jung

One thing I have seen in some articles recently (which is not to say that I agree with them) is columnists assigning the number 5 slot to whichever pitcher we get. That would clearly suggest that they think Aceves or Bard moves right into the 4 slot. That is a good deal of pressure for guys that have really not had starting roles before and have not given indications that they can just slot right into the 4. If the Sox are thinking along the same lines I am not sure that they would have the same expectations for performance that we would expect for a 4. It is an interesting question. Certainly there are more guys and less costly guys that you would consider as a 5. Often 5's have a hard time doing more than giving you 5 innings in the AL East and they are often a rocky 5 innings at that.

Holy Cow....he is only 27. Geez he must have been able to get into bars at 12!

On the other hand we have signings like the Prince in Detroit (nice to know that there are other teams out there motivated in part by Marketing considerations in their major FA signings). I might be wrong but I think Fielder is 31 or maybe 32 by the time the season starts???? He is going to be over 40 in the last year of that contract and it is not like the guy is headed for a robustly athletic mid-life at the rate he is going or should I say growing!

It remains a little surprising to me that Oswalt is not generating more interest from a larger pool of teams. It really does make me wonder if there is something that the baseball pros know about him that we don't.

It does make a lotta' sense. If this comes all the way down to the wire and Oswalt still does not have a deal somewhere then I think he would be much more likely to sign with an AL East team. However I would not be surprised if he views signing with an AL East team as having an impact on his future prospects as limited in time as those might be and would actually ask for something like an AL East surcharge at least until he had ho choices left open to him. I don't even know how often I have seen this before. We have a legitimate big league pitcher that probably started this offseason figuring he was likely to be signing his second to last or last big league contract, probably for something like 3 years who has been backed into a willingness to accept a 1 year deal and drop kick his career one year forward as a result. Oh by the way that is going to put him in the FA class of 2013 which is shaping up to already have a goodly number of pitchers in it. Would you be completely surprised if he were not trying to maximize his opportunity to look good as opposed to coming over here and possibly having his head handed to him?

I think User is right about Lackey's option. If I am reading him correctly his view is that they should definitely exercise when they can (I don't think they have as yet but should when they can). By the time he come back to baseball there are other ways to deal with him again as User is suggesting here.

I get the feeling that whichever teams have been making offers to Oswalt have been making then at some number lower than the $8M for 1 year that has been advertising and he must be balking at that at least for the present. Detroit must have made some effort at a number lower than $8M as well and was rejected. Would love to know where these offers are in relation to the $8M number.

I will lose faith in the Arbitration system if Ortiz wins at $16M. However that would be justice. The Sox will deserve what they get if that happens.

Manana....manana.....always manana

Boy unless there are some small contracts that the Sox can turn into even smaller contracts by trading the player, I don't see it. At this point having traded Scuts I don't see them trading Youk. Who knows, you trade a guy or two making $1.5M or $2M and replace them with guys making less and you save a few $M. But I don't see a trade involving big name players coming and I would even view trades at a much lower level to e unlikely at this point unless it is a trade that brings them pitching. Would love to be a fly on the wall at this point just to understand what they are really trying to do at this moment. There is really not that much time left before they have to leave for ST.

I know incentives would count against the cap. But pushing some of the money to incentives means the Sox can actually buy something tangible in the form of innings or outs or runs limitation for the money they spend on him. It would be a means of convincing themselves that a portion of the money paid is tied to something real...something beyond Oswalt showing up in a uniform and from where the Sox sit today, that might be what it takes for them to commit the funds that Oswalt wants.

Maybe...but after all these weeks of "negotiating" and it has now been weeks that the Sox have supposedly been talking to Oswalt, some of these small print issues have not been covered. Hard to believe. I am still more inclined to think that if they are deeply engaged with Oswalt at this point it is an effort to get some money into incentives.

I agree that both of these might be at play E. It is just this sort of reasoning that makes me suspect that the point of the negotiation with Oswalt (presuming it is happening at all) is to move some of his desired $8M to incentives based from pure salary so that they know to some extent what they are getting for a commitment in dollars that puts them over the cap. That would also explain the time element as any contract that includes incentives is more difficult to put together by the offering party and more difficult to vet by the party offered to.

OK lets go with this then. Oswalt has been out there for $8M for an eternity for a guy that is such a "bargain". If they are not close, what does that suggest? Does it suggest that the Sox want to offer Oswalt $10M and his agents are trying to figure out what they are missing? It should be clear that while they are negotiating with him, they are not offering him $10M or $8M. If they are offering him $7.5, that does not make sense either. They could just as easily lose him doing that as anything else and then they will not have lost him for $1M or $2M but will have lost him for $500k. He is a player that they are willing to take on their terms even when the dollar increments might be as small as a couple $M and that is not what I would describe as a player that they have made a priority.

I would not be surprised if the Sox are trying to negotiate Oswalt in this way. They are trying to take just enough of the guaranteed money off the contract and turn that into incentives based money so that they can turn around and say "this is what we bought for the money over the cap". We bought this many innings, this many outs, this much limitation of runs produced. That I would believe. However based on what has happened and what appears to be happening I do not believe that they are willing to just sign him for money that drives them over the cap without getting that money into incentives. If they can't I believe they will just move on to somebody else. We are the ones that went from making a 4th starter a necessity to making Oswalt a necessity. Nothing the Sox have done especially based on the the last report this weekend that had the two sides "not close" suggests that the Sox have made Oswalt a necessity or even a priority.

