Red Sox Reality Check

If you must have Santana , here he is. The most valued commodity in baseball is low-salaried talent under your control, an approach that allows you to overspend for other areas of weakness. The Red Sox, the most successful of the Moneyball teams, clearly understand this. Spending money to make a splash guarantees nothing, and you may just lock yourself into both bad contracts and bad chemistry. Among the Red Sox high value, low cost contracts include: Kevin Youkilis Jonathan Papelbon Dustin Pedroia Jacoby Ellsbury Jon Lester Clay Buchholz Having these 'commodities', baseball's 'raw materials' as it were, is akin to having oil or gold in the ground, proven reserves, which almost certainly will rise in value. Established players carry higher price tags for past production, and expected production at similar levels to the past. For example, with Mike Lowell , is he more likely to hit .320 with 25 homers and 120 RBI, or hit .290 with 20 homers and 90 RBI? I'd argue...

While the Red Sox bask in offseason glory, what burning topics should we discuss? David Eckstein, free agent, seeks a contract in the Julio Lugo (four years, thirty-six million dollars) range. Eckstein was Dustin Pedroia before Dustin Pedroia. He's small, not especially fast, but has been a productive player. From a Win Shares perpective, it is what it is. Eckstein's best OPS in the past four years was .758, and he averaged less than four home runs and forty RBI for the past four seasons. His big year had 8 homers, 61 RBI, and 90 runs scored. In 2005, his outlier year, he had 28 Win Shares, simply astonishing. The other three years, you're looking at 9, 12, and 11. Admittedly, he's a feisty 'overachiever', especially if you have a "Boras Book" focusing entirely on 2005. But anybody paying him nine million a year deserves the title, "former GM". Carlos Silva is supposed to be the hot property starter this offseason? Yes, you may remember him o...

I don't have a problem with baseball players, barkeeps, or barristers taking the biggest dollar. Maybe Mom would slap me upside the head for taking less.We do have core values, however, of which honor remains one. Players, managers, and ownership have limited loyalty to each other, so our loyalty to branding (some say laundry) may be misplaced.If the Lowells (see Greenwells, Clemens, Pedros of bygone days) want to take the biggest buck, just do it. Do we need the reiteration of unrequited love for the Hub and its fans? Maybe Dustin Pedroia should just say, "I deserved the award, I busted my hump and gave up my body, and nobody did it better." At least that's honest. We like Mike. If he 'needs' the recognition and the considerable difference in money available from FA, then that's his right. But it would be refreshing to hear, "I simply took the most money." That's acceptable, but we'll probable not hear it...

Mike Lowell stands perched on the opportunity of a baseball lifetime, free agency after earning the MVP in the World Series. More power to him, I guess. I believe in the free market, and if I could do what Mike Lowell can do, then I'd have the right to choose how much money I'd make and who would pay me. Will he be happier in Philadelphia with fourteen million a year and four years? If he is, then that's his right, earned, by Curt Flood, Catfish Hunter, and Andy Messersmith. Yes, I got to see those dinosaurs play, Hunter dishing out those comfortable 0 for 4s when baseball games lasted two and a half hours on a long day. As for A-Rod, Mike Lupica has a really compelling article about A-Rod's zero for twenty-seven in the postseason in the past few seasons with men on base. Signing A-Rod turns your team into a circus after your GM has become the puppet in Scott Boras' puppet show. Now I'm not saying Boras isn't the best at what he does. Look what he did for B...

Identifying heroes comes easily to sports fans. We have Josh Beckett, an unblemished 4-0 in the playoffs, Curt Schilling, the venerable warrior, pundit, and blogger. Who doesn't like Big Papi the lethal teddy bear DH and sometimes first baseman, or Jacoby Ellsbury, our latest answer to Ricochet Rabbit trivia? You have ownership which has revitalized the team and the ballpark, bringing revenues to challenge the Yankees, introducing Nascar to New Englanders, and raising water prices to something only the MWRA can dream about. We have local guy Theo Epstein, freed from the gorilla suit, now a 600 pound gorilla as Sox GM. And Terry Francona, who never has to buy a drink again, and can freely pass throughout the six-state region without echoes of "you suck, Francona", ever. But buried somewhere in the bunker at Fenway lives a tall stat geek. Management embraced the lanky Kansas loner, who pores through baseball statistics looking for nuggets, advantages that can give the Sox t...

In addition to having won a pair of World Championships in four seasons, the Red Sox have created payroll flexibility through development. Going into next season the Sox presumably can pony up a payroll of 150,000 dollars Here's the 2007 Salary picture . Let's just use some approximations to guesstimate 2008. C - Varitek 11,000,000 C2 TBA 2,000,000 1B Youkilis 1,000,000 (presumes big raise, no long-term deal yet) DH Ortiz 13,000,000 2B Pedroia 450,000 SS Lugo 8,250,000 3B Lowell 14,000,000 (a very big assumption, may not be true) LF Ramirez 18,000,000 CF Ellsbury 400,000 RF Drew 14,400,000 Ut Cora 2,000,000 UO Kielty 2,000,000 UO Moss 400,000 13 Positions 86,900,000 Pitching Beckett 10000000 Schilling 11000000 Wakefield 4000000 Matsuzaka 7000000 Buchholz 400000 Lester 400000 Tavarez 3800000 Papelbon 1000000 (presumes raise, no long-term deal) Snyder 600000 Okajima 122...

The Sox have exercised the options on Tim Wakefield and Yoyo Julian Tavarez. At four million dollars and less for Tavarez, this makes a lot of sense, especially with the free agency for Curt Schilling. Will the Sox pony up the big dollars for Schilling and Mike Lowell? I'd guess that lowell has a better chance of returning than Schilling, but the latter gets a debt of gratitude for helping orchestrate a pair of championships. Terry Francona can't get an MRI? Must be the horseshoe somewhere in his anatomy. Seriously, the Sox skipper kept the team going in one direction, deals with a myriad of complex personalities and kept the issues in house. Can't imagine that Coco Crisp was wild about being replaced by Jacoby Ellsbury in the ALCS and Series, but he didn't publicly complain. The "starting bid" on A-Rod comes in at 350 million? Obviously, the American Peso has taken a hit under the weight of the Federal Reserve but are you kidding? That's why they call th...