sk7326

That is fair - but I am more interested in baseball, not budgetary limitations. Nobody argues they avoid bad moves. But at the end of the day, if the players make more money who cares? For the cost of the operation to fans, better it go where you see it. Would a large post be a stupid move. Possibly, because Tanaka does not merit the love. It is not stupid just by being a large investment.

Pretty much. The industry is doing really well and teams are flush with cash. If they are not spending on the club somewhere (and the draft bonus rules are reducing the options other than big leaguers) you are basically choosing between compensating players more, or having the Judge Smailses owners pocket more moolah. I'd prefer the former. Personally, years is a more interesting discussion than the annual salary - teams have different economic situations, and wins have different marginal revenues. Years ties up your structure and make players hard to trade. Ellsbury was the 3rd best CF in the league this year. Carlos Gomez had better numbers without the track record, and Matt Kemp was hurt. Very or good middle of the field help is the most valuable commodity in baseball this side of starting pitching. Middle of the order boppers are fun - but you can find guys playing the corners who can bop it without a ton of difficulty (the Red Sox were a prime example this season). If he did this for the next 6 years, he'd be a $20M a year player - but I would not bet anything important on that actually happening.

It is less that than the "they have their own TV network and charge the highest ticket prices in the league" gag ... consumers spend more than other fan bases do, it is not unreasonable to expect them to see it in the product - does not exempt running a smart front office. But their salary structure is essentially limited by how much money they want to take out of the business.

The age is the fascinating part of this. He is 25, that is the big plus here, and there is a decent chance he could end up a solid #2. It would be a large investment for that - but that would be a good guy to have. I agree you can't expect him to be a staff anchor. But as we saw this year, a rotation of #2/#3 starters is plenty to win the title.

You'd trade 2 of our top 3 prospects for a pitcher who is not actually better than Lester? OK. The Rays would have driven him to the airport if we had a prospect the level of Wil Myers to give up ... we do in Bogaerts but we had no intention of trading him. Tanaka is worth considering - he projects as a #2, and he is young. I'd be more comfortable with a shorter hitch - but I won't dismiss Tanaka either. I do not expect Darvish level ceiling though - there is no evidence of that. The free agent lot is good on depth, short on #1 stuff ... and if any of the top guys get QOs, it becomes a tougher decision (like with Kuroda or Ervin Santana). There are some depth guys with a modicum of ceiling like Ubaldo Jimenez or Scott Feldman who might be worth a spin. Heck, you could even bring back former Red Sox Great Bronson Arroyo for a year.

I think that you can argue Workman, no doubt. And if they dealt Dempster to give Workman a job - more power to them. That said, Dempster essentially filled a Tim Wakefield role last season - a guy who doesn't suck that badly and always takes the ball. This is not a great Hallmark card, and you don't want him near any truly nervous spots - but he is absolutely valuable for negotiating the 6-month slog. Dempster's strikeout rate did not have that crazy April level, but it stayed pretty good all season. I am not stumping for Dempster to stay - but he is a depth guy and a sunk cost ... and for a team who needs an innings eater, he can provide it at a salary which is probably inflated but not that much so.

McCann's body has a LOT more wear and tear than Saltalamacchia. There is a lot of money chasing not a lot of players. If it gets past 3 years with him, that is a problem. Among Braves fans I know (and I went to school with a lot) - there is very little chance McCann can catch in 3 years if that. He already has slipped some defensively (Salty is at least his equal at blocking the plate, really the gap is all in the throwing out runners part), and is not a DH/1B caliber bat. I can argue agaiinst Salty for 3 years ... but McCann ain't it.

Maybe - I am more comfortable with going after Kuroda if you want more depth

1. Posting system agreement needs to be reached. We are almost there, but not quite per reports. 2. Given the precedent set by Darvish and Matsuzaka, a $50M+ post is expected whether or not Tanaka is worth it. He has the superficial numbers, and there is a precedent. 3. The new posting process PROBABLY will give the player some input into where he goes - that could impact the number of bidders. 4. From scouting reports I've read, from some of the Sickels/Law sort of types - the numbers are amazing, but Tanaka is more Kuroda than anything if you want to make a Japanese comparison. BTW: the actual Kuroda would be a FA I'd take a hard look at in real life. Is that worth an investment comparable to Darvish? It seems less of an open case that Tanaka will achieve true #1 level like Darvish.

