believe that a couple rubs of the genie's lamp, a FA here and a FA there and hey anything is possible. However, pitching is becoming even more dominant and if anything we have more pitching question marks this offseason than last. Plus everybody is even more focused on who is available, how much risk is there and if there is deal to be made for a pitcher or not. Still hope that having wrestled away pitching from LA in "the trade" does not say more about those two particular pitchers. Pitching is getting progressively harder to come up with. I think we are likely to see a number of the young guys playing this year with the Sox focusing on trying to find some value in FA pitching. I hope that does not mean the bum of the week campaign we were on last year. Hunting for value does not have to mean throwing a bunch of crap against the wall and hoping something sticks. I am beginning to wonder if the Sox should dispense Greinke out of hand on the "he can't pitch in the big markets" claim. It is so hard to just take a pitcher off the board like that.

Contracts are always a combination of time and money. 3/$21 makes no sense for a player of Ross calibre. I am not sure I would want to be committed to Ross for 3 years unless the money per was really light. He signed a 1 year deal in Boston and proved to be really what you would have expected....a guy that can make hay outta' the Monster but is really not much more than that and also happens to be a real game of chance defensively. I would not put him in RF unless I had no options there. LF is about the only place he should play out there defensively. I would say 2/$10 makes some sense.....maybe 3/$13.5M if it has to be 3 years. As I said earlier I think we are going to end up with a lotta' disappointed agents and players this year.

As I mentioned before the deal was done for Ortiz I figured I understood it and was OK with it under the circumstances. To be honest they have finally done it. They have exhausted me with their endless nods to their desire to "always be marketing". Reminds me of a marketing version of the ABC's of Sales....."Always be Closing". It might change someday if and when they sell the team but not before then.

Not sure passing on Ross suggests a move on Hamilton..might suggest a move to bring back Youk for a short term RH bat. Who the heck on the Sox is going to babysit Hamilton the way they have in Texas? You almost have to treat Hamilton like a knuckleballer needing a specialized catcher for every game he pitches if not worse. What are the special "baseball" characteristics of a teammate who is going to stay inside Hamilton's drawers day and night in an effort to keep him on the straight and narrow. I am not sure it makes sense to bring Hamilton to either New York or Boston.

This seems an odd kind of year for player/team negotiations. The last few years it has seemed like the teams have been pushing the salaries higher....a bunch of drunken sailers at the same party with the gals looking better after each shot. This seems like it might be the year that the players and their agents are looking for money that is just not going to happen for the most part. If the player is in a key position (catchers for example are of late always in demand) or a key position with a particular team (maybe Ortiz falls into that category as a marketing vehicle for the Sox) I think teams are going to be hauling in on the reins this year. Ross wants Willingham money.....pllllleeeeaase!!!!

Well something just does not make sense about the whole thing with Haren. It is screwy enough for me not to be willing to call it a fail on the part of the FO without knowing more. Was inclined to the FO inability to make decisive mores until the Cubs deal fell apart and then Haren passed into FA just like that. Now I am willing to leave the door open to there being something that just does not pass the smell test here.

I think Haren is past it as far as being a top of the rotation guy (trying to avoid that term....ace). He could have been a nice addition if it were not for being spooked by how inactive the Angels were on him. Gotta' believe there is something to that. However I can see Pal's point about the $16M were it not for the fact that it does appear that the Sox are setting limits on what they spend maybe as a means of enforcing a spending regimen and making it painful for the FO to overspend for a player or players. In that sense I would not want them to plunk down $16M on Haren because if they start out that way I have got to believe they will run into a budget limitation and not be willing to go past it regardless of what they might be able to accomplish if they do. Even with all the do-ra-me they got from the trade, I have got to think they have set a limit on what they are going to be willing to spend in one year again to enforce some discipline. Something we know has been lacking.

Youk could be a respectable answer at 1st for a year....until they figure out something else long term. As long as the money is not crazy....why not?

Well I think Haren could have been a fit here at a something less than Beckett money. But, I am the one that is always sayin' that the team a guy has been playing for knows more about his condition than anybody else does at least until somebody makes an offer that player accepts and a physical happens. So I gotta' take my own medicine here and assume that there is something going on with Haren that the Angels know about....we need those kinds of problems like we need a dose of poison.

When asked to comment about the near missed deal that would have sent Haren to Chicago for Marmol Sox GM Ben Charrington said........ "Huh".

Sounds like savior Theo, the boy blunder, did not have all of his ducks lined up...Jeez what a surprise.

Man...talk about some age in the lineup...Imagine the Yanks starting Ichiro, Grandy and Hunter in the OF......Arod, Jeter, Cano and Tex around the horn, Martin catching with Raul in the DH spot. Bring on the Geritol commercials.