Bellhorn04

Does anybody here know all the exact details about the Teixeira negotiations? I don't think so. Remember that Boras was his agent at the time. There were stories later that the Red Sox came into the meeting thinking that they had a deal, but that the deal Boras proposed was different from the one they thought they had. Supposedly that was when Lucchino went a little nuts on Boras. Then after the meeting Henry said that the Red Sox were out of it. I have my doubts that the Yankees only swooped in after that meeting. I think Boras had probably been in contact with them. It would be very un-Boras like not to try to get the Yankees involved - as we all know, he wants every dollar that's out there. Anyway we could re-hash it till Doomsday, it doesn't really matter.

Can you imagine how motivated Lester is this year? A bad season might only get him a $75 million contract. An outstanding season might get him $150 million. (Rough figures all.) It's like he's got a $75 million bonus on the line.

There, a joke that was worthy of you.

FWIW Red Sox COO Sam Kennedy checked in with Dennis & Callahan on Thursday morning. The other big Red Sox news over the last week relates to the negotiations for a new contract with left-hander Jon Lester. A recent report indicated the Red Sox made a lowball offer of about $70 million for four years. “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.”

Oh I was thinking of a few. Semien flies out. Semien is running down the first base line.

Exactly.

Any win is a good win, that's for sure. I still can't believe how bad the offence is so far. Last night they started 3 for 3 and then went 3 for their next 41, with the first 2 of those hits being infield hits.

Wow, the first two hitters for the White Sox are Eaton - Semien.

Couldn't be expected to repeat 2013 even if we did keep those 3.

They have work to do just to get to stinking.

Fred is Fred. I've been reading his posts since 2007 so I'm completely immune now from being bothered by them. Maybe in 5 more years I'll be the same way about SoxSport's posts.

Damn, when I read this I thought maybe some Cubs runs were on the board. Disappointing.

The Houston Astros have a team batting average of .185.

Well, you're right, it is all a fantasy world. But it's obviously one we need, isn't it?

If the offer from the Red Sox really was 4 years, $70 million, it's just a ridiculously low offer. The 5 year, $82.5 million contract that the Yankees gave A. J. Burnett after the 2008 season set the bar at the time for #2 pitchers. That was 5 years ago, and there has been huge inflation in pitcher salaries since then. That same year, Derek Lowe got 4 years, $60 million, and he was going to turn 36 that season.

You do realize that Miggy, Pujols, Cano, Votto, Fielder, Mauer, Verlander and King Felix don't play for the Yankees or Dodgers right?

Personally I'm as chill about this season as I could possibly be. 3 titles in 10 years, I am a happy Sox fan. Doesn't mean I won't be in here jibber-jabbering and analyzing things, it's too hard to resist.

What's a little surprising is that the Sox offer was low on both counts - years, but especially AAV. 13.25 for Dempster and 17.5 for Lester? Yeesh. Full credit to Lester, he hasn't made one disparaging comment and he's out there pitching well.

AL teams are averaging only 4.15 runs per game to date. Without even looking it up, that would be the lowest number in a very long time. NL teams are averaging 4.33 runs per game. Either NL hitting is getting better or pitching is getting worse. There will always be exceptions. It's only early. Plus ten more applicable clichés.

Jesus Christ SoxSport, did you watch the 2004 playoffs or not. I'm not saying the Yankees don't get any favoritism, but I also don't think the umps are a bunch of crooks. They reversed the A-Rod slap play without seeing any replays, the second reversal of the game in our favor. That play could have screwed us forever, but the umps fixed it, to the slight dismay of the Yankee crowd, you may recall. I assume that's one of those pesky facts that gets in the way of your good story.

My only point is that our offence is off to a remarkably s***** start. That's undeniable. The only question is how much of an aberration it is.

Of course. But you must concede, our offence is off to a remarkably bad start. We're averaging 3.5 runs scored per game. Last year, in our worst month for scoring we averaged 4.5 runs per game. We've got some work to do to catch up to that. OTOH run scoring continues to go down overall. AL teams are only averaging 4.17 runs per game to date. Offence is being seriously snuffed.

I partially agree with this. I don't think we actually had very many career seasons. Obviously you're including Nava, but that was also the first time he ever had anything approaching a full season. But I do agree that many things went right for us. To me it was like there was always a group of guys who were going well, so we never got into a real bad stretch. And overall our health was very good. Not everything went right by any means. Maybe 75-80% of things that could go right went right. And I think that's actually a very high score when you have as much veteran talent as we had. So far this year our score for things going right seems more like 30-40%.

Baseball games are almost impossible to predict, RSFFL. That's why the game fascinates me endlessly. People going crazy on talksox, OTOH, is easy to predict.

The Yankees will be a tad interested.