jung

It is a good thing that in Spring Training teams actually field multiple teams like A and B squads. They might need an A, B and C squad just to look at all these low cost pitchers.

I offered the opinion that the Sox are offering an incentive laden deal quite a long time ago. Presuming that to be true that appears to be going over like 10 lbs of s*** in a 2 lb bag. To me "serious concerns about his durability" falls into the category of "things baseball professionals know or fear about Oswalt that we are not taking into consideration" on this board. Seeking a multiyear deal elsewhere would then have to be a fall back position and a redirection for him because it was Oswalt himself that began promoting himself as available for a 1 year deal. That appeared to be an effort to draw some interest because I guess he could not get anybody to offer him a multiyear deal. So I am sure he would prefer one but Oswalt himself seems to have ruled out the possibility weeks ago. So I think items 1 and 2 are likely to be accurate appraisals with item 3 being less likely....sort of Oswalt's version of a hope as opposed to a genuine possibility. So he can't get teams to offer him multiyears and can't get teams to offer him what he thinks he is worth for 1 year. Sounds more and more to me that those "fears about durability" or something else we have undervalued on this board are actually really quite meaningful to the people that have to decide to pay him or not. So that brings me back to where I was last night or early this morning. If Oswalt is going to be signed by somebody for less money than he would like on a 1 year deal, I suspect that there is very little likelihood that he ends up with some team in the AL East. Ergo, a team in the AL East that wants to make a genuine effort to sign him has to be willing to offer him more than teams in other divisions are offering to him. So far at least the Sox don't look like they are that team. They can make noise or the press can make noise about Oswalt being their number 1 target till hell freezes over. They don't appear to be putting their money where their mouth is.

Well I will say this 700, based on what I know (which may be a far cry from what baseball professionals know) I would tend to agree with you that $5M is not a reasonable offer for Oswalt. If there are no extenuating circumstances that are preventing the Sox from offering him more then I would say the offers the Sox have made to Oswalt amount to a smoke screen as opposed to being a genuine effort to sign the player. Sure the Sox could be just taking a shot that gives them a very slim chance at signing him but that is not what I would consider a genuine effort to sign the player. Heck I can go buy a lottery ticket as well but buying a lottery ticket does not amount to a genuine effort to generate revenue. It is a shot, a gamble with a slim chance of paying off.

So given the above what are we to conclude if the Sox do not increase the reported $5M offer? Are we to conclude that in spite of what has been reported Oswalt is not their #1 target or are we to conclude that they know and fear something about Oswalt that prevents them from offering him more?

But the reports are that multiple teams are offering Oswalt the same money. Isn't there the chance that the baseball professionals across several teams know something about Oswalt or fear something about Oswalt that we are not taking into consideration?

OK so Maine as an example: I am not impressed with Maine either. But suppose their plan is to bring in a bunch of guys that are all risks of the sort that I mentioned above and combine them with guys that are already in the Sox system in an effort to flesh out a 5 from that bunch. Could we really argue with BC if at the end of the day he said something like "we made what we thought were reasonable offers for guys in this years FA market all the while building a stockpile of arms that we intend having compete for those spots at the bottom of the rotation and in the pen. They already have Aceves and Bard and while we are leery of them starting the season with both of those guys at the bottom of the rotation, again if those guys win out for those positions and all these other guys end up in the pen or in the minors, the Sox might have a reasonable argument that this is what they want to do this year and that there is a reasonable expectation that they will succeed. Now the monkey wrench in all of this is that the Sox are never going to admit that offering Arb to Ortiz was something of a mistake that tied their hands in a sense, presuming an unwillingness to open the purse strings wider than they are. However, if they do end up with enough pitching doing it this way AND keeping Ortiz bat in the iine-up for one more year, even I will end up having to eat my words about Ortiz arbitration.

I might try to just stay in the FA bunch and toss somebody out there from that bunch that we have not been talking about. Once you get down especially to the 5 hole (which has been mentioned in the press as the real spot the Sox are going to fill) you could have guys coming off injury, guys that have been rehabing for awhile, guys taking their last shot at success in the bigs, guys taking their first shots out of the minors...there are a ton of folks that might fit that bill, many more than I can keep track of for sure. I will look at the remaining FA and see what I can see from that and then maybe look farther past that. The point is that we on this board have been pretty focused on two....maybe three guys and I suspect that from the Sox perspective the pool of candidates is far wider than that. That is not to say that if they don't land one of those three guys, we aren't likely to huff and snort and threaten to blow Fenway down.

I tend to agree with the comment that BC appears indecisive. However that is one piece of evidence among many that he does not have the authority normally attributed to GM's. How can he appear decisive if he has to wait for the almighty LL to burp out a decision? I do think they will end up with a pitcher. Maybe we need to remember that at the end of day they are looking for somebody down in the 4 or 5 hole. They are not looking for God to come down to Fenway Park with a baseball glove and a fastball. I suspect they will end up with somebody that can fit into that 4 or 5 hole but I would not even expect somebody that we might perceive as a 3.5 SP. At this point I would not be surprised if we did not end up with a 5.5. Hope to not confuse the issue but I am just using these numbers to try to explain.

Well BC has been preparing us with this "I am content to go into ST with the team as is stuff" and if the numbers that have been tossed around are accurate it is hard for me to take the efforts they are making with Oswalt and Jackson seriously, not because other teams have apparently been tossing the same numbers at those to pitchers but because I suspect it will take something in addition to lure either one of them over to the AL East. However I do think they will end up with some kind of SP, probably not even Floyd but somebody.

