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I don't think anybody tosses $15M at Ortiz either but I could see a team tossing $12M for one year plus a team option at him or maybe even grant him his two year wish but at $10 per. If not that then I can easily see a team offering 1 year plus a team option at $10M and that finally may turn out to be the best he can do.

I just wish we had opted for moving Youk to 1st base where combined with a % of the DH duties it would be much easier to keep him in the lineup.

Blowing up the team implies everybody or virtually everybody goes. There are some guys that should be off this team as it is just time to say goodbye. Sox World is not the Titanic but they have boxed themselves into a pretty stupid spot to be when you consider all the resources at their disposal. We can't want to fill obvious holes and bring everybody back at the same time. There are some guys that stride the fence but I don't even think we can keep the fence sitters (I do not put Pap in this category because nobody is talking outrageous money to bring him back). Wake has to go. I don't think we need Tek any longer. Maybe the only catcher in baseball with an arm worse than Salty is Tek. Drew goes away and I think we will be forced to say goodbye to Ortiz as well. I want the Sox to see what might be possible with regard to Ells but what they could get for him is only one of the major factors. The other is what we could accomplish in 2013. If we think we have a legitimate shot to get there in 2013 then you keep Ells unless somebody puts so much on the table that it helps or at least does not impede your chances of getting their in 2013. His production comes cheaply until after 2013. In fact I would take a plan that suggested that they will need some luck to get into the 2012 post season but with a legitimate shot to go all the way in 2013. Rats Chin Music I did not see your clarification post until I had already posted this one.

The Youk Ellsbury thing is a side show. Ellsbury does not like the Sox Med Staff and for good reason and I think Ells is more off put by the general level of stupidity that he has been exposed to here from being moved to LF to the Med Staff screw up. I don't think Ells liked Youk barking at him for going outside for rehab but the ice cream and whip cream where already there. Youk is not more than a half cherry at most. It really does not matter. Ells will get all the way to the FA market, there is nowhere to go with the Crawford contract and the Sox are not going to spend $40M on two outfield positions.

I don't know if it will boil down to Paps vs Ortiz but if it does, then keeping Paps and letting Ortiz go sounds like the right order. 2012 wil be the first year for AGons at $21M up from $6.5M in 2011 so that does put something of a dent in the funds. Crawford goes from $15 in 2011 to his first year at $20M in 2012 as well so that is a total of $19.5M. In part I think that is why more and more folks are making the same choice you are making as $12M from Ortiz could go a long way right now. $5M left over from Drew and Cameron plus $12M from Ortiz and the $8M I am hoping JH comes up with gets $25M. Wake can't come back here. There is nothing he will be able to do any longer other than turn Fenway into a launch pad so that is $2M. This whole thing of Tek being unwilling to give up that stupid C has just got to stop. Maybe the Sox will have to announce that they will have no captain in 2012 just to end it. I would think Tek has outlived his usefulness at this point but maybe not. If Tek goes then that is another $2M for $29M. I know it does sound trivial but $4M is an actual real major league baseball player. In part that is my point. These $$$ are not meaningless at all. I don't think Ortiz gets all the way down to $8M either and we can't go on claiming that we have to give up some offense for pitching and have to many LH bats and then not give anything up. If we keep Ells, we need to make sure we get Crawford back up to speed, probably have to gamble on Kalish in RF and get some backup OF. If JH give Cherington $12M extra instead of $8M that is probably the difference between looking at the Beltran's or Cuddyer's instead of some pure backup guy. Take a look at that list and start to put all $29M against it and see how quickly you will spend even $29M let alone $25M. In fact I am inclined to think that we might be forced to gamble on Kalish in RF. Not sure how we even get a #3 or #4 starter which we must have and a couple of good relievers and some bench strength and still have the money for a $10M OF. Maybe either Volquez or Wang along with a solid #3/4 can keep both Aceves and Bard in the bullpen.

I think all Scuts did is played in anonymity in places like Oakland and Toronto and suffered to some extend from being versatile enough to move around the infield. However he has rung up a fair number of errors at SS over his career and I really think if there is one thing that has actually hurt him it is that. That is where he has played the most games and he really has rung up a lot of errors there. It almost makes me wonder if he would have achieved more respect if he just stuck someplace as a 2nd baseman instead of always being thought of as this guy that can play 3 infield positions but somehow always finds his way to SS. He does not even get an honorable mention ever for his fielding at any infield position.