Well Oswalt has been publicly out there at $8M for a few weeks now. The point is that I think $8M puts the Sox over with no hope of getting back....I think. Ergo, they won't and have not been willing to sign him for $8M. I agree that they might be trying to push him lower than $8M and they are likely trying to push him to some number that gives them a shot at staying under. If they can't, I believe they will move on and sign somebody else. One thing that does start to worry me about Oswalt is that apparently nobody else is rushing to sign him at $8M either. You mean to tell me that nobody else in either league can muster up $8M for what we all consider a bargain? Maybe he is not the bargain that he appears to be on the surface. In my view they will get an another arm. As each day passes I grow more and more skeptical that it will be Oswalt's arm and everything they have done suggests to me a desire to stay under the cap if they can.

I repeat, the best evidence that they are not willing to go over for Oswalt is that they don't have him. Oswalt has publicly stated that he would sign a 1 year deal for $8M. Would it not be reasonable them to suggest that if they were willing to go over the cap and sign him for $8M that they would have by now? We had suggestions here...that were likely reasonable suggestions that based on having moved Scuts money we would have signed Oswalt before the weekend was over.....a reasonable supposition if in fact all of this was being done "specifically" to get Oswalt. Is Oswalt here? Last reports not more than 36 hours old were that " the Sox were engaged in discussions with Oswalt but were not close".......and that combined with the fact that he is not signed is what compels me to think that the Sox are not willing to go over for Oswalt. Take it one step farther. If they are not willing to go over for Oswalt, who in the FA market this year appears a strong enough pitcher to force them to make a value judgement in favor of going over?

Are you trying to make the case for going over to get Oswalt? If that was what they were gong to do, they would have him already. Apparently that is not what they have in mind. Another poster commented that we should not discount the possibility of the Sox planning on a $188M player payroll budget for this year. Well OK I can buy that as a possibility. Can you see somebody standing in front of JH and making an argument that they should plan on a $182M budget this year? "Gee JH my plan is to be $4M over the tax cap on a $182M budget." I would think the first thing JH would say is either, your fired or....find a way to trim that $4M so that I am under the LT cap cause if you aren't smart enough to find me $4M on a $178M payroll I need to find somebody that is! They Sox have been willing to go over by marginal amounts in past years. I have said for weeks now that I do not think they are any longer willing to do that primarily because of changes to the tax rates but for other reasons as well and that they have drawn a line in the sand this year...whether we like it or not. I do think they will continue to make value judgements one way or the other but with more concern on where they are in relation to that line. Based on what they have done the past few weeks I simply see no reason to believe that they "value" Oswalt enough to go over. I do think they will get another arm. I am skeptical that it will be Oswalt.

That $8.4 has to buy you something and even the $4M that they would be over in this scenario has to buy you something. If they end up only $4M over the cap, they pay $1.8M in tax anyway. That is the point. Suggesting that they don't find their way back under setting themselves up to be back at a 0 rate by 2014 is what makes no sense unless they are really buying something worth having for that $4M or I should say $5.8M. $4M does not even buy them Oswalt.

Sorry but if the benefit to the Sox for all of this turns out to be that they go over by only $4M instead of $10M we will likely and rightly rip them to shreds. That would amount to pennywise, pound foolishness on a grand scale. However I don't think that is what will happen here. I choose to believe at least at this point that they are working to stay under this year...have not given up on that as yet and have not given up on getting another arm either. As I stated earlier however, I think it is us...we are fixated on Oswalt. If the Sox were fixated on him, he would be here by now. They may still get him but if they do, I believe it will be based on one of the scenarios I mentioned earlier. One other scenario might be out there. They might free up even more salary space but I don't see how they can.

What has happened to Brady lately? They could have salted this game away about five times if Brady's decision making was more like what we have grown accustomed to seeing. Christ he just about kept the Ravens in the game. Congratulations Pats...I think! I hate the Ravens...glad to see them gone. Go Pats!

Sounds logical but it is all stuff the Sox know and yet Oswalt is not here yet. So I can only assume at this point that the Sox have made getting under a priority for this year. You can compile many different formulas that that can make the argument either way. However until they spend the money I am inclined to think they don't want to spend the money and go over this year.

I have not brought this up in awhile. Stopped because I did not think anybody gave a rats ass anyway. However the Sox bottom line has really suffered from the big salary increases of the last couple years. They don't generate anything like the kind of revenue that the Yanks generate and I do think that is one of the things that have gone into what I think is a mandate that they stay below the cap and get themselves back to a 0% tax rate sooner rather than later.

Frankly I think we are more fixated on Oswalt than the Sox have been. If they wanted him that badly I think they would have simply bitten the bullet, swallowed the error in having offered Ortiz arbitration and signed him for $8M. I think they want another pitcher. I am not at all convinced it turns out to be Oswalt.

Well the problem with assuming that it will be Oswalt is that he seems stuck at $8M at this point which by all accounts is already a bargain and the Sox don't have $8M unless Lackey's option credit for this year will be more than people have been talking about. I do think they will get somebody. - either the credit for Lackey will be big enough and they get Oswalt -the credit does not give them enough for Oswalt and they get somebody else - Oswalt capitulates further and takes less than $8M from somebody, possibly the Sox Although, unless you want to account for nobody with a better shot at a WS being in the running besides the Sox, if you were Oswalt. close to the end of your career, would you want to join what turned out to be a basket case of a team in 2011?