DocHolliday

Former big time Rangers prospect and a switch hitter. Plays good defense and his low offensive numbers could be partially due to Safeco Field. His OPS+ relative to the league's split OPS + was 109 on the road compared to 52 at home last season (279 PA away, 256 PA home). This would be an affordable pickup in terms of players going to Seattle with the potential to be a LT answer at 1B. He's still young, turning 26 in September. Worth taking a flyer on if the deal is right.

In general, the offseason should be about finding the best value for the many needs and areas of improvement this team needs. If I had to guess, I think this team will end up using all of the avenues possible to strengthen the team - trades, the free agent market, and their farm system. Much of the talk here over the next 4 - 5 months will be spent trying to decide which of the multiple opportunities along the 3 avenues would produce the most value for both next year and beyond. It is doubtful that each and every personnel decision made this off season will work out. But my hope is that, unlike previous offseasons, the team takes on less short term and more long term commitment than they have in the past. After all, its not clear as to when this team will be able to consistently contend for post season runs again - whether its within 5 years, 3 years, 2 years, or even next season. Hopefully all of the decisions will be made based on what is best for the health of the baseball team first - not to revive interest in the team or "splash" types of moves - whether by trade or the free agent market. Outside of the Yankees, the vast majority of the teams that have been in the playoffs the past several seasons have built their teams without making many of the big "splash" types of moves. Even many of the Yankees "splash" moves were made in 1 offseason and have been supplemented by more under the radar moves that turned out to be smart baseball moves (Kuroda last offseason, Russell Martin two offseasons ago, Granderson three offseasons ago). Both the Angels and Dodgers tried to make the "splash" moves this calendar year through both the FA and trade routes and both are sitting out of October this year with the Red Sox. Maybe things will go well and it will be a short wait, or maybe it will take more time. Even if it takes time to get back into contention, I'm willing to wait it out - even if it means taking a long term approach- and hope the FO feels the same way.

No matter who ends up as the next manager, the Red Sox simply cannot spend nearly as long as they spent last off season to come to a decision. Granted, they shouldn't necessarily rush and hire the wrong person. But it is extremely important that they move swiftly and, hopefully, they are are already into the early to middle stages of the process. I think Pete Abe made a good point in his recent blog post today that as each day passes, the potential pool of managerial and coaching candidates will dwindle as well. Francona, who was hired over the weekend and was introduced today, serves as an example of how swiftly the other teams with current and potential managerial and coaching vacancies may have an advantage with early decisions. Say what you want about how Francona's tenure ended, but for the better part of his time here, he had a strong, talented, and committed coaching staff that played a large role in preparing the players to do their absolute best. Looking back on this season, it is very clear that V and his coaching staff were not committed to the same goal as a group. When you also consider the multiple player personnel decisions this team faces as well, there simply is no excuse to spend nearly the amount of time spent last year on what turned out to be a terrible decision anyways.

No matter who ends up as the next manager, the Red Sox simply cannot spend nearly as long as they spent last off season to come to a decision. Granted, they shouldn't necessarily rush and hire the wrong person. But it is extremely important that they move swiftly and, hopefully, they are are already into the early to middle stages of the process. I think Pete Abe made a good point in his recent blog post today that as each day passes, the potential pool of managerial and coaching candidates will dwindle as well. Francona, who was hired over the weekend and was introduced today, serves as an example of how swiftly the other teams with current and potential managerial and coaching vacancies may have an advantage with early decisions. Say what you want about how Francona's tenure ended, but for the better part of his time here, he had a strong, talented, and committed coaching staff that played a large role in preparing the players to do their absolute best. Looking back on this season, it is very clear that V and his coaching staff were not committed to the same goal as a group. When you also consider the multiple player personnel decisions this team faces as well, there simply is no excuse to spend nearly the amount of time spent last year on what turned out to be a terrible decision anyways.

Regarding Scott Baker, I agree that he would be a decent buy low candidate coming off injury. He certainly has much more upside than, say, Aaron Cook. He makes sense to be one of the retreads the Sox consider bringing in to compete for a rotation spot, assuming the Twins don't pick up his option for next season. But he shouldn't be looked at with any degree of certainty for a rotation spot going in. His elbow issues have plagued him in more seasons than this year. Ironically, the player he compares to most, based on Baseball Reference's similarity scores, is former Red Sox pitcher Wade Miller. Easy to forget, but Miller spent time on the DL in his 1 season with the Red Sox and pitched to an ERA of around 5 when he was on the mound. For me, Baker would be option 8 or 9 on that list of FA candidates for a rotation spot.

