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You probably end up putting Aceves at the bottom of the rotation if he goes there because you would not want to depend on him for more than 150 innings, maybe less in his first year in a starting role.

The key I think is not so much whether you call it a bridge year or not but if you can live with the Sox having some positions filled by guys that are not shoe-in's to fall anywhere from 1 though 5 in the AL for their positions because that is not the team the Sox are going to have this year and live with the team being competitive but not more than competitive. Competitive teams do make it to the post season but they are not shoe-ins for the post season. There are going to be some relievers that are questionable including something of a question mark at closer whether they bring somebody in or go with Bard.....RF will likely be a question mark. Does Crawford come all the way back? I think they will have DH covered via a group of the everyday players although I am beginning to wonder if Ortiz is going to fall so far that they won't miss the money for him. I think they were so disappointed in the starting pitching that if they bring in a #4 starter he will likely be somebody that can handle that role. The question marks at SP are already on this staff.

All the manager interviews are over. Sort of an eclectic group to have brought in for interview...No?

Ours is really a very difficult RF. In fact none of them are a cake walk. LF has the wall.....CF has the triangle and end of the bullpen area although I think the triangle causes more problems. How many times have you seen the CF turn back and realize that he has misjudged the amount of square footage out there in the triangle and have to hit the afterburners cuz' that is where the ball is going....then there is RF and that extra square footage out by the foul pole, all the angles out there and the length of throw from out there. Really we tend to focus on offense with our OF but you really can't be a bum in the field to play successfully in the Fenway outfield.

"They are who we thought they were" No wait a minute that is football....sorry about that.

Pumpsie I went so far in one of my last posts to say that in my view it made little sense to pay something like $5M for a closer. Many teams are paying less than $2M and some less than $1M for a closer because they give the job to a young guy early in his career. If you pay $5M or so for a closer I don't think that you get anybody that will pitch better than that young guy. You just pay more money for him.

I would be surprised if the Sox gave any closer 3 years at this point. They can see where they might be pushed to 2 years but there again I think if they go 2 it will be because they were pushed there for a closer that they thing gives them value over that time.

I could see where the legendary Pap stare could be kinda' off putting until you get used to it. If he performs well for them, I am not sure his intensity which some might think suggests he is just over-amped would be much of a problem. I think the Philly fans are going to be pretty amped up about their team and well they should be if they play like they should. They are trying to get the most they can out of having worked to build this team to its current state and they really should have a good chance to win it at least once in the next couple of years as long as they don't get bit by the injury bug.

Elk as most of Jacksonia's arguments are arguments of convenience, he has conveniently forgotten that the Phils already offered Madson 4/50 with the vesting package. The Phils offered Madson the same deal Paps eventually got but Madson's agent Boras screwed the deal. So while I am not saying they should do it, if the Sox were to offer Madson 3/anything it would be less than Philly had already put on the table in front of Madson.

Thank you Elk. This Pap "negotiation" was analogous to a chess game where your opponent has 3 moves to checkmate but does not necessarily have to make those 3 moves in a particular order. The result is the same.....checkmate.

And the chance that the Sox were going to do that was also 0 which brings me back to where I was....the practical result was 0.

The only thing I will offer at this point is a perspective on the practical impact of what the Sox did or did not do. Paps agents literally told Cherington that they would not entertain a matching offer from the Sox to Paps which is really the player telling the team that he is so disinterested in staying here that even if you offered him exactly the same deal that Philly offered, he would not take it. By extension that is the player saying I don't want to be here. I prefer playing in Philly that much more than playing in Boston. Given that dynamic, would you be inclined to then offer even more than Philly offered or would you say to yourself "wait a minute here....do I really want to offer this guy a fortune to chain him to this franchise when he is telling me that he is so disinterested in staying here that I have to actually pay him more to play for Boston than he will take to play for Philly?" You can argue that Cherington should have been engaged earlier but I think given that specific instruction there was no way that the two sides would have carried through a successful negotiation regardless of when they started unless Boston outbid everybody else by some huge amount. Paps is telling Cherington through his agents not to waste his time. So I would judge the practical result as 0.