Depends on what you call mediocre and if you are considering position. Ells was excellent this season ... ultimately if he could guarantee us 6 of THESE seasons, I'd pay his asking price. The odds of that are pretty low.

You can never have enough quality starting pitching. You don't just hand the keys to guys like Ranaudo, Barnes, whomever - especially when these are not ace ceiling sorts. The fact is that quality pitching will either be pressed into duty or valuable in trade. I think there is a chance all of these guys get a cup of coffee in the show next season - and if I were GM, I would look at all of them as prime candidates for middle relief (I like Weaver's idea of middle relief as a good apprenticeship for these guys). I am not comfortable that our top 5 guys will make it through the season, but that is why you still keep looking at solid buy low guys like we did Dempster last season. (and yes, Dempster for his skill set was a very reasonable purchase)

You are not wrong - although he is young in terms of reps - when he was drafted, he was something of a project. This was well known at the time. Considering you expect a physical peak for dudes in the 27-30 sort of range, Middlebrooks still has some development you can plan on. And generally, betting on excellent athletes (who do have baseball skill) "figuring it out" is a sound wager. Jung is right that the hype on Middlebrooks preceded the performance - he came up because our 3B fell to pieces, that's it. He came up, had a good month, exhibited serious upside. The Boston hype machine anointed him and kicked Youkilis out the door. Somebody had to play 3B. I do think his injury in 2012 was a huge hit - that was another 150 PAs or so of development he missed. What I look at is that he is one of the best athletes in the system - he has serious raw power, and not just raw power, but power which has translated into games. He has the tools to be good defensively, although he is raw there. He is just relatively raw generally - and given his background, it is not a surprise. He's not as raw as Wily Mo Pena certainly, but in the same way that Wily Mo was a toolsy phenom who was not raw, raw, raw ... Middlebrooks is similar. I think Middlebrooks is a much better candidate to "get it", as he has shown steady improvement. Even after his callup in August, he was better. His mechanics were simpler, his plate discipline was better. You have to be careful with changing him too much - while yes you want to hone his approach and improve his plate discipline and whatever ... the urge to swing the bat is born, not made. The preternatural ability of the Yooks, Napolis or Adam Dunn to take and rake is not something you can teach. What Middlebrooks CAN work on is swinging at more of "his" pitches (I can't count the number of times I saw him take perfectly hittable 3rd strikes), and spoiling other ones, and laying off the outsided junk as much as possible. He is never going to be more than a .320-.330 OBP guy ... but he has a package of skills and athletic talent, where a "good enough" OBP results in a damn good baseball player.

The distance between Lester and a true ace (and there are only a handful of them) is probably a matter of talent more than anything Lester can do on his own. But that's OK - he seems a lock to be a quality #2 sort of starter for the next couple of years and his durability allows him to remain useful for 4-5 more. I don't want to give a big extension to a pitcher in his 30s, but he is one of the guys i don't worry about being able to create value over the life of the deal.

It is not likely - although you have the causation backwards. Boras works for him.

[i don't weep for the Cards - they are going to be factors for a long time - granted maybe without their current manager. Wacha, Martinez, Kelly, Rosenthal - a lot of amazing arms. I think you might have thought the Sox had the pieces of a playoff contender entering the season considering the rotten breaks of the recent past - but the best team in baseball wire to wire, that never had a losing streak of more than what 3 or 4 games? A true 3-dimensional outfit that were able to turn to their run prevention when the offense started to dry up? It is rare that the best team win the World Series - baseball is funny like that. We were, and we did.

Well historically 1967 ... at least in 2013 the players had a history of being good when they were healthy

WMB is better defensively than Bogaerts. Indeed, Bogaerts has an amazing projections, but it is not for his offense. He'd be a better 3B than SS, but he has more value as a SS, and he should be adequate there. It's not a slam on Bogaerts ability - after all the Yankees have won 5-titles with only "adequate" defense from the SS position. I think what it comes down to is that Middlebrooks-Boegarts is a cheaper left side of the infield with a much higher ceiling than Bogaerts-Drew. We went with the latter in October because ceiling doesn't matter when you are trying to win a 3-week tournament.

