Wacky for Lackey

So...despite my vitriolic assertions to the contrary, I guess The Boof wasn't Boston's only off-season move for the pitching staff, what with the John Lackey signing and all. In fact, I might even be willing to say that I completely acknowledge the error of my ways and resolve - once again - to never criticize the methods behind the madness that is the front office, because - despite all of the odd experiments - the Sox keep making these deals that make so much sense. With Lackey, they now have:

• A superior starting pitching staff that's on the verge of becoming 2007-like godly if Matsuzaka carries his form from the last four starts of 2009 into 2010. We thought the '09 staff had an excellent chance of dominating the field in Spring Training, but the success of even that illustrious group required a blessing of the stars; besides the Dice-K question, all the 2010 Sox need ask of their starters is for health and consistency with their already established numbers.
• A trade piece in odd man out Clay Buchholz, who'll have the chance to become the "maybe he'll make it" ornament of some other team's staff. Buchholz becomes trade bait for the bat the Sox will need to replace Bay, now that they've elected to...
  
• ...sign Mike Cameron and choose defense over offense in left field. The deal has everyone saying farewell to the likable-but-expensive Jason Bay and those Gay for Bay t-shirts Robin planned to market, but frees up money for one of those expensive contracts the Sox will likely acquire with Bay's offensive replacement.

Of course, we can't celebrate a successful hot stove season just yet: someone has to agree to make the trade that makes the Cameron acquisition worthwhile at a price that doesn't make us cry for a mortgaged future or (even worse) a missed opportunity. Anyone got a player with .896 (or better) OPS they can spare?

The Amazing, Flexible Pedroia

Now it all makes sense: letting the market empty of potential shortstops was part of the front office's plan all along! While we were all zigging and trying to talk ourselves into settling for a Marco Scutaro/Jed Lowrie combo package, the Sox were zagging and talking to Pedroia about switching from second to short in 2010.

Well, that's the rumor, anyway. It's not a confirmed thing and - given the quotes Pedroia gave to the Herald when quizzed about the possible move - something that may be more in his head than anywhere else. In fact, for all of the move's logic - because after all, it's a lot easier to find a decent second baseman than it is to find a decent shortstop - it's giving me some deja vu. After all, it was a little over three years ago when Alex Gonzalez last left Boston and we were asking the same questions then that we are now, even if the circumstances are a little different.

Playing Marco Polo in the Dwindling Shortstop Pool

Well, I'm glad the Sox settled the shortstop question quickly and easily, providing some sort of continuity at a position that's had steady of stream of different warm bodies for far too long. Wait, just kidding.

Now that Gonzalez is definitely out of the picture for 2010, removing another possibility from a market both weak in options and rapidly tightening as the month has progressed, we've got a run at Marco Scutaro to look forward to. As Fire Brand of the American League points out in a slightly convoluted metaphor, Scutaro might have finally hit whatever summit he's going to have in his baseball career - his splits for 2009 were .282/.379/.409, far above his career totals of .265/.337/.384 - but that'll make him far too popular for those teams in need. In other words, expect Boston to overpay, quite possibly with a contract that'll keep Scutaro around for a year or two too long, because they don't have the leverage.

I'd be really happy if this deal works out to Boston's advantage, but I suspect we're in for something closer to the Renteria deal, with a bit higher of an upside: Scutaro hits well enough for a year, but tails off in 2011 (when he turns 35) and turns into dead-weight trade bait that the Sox dump for minor leaguers who never make a big contribution. Jed Lowrie, meanwhile, remains haunted by the after-effects of his broken wrist and never blossoms into the player we've stopped expecting him to become.

Penny versus Burnett

While the Red Sox continue their bargain basement shopping for damaged spare parts, the Herald poses an interesting question: would you rather have Brad Penny or A. J. Burnett? They cite some numbers that favor Penny (of course), but I was curious, so I took a look at each pitcher's historical numbers on FanGraphs.

As you can see, Burnett's numbers make him look like a lot more of an average-to-better pitcher than Penny, who seems to have done a lot of climbing towards mediocrity even before he hurt himself last season. To be honest, I'm impressed: these graphs make Burnett look a lot better - and make New York's investment a lot more reasonable - than I had been previously willing to admit. However, before I tucked off into a bout of green-with-envy misery over what seems like a distant second place splash to New York's $82.5 million acquisition, I happened to read David Golebiewski's analysis of both signings. Golebiewski's take on Burnett isn't too surprising - in short, if he stays healthy, he can dominate - but in his piece on Penny, he makes one crucial point that had me flipping an emotional bitch faster than you can say "2003 Marlins Reunion in Boston": statistical projections have a healthy Penny giving up 58 runs in 127 innings, far outshining the replacement-level starter who statistics project to give up 77.6 runs in the same time period. Couple that projection with a paltry $5 million deal and the Penny acquisition starts to make a lot of sense.