One thing that forcing yourself to deal with monetary limitations does is that you very quickly see how much mistakes hurt and how quickly you are forced to make value judgements about who you keep and who you don't....who you sign and who you let go by. Even deals that you think have gone pretty well tie you down to $ commitments that you are just stuck with and they limit your ability to change things at least dramatically. It does not take too many really boneheaded moves to put yourself way behind the 8 ball. Even the $2M that you pay each to Wake and Tek mean something because that is $4M that you could put with some other moneys and plow into a pretty damned good ballplayer. Should we really have tied ourselves to paying AGons $21M per year when we could have moved Youk to 1st, put Beltre at 3rd and pocketed $7M per year? $7M does not sound like much money until you realize that we could be very lucky if we see Cherington with an additional $8M over current 2011 player salary commitments to spend this year and that $8M plus $7M makes for one very very good player or two very solid front line performers. It also puts the Crawford deal in its proper perspective because it is very easy to sit back and just say "well as long as he performs well, so what if we are overpaying him by about $5M per year". Really....so what! When you put limits on yourself what you could have had for that $5M really causes you some pain...never mind what you could have had for the $20M per year. Then when you get to blunders like Lackey you are about ready to hang yourself once you force yourself to deal with limitations. Lets do something with that $7M from not signing AGons and signing Beltre instead. Lets put it with $5M of the money we are paying Crawford. Does $12M put a pretty decent player out there in left field and leave us with $15M more from Crawford to do something with? I don't know. Swisher makes $9M. Granderson makes $8.5M. Lance Berkman makes $9M. Josh Hamilton makes $8M and Nelson Cruz makes $4M. Prefer better defense...Victorino makes $7.5M per. Do you think we could get a decent pitcher for $15M per or shore up the bullpen for $15M? Clearly it is not this simple and nobody but nobody can get it right all the time. The player you need is not always right there for you to get but this does point out the folly of throwing money around in the FA market like some sort of drunken sailor as opposed to using your assets smartly and having the tiniest bit of patience and forethought about what you are doing. How costly it is to just always be shooting for the guy at the top of the list every damn time whether or not that is the guy you need or falling in love with a deal which I think we did with Drew and with AGons for that matter. Is making the biggest PR splash every damn time the best way to build a team that can win on the field? PS Nice list Chin Music. A good effort I think.

Yea funny how the dif between a 3 game series and a 1 game play-in changes the perspective. If it were a 3 game series, it probably diminishes a little from the division crown and if it is a 1 game play-in, it enhances the division crown.

I think you are right. It will be 1 game. Could be tough to make that work unless you next opponent was unable to set up his rotation either.

Never know. I am guessing this extra wild card thing is actually going to happen and if so, I would think that something like 88+ or 90+ wins in 2012 actually gets you into that wild card round. If they do go down that road and make it best of 3, if you had a stud at the top of the rotation, you could get out of that round and at least be in. If it was best of 3 you could potentially even have your stud ready for game 1 of the next round. However if they do make that wild card thing a 1 game playoff then you will likely use up your stud SP there and be at a big disadvantage going into the next round.

Sorry I was editing my earlier post twice as you were making your post 700 but if I am right and they can get revenues year over year up by closer to 5% (pretty modest growth) that should give them another $8M or so to play with.

I wish Sox revenue was growing a bit better because I do think even though the Sox are really tight at the bottom line these days that JH will make increases in payroll on a percentage basis relative to revenue. Unfortunately revenue was only projected to grow by about 2-3% in 2011 and the bottom line really suffered in 2011 due to the increases in payroll outstripping increases in revenue. I have not seen numbers yet for 2012 and we probably won't see any projections until early in 2012. We are probably fortunate if in fact I am right and JH will at least peg payroll increases to a projected revenue increase as a little extra money to play with is better than no extra money to play with. When I looked at the fiscal 2011 projections earlier this year you could really see the impact on income the added payroll was having on the projections and if I were JH I would not have been happy with those numbers. If JH did use projected revenues to peg payroll increases I think a 5% increase in revenues would get them about another $8M in payroll to play with.

I am hoping the numbers don't get nutty for Paps. 3/39 would be OK and that number has been tossed about a good deal. I would be OK with that. I am guessing that anybody else that really wants him already knows they are likely to have to be at around that kind of money and I hope that does not push the $$$ higher for Paps. Signing him is fine. I just don't want to see them tossing Mariano money around for him. I think Ortiz is in for a disappointment. I guess he is already sort of disappointed that the Sox did not do anything during the 5 day exclusive period but I surely did not expect them to do anything during those 5 days. Every day that goes by now probably makes Ortiz easier to digest.

