jung

I don't understand this undying faith that "the Manager" is going to straighten out any of these guys with long term multimillion dollar contracts. The Manager is not going to be able to do s*** when it comes to those guys. In the case of Crawford they don't even have the trade option to hang over his head because nobody in his right mind would take even 80% of that mess of a contract. Don't you guys get it? While I am sure they were not choreographed Beckett's and Crawford's first moves toward Valentine are independent responses from each player to the notion that V is going to "straighten them out". That notion was already advanced in the media by the time Beckett and Crawford had anything to say and that is their response. In fact for his part Crawford has no rational whatsoever for responding to V this way other than the one I just posed. He was not even identified as a bad apple last season, just as an underperforming player. We keep looking forward to this season pointing to the baseball skill set represented by this team and ignoring the fact that they are still a bunch of *******s! It is a team full of f***ing losers and they are getting perilously close at least in my case to being a team that I will find hard to support. That has not happened in 58 years! To be honest I am even beginning to come around to the "blow it up" option proposed by some of our posters. These guys are a joke. There are times in people's lives, in the life spans of organizations when the only way up is to first hit rock bottom. Since we as fans and every other Tom, Dick and Harry has decided to help the Sox excuse and make excuses for the September collapse as some sort of anomaly this team has not as yet hit bottom. As Bill Parcell's often says "you are what you are" and that team was a third place AL East team. I am almost hoping they start 2012 and go right in the tank because I am not sure we are going anywhere with this bunch of chumps. My God it is so bad, it is almost a Hollywood script. "Aging overpaid, underperforming athlete loses track of the reason why he ever started playing the game in the first place. He is instead totally consumed by media conscienceless, appearances, getting his props and his paycheck." Unfortunately the Sox have about ten of these idiots.

I agree about the young arms the Yanks have...not so much about the 3/4 guys. There are a bunch of them but they don't get much outta' them. The 4 has been a real problem I think. Lets face it, the second biggest surprise in baseball last year was how far the Yanks got with that rotation put together with glue and bubblegum after CC. But I do agree about the young arms and even wonder if they might be looking to give some of those guys a shot even this year.

Put him in pinstripes. I don't see the Sox outbidding the Yanks if NY is truly interested in the guy.

Thought it best to steer clear of the discussion until the level of rhetoric got dialed back a bit. Ya' gotta' expect a certain number of people to react to calling 2012 a rebuilding year. i did think one of the posters did do a good job of clarifying when he explained that the Red Sox are not like other teams in that they are not stuck starting from scratch to rebuild and in that sense I think he was trying to say that he does not think of this team much different from the folks talking about the Sox only needing to fill in here and there to contend. Look, regardless of what they do additionally here in the off season it looks to me like they will be reliant on pitchers that they have not relied upon at all before to come through for them and in that sense they will look thin. That said this will not be the first time a team has started the season with a number of pitchers for which there is little in the form of a track record that are going to be relied upon none the less. It happens. We don't expect it to happen to the Sox but I doubt that there will be a way around it this year based on what is available and what they appear willing to spend. It is not a reason to throw in the towel on the season but I am sure a goodly number of us will be disappointed when they look up and down the roster of the team that comes out of spring training. Maybe I have just had longer to get used to this. As you guys know I have thought this is how things were going to look for Sox as far as major and even minor moves were concerned for a long time now. My big disappointment this year was Ortiz arbitration given what i saw as an unwillingness to spend, the hole arbitration to Ortiz left in what is I believe a pretty meager budget for this year and the fact that they left Ortiz with all the cards at the table. The guy has looked like the cat that swallowed the canary ever since then and he has every reason to look that way.

They have so much money invested in Crawford and he has so many issues confronting him at this point I would not throw a new field at him at this point...especially right at Fenway which is entirely different from left and not at all easy to play. If they had paid much less money for him or if he had a good 2011 I would be willing to risk it...but not now. The deeper we get into the offseason the more I find myself wishing that Theo had taken a vacation just before the Crawford signing. Forever more when you google Albatross there will be a reference that reads "see Red Sox signing of Carl Crawford.

Although a lotta' guys are disappearing and he is not perfect Bailey would seem to be a good pick up for the Sox. Could give them some flexibility in how they use Aceves and Bard. Even though he is not that great, I would not be surprised if they are making it painful for the Sox to do something for Bailey as the Sox pitching shortcomings must be pretty well known.