A few things. 1. The Red Sox played 8 of their 16 games on the road ... Detroit is a ballpark with large dimensions ... Tampa and Saint Louis are longtime proven pitcher's parks. The Red Sox scored 45 runs in 8 games at home, 5.6 runs a game (which is actually a higher run rate than their season rate, which led the league). So ballparks did contribute some to this. Remember the Red Sox went 5-3 on the road too, so neither team was hitting. 2. We have good hitters - yeah the averages were bad this postseason, but these were also tiny samples. (to give you an idea - if you see a guy get 3 hits in 10 at-bats ... on that basis alone, you can only really narrow down that he is really a .000 to .644 sort of hitter - it takes a couple of SEASONS to really hone in on true ability) The timing was luck, but when you have a lot of good hitters - at some point something was going to happen. It's like having 3 scoring lines in hockey - you can take guys away for a while, but at some point something good is likely to happen. 3. Just because we hit did not mean that we did not get on base. Consider the one-hitter. Yeah only one hit, but there were a parade of baserunners. We lost 1-0, but we had plenty of chances to take the lead. It's not luck, but it is not clutchness either. It is just piling up opportunities, and our ability to generate baserunners even without hitting allowed us to have chances. Yeah we stranded a lot of guys, but remember, during the season we and Detroit led the league in LOBs. LOBs are is a good "bad" statistic.

None of what you described are personnel decisions. Beckett has a long, rich injury history - so the struggles were typical. The ALCS, Tampa was better - they were the best team in the majors that season (Angels got off to a huge start but were flawed as we discovered). Frankly the comeback is one of the proudest moments of this entire decade, though it goes under the radar since a title (or a pennant) did not come with it. The players and manager left it all out there. The sacrifice thing - that is just philosophy, and hard to reconcile. Francona, Farrell, Weaver ... the school of not sacrificing has a lot of students. Certainly it has been proven that giving up outs assures that multi-run innings are few and far between.

Bradley had 61 at-bats above single-A when he crushed spring training ... his progress is fine. There is little reason to think Bradley won't be Ellsbury's equal (or close) in terms of getting on-base.

Errors seem like less of a big deal because it is not really the primary focus of defense. After all, you can't make an error on a ball you cannot reach. I think with Middlebrooks, you have to look at some decisions they did make after his callup. He played 2B in a pinch - and did not embarass himself small sample size noted. In the Detroit series, he was brought in to pinch run for Bogaerts. So the athletic tools are there and valued. He had a rough defensive start to the season, probably due to his entire form going to seed at the plate. But he was good defensively a year ago, and clearly he is a high caliber athlete - this is not a 1B in hiding. As for the idea of a team for October and a team for the regular season - I strongly disagree. Baseball has not yet gone the way of hockey. 5 of 15 teams is a pretty elite group, especially in a division like the AL East where you don't get to coast. You have to build the team to qualify for the tournament - and then figure out the rest later, maybe the trade deadline, maybe later than that.

There are exceptions ... but the larger case is generally fairly true. This doesn't mean that free agency is a bad idea and we all have to turn into Tampa Bay ... clearly nobody is starving here. But you want a deal to encompass a good amount of "peak" ... since you are paying a premium to outbid somebody and the contract will have negative future value at some point most likely.

The free market sets value sort of ... but that neglects the winner's curse of the auction, which Bell described. The team that wins the auction by definition overpays compared to the market. Now, it's not my money - and if the owners want to pocket the money saved from not signing Ellsbury then bleep them, obviously. But this team's history financially has not been anything to worry about on that front. If you let Ells and Drew walk, you can source 3 of the 8 positions for less than $2M TOTAL. For that money, what can the team do? That is the key.

For me, the problem has always been approach. In the NPB, you have the 5 days of rest instead of 4, and the much higher pitch counts. It encourages the "away from contact" sort of approach Daisuke had. Now granted, Matsuzaka is an extreme example. But even Nomo was not pitch efficient, and tried to get hitters to chase stuff (hence the popularity of the splitter, a pitch which has really disappeared from view among the US). Darvish is the only example of a guy who has a true American approach - who works inside the strike zone and counts on his stuff for swing and miss. Yes, he throws a lot of pitches too and had walk issues last year - but you know what I mean.

There is also future durability and what not ... Pedroia will stay on 2nd much longer than Ellsbury can be expected to hold down CF at a very high level. I am not discounting that Ells could still be a good base stealer and evolve into a future roving leadoff hitter as he shifts to more of a LF sort for hire like Kenny Lofton's later years, but I wouldn't pay 20 million per for em.