Bellhorn04

Needless to say Lester and Buchholz have to pitch well or the rest doesn't matter much. Dempster is an innings-eater type anyway.

It might not be that dumb in the bigger picture if you look at where they're positioned and where their prospects are. They added prospects with the Dodgers trade, now in the offseason they've held onto all the prospects and the draft picks as well. I think as Sox fans we're just not used to a strategy that involves having patience for a couple of years.

I think there will be more. They've got 25 million + without hitting the tax threshold. They've at least demonstrated that they're not just pocketing the money from the Dodgers trade.

Ah well, f*** it...at least they're spending the money. Some of it stupidly perhaps. At least these are all short-range deals. Go prospects!

And I will be shockingly surprised.

Now the Rangers are going to have to do something to make their fans a little happier.

If he gives them 200 innings that's more than we've been getting from most of our starters. If he does it with less than a 4.5 ERA that's decent. If he does it with a 5 ERA he's Ryan Wakefield.

Angels are signing Hamilton - 5 year deal.

I couldn't give a damn about Youk signing with the Yanks. I certainly don't fault him for taking the 12 million. And he's just not the same player he was. Man the Yankees are an old team though.

Hello zac.

Right. They actually have an option on Lackey for 2015 which is at MLB minimum salary.

The threshold for 2014, 2015 and 2016 is 189 million.

Red Sox 2013 payroll numbers per Alex Speier of WEEI (who is one of the very few baseball writers who seems to understand how many people like to know these numbers) These are the luxury tax numbers-the AAV numbers. The luxury tax threshold for 2013 is 178 million. Guaranteed deals John Lackey, $16.5 million David Ortiz, $13 million Mike Napoli, $13 million Shane Victorino, $13 million Clay Buchholz, $7.4 million Dustin Pedroia, $6.80 million Jon Lester, $6 million Jonny Gomes, $5 million David Ross, $3.1 million Jose Iglesias, $2.1 million TOTAL GUARANTEED: APPROX $86 MILLION Arbitration eligible Jacoby Ellsbury Jarrod Saltalamacchia Andrew Bailey Alfredo Aceves Craig Breslow Andrew Miller Daniel Bard Franklin Morales PROJECTED TOTAL: APPROXIMATELY $30 MILLION-$35 MILLION Pre-arbitration eligible Junichi Tazawa Mark Melancon Felix Doubront Ryan Kalish Daniel Nava Will Middlebrooks Clayton Mortensen Pedro Ciriaco PROJECTED TOTAL: APPROXIMATELY $5 MILLION Additional expenses Medical, 40-man roster, etc. APPROXIMATELY $12 MILLION ESTIMATED 2013 TOTAL COMMITMENTS: $138 MILLION So we are about 40 million under the threshold. If they were to sign Dempster for 13 million that would leave about 27 million of room left.

Based on his last 3 seasons Sanchez appears to have the potential to be a solid #2 or #3 for a number of seasons. That's not clogging a spot, it's filling a spot.

That seems beyond absurd to me. I can't see them backing out unless there's a medical issue.

I'm guessing our bargain starters have had a collective ERA over the last 5 years of about, oh, maybe 6.25?

OK, now help me out with this...how have we done with bargain starters in recent years?

But how sure are we that prices are going to go down? The list of who's left is shorter, but aren't there still a lot of teams with money to spend? Haven't seen any bargain signings yet.

The inertia on the pitching front is amazing. It'll be a sad joke if they do no more than make an offer to Ryan Dumpster. If that's the way it ends up, I hope the team wins 68 games and Cherington is fired mid-season.

What position would Swisher be playing?

It's a big year in Bailey's career. I would hope he has been working his butt off and is motivated and a little angry and all that good stuff.

Sanchez isn't a 'retread'. He's only 28 years old and he's only logged 869 major league innings. When we signed Lackey he was a couple years older and had logged 1500 innings.

Another stat showing how strong Sanchez finished last year: Last 11 starts including postseason 74.2 innings 2.05 ERA 62 K 13 BB

I would rather see Marcum than Dempster as well because he's got some AL East credentials. I did see some scary data on his fastball speed from last year though.