Catching talent is in such short supply in MLB I think there is more than an even shot that some team makes a play for Tek maybe asking him to play a season with intensions of moving him into coaching somewhere in their organization at some point.

I do think that the number of FA players still available that the Sox have legitimate interest in is dwindling rapidly. In fact as far as busting the LT cap is concerned that list may be down to one....Madson. Once he is spoken for if he is not wearing Red Sox I will at that point be inclined to think that the jury will for the most part be in as far as busting the LT cap is concerned.

I suspect the Nats were able to offer more for Gio than the Sox were willing to offer even in prospects. I would be willing to bet that the Sox held Larvarnway back...maybe more. That actually sounds like reasonably good thinking to me as I would not have wanted the Sox to toss a whole bunch of talent in to get Gio. I can see the Nats putting together a sweeter deal and I guess that is what happened. I do think we have entered the trade portion of the Sox off season personnel move season. Might still make a FA move I guess. Players are moving off the list pretty quickly though.

Boy I think Aceves would be doing remarkably well to stay under 4.00 as a starter considering he would have to expect to go through the lineup at least twice and hopefully at least three times every time out. Guys with ERA's below 4.00 but above 3.00 in the AL East are not exactly what I would call bums. If he gave us 150+ innings at somewhere in the 3.70 range I would consider that a very successful season for him starting.

The problem with going over the LT cap this year is that next year is likely a better target if they are going to go over and if they go over this year even by a little, they doom themselves to the 50% bracket next year. The new CBA makes it much more attractive to go over and back again in alternate years if you can get back to a 0% rate again as you will not pay more than 17.5% as a rate now if you do that. While they have not gone over by much when they have gone over in the past, the way the new rates are stacked makes that a plan that has grown a bit long in the tooth. They would be better served finding their way back to a 0% rate and then going over either in alternate years or never more than two years running. Regardless of what LL says I don't see the Sox putting themselves in a position where they end up paying $.50 on every dollar over the cap in tax. Doesn't sound like much of a big deal but it means you end up paying $7.5M for a $5m player or $15M for a $10M player. In reality I think that will tie their hands. It might be easier for me to see them going over this year if the cap limit was going up next year but it is not. The limit does not go up again until 2014. The way the rates are stacked now a good plan would be to get back to 0% and then pay 17.5% in any year following if you went over, and rely on the raising cap limit to give you some help in getting back under again. The Sox are about the only team effected by the new rates. The Yankees don't care and if the Phills go over this will be their first year over the cap.

Is Kalish really still not ready at this point? I would probably opt for seeing Redick part of a trade but not if Kalish is still not ready. The Sox seem to have a propensity of late for going after these "if he stays healthy" types with predictable results. So I would actually think Redick should be part of some sort of a trade package if Kalish can play.

While it takes a team to win there are players that have leadership characteristics that result in the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Sometimes it is referred to as the "the straw that stirs the drink", other times it is the "glue that binds them". I just don't see much in that regard from this current crop of Red Sox. Does not mean they can't win or won't win. That just is not a characteristic that I think any of them exhibit. Schill did, Yaz did.....to some extent even Rice and Fisk did.

Geez...these guys are not Gods...their baseball players. AGons does not impress me as a "get on my back and I will take you to the promised land" kind of player. He is a great player but he is a cog in the machine. They will win or lose as a team. Like it or not I don't see any Shillings, Yaz or even a Rice or a Fisk on this team. Before we start singing the praises of Ortiz, remember how old he will be come the 2012 season. I would hope we get a good year out of him but I don't expect a "climb on my back year out of him".

Well if that stadium got built without a referendum, do ya' mind telling me why it took the voters till now to figure out that they never voted on the damn thing? Sad commentary. We can't burp out a fire hydrant in my little town without folks waiting for the public notice for the referendum. Not that we are some model for democracy or civic involvement but for crying out loud....a multi-billion dollar sports stadium? Did they all get a case of sunstroke concurrently?

I wonder how much all those losses at the start of the season were a reflection on Salty and how he handled the pitchers or a reflection on the starters that might have simply been resistant to having Salty back there. I do seem to remember that at the start he provided what I thought was a pretty poor target for one thing.

