jung

Won't be awesome if he is wearing somebody else's uniform.

That is a good point especially when it is coming from a pitcher.

We will likely never know why the Yanks went Kuroda instead but I would not discount NY being more concerned with Oswalt based on history. Really hard to tell though. How can we see into the mind of the GM and discern such marginal differences?

They may end up there but it makes no sense that they would be aiming to end up there. If that is the case, they just sent off a player that could help them for the difference between being $4M over and $10M over. I do not think they are comfortable with the idea of being any amount over this year and will continue to make every effort to stay under.

If there is one thing we are all learning in this it is the complexity of dealing with the cap when you have players you might be able to coax away from Arbitration, players that may win or lose in Arbitration, potential options to exercise and players that you want to sign. It is clear to me that the Sox are making every effort to stay under the cap this year. They are playing so close to the line that they might go over even making every effort to stay under. Probably even with sending Scuts off, the only way they can guarantee staying under is to send off more salary or not sign any more players.

No I don't think they are settled on Oswalt. I still think the same. They want Oswalt but for less than the $8M that has been publicized.

I obviously do not know but I think that BC is planning on how much he will benefit from the Lackey option and combining that with a reasonable number of Arbitration wins or favorable negotiations that either gets him enough for Oswalt or Floyd. I still believe that the Sox have been trying to coax Oswalt below the $8M that he has been apparently peddling and if that fails, Floyd becomes the fallback. It seems to me that the Sox are literally scraping money together to get the player they want and keep to what appears more and more to be a mandate from ownership to stay under the cap this year. Guys like iortiz and myself have said the same thing consistently week after week. This is the only way to make any sense of what the Sox are doing. I have to give BC credit for one thing. He seems to be following a mandate handed to him by his owner and other than the Ortiz blunder is making the best of it. That said it takes about 10 player moves to make up for the damage from the Ortiz blunder. What hurts about Ortiz asking for $16M is that you have to think he and his agents think that was the right thing to do. Hence I would put the chance that he negotiates to a number like $13M at 0%. Maybe he takes $14M in negotiation. That is still way better for the Sox than $16M. However $12M would still make Ortiz a ton of money and put the Sox either in position with an outside shot of dealing realistically with Oswalt or at least getting a decent arm. In the end this might be good for us and them. So much for the heady days of blowing off $147M for the Crawfords of the world. We are right down in the dirt now folks. Begging Ortiz to take a reasonable number and begging Oswalt to take even less than the $8M he says he will take now. Time for a reality check. Presuming Oswalt will take $8M, if the Sox were offering $8M this late in the game, you don't think he would be signing as we speak?

Believe me iortiz I am not excusing the Sox for the initial mistake of offering Ortiz Arbitration. My only point in that part of the post was to suggest that the Sox did Ortiz the biggest favor of his life and he could have done them a world of good not taking the fullest advantage of it. Taking a bit of a break on your income is done all the time in the NFL, a team sport where virtually any play can be your last. However not trying to take your team to the cleaners for every dime you can in MLB, never happened.

Iortiz, While it is a questioning post it is a logical post. I suspect that the Sox are figuring they are either just to the right side of the tax threshold with Scuts gone and/or know how much of a benefit they will get against the 2012 cap for the Lackey option and when they can take the Lackey benefit for exercising his option. By the way, while I guess expecting a player especially in MBL to take a bit of a hit for the team (although it is done all the time in the NFL) is there any question at this point how much Ortiz could have helped this team if he made an Arbitration submission at around $14M instead of $16M? Now it is going to be all or nothing. To be honest I hope he gets his ass kicked in the Arb hearing and has to take $12M.

At least 2015 is the other side of a number of the Sox contracts expiring and 2015 if finally a year after the tax threshold goes up. I wish we really knew how the heck the Lackey thing gets handled and when the "benefit" of exercising does accrue to the Sox. Lackey is going to miss all of 2012 isn't he? So at some point in 2012, when that becomes obvious, can they exercise and take the benefit against the 2012 totals?

As far as the cost of pitching is concerned I did not think Oswalt or the other guys under consideration would come down to meet what the Sox were looking for. I had stated for the longest time that I thought they were trying stay under the cap and that specifically as it related to Oswalt they were looking for an even better deal than $8M. Mainly I held that opinion because they could not afford $8M. At least based on the last calculations done here a few days ago and the last article posted at the same time, it would appear that by dumping Scuts they have the $8M and can still just barely stay under. I did just post a few hours ago that there is rarely much movement on these guys or much interest in many cases until it looks like somebody is going to make a serious move on the player. So if the Sox are down to the wire you can bet that Oswalt's agents are making every effort to make sure those that have expressed interest that has the potential to pay him is getting a shot at him. We are in large part taking the optimistic view that Oswalt has been waiting for the Sox to come up with the money. However the last bit of posted news here stated that "the Sox were very much involved but that Oswalt was not close to signing. That does not sound to me like Oswalt has been waiting for the Sox at all. They may still get him, but they will likely be some movement along the way.

