jung

But that is still not enough right based on the committed dollars. I think they have $24M to spend to get the cap limit. Is that not correct? Actually maybe Paps money is in the Arb money. Is that where Paps money is accounted for currently?

How, without busting the Luxury Tax threshold which they are not going to do.

I like having a lefty reliever but the Sox already have Lester starting from the left side. Danks would put two left handers in the rotation.

You don't need to spend big money on a guy to come in and pitch the 9th inning when you can't get to the 9th without a chance to win the game. This team has way bigger issues to deal with than its closer because the other issues it has all wreck havoc in innings 1-8.

Actually I would not be surprised to see the Phils bust the Luxury Tax threshold. They have the horses now. They can definitely get to and win the WS.

While Paps was going to follow the money and could not turn down a 4th year like that...I would not be surprised if he is happy to be out of here. Say what you want about Paps propensity to be a little over-amped, that crap that happened here is like 180* away from where Paps wants to be. New manager or not, many of the same players would be back. Almost surprised Paps did not hit somebody over the head with a chair last year. Would not be surprised if Paps does not think much of the FO here either.

Danks....so you are going to have two left handed starters to encourage opponents to load up on right handed hitters to take aim at the Fenway wall?

I have thought they would sign a player or players before a manager mainly for that reason. You really do have to be working on your roster. The manager decision is where they can afford this "process" they are going through but players are a different story.

Well this tells you a good deal about the direction the Sox are taking for 2012. We all said that the first player issues they needed to address (presuming they wanted to sign him) was Paps. The Phils took a run at Paps earlier. He declined. Something happened with the Madson signing although they actually thought they had a deal with Madson. Apparently Phils ownership did not sign off on the Madson deal and the Phis went back after Paps offering him the same thing that they offered Madson (maybe 4/50 maybe not) and Paps has gone for it. Four years is more than the Sox would have offered I think as I doubt they would have been willing to go past 3 years. Clearly then, the Sox did not do anything or at least anything that satisfied him. Phils went back and got him. I think that tells us a good deal. I do suspect that they are going to take the low cost route and stay under the Luxury Tax threshold. They know they have to get another SP. Not sure if they will move Bard to the closer role or sign one but I do think whatever pieces they bring they will bring them in under the Tax limit. I think the Sox recognize the difficult position they are in at least for 2012 and will make an effort to field a team that has a shot at the post season for this year but not one that is anointed as a post season team before anybody tosses out the first ball of spring training.

Well, $10M per is only $1M per more than I have allocated for Jackson. Maybe we can get him...maybe not. The point is we need to fill the #4 spot in the rotation this year, not the #1 spot and that is the kind of SP we should look for and the kind of money we should spend. No sense in even thinking about Wilson or even Buerhle even if he was willing to leave Chicago. A #4 that is steady and reliable probably is $8 to $10M, maybe less but not much less.

Give it a couple of hours Laser and you will be reading post after post about why this guy is untouchable and why that guy won't be traded for Ells. Keep Ells at this point. If you keep him and let Ortiz walk this supposedly terrific, offensive juggernaut of a lineup will only be missing two pieces, Drew and Ortiz, one of which played no more than 80 games and change in 2011 and the other getting older and tying the managers hands, making it impossible to rotate guys into the DH spot and give people some rest. Sign Pap if you want to, don't if you don't want to....you need a respectable closer but this constant insistence that we have to have close to the best of everything just sounds more and more like Yankee envy to me. Trying to play the print money game with a team that turns double the Sox revenue every year just flies in the face of reality. Worse, Pap is not Mariano. There is only one Mariano. If you don't sign him you have to bring somebody in here that can do a respectable job of closing at some $ number maybe not more than $5M per or trust Bard with the job and replace Bard's middle relief role. If you don't sign Pap you have $24M for new players. Take the $24M and first move Bard into the closer spot for 2012. If you look at the bulk of closers in MLB, there are a very select few that make big money, with the bulk making a couple $M or less per year because they are guys that are at the front ends of their careers playing for teams that gave them the job much as we have discussed Bard here. Paying some middling amount for a closer does not likely get you somebody better than Bard will likely be. You just get somebody you are paying more money. But you could likely get a good middle reliever for $4M or so. If you do that you can at least afford a Jackson or somebody like that for maybe $9M for the rotation. That leaves $12M of the $24M left. With that you get a RH bat for RF but you can't spend much here either. Spend about $7 for someone that you can platoon with Kalish in RF and spend the rest on more relief depth whether it is one more or two and that is it for 2012. We just have to stop looking at these guys at the top of the rotation and these big bats that want big money with any expectation that we can even sign one of those kinds of players without wrecking any chance of bringing in the number of players you need to avoid just crashing and burning from attrition in 2012. Your lineup is what you had in 2011 without Ortiz and with Kalish platooning in RF with somebody. Your starters are Lester, Beckett, Buckholtz. Jackson and Aceves. Your closer is Bard and your are bringing in at least two new middle relievers. I think that is about the most efficient way for this team to spend $24M and field a reasonably good team for 2012. Frankly i want to see guys like Kalish. I want to see young guys even though they might not be fully ready. I am tired of these old warhorse FA with their bum knees and their broken shoulders and their double digit $M expectations. Could the team I just described possibly go no farther than the Sox got last year???....Absolutely. Can it compete....only if the starting pitchers recover. The Sox should then prep up for spending serious money in 2013, the last year they will have Ells and take there shot at having a team that would deserve higher expectations in 2013, not 2012.

