The 2010 Boston Red Sox Call All Destroyer Tells Us What He Thinks Thread

i agree ciderpress tho i do wonder about his conditioning

yeah when i say 'health' that includes the fact that he's gotten pretty fat since coming here

if beckett can stay healthy he would be a pretty great third starter, problem is that he's never healthy and his contract is inane

yeah the sox are now paying big bucks to two guys who are mid-rotation starters miscast as aces (the other being lackey)

yeah, i never again want to hear the red sox front office cry about being priced out of a major free agent by $10 million dollars after handing out those two contracts

yup

sox will probably be favorites to win the division or WC again going into next year but i do worry about them becoming an old team, between those contracts and the huge step back that their farm system has taken this year

i don't think they'll be favored over the yankees for at least a few years -- we'll see what happens with the rays

sox need 2 sign prince

every time you guys get mad at josh beckett just think of hanley

i think sox are gonna be wary of prince after seeing the tail end of mo vaughn and david ortiz's careers

David Ortiz had some pretty good years for the Sawks.

yeah, i just mean that they've seen firsthand how players with that skillset and body type tend to lose their contact skills quickly in their 30s

idk i think prince would be a great fit for them -- extremely, extremely high obp guy, lefty, not at all a dead pull hitter like ortiz

yeah i definitely like prince to be good for at least another 4 or 5 years but he's gonna be looking for 8

not that i'm worrying about the 2018 red sox team or anything

also there's no guarantee prince will hit the FA market yet, someone could trade for him and extend him. not likely with boras i guess but still possible.

every time you guys get mad at josh beckett just think of hanley

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHH

it's the curse of nomar!

it's telling that The Nation is pinning its hopes on the vaunted return of..... dustin pedroia

that was pretty f'in sweet

if our starters can make it through seven i really like our chances tbh. i mean obviously guys like me who hate beckett anyway will get all backseat driver with the rotation, when it's evident that we've got a couple of the best pitchers in baseball - lester and "buck" - and a couple of theoretically solid 3 and 4 guys. it's the bullpen which is just horrible beyond bard and papelbon (yes i still have faith in paps) and you have to know a lot more about anonymous middle relievers to start suggesting tweaks there - you have to be a real "head" - and i just am not, i guess, to that extent.

how about kalish huh? seems like the real deal. now let's get the salty dog in there and get a head start on 2011.

(btw no disrespect to doubront and bowden who shut em down last night.. but i dunno about those guys in an LDS)

Wow, whiny Red Sox fans really are the worst.

The Lackey signing is symptomatic of nothing -- he's been one of the most consistent pitchers in the league for years, he was the only half decent free agent starter available last year (unless you somehow foresaw Carl Pavano's big comeback) and they smartly passed on the asking price of guys like Jason Bay. Lackey's contract looked like (and still does look like) a safer bet than, say, the contracts of A.J. Burnett or C.C. Sabathia.

Besides, the real bust in their rotation isn't Beckett or Lackey, it's Dice-K. They're paying, what, 5Y/90M (including the transfer fee) for a guy whose injured all the time and is a third starter at best when he's healthy?

whose who's

he's starting today i read. of course we all know theo has a habit of coveting these guys and they never work out....Lugo, Drew, renteria....

JD Drew hasn't worked out? He hit .282/.377/.498 as a Cardinal. On the Red Sox, he has hit .273/.382/.481 and has missed fewer games per season. What was expected of him?

well his numbers are down this year - BA hovering around .260 and an OPS of .820 is not great for his position

lackey's numbers show year-to-year decline and he's an injury risk. also he's rarely better than a second starter when healthy. if i've said it once i've said it a thousand times--sabathia was the guy to get if they were going to pay serious cash for a free agent pitcher.

the drew signing has obviously worked out, but watching him every day it's easy to understand why he frustrates ppl.

i like drew but at times he looks kinda lost at the plate and isn't enjoyable to watch. i don't think he actually ever is lost but that's how it comes across.

yeah he looks so natural when he is hitting that when he goes through a stretch of grounding out to second base for days on end i'm like "why can't you fix this??"