Agreed and I expect them to spend that money and I expect them to spend any other moneys they cut from payroll.

Well I don't think they will be frugal with the $$$$ this year "because" Cherington said so. They have actual fiscal rational for being frugal with the $$$$ this offseason and Cherington may well be attempting to lower expectations.. I do expect JH to open the purse strings a little wider but if the Sox are going to make some sort of big deal this offseason I expect the money to come mainly from cutting payroll somewhere else.

By "close to the vest" I was implying that they are not going to be very liberal with the $$$$ this trade and FA season. Cherington has as much as said so.

I did not catch the Cafardo comment so I don't have the context. Is Cafardo figuring that Valentine and Martinez show up somewhere around 5 and 6 or somebody of equal stature?

In the first place the question as posed is unrealistic. The Giants are not offering Lincecum straight up for Ells and they are not going to. It would be Ells+ if at all and I would prefer Ells alone or Ells+ maybe Riddick for multiple players all of them MLB ready or no more than one year away with at least one of them a solid middle of the rotation guy to an Ells+ deal for a star pitcher with stats all headed the wrong way. That would give Lester one more year to move past Beckett into the #1 spot and would put the Sox in position to grab a #1 if they have to in 2013, which is shaping up as a better year to be hunting for a top of the rotation guy. or: Do an Ells+ deal this year for a SP pitcher with stats headed the right way not the wrong way.

Pedro was still stronger and had a more classical delivery than Lincecum has. Maybe more importantly, when the Sox got Pedro, innings pitched and SO/9 were all going up much like they are now for Felix. Innings pitched and SO/9 have been gradually headed down for Tim since his first CY year. Pedro's last 2 years in Montreal he pitched 216 and 241 innings over 31 starts each year and then pitched 231 and 217 innings over 29 his first two years in Boston. He was still going deeper into games even his first two years in Boston. His SO/9 were still headed north as well and Pedro had his two best SO/9 years his first two in Boston. Virtually all of Pedro's stats were still headed in the right direction when the Sox signed him and for the first two years after. Tim is not giving up more home runs as yet but how long do you think that would last headed to the AL East while his stats are in general decline? Pedro suffered his first injury in about his 10th year and it only cost him half a season and an off season I believe. He came back strong the next year. Virtually every stat is headed the wrong way for Tim, not just the few I mentioned earlier and that is a petty steep glide slope for somebody as young as Tim. BB and BB/9 are headed the wrong way as well and most have been in gradual decline since the CY years. I would be most concerned with how deep he is going into games even now pitching in the NL West. On average he is going about 6.6 innings per start now down from almost 8 in his best year. The gradual nature of his decline is frankly pretty alarming if you are about to send off the most valuable trade asset you have for him. I would rather see a graph line bouncing up and down than one that is so decidedly headed south. Presuming a straight up deal, Ells for Lincecum would never happen I would likely be more interested in an Ells + deal for Lincecum if the Sox had not stretched the "risk" elastic band out about far as it can go. They already have big money tied up in risks that went the wrong way and have work to do just to recover from those.

The position of Manager has lost a good deal of luster over the years. Hell if Ozzie Guillen can manage I can manage! Actually that is not really true but it does tell you something about what the manager of a MLB baseball team does when compared to a pro football coach for example. It appears to me that most managers are simply the umbilical cord between the FO and the players and I mean that with everything that could be implied from such a comment. I guess in some cases they can be the link to the media as well especially for players that are not comfortable in front of the media. Some of them make a good many of the in game decisions and some don't even appear to do much of that any more. Larussa has his fans and his detractors but he may end up being the last manager we see for awhile that was innovative in the things that he brought to the game from the manager's position. That does not mean that I agree with much of what he did but he did use his noodle to make changes in the way managers dealt with the assets of the team. If it is in fact true that Larussa had a 2:1 rule demanding that his pitchers hit two opponent batters for every Card that was hit I might have hauled off and thrown one right into the dugout to nail him if I was an opponent. They can surely have a major impact on the state of mind of their players, their comfort level and the effort that they make to support each other but beyond that they fill out the line up card from what I can see. I do think they had more of an influence back in the 60's and even the 70's but it has eroded as each baseball era passes and I think it is at an all time low at present. Doesn't mean the Sox should hold a raffle in Kenmore Square to pick a manager but I do think the technical aspects of the job are wildly overrated.