What we miss lately is a solid supporting cast for the starting everyday 8. Our everyday 8 every year lately looks like it will crush the competition but as soon as they start going down or running out of gas we suddenly discover we have dog dodo behind them. I cannot definitively say how much of an answer Punto is but I think we constantly downplay how important the second line players are even given the fact that a few of our starters are either aging or are brittle or prone to fatigue or all of the above. Every deal can't be for some multimillion $ all star.

I don't have much to add to this discussion of front office criticism. It is worth however worth noting that the FO perspective is not the same as the fan perspective and there is a good bit of conflict that arrises from that very simple fact. Fans tend to downplay the business aspects of owning and running a team and then have even less patience with the fact that there is a difference between owning and running the business operations end of a team. In truth whenever I comment one way or the other I try to at least give the Sox organization in its various aspects some effort in trying to understand their perspective but at the end of the day it is not the same thing and it will never be the same thing. So I would suggest that "fans" just give each other a break because it is not an issue of knowing better anyway. It is an issue of knowing different and that is always going to be there.

My God yes. You have no idea how frustrated I am with this one. Take it one step farther. Typically what happens is the guy ends up with some sort of an issue in that transition year when he was left in the minors and sure enough the Sox bite down hard on that and leave him there the whole year OR LONGER. Drives me absolutely nuts!

You are right. I am not considering age at all but preparedness. Based on what they have done so far, the Sox we know would very likely start them in the minors next year. I like you and I think User would like to see them come up to start the year. Fortunately, while I still have to credit you two guys for calling it early, I don't think the Sox will have a choice this time.

I am sure I have done it somewhere as well but I think you are contradicting yourself in the same paragraph here. The flaws you are pointing out are not accidental coincidences that could not have been avoided: injuries...everybody has injuries. The issue is not whether you are going to have them. The issue is recognizing that in major professional sports of this era they are unavoidable. If one insists on building a team stocking the starting 8 everyday players with big stars while leaving dog s*** to back them up, that is a team doomed to fail. As I stated in a separate but very recent post, the networks control major professional sports now. The schedules are brutal. I never disagreed with AGons comments in that regard. I disagreed with him opening his big mouth and complaining about it. Terrible chemistry.....any baseball team in this day an age especially with guaranteed contracts that allows the delicate balance between stars with big money, long term contracts and young hungry players to get out of balance is asking for it. The Sox asked for it and got it in spades. s***** performances....I guess Crawford's was unexpected so I will give you that. However Crawford should never ever have been here in the first place.

I hope you are right here as that would be about half a year at least ahead of conventional wisdom especially with regard to the Sox. Honestly I wish they would take more risks like that and bring guys up even if it means they might be a half season or so early.

As it regards SP I would have to opine that the system is real short of pitching. It is to the point of being a glaring weakness. We were not deep there when it was raided the last time. So now we are really shy of pitching in the system. We could recover but it is going to take a concerted effort to draft there and then resist the temptation to send them packing every time some big bat makes its way to the FA market. While I understand that prospects are are a bad bet on a percentage basis, the payoff in pitching prospects is a different story at least in my view. The Sox would do well to at least be more conscience of the value of not stripping the system of pitching prospects.

I am not all that revved up about stars honestly. I have had just about all of these supposed juggernaut lineups that I can take for a bit I think. The networks rule everything in the modern sports era. It does not matter the sport. The schedules are brutal. A team needs to be able to support the starting lineup with solid reliable subs more than it needs some superstar studded starting 9 that is out of gas by mid-season. Using another sport for an example just a couple weeks ago, the Jets had to play on Sunday night and then travel just about coast to coast to play on Thursday night....just ridiculous. Anybody that has played that sport on an organized basis at any level from high school up knows that the day after you are as sore as if you had been in a car wreck. So Monday would have been a complete wash leaving Tuesday to practice, maybe part of Wednesday and travel Wednesday night for a Thursday game. But that is what the network wanted. As you might have guessed, the Jets lost that Thursday game.

That is what I have thought....that BC did not see players that he felt he could commit to for multiyear deals so opted for Ortiz. Still don't like it whatever the rational. Plus if we see this resistance to even a percentage of signings that are typical for the league with regard to duration extend into next year, watch out. JH may be preparing to exit even sooner than I might think.