Somebody (maybe you VA) tried to warn us early...but it didn't stop the downward slide into the quagmire.

Here I will go ya' one better although I think it is LL pulling the strings. "Bard's on first, Aceves on second , and What's on third and where is Cherington....I don't know!"

Boy we have had Bard and Aceves all over the place so far: Bard closes, Aceves starts Bard and Aceves both in middle relief Bard in middle relief, Aceves starts Bard starts, Aceves in middle relief Bard starting or in middle relief, Aceves closes The only combination I have not heard yet is both Bard and Aceves starting.

That is right User...it was the Damon Tigers thing. This one seems a little uglier for Boras though in that 4/50 + vesting for a closer allowing him to stay with the team he is playing for would have been one hell of a deal for Madson. At critical junctures agent and player are available to each other 24/7 too. So when Boras had the first inklings of an issue he probably informed Madson at a point when Madson had no idea that the ground had shifted right under his feet. Ugh what an ugly phone call.

This is not the first time this has happened with Boras. When it does I end up wondering if there is a Boras backlash from the player. Here Madson had 4/50 and probably the vesting clause in hand and apparently Boras kept pushing for that 5th year under contract. Pushing everything PAST the limit is something he is known for. Suddenly Madson does not have a deal with the team he is already playing for and he is the guy on the outside looking in at least with that team. While he probably did not want to move, he is moving now and does not know at this point what he is going to get. Surely Madson will have a team to go to but I gotta' wonder about that first phone call between player and agent after something like this.

For a closer or any reliever this is true. Just pointing out what differentiates what Philly is doing from what some other team not positioned as they are at this point in time might be doing.

What Philly sees in Paps is a top of the line closer that fills that spot certainly for the next two years which I think Philly thinks are "all in", prime, take it to the house years for them, much like 2007 turned out for us. I also think that they were willing to give him the added two years because that is what it took to close out competition from elsewhere. We are told that is what they were offering Madson so it looks like they were willing to go four for him as well for the same reasons. I very much suspect that Philly is prepared to overpay for any FA deal they are going to make right now because this is what you do when you are truly confident that you have almost all the pieces you need to get to and win the WS and are working to complete the puzzle with the last 1-3 pieces.

And they had to start this year.

Phils fans have no reason to be upset unless they think Madson was a better option or maybe don't understand why the Madson deal fell apart and are pissed at the owner for not signing the contract that was sitting on his desk. I expect to see the Phils do a few more things this offseason to insure that they give themselves the very best shot at getting to and winning the WS as the position they are in at this point would suggest. That is unless they think Paps was the last piece to the puzzle.

Maybe one of the more interesting aspects of this event is Paps unwillingness to even entertain an offer from the Sox to match the Phils offer. I had thought we would see the opposite of the home town discount once offers for Paps started coming and sure enough....we have the home town surcharge.

Sox ended up cramming a high number of games into a short period of time at the end of 2011 and Paps pitched in just about all of them if not in fact all of them and he finally wore down. Understandable I think.

Even in this a pretty darned good year for Pap, you could tell that when push came to shove, Pap for the most part had one answer...rear back and throw harder and that is hard to get away with especially in the post season where the hitters are more focused and can get into this cycle of fouling off balls until they have adjusted to your heat and until you make a mistake with your location. Mariano has had enough versatility so that in some instances once he had you two strikes, he had you. Not only does he not have to throw you a fastball it is unlikely that he will. Not saying Madson is Mariano....nobody is but just saying that there are times over the years especially when Paps gets into one of those duals with a hitter that you can just see the guy catching up to Paps fastball as the at bat progresses.

Gosh Boras is such a factor. The Madson deal was apparently squirreled at the last minute by Phils ownership as the owner would not sign. However, I wonder if what that really means is that the owner ended up so hot under the collar that he refused to sign Madson as a Boras client.