Regarding Scott Baker, I agree that he would be a decent buy low candidate coming off injury. He certainly has much more upside than, say, Aaron Cook. He makes sense to be one of the retreads the Sox consider bringing in to compete for a rotation spot, assuming the Twins don't pick up his option for next season. But he shouldn't be looked at with any degree of certainty for a rotation spot going in. His elbow issues have plagued him in more seasons than this year. Ironically, the player he compares to most, based on Baseball Reference's similarity scores, is former Red Sox pitcher Wade Miller. Easy to forget, but Miller spent time on the DL in his 1 season with the Red Sox and pitched to an ERA of around 5 when he was on the mound. For me, Baker would be option 8 or 9 on that list of FA candidates for a rotation spot.

Let the change for the better begin!

Perfect ending to a disgraceful humiliating season.

They have a lot of work to do before Christmas at Fenway if they want their phony sell out streak to continue into next season.

Hopefully that's the case. Next season's schedule has the extra travel days to account for the WC game. Wasn't sure if MLB was going to use the 2-2-1 format for the ALDS.

Too bad the Tigers aren't playing them in the 1st round. Even with the A's surge, I think the Tigers will come away winning that series since Verlander will get 2 starts and they will have home field to start the series despite being the lower seed. MLB really needs to rethink the scheduling for the ALDS round. It makes absolutely no sense for the higher seed to not start the series at home because it effectively eliminates any type of home field advantage for the higher seed.

Think of how different the landscape around RSN would be if there was a 2nd WC in place last season. It's been fairly under the radar to this point, but the 2nd WC has served as the bailout plan to a less dramatic collapse by the Rangers this September.

Yet they will get a bailout plan the 2011 Red Sox never got with the 2nd wild card. Assuming Baltimore loses, the wild card game will be played in Texas. And, if the Rangers win that game, they will play the first 2 games of the ALDS at home against the Yankees. Not exactly at a disadvantage being the WC team in that scenario. But they get a gift wrapped opportunity to end the Yankees season by winning the first 2 games at home. The way Sabathia has pitched for the Yankees lately, I like the Rangers chances if they can survive Friday. They play unbelievably at home and will be motivated to put their minimally chronicled collapse from today to bed.

This.

Oakland 6 outs away from being tied with Rangers for AL West lead. Of all the divisions in the AL, the general consensus a month ago was the Rangers would be the top AL seed and win the AL West comfortably. By far one of the most improbable years with Oakland and Baltimore playing the way they have.

One more day until this disgrace of a season is over. Been the same story since Opening Day - they could have just ended the season in Detroit and saved us all a lot of wasted time and misery.

I love Youk, but I think that ship has sailed. Even in 2010, when V was with ESPN and Youk was 2 years younger and played 1B regularly, he only appeared in just over 100 games. He has averaged around 110 games over the last 3 seasons and his OPS has declined in each of the past 3 seasons from .975 in 2010 to just over .750 this year. With the way he plays and his age, he will need to transition into the DH role at some point in the near future if you want to get decent production out of him. Maybe you could sign him to play some first and fill in for David to keep him healthy and productive. But I doubt Youk wants that type of role, and will likely get offered a full time role at a corner IF spot with a team like Seattle. With the protected first round pick, it makes a lot of sense to sign a guy like Mike Napoli to a 3 year $36 M deal with an option for a 4th year @ $10 M. Napoli has a similar plate approach to Youk and can catch some to boot. His swing is a perfect match for Fenway and he has the dirt dog mentality that Sox fans love. If he can be had for reasonable $ and years, he makes a lot of sense and becomes a logical replacement for Ortiz when he retires.

Agree with all of this as well. As Edes pointed out yesterday, they are apparently still not done restructuring the FO. A few candidates have been mentioned for that position as well. They really need a presence near the top of baseball ops - as you and others have mentioned. They seem to have brought back James in a more serious role than in previous years and, if they have any common sense, ought to bring the saber consultants back in as well. It makes no sense to me why they let them go in the first place. It's almost as if they thought that they could get by with their own crew and systems for analyzing and evaluating. Never hurts when you can have an outside take on potential decisions. Hoyer and Brynes were highly sought out and were allowed to leave with a promotion in other places. Bill Lajoie, who was essentially the GM of the Sox while Epstein left after 05, left to work with the Dodgers before passing away a couple of years ago. There was a lot of talent and leadership that left this organization between 2006 and 2009 that, at the time, was largely left unnoticed by the fans and media. From the coaching staff side, I think there was a big void when Brad Mills left. Say what you want about how the Astros fared while he was in charge, but many accounts suggest he was relied on heavily by Francona much like Joe Maddon relies on Dave Martinez. I'm not necessarily suggesting that the people who were brought in to replace leadership positions on the coaching staff and in the front office are incompetent. But perhaps they were not fully prepared to assume the roles of the person they were replacing. Hopefully these new evaluators and executives who are being hired on now can fill the gaps that exist within the current group.

