Elktonnick

Can't because several are out of options. I think Bowden is one who is out. Cherry is looking to trade those because this limits their ability to be called up.

As Bill Lee said the problem with Bowden's delivery is that it isn't deceptive. He hesitates at the top of the delivery showing the ball for what seems like an eternity. That may work in AAA but the hitters are lot quicker in the show and I doubt if he'll ever be successful in the bigs. IMHO

I think it will be something nominal. I don't expect anything that will affect the sox or the cubs for the foreseeable future.

Both Foulke and Bowden show the ball too long much. Foulke got results for a while. I thought he was little quicker and didn't deliver as ereect as Bowden.

Just heard an interesting discussion on MLB radio. One HOF voter agrees with you that Posada is unlikely to get in.

I think Sheehan's article re-enforces your point. BV will have this team run more. Defensively that's certainly why they picked up Shoppoch. Not to belabor the point but all the more reason we hopefully have seen the last of Tek and Wake.

Fred you know my opinion of Bowden. I never understood how anyone who saw him pitch with his delivery could have been high on him

You may find this article interesting as to your point. Stolen base attempts are, like save opportunities and intentional walks, one of the few baseball stats that are entirely elective. You can't decide to hit a home run or strike out a batter or even steal the base, but you can decide that you have the green light, read the pitcher and take off for the next bag. It's because of this that analyzing stolen base attempts is a fairly pure activity: They tell you pretty much what is going on in the game, as a whole, at any moment in time. Now, one of the popular misunderstandings of sabermetrics was fundamentally a timing issue. Because analytics made the leap to the mainstream during a time of high offense -- with statheads correctly warning that the risks involved in attempting to steal a base weren't worth the payoff -- the idea took hold that sabermetrics says that stealing bases is bad. The fact is, in a vacuum, nothing is good or bad. Baseball is a closed system for the most part, so changes in one part trickle through and affect the whole. In the 1990s and 2000s, it was relatively easy to advance baserunners with extra-base hits, and a home run was a likely event, historically speaking. Because of this, the value of moving a runner up 90 feet was lessened, and the cost -- the out created by having that runner caught stealing -- was incredibly high. Stolen bases weren't bad because statheads don't like seeing close plays at second base; stolen bases were bad because the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. Well, as we've been talking about for a while now, offense has dropped significantly in the past two years. Offensive levels in 2011 are roughly where they were in 1992. It stands to reason, then, that if the value of stolen bases goes up in low-offense eras, that steals should be coming back into vogue. And they are. In 1992, there were 4,865 stolen-base attempts, about 1.15 per team game; or looked at another away, a steal was attempted about 12 percent of the time that a runner reached first base, as approximated by adding singles, walks and HBPs (this is a blunt instrument designed to better estimate stolen-base opportunities). In 2000, at the peak of the offensive era, teams were looking to swipe a bag .87 times a game, a drop of nearly 25 percent in just eight years, and they ran about 8.6 percent of the time a runner was on first. By comparison, the 2011 season is a track meet. On a per-game basis, steals have bounced back a bit, to .94 per team game, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Look at the numbers above again: Batting average is even lower, but slugging is higher. Extra-base hits are still high relative to singles, so the better denominator is opportunities: those runners on first base. Teams are now attempting to steal bases at a rate of around 10 percent of the time that a runner reaches first. It's not quite 1992 again, but the running game is bouncing back toward prominence. The reason it may not get all the way back is that while runs per game are trending down, the shape of offense is still more like the 2000s than the early 1990s. We're playing in a high-strikeout era, one in which power is still a big part of the game. Singles are as rare as they've ever been -- the dip in offense has been about trading singles for outs and homers for doubles and triples. The percentage of plate appearances ending in a single, 15.2 percent, is lower than it was when offense reached its peak in 2000 (15.6 percent), but it's much lower than it was the last time offense was at its current level, in 1992 (16.3 percent). Even in 1968, the nadir of the second dead-ball era, singles accounted for 15.8 percent of all PAs. For all the focus on how home runs have become less frequent -- and they have -- it's the slow decline of the base hit that is at the core of 2011's low run-scoring. So while run levels would dictate trying to steal more, the biggest benefit of a steal -- putting a runner in a place where he can score on a single -- is trending toward all-time lows. It is, quite frankly, a vexing problem: creating runs in a peak-strikeout, low-BABIP, low-HR/FB environment. We simply haven't ever seen these conditions in MLB before, and it may be a while before we know what works best in this environment. For more from Joe Sheehan, read his newsletter or follow him on Twitter. Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/joe_sheehan/06/09/stolen.bases/index.html#ixzz1iuVcwokU

"The Red Sox were gauging trade interest in some of their out-of-options pitchers at the GM Meetings this week, a source tells Alex Speier of WEEI.com. Franklin Morales, Andrew Miller, Felix Doubront, Michael Bowden and Scott Atchison are all out of options but aren't locks to make next year's bullpen, according to Speier, so Boston may decide to add or remove some of these players from the 40-man roster based on relative trade interest." If this is true then the situation is worse than I had thought. Their chances of competing is directly related to pitching especially their pitching depth. Unless they address this issue I think Shaughnessy's prediction in October of a possible 4th place finish isn't far fetched as shocking as that may be to some.

Youk's trade value will never be higher. He is more valuable as a first baseman. I seriously doubt if Youk will play 120 games at third probably a lot less. He is more likely to stay healthier in a less stressful position such as DH. So in many respects he is more valuable elsewhere than in Boston

Excellent point.That was exactly the way I saw it also.

I still think it is unlikely that the Sox will sign a FA pitcher who could start soon if at all. I have always thought they are more likely to trade for one. I think some kind of deal with the Braves still makes the most sense from my point of view.

LOL! I hope you meant what you wrote!

Look who says someelse is taking themself too seriously Tha't really a case of the pot calling the kettle black. It's all about principles son. Talk about myopia. You do suffer from too literal thinking I see you have trouble with concepts and analogy. You love that word strawman. One would almost think you knew what it meant, which of course you don't. Just like most of what you post here. Still waiting for you to answer the questions I posed over a month ago. Get back to me when you do! Then I'll take you seriously, perhaps!

I can see you know nothing about business management. Scouting is merely another word for information gathering or intelligence. Conditioning is rmerely a form of training. Onfield management is merely operations. Seriously, at its most fundamental baseball is a game of economics. It arose in popularity as America transitioned from an agrian society to an industrial one. A baseball game is an allegory for economic productionin in an industrial setting. just like a football game is a mock military battle. Just as military principles are required to be a successful football team, sound operations and business principles are required to be successful baseball team. That's why the Red Sox use sabermetrics just as economists use econometrics etc. ,Many have written about this theme. So it isn't a new concept. But in the end, MLB is a business make no mistake about it. "

You have to run ta ML baseball team like a business to be successful in this sport. Using performance measures with emphasis on outcomes not just process measures and other TQM and CQI techniques are the way to do that.