It could be that DD thinks Johnson and Velazquez both deserve a legitimate shot as starters.
And I suspect he's also keeping a sharp eye on what's left in the dumpster.
Forget Lynn, man, the dude turned down 2 years and $20 mill. We just don't have enough left in the cookie jar.
We need to do a dumpster dive. R. A. Dickey is not that bad in that category. He's durable and can probably keep the ERA under 5.
Seriously, if JD has a case of being wall-shy, left field in Fenway might be an issue. Especially if he knows that Hanley and Swihart both got hurt out there only recently.
Oh, it's been mentioned a lot in the Spring Training thread. Kimmi posted this March 3.
Jason Mastrodonato
Verified account @JMastrodonato
2m2 minutes ago
Looks like every player who had a flexor strain last year missed at least six weeks except Pomeranz, who got a late start after a stem cell injection in his elbow and then missed the minimum 10 days on the DL to start the year. Diagnosis then was a left forearm flexor strain.
Boston’s analytics department is now up to 10 full-time employees (plus interns)
Holy crap, that really is an amazing number of people analyzing baseball data, especially when you consider how much work is being done by the computer programs themselves.
I'm about 99% sure Dombrowski will acquire a starting pitcher fairly soon. I'm even wondering if he's trying to talk John Henry into springing for Cobb or Lynn and incurring the tax penalties that would go along with that.
The point stands, though, that David Ortiz was relatively underpaid because he was a DH, and if he had been able to play first base, not necessarily even that well, he would have made a chunk more money.
Sure, that's the truth. It's just about when you need a fill-in starter, you'd like it to be a guy who can at least 'keep you in the game' with 5.1 innings and 3 runs allowed or something-not get shelled out of there in the first inning. Somebody who doesn't cost you much but has a chance of landing a decent contract the next year if they do well, like Fister.