I have believed for the longest time now that Iglesias would get his shot this year regardless of the fact that he has not shown much at the plate yet. No I don't think he will give us Scuts numbers at the plate. But if Iglesias is where they were going anyway, I don't think we have to worry all that much about what kinds if numbers we get from the guys they throw into the breach before they insert Iglesias.

How the hell can they have the nerve to call that a "huge" mistake? Sounds like an effort at sensationalism and an opportunity to say I told you so if anything goes wrong in the deal. I hate ******** like this (not meaning to imply any angst directed toward the poster). Huge mistakes are ones where you give up cornerstones to the team and get nothing back. That deal can not be straight up player for player anyway. Scuts is a nice player but he is not one of the bedrocks that the team is built upon.

I don't know that I am ready to go here yet with Bard as big a question mark as he is as a starter. However if we get Oswalt that gets us close enough in my view and it is probably as good as we could have hoped to get this year with the rotation. All it would take to flip the Sox rotation to superior to the Yanks presuming the other four guys pitch to form would be for Bard to turn out to be a pleasant surprise outperforming expectations. We are talking about a guy that has not been successful starting even in the minor leagues that will now be starting in the AL East. One difficult decision the Sox might have to make if Bard does struggle would be to determine if he should go back to the BP. If the Sox are forced to make a decision like that I hope they do not give up on him to soon. I would rather have them be a bit patient with the guy since in fact he could go back to the BP. This is a great opportunity for Bard and the Sox as I am hoping Bard will not put tons of pressure on himself. Since he will know that the pen is there for him that should give him some degree of security that the alternative is not down to the minors.

Now I am interested to see how quickly the other shoe drops. Much of the action on these guys does not seem to get going until it becomes common knowledge among the professional baseball people that a guy is close to a deal. I am hoping that the Sox have done their math since they appear insistent on staying below the cap. Want them to be able to just make this deal for Oswalt and be done with it.

If you tell me that I am going to get one of those two pitchers for Scuts....I am good with that.

The analysts are always to impressed with whatever team makes the most noise in the offseason without considering what was there to begin with. The Angels seem to be drawing the most attention in that regard this off season. It is like Albert is going bat 1,000 and CJ is going to pitch 10 complete game shutouts. Sure they are two big pieces but they can't do everything. I still think what it boils down to is that the Angels will do more damage in the West than they did last year and are a very viable WC contender because of it. To me the Angels create more of a problem for the Rays and the Sox than anybody else.

Ravens + 8.5 would be hard to bet against.

I know the question sort of includes it answer but No, I don't think Oswalt is turning down an offer of $8M from the Sox. I do not think the Sox would offer him $8M. I have posted here that as insane as it may seem I thought they would be interested in getting a super bargain and nothing less would do. So they would be interested in my view if Oswalt fell to something like $5M.

Crawford's SB attempts are based on his inability to get on base last year. Ya' can't steal first.

I don't think that is the case Fred. There is one thing that I think may have confused the issue. Teams and players have in the past made handshake agreements behind the scenes and that has worked as a means for teams to step away from Arbitration but the handshake agreement is the difference. In fact while I have not found the new language as yet and in fact have not found a complete new CBA posted anywhere as yet, it is my understanding that there is some effort in the new CBA to eliminate these handshake agreements. i don't even know why the league would necessarily care other than that it is something of a mutation of the intent of arbitration. But what you might be seeing as a formal process is in really the result of one of these handshake agreement between player and team. As you can probably tell by the way Ortiz is going into this, there is about 0 chance that there is a behind the scenes handshake agreement that will allow both parties to gracefully back away from arbitration.

I think the Angels have drawn up closer to us but more importantly I think they will do more damage in their own division than they have in the past few years. That makes them more of a threat to suck down one of the wild card spots I think. Funny how things have worked out in the West. Seems like they were a complete AL afterthought for awhile. Then the Rangers became a team to be reckoned with and now the Angels have pulled themselves up some. Now the poor Central looks like they will be stuck sending only a division winner into the post season for awhile.

I thought the judge could have more impact even though he did not have more leeway than that. But in reality if I followed the actual hearing more closely maybe what I thought was a judge calling guys into a meeting and asking that they come to terms was really the team and the player taking some action completely separate from the Arbitration hearing itself. I think I will try to follow this one during the process. Usually I just end up looking at the deal when the dust settles and I may be drawing the wrong conclusion from just looking at that.

I think $16+ is a negotiating position and I hope it does not have the desired effect. By all rights at least in my view I don't think he should get $14 although I have basically conceded him $14 based on the circumstances. How I would love for one of these darned things to turn out with some basis in reality. Yea he had a great year for a 36 year old but at some point age has got to count for something. If the Arbiter just uses some standard formula, we are probably screwed.

I don't think the off season is over as far as things the Sox do is concerned but at this point it would be hard to argue that they are not sticking to a particular budgetary formula. I don't think they are willing to spend $8m+ on anybody at this point or at least on anybody they could realistically expect to fall into that price range.