Where's the decline in Lackey's numbers? His ERA has almost always been in the 3.5-3.8 range, WHIP around 1.20 - 1.25. He had some arm trouble in 2008-9 but still threw a lot of innings during the starts he did make (IOW, he wasn't fragile when he came off the DL). And in 2007 he was 2nd in the Cy Young voting. That kind of consistency and peak value might not make you one of the best ten pitchers in baseball, but that's a #1 starter for most teams.

I actually agree that Sabathia was the guy to break the bank for ... but not for eight years.

his k rate has been going down yearly since 2005 and his bb rate has been going up every year since 2007.

his K/9 rate from 2007-2009 went from 7.19 to 7.18 to 7.10 -- yep, obviously he's falling off a cliff there

and this year it's 5.76. his k/bb is fucking 1.68. he's on the wrong side of 30. i think it's reasonable to ask why this was the guy to give a market-value contract to for his age 31-35 seasons.

Obviously he's still hurting and it's not the real him, and since he's been one of the most consistent pitchers in the league then you pretty much know exactly what you're getting when you sign him (as well as it can be known for any pitcher, anyway). There's no way to predict that his K-rate would decline by 1.4 in a year. It's not like they signed him after one fluke-y good season in his free agent year.

He's also a big guy who's had a fairly mild injury history, so he's he's not the type of guy you'd expect to completely fall apart. If you're going to gamble on a pitcher to keep producing in his age 31-35 season, then he's the guy (and a much better gamble than Burnett or Zambrano -- who are making similar money and might already be washouts).

Considering the other options on the market (and you don't get many chances to sign a Sabathia/Santana level guy in his late 20's and at his peak) then it was a good signing. Worth 17 mil a year? Maybe not, but that's market value for that level of pitcher these days (and you can thank guys like Zambrano and Burnett for that).

i don't think i can fault the sox front office for not expecting a guy who put up a ~3 k/bb for 3 years in a row to suddenly drop to 1.68

i didn't like the contract for other reasons, namely that lackey's one of those guys who's perceived as a "#1 starter" but profiles better as a #2 or #3, and those guys are impossible to avoid overpaying for.

Obviously he's still hurting and it's not the real him

still hurting? from what? he's one of two sox pitchers to make all their starts this year.

i mean no shit he's better than burnett or zambrano but it's what ciderpress said--these guys are basically an automatic overpay, and given that the team i root for has the second-highest payroll in the sport i'd prefer that they save their overpays for elite talent.

Sorry, I forgot that he wasn't on the DL this year but the point stands -- unless a pitcher like Sabathia is on the market (which happens maybe once every five years) then the best you can do is sign a #2 guy (hopefully with a #1 ceiling) and Lackey looked like one of the most reliable pitchers of that type that you'll ever see on the free agent market. And I'd assume that he'll bounce back next year, at least somewhat (unless he has some nagging injury, or changed his delivery, or something else we don't know about).

ok--i just would have preferred the team put themselves in a position where they did not have to acquire one of these guys last offseason.

all i can say is, i saw epstein answering questions before last night's game and he looked like he was trying to pass a billiard ball through his colon

i think there's some unwritten rule among sports journalists that you can't publish a photo of epstein unless he's making the :I face

cad is otm about lackey -- it really wasn't a signing that made sense, esp because it seems like they knew what they had in buchholz considering that they refused to trade him multiple times throughout his career -- i think pretty much everyone's reaction to the lackey signing was "yeah, so?" -- it just reminded me of something that the mets would do, spending money on a name because you have the money to spend on a name

they could've got jon garland/joel pinero/brett myers for half the price & gotten relatively the same production

and then had more money for cliff lee

who everyone knows is just gonna go to the highest bidder

I wonder who that will be

exactly

they could've got jon garland/joel pinero/brett myers for half the price & gotten relatively the same production

We don't actually know this, though.