I said a respectable closer. Pap is far better than respectable but costly. There are few closers making Pap money and many do a "respectable" job.

I know nobody likes what I am about to say but I do think we tend to interpret building a team with a chance to get to the post season into in reality not being satisfied unless we set ourselves up the way everybody thought we were set up this past season. Everybody with a pen workin' for a media outlet had us penciled into the post season and making it to the WS and it is like we are not satisfied unless that is how we are set up. Having a chance to get there is not the same as trying to guarantee that you are going to get there and that also smacks to much of trying to buy your way in....the same accusation we always throw at the Yanks. This might be the year when we just have to live with it. It might make sense to insert the young guys and give them a chance. I can see where a team is hard to market without a respectable closer though because it is so disappointing to go through 8 innings of a 9 inning game only to have some guy come in, give up 2 walks and a home run and send you packing to the Mass Pike. So for that reason alone we have to have a respectable closer. Maybe Pap although he is costly and far better than respectable but either through attrition or on purpose it seems to me that we are going to end up putting much responsibility into the hands of some pretty young guys for 2012 like it or not. if we sign Pap we probably will only have $10M left to do anything else and that will have to be some kind of pitching. If we don't sign Pap then you need a respectable closer and then maybe you have $15M to play with.....maybe! Even if they wanted to bust the 2012 Tax threshold there is not much of what they need available this year anyway. Keep Ells and let him get to the end of his contract....try to have a better mix of young guys and your existing star players for 2012, market the team that way, play hard and I would sort of be disappointed in us if we were all down in the mouth because that is what we had to watch in 2012. However if I am willing to give them 2012 to sort of recover they better damn well play hard and they better take what benefit they get for having avoided the tax in 2012 and for having gotten some young guys more experience ala' trial by fire and they better be willing to take advantage of the fact that there is so much more pitching available in the next FA season as opposed to this one. What is past is past and what is done is done. I can tolerate an ownership desire to be fiscally responsible as long as they give me a team that is fun to watch in 2012 and as long as they plan on taking full advantage of the position they will be in for 2013. Just don't embarrass me again like you did in 2011.

Actually you are right iortiz. We never did post anything up here that accounted for Paps money. I thought we had but I have had so many calculations going so many different ways I forgot what was posted here and what was not. Sorry about that. Forgot my own damn argument from yesterday about the lack of money!

Well you are getting two pitchers and you have your closer if you keep Paps so that leaves you like $10M or $11M for more arms.

Remember if you are playing with this alternative, you already have $12M into Paps so you only need to allocate $1 maybe $2M of your money to keep Paps If that is what you want to do.

Hopefully can answer two posts in one. Don't hold me to it because I have lately only been looking at this from the perspective of keeping Ells but I think that if you trade Ells and do not sign Ortiz with the combination of Ells 2012 Arb money plus Ortiz money plus the rest, you might be able to get a pretty decent (not $20M per year) SP, a RH bat to play RF (provided that you also cover rotating the DH position) plus shoring up the pitching depth without busting the 2012 threshold because now you are pulling Ells 2012 arb money out as well. You have taken two big bats out of the lineup but they are both LH bats and I think that really means that the RH, RF you bring in has to be good enough to soften that blow. Again we have been saying all along that we have some overage in offense so you can give up some of that especially to improve your pitching. Also, in opening up the discussion to trading Ells, you no longer restrict yourself to the few FA starters coming on the market this year. It might take a three way deal to do it to get the right combination of players on the table and it seems complicated regardless of how many teams are involved but Ells 2012 arb money is likely does make room as long as you still let Ortiz go. I gotta' look at more but I think what I have posted above is correct.

Laser is this because you would prefer to try to do something at the front end of the rotation instead of the backend or do you not like somebody like Floyd even at the #4?

The combination of Floyd/Quentin is what makes that deal intriguing, at least to me.

Me neither but I could see the White Sox being interested in something like that as opposed to some other situations where we would be on our knees begging somebody for a little extra pitching if they would just take our 30/30 MVP year CF off our hands.

I forgot we are probably already into the next Arb year per your numbers or would be. is that correct User? I just would not want to send off multiple solid prospects that are close to being able to help the Sox. If + means "a" guy, I could go there.

That is correct. However there are teams out there that need better offensive marketing center piece as well and it would that aspect of Ells being dangled out there that would to some degree offset our need for pitching.

Good catch iortiz I did not comment on the "+" part. I guess when I think about the + part of Ells+ I would not want that to be much at all but I don't have a name in mind that I could drop into that "+" category.

Hum, I guess $2.5M or so would come off the books for Ells, I think. I would toss AGons into the DH pool as well as he clearly wore down in the second half last year as well. White Sox have plenty of money to spend under the cap, a solid revenue stream and a favorable lease arrangement from the State of Illinois. So, paying Ells would not be a problem for them. There could be a workable deal here.

Gee I don't know User but I like that better than hunting after Buehrle who apparently is not going to go anywhere anyway unless somebody makes him an offer he can't refuse. I don't know if I want another LH starter encouraging RH lineups in Fenway so I guess I like Floyd fine, maybe Danks also. I am sure there will be detractors but the money would likely be right if something could be done with either or maybe both.