I think that whatever validity there is in the idea that the Sox did not want to see Theo go is based on the recognition that the issues that came to a head in 2011 where organization wide. They were bigger than Theo with plenty of blame to go around both above and below Theo's pay grade. However as we have often discussed here, JH is not going to fire himself and JH NEEDS LL. If anything, giving Cherington the GM job tells us a good deal about how close to the vest JH and LL will be playing their cards for awhile and through Cherington, JH and LL have made no bones about telling us so.

I think the decline that Lincecum is showing really puts a team interested in him on the hot seat as there is enough there to make one concerned that he could be headed for a physical breakdown in the near term yet not enough there to put a dent in the compensation that the Giants would demand for him. So for example if the Sox gave up Ells and two good prospects for him or even the unthinkable, just Ells himself for him can you imagine the uproar if Lincecum broke down even during the second year here, let alone the first. Heck if he broke down the first year there would a linch mob on the way to Fenway. If he was a typical big strong pitcher, I think there would be less concern but the way he throws makes you wonder if we are gong to see his arm on the ground half way between the mound and home plate one of these times. It is like watching somebody with a buggy-whip the way he leverages his body against his arm. It is probably in part why he has such great stuff as well but it sure does not look like a body and a pitching motion meant to last long term and his numbers are declining.

I really think that where Theo falls in the eyes of the Sox is somewhere in the middle of the two extremes we usually end up discussing. I really don't care how Chicago is treating Theo. What do you expect Chicago to do? By the same token I don't think the Sox were near as unhappy with Theo as spring loading the door that he walked through. I don't think there was a career path for Theo here because LL is JH's junk yard dog and Theo is not up for that task. So I don't think he was ever going to be President here. I don't think JH was happy with the way things were going either. The sacred cow in Boston for this franchise is NOT championships. It is revenue and income as it should be for any business as long as that business does not let the product suffer badly. If you look at the fiscal projections for the 2011 Sox, revenue was hardly projected to grow by more than 2% as I remember it which is really not really growth. The revenue line was not really at issue though. The biggest difference between the 2011 projections and past year fiscal performance was the EBITDA line. EBITDA was projected negative for 2011. Now I doubt once the fiscal year closes and we hopefully get to see the final 2011 numbers, that they did that poorly. When those projections were cobbled together most of the cost numbers like player salaries and all salaries for that matter where known while some of the devices available to the Sox to generate revenue were only estimates. i strongly suspect that while the revenue numbers were marginally better than projections that those additional revenue sources yielded much higher margin and better income for the team. However what those projections did say is that the Sox had crossed a critical line going into the 2011 season. They were now spending so much on player salaries that the bottom line was clearly in jeopardy especially if they did not make the playoffs which they did not. JH is a numbers guy. I think the declining fiscal performance of the team is what ultimately made it hard for JH to continue to see the team going where it was going. They were clearly spending too much money in player salaries, getting hammered by their fan base for poor performance on the field AND now were not doing particularly well from a fiscal perspective as well. I think for at least some period the result will be a much more risk averse Sox perspective from which they sign FAs' particularly. Hopefully the product itself will get more attention than it has gotten of late as well.

Geez I don't think I would be that hard on the guy. Sometimes when you are actually in a particular business it is the difference between you and I knowing that the Orioles now have the wackiest ownership in baseball and a guy like Baird knowing what makes them so wacky. Often owner eccentricities go way past installing showers out in the bleachers (which I actually did not think was such a bad idea at the time since in the Oakland of that era you could probably avoid a vagrancy charge for the cost of a bleacher seat and get a shower to boot). An owner can make it damn near impossible for a GM to make any progress if he so chooses.

There are some warning signs in Tim's stats. His innings per year are way off their peak though still above 200. He pitched 265 innings in 33 games in one of his CY years and 261 in the other. In 2011 he pitched 220 innings in the same 33 starts. Clearly he is no longer going deep into the game as often. His SO per nine are headed steadily down and his walks per nine are steadily up. That said I agree that Ells by himself would not get it done and you would still be faced with a pitcher that is probably right on the bring of starting to press his luck a bit. I am sure Tim sees the same things we see and you can only throw as hard as you can throw. When the result is not the same the tendency is to press. I am truly concerned that Tim is well on the way to his first Pedro experience. I think he is much more frail than even Pedro while exerting more torque on his arm than Pedro did.