Therefore, since I'm all too happy to place my faith in the numbers, I'm at ease with the Penny pickup. New York can have its big-money contracts; the Yankees need them to have a shot in 2009. The Sox may be spending far less money, but they're still in a great position to compete.

Surprise, Surprise: Tazawa Signs With the Sox

Welp...looks like we got ourselves another pitcher. Actually, we've got ourselves another two pitchers, but anyone excited about Wes Littleton and his rapidly declining ERA+ and climbing WHIP might need to get themselves treated for baseball withdrawal. But no, the pitcher in question is, of course, the result of Boston's far eastern fishing expedition, the man who landed in Boston so he could (supposedly) pitch with idol Daisuke Matsuzaka: Junichi Tazawa.

Frankly, I don't know what to make of Tazawa: the Globe reports that in addition to a low-90s fastball, "[Tazawa] is said to have good command of both a breaking ball and changeup, the latter reportedly having the action of a split-fingered fastball," but then they go on to use Craig Hansen as a precedent for signing an amateur to a major league contract...and we all know how that experiment turned out (whether or not you want to blame Hansen's ultimate failure in a Sox uniform on his own inabilities to adapt to major league hitting or his overexposure in 2006 is a point for debate, but the end result is the same). Tazawa will start out in the minors and his contract is a paltry $1 million a year, so I guess if he doesn't pan out it won't be a big loss.

The real Hot Stove starts when, now?

Your Move, Mr. Epstein

We all know that Scott Boras is a.) Satan and b.) a very good agent (although whether or not he's better for his clients or himself may be up for debate), so we should be used to opening shots like this one:

Agent Scott Boras told reporters that New York Yankees catcher Jorge Posada’s four-year, $52.4 million deal, which was agreed to last offseason, will serve as a benchmark for any team looking to land Varitek.

“It’s probably representative, age-wise,” Boras said, “and it’s also representative of what a player on a winning team (is worth). You’re not going to have many catchers who have the performance levels and a 60 percent winning percentage on a franchise and have won two world championships and caught four no-hitters. The idea of it is that there just aren’t many in the marketplace that can lead a club like Jason Varitek and that’s going to be his value.”

But still, hearing Boras make value arguments is like getting a Novocaine shot: you know it'll hurt, but you've forgotten exactly how much until it happens. Seeing Boras dance around the bad and spin the good hurts, doesn't it? Almost makes you want to see the Sox offer more than two years...until you remember that enormous risk outweighs emotional connection.

Should the Sox Try For Santana?

I opened up Boston.com this morning to see what was going on in hot stove land, and came across this piece by Eric Wilbur on the relative value of putting Johan Santana or Dan Haren in red stirrups for 2008, who it would cost the Sox to make such a mega deal happen, and whether or not the overall deal would make sense for both our 2008 championship aspirations and the future of the club. Wilbur made an interesting point: he said that if the A's are looking to shop Haren - something that's still only in rumor mode at this date - he'd be a much better choice than Santana, and I agree. Here's why:

• Santana's numbers at Fenway are pretty ugly: 29 base runners and 12 earned runs in about 16 innings. Haren's Fenway numbers in the same number of innings are better (26 base runners and 8 earned runs), and he's two years younger. If we're going to lose a year having a pitcher adapt to winning at Fenway, I'd prefer it'd be from the guy who's got a head start and the younger age. On a related note, if the Yankees grab Santana, his history in Fenway means he won't be an automatic Sox killer.
  
  
• After his monster year in 2004, Santana's ERA+ fell about 25 points in 2005, then took another 30 point drop in 2007, leading to (among other things) a failure to anchor the pitching staff on my fantasy team. More importantly, although he's had his famous second-half resurgence every year since 2004, the quality of those resurgences is slipping: OBP against, for example, was nearly equal in both halves of 2006, and higher in the second of 2007, where it had been much lower in the second halves of 2004 and 2005. Might this be part of a trend?
  
  
• Santana will cost a whole lot of money to keep - he's coming into the end of his contract, and Wilbur has his rumored asking price at $25 million a year. A contract year performance would support that kind of money, but if Santana's entering a period of decline, he won't be worth $25 million in 2009. Haren, meanwhile, is a paltry (by comparison) $5.4 million for the next three years; plenty of time for him to prove he can be another dominating starter at Fenway without nearly as much monetary risk.
  
