jung

Because the report today is that Management knew about it at the end of last season. Again this is not the player hiding the injury. According to Gammons tonight, Crawford even took a few shots in the wrist late last season to numb it up. This was either fully a Management decision with the support of Medical or Management, Medical and the player deciding to forgo an MRI at the end of last season and wait to see what happened with a couple of months of rest. I strongly suspect that if they had done the MRI at the end of last season, they would have seen the same damage that prompted them to scope the wrist now.

Ya but it does not sound like Crawford hid this at all. This sounds like a mutual decision between Medical, Management and the player. I don't understand why they did not insist that Crawford have an MRI last year as it appears that would have exposed exactly what they were up against. This is the part that really kills me because this is at least the second time we have had the team deciding against an MRI early enough in the process to make a difference. I don't get that at all.

Gammons thinks the Rangers will sign Darvish on Wednesday.

Did not say anything about the medical staff but it did make it sound vary much like it was a decision taken with management involvement. Ya' gotta believe that Management would not have made a decision like that unilaterally and it would not have involved itself in such a decision without some input from Medical. The player has some input and some control over what happens to him as well. It surely sounds like another one of those instances where an MRI done at the time would have shown them the same thing the MRI done now must have shown. I don't know why there seems such reluctance to just go get the damned MRI done. They would have known and very likely would have gotten this done at the end of last season.

Ells agreed to $8M today to avoid Arbitration. Really don't think Ortiz is going to agree to anything. I think he goes to arbitration.

Actually the article on the Crawford surgery says that Crawford did experience soreness in the wrist at the end of last season but the decision at the time was to wait through the offseason and see how it felt whenever he cranked it up again for the 2012 season. How the heck does that decision make any sense? The guy is a big part of your payroll and you are projecting him to be a bi part of your season and you just let him walk out the door until the start of the next season. Then I also don't wonder if Crawford not making himself available when V was trying to contact him was really Crawford telling the Sox that during the offseason he does not talk to anybody from management, not his new manager not anybody....Go F off in other words. Maybe...maybe not.

Are we a little surprised that after such a rotten season Crawford must have shut it down completely until the last couple of days? This is probably the process he has gone through every offseason and every preseason but after the year he barfed up last year....just picked up the bat now???? I would have thought he would have been a little more aggresive than that.

Ouch....that one hurt!

Well at least it is a scope job and not a really ugly and invasive surgery. Wish he found it at the end of last year. If the whole procedure is just going to be a scope then he might have not lost that much time. Would be hard to imagine him able to do anything until it completely heals though. Who did we have though that never really came back from a wrist? Haven't we had one of those?

Actually I had thought that the injury Youk suffered before the abdomen was to his throwing shoulder which is why I was concentrating on the throw. But I went to look for that injury specifically and it was a thumb injury. My bad.

Did they ever move back to 3rd? By the way I have pointed to the throw from 3rd as being the most difficult and glaring difference to begin with. Saving wear due to throwing is probably the greatest benefit you get making a move from 3rd to 1st.

Come on, how can you make this argument? "Running to cover the bag". A good many of them are waddling to cover the bag and if they are holding somebody on they are already there. Think Prince Fielder could play 3rd, Frank Howard, George Scott, Jim Thome, Frank Thomas who actually DH'ed finally more than he played first, on and on and on. Have we not seen players time and again tried at 1st in order to improve their longevity and keep them able to come to the plate? Seen that much at 3rd? When people talk about ways to keep Ortiz in inter-league games do they talk about the possibility of putting him at 3rd or at 1st? Once again just like the issue of the possibility that Youk might have injured himself batting being just as strong as fielding, it does not matter whether his injuries to date can be traced to throwing. 3rd is less taxing on the body than 1st. In addition, especially for baseball players it is the accumulation of dings and knocks and pulls and strains that occur over the course of the season that eventually makes things like diving right, taking one in the chest and then scrambling to one's feet to make a throw that much more challenging. Those players are not going to back off even if they should. They are going to try to make that play even if they are already nursing some injury that makes that play much more difficult. The result sometimes is that they injure themselves further because the overtax one part of the body to protect the injury or injuries. In fact another opportunity that is often discussed relative to moving a player to 1st base is a player coming off of injury....why....because it is less taxing with more opportunity to protect the healing/recovering body.

Very true but that is not the point at least I don't think it is. Is there less wear playing 1st than 3rd? I would say that without question....yes. In fact as players age an effort is often made to try them where.....1st base, as a means of keeping their bats in the game longer. We saw this much more before the DH came into play. While we see it less because of the DH it does not change the fact that playing 1st is easier on the body.

A 1st baseman does not make anywhere near the number of throws that a guy at 3rd makes. Plus at 3rd you take a good many hard shots, dive a good deal and then have to get up quickly and throw all the way across the diamond. I know this does not sound like much as I am typing it but there is a substantial difference when you are diving left and right, fielding the hottest smashes in the infield and then having to make that throw across the diamond. I would take diving at 1st and getting up to make my little toss to the pitcher coming over or trotting over to touch the bag myself every day compared to having to hustle to my feet and make that throw from 3rd.