I suppose winning 2 out of 3 could be some amount of redemption - particularly with how the Yankees let the Rays come back and win game 162 last year when even this year's Red Sox team could have closed out that game if given that lead and 9 outs to go. But for me, the biggest good news will come in 3 days when this season is finally over. As many on this forum have said, this has been one of, or the most, trying seasons for the majority of Sox fans of this generation. It seemed for a number of years, it became really easy to dismiss how fortunate being a Sox fan really was. The last three years have really highlighted how special the period from 2003-2009 really was, even in the years we didn't win the World Series. Hopefully when the Sox get back to that point, I'll be able to appreciate it even more than I did in the past.

Ask the Yankees how many times Nathan's shut them down over the years - or any reliever who pitched for the Twins over the last 10 years for that matter.

Glad to see that the Red Sox have admitted that their current FO lacks leadership and expertise after the recent player evaluation and personnel decision blunders from recent years. Hiring former players Varitek and Pedro and proven talent evaluators like Eddie Bane (former Angels scout who played big hand in drafting players like Mike Trout and Jered Weaver) is a step in the right direction for an organization that lost a lot of gifted evaluators and leaders from the 2004 - 2007 era. There's nothing wrong with giving evaluators the opportunity to interview and advance their careers. But perhaps the Red Sox need to recognize that keeping their top evaluators could prove more important for their long term health than keeping individual players. It seems as though many of the key front office personnel from the successful era were sought out by other teams and the organization was never fully able to replace the voids.

3 more to go. Part of me wants us to lose to get a better draft pick and part of me wants us to knock the Yankees either out of the division lead or, depending on how the other teams play out, completely out of the playoffs. Hopefully there will be a combination of both. The good news is that they secured a protected first round pick for next year's draft. The last thing I'd want to do is give one of our rivals (say, the Rangers) a 1st round pick for signing a FA like Napoli. If we are going to get back to where we once were, we are going to have to avoid giving rival teams additional 1st round draft picks at all costs.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the payroll for next season will be around $150 M. Right now, they have around $40 M committed to a handful of players for next season. When arbitration raises are factored in, the payroll will be around $80 M before any free agents or trades are considered. That leaves around $70 M to spend on free agents and/or to extend players acquired in trades who might be nearing free agency. The figure will be way below the threshold for the following season that you mention. It puts them among the top spending teams in the league, but maintains the flexibility they had for years when they were competitive. But it also seems to force them to be creative in filling the many holes the team has currently. They obviously won't be able to spend their way to solutions for all of the problems they have. Nor will they be able to trade for solutions for all of the problems they have. With a limited amount of resources, my hope is that they put their focus on improving the primary areas of need, such as the starting pitching and offense at 1B and in the OF.

If he is ever going to be able to improve his approach, he's going to do it against major league pitching. It would do him a world of good to refine his approach in some sort of instructional league this winter to get a head start in the spring. His struggles have been well documented, but they seem to have been enhanced by the overall weak offense on this team as the 2012 season has winded down. If they are able to improve next season's offense in other positions on the field, they can afford to let Iggy play out the majority of the season at short until Xander is ready.

All of the news about guys like Pedro and Tek joining the organization in an instructional role with the pitchers is a promising sign that this organization realizes that they need to improve all aspects of the pitching in this organization - from philosophies, development, training, and approach. I'm not certain of who has been responsible for developing the pitching prospects over the last few seasons, but its clear that there has been a significant void in pitching prospects making it to the majors from Buchholz, Masterson, and the like. Recently, Doubront and Tazawa are really the only products to come from the farm system that have shown any signs of being productive major league pitchers. Granted, some promising prospects like Casey Kelly were dealt away in the Adrian Gonzalez deal and Masterson was traded away for Victor Martinez. But it really seems like the pitching has to improve from the lower levels from the farm system up to the major league level. This seems to be a good first step to the pitching transition.