  
• Haren's numbers have been trending up since he became a full-time starter in 2005, and garnered an ERA+ of 137 (his highest yet) in 2007. He hasn't reached Santana's godly levels, but he's definitely getting much better as he gets older.
  

Now, assuming such a deal might actually take place (and the great news for us fans is that it doesn't have to happen for us to feel secure about next year's start), who would be the logical trade bait? I say Coco and Lester. Coco's the obvious choice - he's never lived up to his promise in Boston, and Ellsbury has "rising star" written all over him in permanent black marker - while Boston's surfeit of pitching makes Lester the more attractive option (over Buchholz) to deal away; his peripherals are trending in the right direction (lower WHIP, higher strikeouts per inning), and he's had more time to prove himself at the major league level.

The Party's Over

The party's over, and people have started to leave. As the overhead fluorescents flicker back on, the mood lighting disappears in a blast of blue-white glare and you're left holding what you hope is the jacket you wore on the way in. The World Series is over, the rolling rally has rolled on into history, and it's time to figure out who's coming back in 2008 and who's hitting the dusty trail to another city and another team. As the announcements start to pour in, however, let's hope the powers who manage our favorite team learned one thing from the aftermath of 2004: trying to duplicate success with cheaper replacement parts dances with disaster at every turn. So far, they haven't figured out that means bringing back Mike Lowell, but there have been a few other moves of note:

Exploring New Opportunities

• Curt Schilling - No surprise here; Curt's been talking his next move since the Sox declined to extend his contract by a year back in the Spring. The master of media relations has been keeping the media and fans abreast of select negotiations matters through his blog, including an announcement intended to dispel rumors that he's ceased discussions with Boston management. Should Curt stay in Boston: behind the fate of Mike Lowell, that's the biggest question about this championship team. I've been inclined to say no, to give both Lester and Buchholz space to shine in next year's rotation, but that means Matsuzaka would need to have a much more consistent year in 2008. Safe money would have Schilling back for one more year.
  
  
• Doug Mirabelli - Dougie filed before the Sox announced they'd be exercising Wakefield's option and before Kevin Cash chose free agency over assignment to Pawtucket, so it's likely he'll be back in Boston for another year, come hell, high water or the promotion of catcher Dusty Brown. When it comes to the knuckleball, I can't see the Sox making the same mistake twice.
  
  
• Bobby Kielty - I wonder how much that pinch-hit, game-difference, helped-win-the-World-Series-with-one-swing home run added to his contract value as a utility player. I'd wish this guy luck, but with Eric Hinske testing the waters I wonder whether or not Kielty might end up making a good bench option for 2008.
  
  
• Matt Clement - I think that marks the end of the "We Don't Need Pedro...We Can Sign Two Starters for Double the Effectiveness at Half the Cost!" experiment Theo launched in 2004. I'd say it all worked out poorly for Boston (I still have nightmares about David Wells taking the mound), but the Sox were right: Pedro's arm is now seeking to finalize the divorce from his shoulder, and the Mets are still paying him to rehab. I guess the winners are the teams that got the compensatory draft picks.
  
  
• Eric Gagne - So, um...don't let the door hit you on the way out, ok?
  

Demonstrating Their Commitment to the Team

• Tim Wakefield - A year without Wakefield on the mound in a Boston uniform is a year I don't want to face, and fortunately neither does the Sox Front Office: they picked up the 2008 version of the recurring option for another year of Knuckleball Fun Featuring Tim Wakefield after an arthogram revealed his aching shoulder just needs rest. I say he goes for 18 wins next year.
  
  
• Julian Tavarez - The Sox didn't put him on the post-season roster, but they still decided to bring the highly versatile and slightly crazed Tavarez back for a third round of erratic pitching, wild gesticulations and blood-soaked baby sacrifice. My theory: either Tavarez is Theo's backup plan in case either Lester or Buchholz turns into a bust, or the Sox couldn't bear to part Manny from his static electricity partner.
  
  
• John Farrell - "Those, rumahs, erah, aboutah Pittsburgh, were, erah, spread by my enemies to discredit me." Probably a good thing if the pitching coach for the team with the lowest ERA in the AL stayed around after that team won a championship, hmmm? Might help contribute to future titles and all that?
  

Entering a Mutually-Chosen Period of Readjustment

• Royce Clayton - Clayton was the acquisition most people (including myself) don't remember Boston making in August; the guy who played six games and sat on the bench in the post-season, and now he's gone, just like that. Royce, we hardly knew ye, and at age 37, it seems a little unlikely any other team will, either. We'll always have Taco Bell, though.