Floyd would not be my choice either. I just don't think the Sox will land either Jackson or Oswalt off the free agent market. The Sox are apparently not willing to offer a premium to what other teams will offer to sign either one and once real interest starts to percolate for them, I am inclined to think they will get either the same offer from a team that they would prefer going to or a greater offer from somebody other than the Sox. In Oswalt's case I think it will be for former and in Jackson's the latter.

Floyd is cheap against the cap cause of his AAV and I have a suspicion that the Sox will be down to Floyd before long.

If I were BC I might be makin' Floyd my new best friend.

I do get the Santos thing. Whether BC was interested in him or not, he should have known he was available.

Wheeler is a match up reliever. In truth I think the Sox gave up on him before they even starting on their BP "depth" campaign. I do understand folks looking at his numbers and believing he is worth a shot but I actually think the Sox are generally headed toward leaving some room to try to develop some of the younger guys that will start 2012 in the minors. Pure numbers alone might have suggested that they keep him but I just don't think he fit the Sox plans. If he had a better reputation with regard to his ability get lefties out, it might be easier to make the case for him. I think the Sox might be looking at the value they would attach to a guy that can come into the 5th, 6th or 7th inning and get a couple righties out against being able to develop some better long term solutions. I could be wrong but I think that is why Wheeler is an Indian today and not a Red Sox.

I actually think the $5M number has been associated with so many teams that I am inclined to think it is valid. I still think there is something about Oawalt (maybe some combination of injury potential and age) that has got the major leagues spooked on this guy. The problem for the Sox is that all these offers are looking like they are going to be pretty low. If I were Oswalt and I were going to pitch somewhere for short money it sure and hell would not be anywhere in the AL East.

I would bet the farm that the Sox "plan" was some number like $5-$6M plus incentives to get to a higher income. As I suspected though. once an expectation is set, then a bunch of other teams can jump in at those kinds of numbers. Sox will be extremely fortunate to end up with Oswalt or Jackson in my view. I would not bet on either at this point. Maybe Floyd if anybody.

BC really could not answer those questions about the Luxury Tax honestly anyway. The tack the interviewers took was to ask him if there was a mandate from ownership to stay under the cap. Well BC can't say that there is so he said that there isn't. What else was he going to say. As for the questions about trading Scuts to free up some room under the cap, the premise for that whole line of questioning was wrong in my view. The premise was that in the past if the Sox wanted somebody like Oswalt, they would just have opened up the check book and signed a check without having to do something like move a player to free up room under the cap. Nobody just opens up the checkbook in my view. If you want to say that they were less sensitive to cost fine but to imply that their whole reasoning has changed does not wash with me. You cannot expect organizations to make moves from the very same perspective year in and year out. They don't live in some bubble. The Sox have spent money with what appears to be more freedom in the past. They will likely do it again when it appears to them to be the right thing to do. These are all value judgements. Right now the Sox appear to have placed a high degree of value on staying below the cap threshold. A trade or FA signing that would drive them over the threshold would have to be a really super, undeniably favorable deal for them to be willing to take the financial hit they will take. In my view the interviewers kept probing for black and white answers where none exist. They and sometimes even we act like the Sox FO went to a big party one night and the next day woke up with a headache and Carl Crawford. We sort of got answers from the BC interview if we read between the lines. I would have preferred a more subtle line of questioning because I think we would have learned more.

I do think it is interesting that so much focus seems to have shifted from Oswalt to Jackson. If I were a betting man I would bet that Oswalt has shunned the Sox and the Sox are now concentrating on Jackson.

I am not sure how much I am buyin' the Sox "preferring" Jackson. I suspect they might have been rejected by Oswalt and maybe even more than once and are now preferring Jackson out of necessity. Just a guess on my part though.

Well with the money they freed up it appears they can get a pitcher and still stay under the cap. So I gotta' believe at this point they get somebody. Just don't know who or when.

In fact even the two consecutive years to get back to 0% Lux Tax Rate is a break by way of the new CBA. Under the old one if you were over for three years it would take three years under to get back to a 0% rate. Although being able to get back to 0% in two years is a break it is sort of the carrot in this case. The stick is that if you don't get back to 0% you are clipped for the tax AND clipped for the rebate teams would expect to get back from their revenue sharing contributions.

Ya, I don't think they were without a strategy when they offered Arb to Ortiz. I think they just made a mistake. Took a shot and it did not work out. I have to look more carefully at the revenue sharing issues and the timing on those changes but I think one of the things that might be motivating them to stay under the cap this year is that under the new rules in order to get 100% of their revenue share back they have to be at 0%. From where they are today, the only way to get back to 0% would be to stay under for two years running. I think they have next year knocked if they can just stay under this year. If they don't back get to 0% I think by 2014 (meaning they have to get under this year and stay under next year) then they lose a big chunk of revenue sharing...a far larger penalty than even a reasonable expectation for what the four year tax rate of 50% would yield. If they go over this year, then even if they are under next year and stay under for 2014 it will be 2015 before they can get back to 0% and I think there is no question then that they would get clipped by the new revenue sharing penalties that have been added to the LT Tax itself. I do think that baseball has come up with a formula that finally will even give the Yankees pause with regard to the LT cap.

I did not find specific language regarding when and under what conditions a player could be examined either other than those rules that govern a player under contract that has sustained an injury. I did not look in the UPC though. The language we are looking for might be in there.

Well for the Sox to be looking for an everyday SS they would have to come up with someone that would make Scuts salary dump make sense. How cheaply can you find an everyday SS? Seems to me that the only thing that makes offing Scuts makes sense is that you bring somebody to play the position that is salary controlled. I don't who they could bring that would be that much better than staying within their organization and existing roster.

I can't see the Sox bringing Hanley here.