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But don’t forget - the $63mill JD walks away from counts against Boras’ new earnings. So if JD’s new deal is for under $60mill, he effectively loses money. The smart move for Boras (and Martinez) would be to wait one more year to opt out...

Actually she disliked Dombrowski’s history of tearing down farm systems for short term gain and long term question marks. And that’s a much more legitimate complaint than you have about Bush...

And it was the least surprising thing Price ever did....

Does he have to say anything if he is?

By Monday, right? If JD was as sure about this as most of you, he would have opted out already...

So what exactly is a crapshoot? Because a difference of 5 successful title runs over a full century sure seems like one to me...

Backup catcher isn’t a dire need, but maybe changing up from Sandy Leon is...

And Braves declined the option on Billy Hamilton...

The Sox don’t need infielders. A starter, a reliever or two, a backup catcher and probably at least one outfielder...

I mean, one season of fWAR? Ryu has pitched 400 innings in the past 5 years. That’s a big, big factor...

I doubt Quintana will be a free agent at that price. Trade bait? Maybe, but not a free agent. Porcello has a massive advantage over Wheeler and Ryu, who are injured so often their Topps baseball cards list their position as “DL.” So Porcello or Odirizzi as next in line behind the top three of Strasburg, MadBum or Cole?

Plus he’s probably one of the five best starting pitchers on the market and only turns 31 in a couple months...

No. As Phil Rizzuto has been dead for over a decade, he finds himself unable to sign the contract...

Fairly certain the Red Sox did hire Mike Hazen at one point...

Even if they had that discussion, Bronson Arroyo’s agent likely did as well...

Ryan?

I don’t think he is necessarily traded. And don’t forget, having some control of his own destiny is how he got to Boston. The biggest reason he won’t opt out is he’s not likely to get a better deal than the one he got when he was two years younger, coming off a career year at the plate and where he actually played in the field, and didn’t have a QO attached...

Ah Recency Bias rears its ugly head. Bush is a different person with a different background and professional history. If the Sox wanted another LaVangie, they never would have fired the first one...

I think another good under-the-radar candidate is Tanner Roark. Roark made $10mill last year and could get a raise and still be under a paycut from Porcello. Since the Sox are extremely unlikely to make a splashy deal for Cole or Strasburg, the best of the second tier candidates might be Porcello and Roark...

But then Holt might be a candidate for a starting position in the infield, and has proved his value. And despite trying to get under the tax limit, it does not mean the Sox are going to spend nothing this off-season. They still have to field a team and play 162 games...

He'll finally break his way completely out of professional baseball...

Well, it actually is a different approach. Just because he came from the Sox does not mean he is the same type of coach, as I explained earlier. In fact, you seem to be advocating for the same old approach by getting a coach well-versed in mechanics (which Bush may or may not be). But those candidates largely fall into two categories: 1. Experienced pitching coaches who were fired by their previous organization 2. Inexperienced candidates who have never been an MLB pitching coach. Which is preferable? And how is either better or worse the Bush? Bush might fail miserably, or he might succeed. But to say he is the same old as LaVangie because he came from the same organization is just silly. That's like saying the Sox should unload Bobby Dalbec because Lars Anderson was a flop...

That is an argument many are making and MLB might even be considering. It's absolutely not hypocritical. While baseball hs embraced using technology to influence game play in the past - like the adoption of instant replay, that doesn't mean everything has to be an "either or" scenario. And the decision that "people need to be consistent" is immaterial. MLB doesn't mandate the use of software and experts for the calcualtion of UZR. That's an after-the-fact analytical tool used by the statistics companies. The changing to robot umps absolutely has some benefits, but to call the in-game decisions be made using MLB must meet the exact standards of the analytics afterwards is two completely different things. Maybe a good parallel is our election process. We do maintain human exit polls and allow humans to do the actual voting. But many people have devised statisitcal models to predict elections with surprising accuracy, notably Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com (and formerly of Fangraphs.com). Just because we have the ability to predict elections with surprising results doesn't mean we need to dump the entire electoral process and replace human voting with statistical analysis....

So the 7 game sample of the ALCS usurps the 162 game sample that precedes it? The Astros' starting pitching ranked 4th in MLB with 19.4 fWAR. The Yankees' SP tied for 16th with Detroit at 10.6 fWAR. Even the pitching-needy Red Sox did better. Perhaps you outpitched the Astros because Astro pitching was facing a tougher lineup? It's not like all things were equal there...

Then you have also seen plenty of instances where the Sox made internal hiring options that did work out...