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They gave the AL award to Francona? Really?

jung, making an even longer post doesn't validate your point. Also, saying that OBP/OPS don't matter when teams are judging a SS's value in negotiations has to be the most asinine thing i have ever read on this site. Drew's low R+RBI total were also afflicted by his low games total and position in the lineup. This is common sense stuff. Let's just stop this discussion here.

jung, you are conflating things on the Drew issue. Your initial point was that "all that Drew offers is BA". That is completely and thoroughly incorrect in every sense of the word. Drew had a .777 OPS and 111 OPS+. He was even reasonably productive by standard measurements regardless of positional value. The point that he looks better because SS is an offensive black-hole league wide is correct, but the merits of Drew's platform season hold up on their own. Specially considering that a lot of the time he missed was due to a concussion, since projecting his numbers over 145 games without the initial concussion backlash make his numbers look even better. The whole "but he hit 7th and is not part of murderer's row" argument is not valid. He would've hit in a much better position had he played for a team that didn't have as much firepower as the Sox. It's all about context. You are looking for an argument where there is none. Drew had an outstanding 2013 season offensively and defensively and will parlay it into an outrageous contract that will have us saying "Whew, Glad the Sox dodged that bullet" sooner rather than later.

BA is the only thing Drew gives you? He had a sub .260 BA, but a .443 SLG% with 50 XBH in 125 games. What he provided was a decent OBP and above-average power for a SS. What exactly are you talking about here jung?

Dojji, you seem to still have reading comprehension problems. The "Trout comparison" you speak of was made by Mark. Mark has made the disclaimer several times that the point was not compare Trout to JBJ directly, since they are obviously not similar. The point was that it's not uncommon for guys to struggle when first called up and then perform up to their talent levels. As for the rest of your post, i find it hilarious to see you talking about logical fallacies. What are you even talking about? People want Bradley to be the answer because he has awesome on-base skills and elite-level D. People have made their peace with Ellsbury leaving with or without JBJ because they know it would be a stupid investment. What you're saying here is pure gibberish, and another example of your typical contrarian nature.

Trumbo has a lot of power, but also makes a tremendous amount of outs. Not a fan.

Cherington (unsurprisingly) wins Exec of the year.

He's not talking about Drew staying here, he's talking about Drew getting his money, regardless of team.

Yeah, but you can make educated assumptions on some players. And as a 1B who doesn't have upper-echelon power and has survived off a high BABIP for the last couple of years, you can assume that the possibility of a drop in production is very real. Why take the risk when you can get a platoon guy for cheap?

Paul Konerko last season: .923 OPS against lefties. Kendrys Morales last season: .794 OPS against lefties (playing in Seattle) Mike Morse had a down year because of injuries, but he's historically fared pretty well against lefties. These are all options that could be acquired as part of the platoon with no draft pick compensation and without having to give up young talent.

As posted below, the problem is that 1B production is easy to find on the market. You could probably get as much production from from a Carp/(Insert rightie platoon 1B) than trading for Belt, whom you cannot guarantee will produce at the rate you're projecting him. This is the typical case of "SFF gets mancrush, SFF overvalue X player" at play here. No thanks on Belt.

.351 BABIP. Also, 1B is the easiest position to find offense. You don't sell controllable assets for a position where you can find relatively cheap production on short contracts through FA.

Ranaudo and Doubront PLUS WMB for a mid-tier 1B? Please no.

No thanks.

Franklin Morales has negative value right now. You probably couldn't get Jayson Nix for him.

Yet neither of them has a very high possibility of being better than Peavy.

It doesn't make sense to downgrade the rotation to save money. If they can't move Dempster, there's no reason to move Peavy. It's not a need. They're not strapped for cash.

It was also AVN, yes, but Brett Favre had the same issue since 1992, and look at how long he played with it without complications.

Why would they trade Peavy? He's an above average starting pitcher. I can't, for the life of me, understand the fascination with moving the guy.

That's a pretty damn good way to put it.

Pedroia was hitting under the Mendoza line. They gave Cora playing time while he worked out of his slump. It's a common practice. You are not a talent evaluator. If the FO thought Ellsbury was ready, they would have called him up beforehand. His ETA per scouts was always 2008, they RUSHED him up because of need. Do you know better than scouts who do this for a living? The plethora of homegrown talent was referring to roster construction in general. A farmhand is a farmhand. You took away what you wanted from the point and ran away with it. Let's skip 2007, and make it simple: Delaying a prospect's arrival as a full-time player for a couple months, or giving him more seasoning while he gets ready for the show does not constitute "being blocked". That is a completely incorrect assessment. You and SS are dead wrong about the whole "FO blocks prospects" thing, and you're clearly grasping at straws to prove otherwise. It's been proven time and time again the FO is more than willing to trade away or bench a veteran for a hot prospect pushing their hand. I don't understand how you can say otherwise based on either not deeming a prospect ready or easing him into a job. Please stop.

Crawford and Lackey were Lucchino guys.

The problem is that you're making two very silly assumptions: 1) That Bradley will certainly fail, which is based on a set of very unsupported biased opinions. mark's point on the Trout comparison is that it's normal for kids to come up, struggle for a bit, then adjust. Another notable example of this is a kid named Dustin Pedroia. Keep that in mind. 2) That the Sox will not tinker their roster to accommodate for either a possible platoon partner or a timeshare guy as insurance for Bradley in case they decided to hand the position to him. I think you're the one missing the big picture if you think the Sox would be unprepared if they gave JBJ the position.

Yeah, because the Red Sox blew everyone else out of the water by a large margin. The Yankees, iirc, even bid more than what was initially expected to be the price for Darvish. Red Sox= Super Heavy Hitters.

And the Yankees were heavily involved in the Matsuzaka sweepstakes.....