Bellhorn04

And you might be able to get him for a hair under $200 million.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and suggest that the market may stay absurdly high for a few more years. There are more teams now with money to throw around. It's at a point where even the richest teams can't find any easy route to upgrading their team. If Cherington can put together a playoff-caliber rotation without blowing the budget sky-high or raping the farm, it'll be his finest hour.

His trade value is limited as you said, but I think there are a number of teams interested in him. 100 RBI's still means something.

I'm not going to the dark side, seriously. About 90% of the time I'm still even-keeled about it all. Some things I do get emotional about. Losing a guy like Lester is one of them. But I'll get over it.

I'll say this - he shouldn't be written off. When he's healthy he can be a hell of a player. I think we're all just very cynical about his health issues ever going away.

I think it's pretty clear the Red Sox will deal Cespedes, and probably could have dealt him already to more than one team, but they're holding out for a better offer.

Lester decision reportedly coming tonight or tomorrow.

Based on some of the stuff I'm hearing, my gut feeling is that Lester is going to the Giants.

You probably won't like how many years and dollars Shields gets either - it'll be too much of each, you can be sure of that.

I read that piece. It's kind of a jumbled mess IMO

There are other possibilities. But I just don't see how it's a sure thing we can swing a good deal for an ace. The names of Cueto and Sale keep getting tossed around but no one knows if they're actually available.

Personally I fail to see that Lester can be 'easily' replaced, unless you consider giving Scherzer 180 million or Shields 110 million or trading Swihart/Owens/whoever for Hamels and taking on his 110 million easy. As for Cueto, does anybody actually know the Reds want to deal him, or will deal him without being 'blown away'?

I think you kind of made the same point at least 5 different ways there LOL

No Lucchino there though - that's a good thing.

Absolutely. But if there are a few teams in on Scherzer it's gonna get pretty stupid.

That's a pretty big if on Lester/Scherzer however. If they fall short on Lester, do you really think they'll try to win the Scherzer auction?

Here's a little thought to ponder. Let's say the Sox miss out on Lester, Scherzer, and Shields. Let's say they also can't work out a deal for Hamels or Cueto or any #1 that they can live with. Would they have the balls to make a couple of lesser acquisitions and ask the fandom to be patient for 2015 while they assess the prospects and work toward 2016?

More like $80-85 million in fact...

The Phillies are obstinate f***s. They haven't even traded Cliff Lee yet.

My concern is that they get boxed into a position where they make moves they shouldn't make, like trading too much to get Hamels. Once Lester and Scherzer are off the board (assuming they're not ours) Ben has to pull a few rabbits out of the hat.

Regardless of what moves they make, we also need one or two of the starter prospects to develop. We've built up a big enough pile of them.

A higher AAV, that's correct.

Agreed, but doesn't the word risky apply to almost every free agent signing of any significance now?

Big Papi has been making a lot of Lester-related comments recently, all hoping he comes back, of course, but one of the comments was that Lester was 'devastated' about being traded.

Here is all we know about the Red Sox initial negotiations with Lester: they made him an offer of 4 years for $70 million. On April 17, 2014, Red Sox COO Sam Kennedy said the following on the Dennis & Callahan show: “You have to remember, we’re starting from a place where the Red Sox, from John Henry on down to Jon Lester, want to make a deal. That’s the starting place. I think everybody feels good about that,” Kennedy said. “The problem with negotiations and details from baseball negotiations getting into the public domain when you have a leak like we did this past week related to this deal is one data point gets into the media, gets out there, gets dissected. I can tell you there are lots of other data points related to this negotiation that are not in the public spotlight, in the media. All I’ll say is that Ben Cherington, Jon Lester, Larry Lucchino, our ownership group will continue to work on this. And it’s clearly best when baseball discussions are kept private, and then baseball decisions are made public. That’s been our philosophy. “Do we want to see Jon Lester in a Red Sox uniform for a long, long time? Absolutely, yes. As a fan, I hope that he is with us for a long, long time. We’ll see where things go over the coming weeks and months. But I’m hopeful that we do end up getting something done there.”