I don't know how much patience people will have with "waiting till next year" but I do think that is the better option than trying to clear cap space some way. Surely the FO is responsible for exploring ways to improve the team....but at the end of the day now that we have gotten this far into January, a trade is less likely I think and I have not seen a FA SP coming for weeks anyway. I would even be willing to platoon Ortiz a bit to rest Youk some in the DH spot. As far as his conditioning is concerned to me Youk has come into each of these last two seasons looking like an Adonis at least for him and it did not save him from anything in either case. As I said earlier i don't think his issues have anything to do with conditioning. Unfortunately Ortiz would whine and moan like you read about if he did not get his at bats and we would have to deal with him raging around the clubhouse....another hell of a leader that guy turned out to be.

So if Oswalt has a decent 2012 you don't think he will try to parley that into something like a 2-3 year deal someplace? Heck these guys have to be dragged kicking and screaming away and you can't blame them for the money they can get. I would say there is at least a chance that Merloni might have something, only a chance though.

I very much want the Sox to keep Youk. I just don't think they can afford him given two things: 1. The box they have put themselves in by keeping Ortiz....both in his cost and the impact it appears to be having on the Sox ability to acquire more pitching and in the fact that he effectively closes off rotating Youk into the DH role as a means of keeping his bat in the lineup while reducing the physical wear on him. 2. Youk's diminishing games per season due to his somewhat brittle physical makeup. He has gone from 145 per down to 136 down to 102 and then 120 last year. Even with that if somebody guaranteed me 100 games at the same rate of production that he had for 120 games last year I would take that even if it cost me the ability to get more pitching. Nobody can give me that guarantee though and if I can only get something like 80 games or maybe less out of him then I gotta' think about how valuable he would be to a team that does have an opening at first base and what I could get via a two team or three way deal. I do not want the Sox to just give him away though. Hence I don't think they should look for trades with teams that need a 3rd baseman as anybody thinking about him at third confronts the same problem we have. They should look for trades with teams that need a 1st baseman. If they don't trade him I can live with that. But I think he is the only guy they can move that could be the centerpiece to a trade that really helps them. Hence I don't think they have a choice but to explore the possibility. Hey it is apparently the Sox themselves that have set the bar. They are unwilling to get more pitching unless they can move salary or so it seems.

I should have reiterated the comment I heard from Merloni today on EEI and posted as part of a larger poet. Not sure about the credibility of this view but I guess it is in an interesting take on Oswalt and not one that I had considered. Lou's take was that Oswalt would not want to come here which is the same thing as saying he may truly not want to come under any reasonable circumstances or that he will make us pay something of a surcharge to come here. Merloni's point was that Oswalt would not want to come to the AL East on a one year deal because the risk would be far greater that he gets tagged and slapped silly making it harder for him to cut a longer term deal somewhere in 2013. Merloni thinks Oswalt will stay somewhere in the NL for this one year and avoid the risk. He is comfy there. He likes it there and the chances are better that he have a decent year setting himself up for a multiyear deal with somebody in 2013. Not sure what anybody here thinks of that. Not even sure what I think of it other than to say it is different.

That is exactly what I am saying. pumps.

Sorry...did not make myself clear. Exceeding by a little bit makes no sense. If they are going to exceed by a little bit then go sign the guy and exceed by more than a little bit. However I think the jury is actually still out based on what they do next. If they can get pitching and still stay under by virtue of trade and some clever movement of players and money then I would opt for that before I would simply say that they have no chance at staying under so go get Oswalt. Besides as usual I don't think it much matters what we want anyway. They appear to have gotten to this point with a purpose. I expect they are going to play this out. It will be interesting to see what happens if some other team makes a real play for Oswalt in the interim. That said I have thought for the longest time that their plans never really included Oswalt, never really included Kuroda and never really included Jackson unless the price for one of those three guys fell right through the floor. Won't be long at this point before we actually and finally know.

Well from where they are today it would be foolhardy to go over by a little bit. I am hoping for the give salary to get salary option.

So it looks like they are right on top of the limit. Hopefully we are down to seeing how cleverly they can give salary to take salary. We might even come out of this a feeling a little better about the Sox FO. Heck they sure as hell better be able to add!

Your right...he only has $1.6M allocated to three unnamed players but that isn't enough. So they are already cutting into the margin to the cap limit. Still and all, they could actually be just barely under looking for some way to move salary to bring in salary which is what the pundits appear to be saying. Now it maybe boils down to how cleverly they move salary and how cleverly they bring salary.

Well they got $4M to go by those calculations. If that is accurate that is probably a couple retreads and then that puts some meat to the comments that they are insisting on moving some salary to bring in salary. At least that is not the quagmire I have been trying to digest for the last few days.

The second one puts us just a tad under and it seems to include all of the correct components all be it with a few estimates in there. Being a tad under would at least seem consistent with what they are doing or I should say appear to be doing.